...On Nov. 22, 1963, Mr. Wicker, a brilliant but relatively unknown White House correspondent who had worked at four smaller papers, written several novels under a pen name and, at 37, had established himself as a workhorse of The Times’s Washington bureau, was riding in the presidential motorcade as it wound through downtown Dallas, the lone Times reporter on a routine political trip to Texas.
The searing images of that day — the rifleman’s shots cracking across Dealey Plaza, the wounded president lurching forward in the open limousine, the blur of speed to Parkland Memorial Hospital and the nation’s anguish as the doctors gave way to the priests and a new era — were dictated by Mr. Wicker from a phone booth in stark, detailed prose drawn from notes scribbled on a White House itinerary sheet. It filled two front-page columns and the entire second page, and vaulted the writer to journalistic prominence overnight....
It is apparently good men like Tom Wicker that frustrate me most and I can not understand... over time, they had to know what they reported about the Assassination of President Kennedy was wrong... but they never said anything... and I understand if they were fed false info, etc... but at some point... they had to look in the mirror and admit that the officail story just does not work...
Wicker's reporting for the New York Times on 11/22/63 was what he hung his reputation on... I know it was not his entire life... but his life was certianly lived in the shadow of that day... as all of our lives have been... so in the end... he did more harm that good with his reporting.
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