Mr. Kantor. No; I had no opportunity. The only people I talked to were the two Texas Congressmen, as I got off the phone, and that was the only word I had with anyone until the announcement came from Malcolm.
Mr. Griffin. So that you didn’t, yourself, even have any firm expectation as to what the announcement of Kilduff would be?
Mr. Kantor. No; I knew it was a rather grim situation, but I didn’t know how grim.
Mr. Griffin. Was a prepared statement handed out?
Mr. Kantor. No; it was not. He made the statement under trying circumstances. His voice was quivering. He was leaning on a table which is used by a teacher in the classroom, which was being used as an emergency press headquarters. With great difficulty he made the announcement that the President had died at about 1 o’clock, which would have been a half hour before he was making the announcement.
Mr. Griffin. How do you fix the time of the announcement at 1:30?
Mr. Kantor. I was following my watch very closely because it was a matter of newspaper deadlines, especially for our Texas papers. The reason I had called Washington was because I felt that I could not begin calling our three papers in Texas individually, and I felt that from Washington the story could be related to all 18 of our papers. And so I was watching the time closely.
Mr. Griffin. And did you report to your Washington office that the time of the announcement had been 1:30?
Mr. Kantor. I believe I did. And if I didn’t, the wire services were doing that at the same time. But Mr. Kilduff said that he would have further announcements to make in—I think he established the time as 10 minutes. And told us to make our phone calls or do what we had to do, and return to this room.
Mr. Griffin. Did you make a phone call?