Black and white photograph of Kenneth O'Donnell, Special Assistant to the President.

As Special Assistant and Presidential Appointment Secretary, Kenneth O'Donnell was in charge of coordinating the President's appointments and schedules.

Early Life & Personal Connection to the Kennedy Family

O'Donnell was intimately associated with the Kennedy family, placing him in JFK's closest circle of associates. He was born to an Irish family on March 04, 1924 and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. O'Donnell's father was the football coach and P.E. director at Holy Cross College. O'Donnell was the football team captain at Classical High School. His brother Cleo also played with him. Before going to Harvard, O'Donnell served in the Air Force from 1942 to 1945 and became lead bombardier. Fourteen of those months were spent overseas, where he won a Distinguished Flying Cross Award.

O'Donnell and Robert Kennedy were roomates during their time spent at Harvard, where O'Donnell was studying government. O'Donnell recevied his A.B. in 1949. Afterwards, Robert was the person who recruited O'Donnell in 1946 for JFK's first congressional campaign. For a time, he served for Senator Kennedy in an unpaid role. O'Donnell became an official member of JFK's staff by 1958. He was also vital in the planning and execution of JFK's presidential campaign in 1960. He was given the title of Appointment Secretary/Special Assistant to the President, and he seems to have had a very particular way of instructing the other White House staff members. It was often the case that O'Donnell was mistaken for a Secret Service agent, because he always hovered so near to JFK. In fact, the White House press referred to O'Donnell and the other members of JFK's inner circle as "Kennedy's Irish Mafia" due to their closeness to JFK. During the Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, O'Donnell served as an off-the-record advisor to JFK. After the assassination, O'Donnell became LBJ's Presidential Aide until 1965.

An excerpt from O'Donnell's Warren Commission testimony, an account of the conversation among O'Donnell, JFK, and Jackie at Hotel Texas on the morning of the assassination (volume VII, page 456).

Excerpt from Warren Commission Report, page 45, detailing the bubbletop decision.

Excerpt from Kenneth O'Donnell's FBI Key Witness folder, page 12, detailing LBJ's request to O'Donnell for permission to leave Dallas.

In this excerpt from O'Donnell's interview with the Warren Commission, he recounts giving the order to flee Parkland Hospital and quickly board Air Force 1 (volume VII, pages 452-453).

The Assassination

Morning of November 22, 1963

In his Warren Commission interview with Arlen Specter, O'Donnell recounted an eerie conversation held on the morning of the assassination. As waiter Marvin Love served JFK his final breakfast, O'Donnell, JFK, and Jackie were chatting in Kennedy's room at Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, discussing the very possibility of an assassination. O'Donnell was quoted as saying:

"But he [JFK] said that if anybody really wanted to shoot the President of the United States, it was not a very difficult job - all one had to do was get a high building some day with a telescopic rifle, and there was nothing anybody could do to defend such an attempt on the President's life."

In this conversation, O'Donnell suggested that Kennedy himself was constantly aware of such dangers; JFK thought that the Secret Service could potentially protect him from crowds, but in that hotel room, he acknowledged that there was no guarantee the agents would be able to protect him from a shooter.

Motorcade, Parkland Memorial Hospital, & Airplane

Kenneth O'Donnell was seated in the left jump seat of the Secret Service follow-up car with David Powers in the seat next to him. The Secret Service car followed directly behind the Presidential limo. Many people wonder about the decision to leave the limo's bubbletop off during the procession. Interestingly, the Warren Commission Report pinned this decision on O'Donnell. He apparently gave the Secret Service instructions to leave the top off if the weather was clear. The weather on the 22nd was lovely indeed.

After the race to Parkland Hospital and JFK's death, according to O'Donnell's FBI key person file, O'Donnell was the man whom LBJ asked for permission to leave Dallas aboard Air Force 1. Apparently, Johnson was reluctant to leave "without permission or suggestion from someone on the President's Staff." O'Donnell was also the person who told Agent Clinton Hill to find a casket to transport JFK's body back to D.C. Furthermore, according to his interview with the Warren Commission, O'Donnell gave the order to leave Parkland Memorial Hospital and board Air Force 1 without following the normal bureaucratic procedures. He was afraid that an autopsy would last days rather than hours and strongly felt that this would be "an impossible situation for Mrs. Kennedy." O'Donnell said he was in a "highly desperate strait" to board the plane and take off, fearing that "at some moment we either might not be granted clearance to take off, or that the hospital may have in some way gotten the police to intercept us." However, Robert Kennedy insisted that LBJ be sworn in before take-off.

