JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President (26 page)

At an afternoon groundbreaking for the nation’s largest nuclear power plant, in Hanford, Washington, he said that he had strongly supported the test ban treaty, and “
it may well be that man recognizes
now that war is so destructive, so annihilating, so incendiary, that it may be possible . . . for us to find a more peaceful world. That’s my intention.”

Salt Lake City had voted overwhelmingly
for Nixon in 1960. Its mayor had endorsed the right-wing John Birch Society, and its most prominent political leader, former secretary of agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, was an elder in the Mormon Church and a confirmed Birchite. Kennedy was presumed to be so unpopular that his decision to speak in the Mormon Tabernacle to a largely Mormon audience was being compared to his appearance at a 1960 convention of Protestant ministers in Houston, during which he had explained why his Catholic faith should not disqualify him from the presidency.
Yet the largest and most enthusiastic crowd
of his trip cheered him as he rode through downtown Salt Lake City at dusk in an open limousine, and eight thousand people had filled the Tabernacle to capacity and a similar number had packed a nearby hall and the Temple grounds, where loudspeakers would broadcast his speech.

He received a five-minute standing ovation when he took the podium. Instead of pandering to this conservative audience, he delivered a blistering attack on Goldwater’s simplistic foreign policy, receiving sustained applause when he criticized his “black-and-white choice of good and evil.” He urged these conservative Mormons to recognize “that we cannot remake the world simply by our own command,” and asserted that “every nation had its own traditions, its own values, its own aspirations. . . . We cannot enact their laws, nor can we operate their governments or dictate our policies.”

The applause was even louder when he proclaimed that the test ban treaty meant a “chance to end the radiation and the possibility of burning.” He mentioned that he had just flown over the Little Big Horn, where Indians had killed General Custer and several hundred of his men. After calling it “an event which has lived in history,” he reminded them that in the case of a nuclear war, “We are talking about two hundred million men and women in twenty-four hours,” adding, “I think it is wise to take just a first step and lessen the possibility of that happening.”

Among those applauding had to be people
who had heard him deliver a hawkish cold war speech here in 1960, during which he had called Khrushchev “the enemy” and excoriated the Communists for seeking “world domination.” Tonight, he quoted Brigham Young’s commandment to his followers to “go as pioneers to a land of peace.” When he finished, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir burst into the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” thunderous applause shook the hall, and the cheers were the loudest Bruno had ever heard him receive. While he was still on the stage, the United Press International correspondent Merriman Smith rushed up and said, “
That was a great speech
, Mr. President.” Peter Lisagor overheard Smith and thought his praise was unseemly and unethical, but
admitted feeling the same way
.

Like Billings and Great Falls, Salt Lake City had demonstrated that the test ban treaty had support across the political spectrum, and that peace could be a powerful issue in 1964. Bruno thought that the best political advisers in the world could not have persuaded him any better to run on a peace-and-disarmament platform. Vanocur concluded, “
If JFK had any doubts
about his reelection—and I think he had none—they were dispelled by this trip.”

He was ebullient throughout the rest of the tour. At an airport ceremony requiring him to push a button activating a generator at a dam 150 miles away, he joked, “
I never know when I press these
whether I’m going to blow up Massachusetts or start the project.” While waiting for a disembodied voice to announce over the loudspeakers that the generator had engaged, he said, “If we don’t hear from him it’s back to the drawing boards.” When the announcement finally came, he deadpanned, “This gives you an idea of how difficult it is to be president.”
He arrived at the lodge
in Lassen National Park in such a good mood that he allowed himself to be photographed feeding a tame deer—the kind of staged scene he usually avoided—and gave the deer so much of the bread in his cabin that there was no toast the next morning. After a speaker introducing him in Tacoma praised Mount Rainier, he invited everyone to travel east and marvel at “
the Blue Hills of Boston
, stretching three hundred feet up, covered in snow.” He told another audience, “
I do not think that these trips
do very much for people who come and listen . . . but I can tell you that they are the best educational three or four days for anyone who holds high office in the United States.”

