John Connally

John Connally was governor of Texas, was wounded in the car in which John F. Kennedy was killed, and later served a Republican president as secretary of the treasury after a career as a Democrat. He came up as an aide to Lyndon Johnson, managed his campaigns, and was appointed secretary of the navy by Kennedy in 1961 before resigning to run for governor. He was riding in the jump seat of the presidential limousine in Dallas on 22 November 1963 when the shots were fired, and was hit through the back, chest, wrist and thigh. His wounds are central to the argument about the assassination: the Warren Commission concluded that a single bullet passed through Kennedy and caused all of Connally's injuries, and Connally himself never accepted it, insisting to the end that he was hit by a separate shot. He served three terms as governor, switched to the Republican party in 1973, and as Nixon's treasury secretary presided over the decision in August 1971 to end the convertibility of the dollar into gold, which finished the Bretton Woods system. He told European finance ministers that the dollar was America's currency and their problem. He ran for the Republican nomination in 1980 and won a single delegate at enormous expense, then lost most of his fortune in Texas real estate and declared bankruptcy in 1987. His wife Nellie was also in the car and gave evidence about the sequence of shots that supported his account rather than the commission's. He was acquitted in 1975 of taking a bribe over milk price supports while treasury secretary. Nixon had wanted him as vice-president in 1973 and was told the Senate would never confirm a recent party convert.

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