O'Donnell on JFK's Legacy

In the video above, filmed ten years after that fateful day, O'Donnell remarks on the assassination and sums up JFK's lasting legacy to the country. JFK "brought young people intimately into politics."

Original paperback cover of the 1972 publication written by Kenneth O'Donnell and David Powers.

Publication & Death

In September 1972, O'Donnell published the memoir Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye with David Powers, reminiscing on their political journeys and their experiences with JFK in office. O'Donnell and Powers agreed to let O'Donnell narrate the entire book in first-person, because their editors felt it might be too confusing for their readers if both men told the story. However, in a note at the beginning of the memoir, O'Donnell made sure to emphasize the "incredible memory of Dave Powers," whose "total recall" of historical details was essential to the creation and accuracy of their book. Memory is often extremely slippery. Thus, the amount of detail Powers and O'Donnell were able to convey through a collaboration between their two brains is impressive indeed.

Sadly, O'Donnell died young at age 53 on September 09, 1977, only five years after the book's publication. His death occurred in the morning at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. His condition was related to a liver issue, although the exact cause is unknown, because his family asked the doctors not to reveal the details.

Front cover of paperback edition of Tip O'Neill's memoir.

Testimonial Discrepancies & Historical Errors

As amateur historians, it is important for us to consider questions regarding the accuracy of different primary sources, including the testimonies of our witnesses. Many conspiracy theorists often latch on to innaccuracies. Sometimes, discrepancies do not come to light until many years after an event has occurred. Innaccuracies can result from memory loss as well as other reasons, such as O'Donnell's.

Warren Commission

People often wonder about the direction from which the shots came. In O'Donnell's Warren Commission testimony on May 18, 1964, he claimed there were three shots that came from the right rear:

"Mr. O'DONNELL: My reaction (to the source of the shots) in part is reconstruction—is that they came from the right rear. That could be my best judgment.... looking at the manner of the President's movement, I would think you would have to feel the thrust of the shot was from the right rear.

Mr. SPECTER: Now, what was there about the President's movement which leads you to that conclusion?

Mr. O'DONNELL: He was leaning out waving. He may have just been withdrawing his hand. And the shot hit him, and threw him to the left. He slumped on Mrs. Kennedy."

Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye

In 1972, O'Donnell's memoir essentially supported his witness statement regarding the number of shots:

"I had just finished speaking when we heard shots, two close together and then a third one."

Man of the House

However, in 1987, 23 years after O'Donnell gave his original 1964 statement, Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the House, published his own memoir about his experiences interacting with policitcal figures. In Man of the House, O'Neill recalls a dinner in Boston with O'Donnell:

"I was never one of those people who had doubts or suspicions about the Warren Commission's report on the President's death. But five years after Jack died, I was having dinner with Kenny O'Donnell and a few other people at Jimmy's Harborside Restaurant in Boston, and we got to talking about the assassination.

I was surprised to hear O'Donnell say that he was sure he had heard two shots that came from behind the fence.

'That's not what you told the Warren Commission,' I said.

'You're right,' he replied. 'I told the FBI what I had heard but they said it couldn't have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn't want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family.'

'I can't believe it,' I said. 'I wouldn't have done that in a million years. I would have told the truth.'

'Tip, you have to understand. The family—everybody wanted this thing behind them.'
Dave Powers was with us at dinner that night, and his recollection of the shots was the same as O'Donnell's."

After a comparison of these passages, we can clearly see that O'Donnell intentionally altered the information he presented to the Warren Commission, because he felt it would be the easier solution. This discrepancy in accounts also makes us question the reliability of the Warren Commission's findings. O'Donnell thought that the Commission did not want to hear what he had genuinely heard, so he tried to testify to please them. Of course, it is not our intention to stirr up any more conspiracies, but as historians, it is important for us to consider whether other interviewees may have felt similar pressures and altered their recollections as well.