During a 1949 debate over federal funding of low-cost housing for veterans, he had shocked his fellow congressmen by denouncing the American Legion for opposing the measure because it wanted to curry favor with real estate and construction interests, declaring on the floor of the House, “
The leadership of the American Legion
has not had a constructive thought for the benefit of this country since 1918.” His staff and friends had urged him to apologize and retract the statement. Instead, he attacked the powerful Legion again. After veterans and even Legion members rallied around him, he told Powers that the experience had taught him that “
more often than not, the right thing
to do is also the right thing politically.” His Western tour had taught him that ending the cold war might also be the right thing politically.

He spent Sunday in Palm Springs relaxing at the singer Bing Crosby’s ranch. He swam, watched football, and probably also watched an interview with Everett Dirksen on ABC’s
Issues and Answers.
Asked what issue
was most likely to “sink” the president in the election, Dirksen named the budget, specifically “a recurring deficit” and “public debt.”

While rehashing the trip with his advisers around Crosby’s pool, he asked Bruno how he had turned out such big crowds. “
It’s because they really like you
, Mr. President,” Bruno said. (After Bruno returned to Washington, he asked Lincoln if Salt Lake City had pleased him. She replied, “
Jerry, he is very, very happy
.” When Mansfield returned he told his secretary, “
Thank God, he got out of the state
without being harmed.”)

The darkest immediate cloud on Kennedy’s horizon was Jackie’s cruise. Angry letters were deluging the White House, attacking her for vacationing so soon after Patrick’s death, feeling well enough to travel but not to resume her duties as First Lady, and not choosing to holiday in the United States. While at Crosby’s ranch,
Kennedy drafted a press release
that portrayed the cruise as a wholesome family excursion, writing, “W.H. announced that Mrs. Kennedy would join Prince and Princess Radziwill, her sister, on a cruise in the Mediterranean. Mrs. Kennedy will be accompanied by her son John—and the Radziwills by their two children. They will travel on the _______ owned by Mr. Onassis which has been secured by Prince Radziwill.” Very little in his draft was or would prove to be true. She was not bringing John, nor were the Radziwills planning to include their children. Saying that Prince Radziwill had “secured” the yacht implied that he had chartered it and that Onassis would remain behind.

Back in Washington the next morning
he edited the release
so that Salinger could deliver it at a noon briefing. When he finished, it read (with the passages he had crossed out in brackets, and his handwritten additions in italics) “
while Mrs. Kennedy is visiting Greece she
will accompany her sister and brother-in-law Prince and Princess Radziwill on a [ten day] cruise in the Eastern Mediterranean aboard the yacht Christina. [Mrs. Kennedy will be accompanied by her son, John Jr., and the Radziwills by their children.] The yacht has been secured by Prince Radziwill for this cruise from her owner, Aristotle Onassis. [The cruise will begin October 1st.] Mrs. Kennedy plans to depart tomorrow evening at 10.”

It was more accurate than his first effort but still gave the impression that the cruise was a Radziwill production, with Onassis merely supplying his yacht. Pamela Turnure joined Salinger at the briefing and said it was “
possible some people will join
the cruise,” but because the list had not been finalized she would not be announcing their names. Asked if Onassis would be on board, she replied, “Not to my knowledge.”

That morning
Kennedy scribbled the kind of to-do list
that people compile after being away. Underneath a reminder to tell Lincoln to “get moccasins darkened,” he wrote, “Study of Cuba—previous administration,” evidence that he was monitoring the conversations between Attwood and Lechuga.

He ran into Arthur Schlesinger as he was heading upstairs with Jackie and the children for lunch. After Caroline curtsied, John copied her, leading Jackie to say, “
I think there’s something ominous
about John curtsying,” and John to protest indignantly, “Mummy, I wasn’t curtsying, I was bowing.”
Kennedy generously praised Schlesinger’s Salt Lake City speech
even though he had discarded most of it. Later that day, Schlesinger handed him a memorandum describing a proposed agreement with Harvard University for his presidential library.
Kennedy objected to its stipulation
that Harvard would turn over the land whenever “the President” requested it. Despite his successful Western trip he was taking nothing for granted. “What if I’m no longer president?” he asked Schlesinger. “We’ve been assuming this would be a two-term proposition. What if it isn’t?” Schlesinger assured him that Harvard would turn over the land even if he served only a single term, but he still insisted on changing the language so it read whenever “President Kennedy” requested it.

