A state of disobedience

Dallas, Texas

It was almost a northern city, in many ways. Like Atlanta and a few other places in the old south, the old Confederacy, Dallas was filled with northerners and flush with northern, and urban, attitudes and values. While a Texas—or Georgia—Democrat was likely to be more to the right than a Massachusetts—or New York—Republican, a Texan or Georgian Democrat from Atlanta or Dallas was equally likely to be only somewhat to the right of Marx or Engels. That was, of course, considerably to the right of a Massachusetts Democrat, many of whom stood considerably to the left of Marx and Engels.

Support, therefore, for Governor Seguin was far more muted in Dallas than it was in, say, neighboring Fort Worth. Indeed, that support was sometimes hardly in evidence at all.

And, however much federal law enforcement agencies had expanded and rotted under the Rottemeyer administration, some had done so less than others.

The premier agency, in fact, had—excepting some newer and much expanded sub-groups like the Hostage Rescue Team—hardly rotted at all. Although in the shadow of a pile of filth, and affected by the stench of it, the FBI—the core of a fine old organization—still retained some measure of its old dignity, restraint and purpose.

So, although there had been some incidents in Dallas—the FBI's area of responsibility for rear area security, those incidents had been few and not one had escalated into the type of random viciousness which were making the name of the United States government a stench in the nostrils of Texans, and others, elsewhere.

In Fort Worth, however, things were different.

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