In Don De Lillo’s Libra, three CIA officers, discredited by the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, construct a plan to fake the assassination of President John Kennedy and energize America’s anger toward Cuba. Win Everett comes up with the idea; Larry Parmenter finds the political support and the money; T-Jay Mackey finds the men to do the work. In their dark world of angry dreams, the plan turns poisonously real, ensnares Lee Harvey Oswald as the ‘patsy’ and kills JFK.
The picture above, taken from the famous Zapruder film, shows the actual moment of Kennedy’s death in Dallas.
Here are three excerpts from Libra, in which the plotters set up the plan.
Win Everett:
A pickup came down the road and they rolled up their windows to keep the dust out. The driver gave a half-wave without taking his hand off the wheel. They waited for the dust to settle, then rolled down the windows. Win paused a moment before beginning to speak again.
“Some things we wait for all our lives without knowing it. Then it happens and we recognize at once who we are and how we are meant to proceed. This is the idea I’ve always wanted. I believe you’ll sense it is right. It’s the high risk we need. We need an electrifying event. You’ve been waiting for this every bit as much as I have. I believe that or I wouldn’t have asked you to come here. We want to set up an attempt on the life of the President. We plan every step, design every incident leading up to the event. We put together a team, leave a dim trail, The evidence is ambiguous. But it points to the Cuban Intelligence Directorate. … This plan speaks to something deep inside me. It has a powerful logic. I’ve felt it unfolding for weeks, like a dream whose meaning slowly becomes apparent. This is the condition we’ve always wanted to reach. It’s the life-insight, the life-secret, and we have to extend it, guard it carefully, right up to the time we have shooters stationed on a rooftop or railroad bridge.”
There was a silence. Then Parmenter said dryly, “We couldn’t hit Castro. So let’s hit Kennedy. I wonder if that’s the hidden motive here.”
“But we don’t hit Kennedy. We miss him,” Win said.
Larry Parmenter:
They returned to their food, their lunch. The voices and noise around them became apparent once more, a tide of excited news, a civilized clamor. George said something perfectly right about the wine, swirling it in the high-stemmed tulip glass. An attractive woman hurried toward a table, showing the happy exasperation that describes a journey through traffic snarls and personal dramas to some island of prosperous calm. There were times when Larry thought lunch in a superior restaurant was the highlight of Western man.
…
Larry couldn’t help laughing. It was all so curiously funny. It was rich, that’s what it was. Everyone was a spook or dupe or asset, double, courier, cutout or defector, or was related to one. We were all linked in a vast and rhythmic coincidence, a daisy chain rumor, suspicion and secret wish. George was laughing too. A wonderful woodwind rumble. They looked at each other and, laughed. They laughed in appreciation of the richness of life, the fabulous and appalling nature of human affairs, the good food and drink, the superior service, the wrecked careers, the whole teeming abscess of folly and regret. Larry felt flush and well fed, a little tipsy, all the right things. The Honduran ambassador said hello. A man from Pemex stopped to tell a richly filthy joke. It was a lovely lunch. It was great, rich, lovely and perfectly right.
Parmenter took the Agency shuttle bus back to Langley. Then he wrote a memo to the Office of Security requesting an expedite check on George de Mohrenschildt.
T-Jay Mackey:
Mackey gave them some background on the operation. Extremely dedicated men were behind it. The idea was to galvanize the nation into full awareness of the danger of a communist Cuba. Direccion General de Inteligencia would be exposed as a criminal organization willing to take extreme action against important figures who opposed Castro.
He told them a shooting was in the works, designed to implicate the DGI. He wanted Frank and Raymo to be part of it and he supplied some operational details. High-powered rifles, elevated perches, a trail of planted evidence, someone to take the fall. There would be five hundred dollars a month for each of them, commencing now, and a nice payday when the job was done. The men behind the plan, he said, were respected Agency veterans, deep believers in a free Havana.
He did not mention Everett and Parmenter by name. He did not tell them who their target was or where the shooting would take place. He would let details drop, here, and there, in time, as need dictated. The other thing he did not say was that they were supposed to miss.