October 1–31, 1963

DAYS 53–23

WASHINGTON, ARKANSAS, AND CAMP DAVID

J
ackie had canceled her official engagements until January, but she decided to make an exception for Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and welcome him when he arrived at Union Station on Tuesday by chartered train from Philadelphia. The hairdresser Kenneth Battelle had flown from New York that morning and given her a sophisticated cut and style more suited to a jet-set cruise than to a First Lady who was in mourning and preparing to greet an emperor who traced his lineage back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and whose subjects approached him on their hands and knees. After seeing what Battelle had done, Kennedy summoned him back upstairs and asked, perhaps in jest, “
What are you trying to do
, ruin my career?” Battelle combed out her hair and gave her a pageboy. Kennedy also vetoed her hat as too flashy, and a photograph of them welcoming the emperor shows her wearing a black woolen suit and black pillbox hat.

He usually walked several paces ahead at ceremonial events, but at Union Station a reporter noted that “
he gently guided her ahead
of him . . . and if she dropped her yellow gloved hand from his arm, he placed his hand on her arm.” A military band played, cannons boomed, and she presented the emperor and his granddaughter Ruth Desta with a bouquet of roses and informed them that she had broken mourning to greet them. The president hailed Selassie as “
a man whose place in history
is already assured,” an honor never far from his mind.

They rode to the White House in an open limousine. The five-foot-tall emperor wore a field marshal’s uniform plastered with ribbons and medals and stood erect in the backseat. Kennedy remained seated to avoid towering over him. Jackie and Ruth Desta followed in a bubbletop limousine. After discovering they were both keen horsewomen and painters, Jackie invited her and the emperor to tea in the family quarters. Haile Selassie used the occasion to present her with a full-length leopard-skin coat, perhaps chosen to trump the one she had received from his archenemy, President Aden Daar of Somalia. She slipped it on and, because they were speaking French, said, “
Je suis comblée
[
I am overcome
].” She hurried downstairs and found her husband in the Rose Garden. “
See, Jack, he brought it to me
!” she exclaimed. “He brought it to
me
!”

“
I was wondering why
you were wearing a fur coat in the garden,” he said dryly.

Before leaving for Athens,
she handed Chief Usher J. B. West a stack of prewritten postcards
addressed to John and Caroline (she did not trust the foreign mails),
and gave Evelyn Lincoln a letter
in a sealed envelope with instructions to deliver it to her husband the following day.

•   •   •

D
URING
A
W
EDNESDAY
MORNING
meeting in the Cabinet Room,
McNamara and Taylor reported
on their mission to South Vietnam.
General Krulak had overseen the drafting
of their official report, consulting at every step with Bobby, who had in turn briefed the president. Bobby then relayed the president’s comments back to Krulak, a process guaranteeing that the final report would be written to his specifications and include an optimistic assessment of the military situation, one justifying the withdrawal of some U.S. advisers. McNamara had made it clear to the aides accompanying him on the trip that this was the goal, leading McGeorge Bundy’s older brother, Assistant Secretary of Defense William Bundy, to write, “
All through the Saigon briefings and in the field
, the question at the top of McNamara’s mind . . . [was]: Could the U.S. look forward to a reduction in its military advisors by the end of 1965?”

McNamara and Taylor affirmed in their report that “the military campaign has made great progress and continues to progress.” They acknowledged “serious political tensions in Saigon,” but found “no solid evidence of the possibility of a successful coup . . . although assassination of Diem or Nhu is always a possibility.” They were guardedly optimistic, writing, “The military program in Vietnam has made progress and is sound in principle.” The political situation remained “deeply serious,” but had “not yet significantly affected the military effort, but could do so at some time in the future.” They recommended that “a program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965.”

An earlier draft of their report
had recommended that the Defense Department “announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963,” adding that “this action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.” This passage had alarmed Averell Harriman’s assistant William Sullivan, who told McNamara that pulling out all the U.S. advisers by the end of 1965 was “totally unrealistic,” and threatened to write a dissenting report. To placate him, McNamara and Taylor eliminated the recommendation to withdraw a thousand advisers.

As soon as Kennedy noticed the omission
, he suspended the meeting and took McNamara and Taylor into the Oval Office.
When they returned
, McNamara announced that the report now contained a troop-withdrawal schedule. Kennedy asked McNamara if reducing the number of advisers was dependent on military progress. “No. No, sir,” McNamara said emphatically, adding that even if the military campaign went beyond 1965, “we believe we can train the Vietnamese to take over the essential functions and withdraw the bulk of our forces. And this thousand is in conjunction with that.”

“What’s the point in doing it?” McGeorge Bundy asked skeptically.

“We need a way to get out of Vietnam,” McNamara said. “This is a way of doing it.”

Taylor backed him up. He had asked the U.S. officers whom he interviewed, “When can you finish this job in the sense that you will reduce this insurgency to little more than sporadic incidents?” Most had said a year would be “ample time,” assuming there were “no new major factors.”

“Well, let’s say it anyway,” Kennedy interjected. “Then in ’65 if it doesn’t work out [unclear audio], we’ll get a new date.”

McNamara emphasized that the withdrawal was not contingent on winning the war, merely on completing the training of the South Vietnamese army, adding, “The only slightest difference between Max and me in this entire report is in this one estimate of whether or not we can win the war in ’64 in the upper [unclear] territories and ’65 in the [unclear]. I’m not entirely sure of that. But I am sure that if we don’t meet those dates, in the sense of ending the major military campaigns, we nonetheless can withdraw the bulk of our U.S. forces, according to the schedule we have laid out . . . because we can train the Vietnamese to do the job.”

Taylor now defined “victory” in terms making the withdrawal of the advisers justifiable under most circumstances, saying, “It ought to be very clear what we mean by victory or success. That doesn’t mean every Viet Cong comes in with a white flag, but that we do suppress this insurgency to the point that the national security forces of Vietnam can contain [it].”

Chester Cooper, a CIA officer serving in the State Department as an assistant for policy support, was working in a basement office in the White House that morning.
He protested when McGeorge and Bill Bundy
brought him the final draft of a press statement announcing that the U.S. military mission in Vietnam would end in 1965. Bill Bundy, in a tone of voice that Cooper described as reflecting his “utter exasperation,” said, “
Look, I’m under instructions
,” meaning that the president had insisted on including this passage in the report. McGeorge Bundy asked McNamara to persuade Kennedy to remove the pledge to withdraw in 1965, but as Cooper wrote later, “McNamara seems to have been trapped,” because “the sentence may have been worked out privately with Kennedy, and therefore imbedded in concrete.”

After hearing more protests during a National Security Council meeting that afternoon, Kennedy demanded that everyone support his policy. “
Reports of disagreements do not help
the war effort in Vietnam,” he said. “We must all sign on and with good heart set out to implement the actions decided upon.”

McNamara suggested announcing the withdrawal timetable in order to “
set it in concrete
.” Kennedy agreed, but wanted it presented to the press as something that McNamara and Taylor had proposed. As McNamara left the Cabinet Room to brief reporters, Kennedy shouted after him, “
And tell them that means
all of the helicopter pilots too.”

McNamara’s statement was front-page news. He informed reporters that “
the military program in South Viet Nam
has made progress and is sound in principle, though improvements are being energetically sought,” that “Secretary McNamara and General Taylor reported their judgment that the major part of the U.S. military task can be completed by the end of 1965,” and that “by the end of the year, the U.S. program for training Vietnamese should have progressed to the point where one thousand U.S. military personnel assigned to South Viet Nam can be withdrawn.”

Some of those attending the October 2 meetings understood that the policy that Taylor and McNamara had proposed, and that Kennedy had approved, had been Kennedy’s policy all along. Deputy Secretary of Defense Gilpatric said that McNamara told him afterward that the withdrawal “
was part of a plan the President asked him to develop
to unwind the whole thing.”

After listening to a recording of the October 2 meeting thirty years later, McNamara found that it confirmed his impression that the decision to announce the withdrawal had divided the president’s staff. “
Many, many were opposed to approving a plan
to remove all advisors and all military support within two years by the end of ’65. Many, many were opposed to withdrawing a thousand within ninety days. And then after that decision was made, many, many were opposed to announcing it,” he said. “And he [Kennedy] went through those controversies and the tape is very clear on this. First, the controversy over whether to establish the plan and have it as an official government policy. And second, the controversy over whether to put it in concrete by announcing it. He did both.” McNamara believed he had done this because “he believed the primary responsibility of a president was to keep the nation out of war if at all possible.”

•   •   •

J
ACKIE
HAD
BEEN
CAREFUL
not to spoil
John and Caroline, but the moment she left for Greece,
Kennedy asked his driver
Muggsy O’Leary to buy some toy horses for Caroline, and sent out Lincoln to buy model planes so he could give one to John when he dashed into his bedroom every morning. John was too young for school, so he received the most attention.
Kennedy played with him
before his first meeting of the day, swam with him before lunch, played games of “through the tunnel and under the mountain,” standing with his legs apart so John could crawl underneath, tickled him until he wet his pants, and let him ride along to Andrews and Camp David in the helicopter, putting on a helmet and touching the controls. He told a friend, “
I’m having the best time of my life
.”

He brought John along on Wednesday for the first leg of a trip to Arkansas, taking him to Andrews by helicopter and letting him sit in the presidential compartment on Air Force One. He was going to dedicate a dam that lay within the congressional district of Wilbur Mills, the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and to gain a sense of how much his civil rights bill had damaged his chances of winning the state. Accompanying him was Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas, a Rhodes scholar, an internationalist, and a liberal in everything but civil rights.
Two years earlier, Fulbright
had seized the opportunity of sharing a flight with him to give him a memorandum opposing the Bay of Pigs operation and recommending a policy of isolating and containing the Castro regime. After reading it, Kennedy had invited him to attend the final Bay of Pigs review. Fulbright denounced the invasion as a violation of the nation’s moral principles. Everyone in the room, including Kennedy, ignored him.

During their flight to Arkansas on October 3,
Fulbright urged Kennedy to skip Dallas
when he visited Texas. Fulbright’s liberal positions on foreign affairs had made him persona non grata in the city, the wealthy Hunt family had funneled money to his opponents, and the
Dallas Morning News
had called him a “red louse.” The attacks had so unnerved him that he steered clear of the city. He told Kennedy it was “a very dangerous place,” adding, “
I
wouldn’t go there. . . . Don’t
you
go.”

If Kennedy had harbored any doubts about visiting Dallas, an article that week in
Time
titled “
Box Score for ’64
—Can Anybody Beat Kennedy?” would have dispelled them. It reported that although most political observers considered him a sure winner in 1964, a state-by-state survey by its correspondents indicated that Goldwater would give him “a breathlessly close contest.” The article came with a box score showing him losing the South to Goldwater, winning most Northeastern states, some Midwestern ones, and California. The outcome might be decided by Texas, but because Vice President Johnson was “not the power he once was,”
Time
said, Kennedy could “only be rated even there.” If he won Texas, he would have 280 electoral votes, 10 over the 270 he needed, but if Goldwater won the state he would have 266 votes, “with an excellent chance for picking up the necessary additional four from among the Kennedy-hating unpledged electors of Alabama and Mississippi.”

Kennedy found the article so unsettling that he had raised it with his political advisers on October 2. He did not usually tape meetings concerning politics, but he neglected to switch off the microphone, inadvertently recording this one. Because the participants kept moving around the room, only snatches of their sentences are sometimes audible. He began by asking, “
Did you read that
Time
magazine yet
?” Referring to Goldwater, he said, “I guess he’s a Puritan, so anybody who’s got any girls, just play it more quiet.” Because Goldwater did not fool around with women, Kennedy assumed he would be less tolerant of people (such as himself) who did, and said, “I just figure that a guy who’s getting laid is not going to go after a guy who’s getting laid.” Speaking of a staffer who liked flight attendants, he said, “He ought to look like he’s all business. If he’s parading stewardesses around he’s going to make all the other guys sore.” Returning to the
Time
survey, he called the writers and editors responsible for it “those cocksuckers,” and complained, “I thought I was a sure thing.” He insisted that even if he lost the West, he could still be reelected, “if I win California and Texas.”