Killing Kennedy (23 page)

By 3:00
P.M
., it all seems to be over. The children who haven’t been arrested limp home in their soaked and torn clothing, their bodies bruised by countless point-blank blasts of water cannon. No longer bold and defiant, they are now just a bunch of kids who have to explain to their angry parents about their wrecked clothes and a missed day of school.

Once again, Bull Connor has won.

Or at least it seems that way.

But among those in Birmingham this afternoon is an Associated Press photographer named Bill Hudson. He is considered one of the best in the business, willing to endure any danger to get a great photo. He has ducked bullets during the Korean War and dodged bricks while covering the civil rights movement.

On this day in Birmingham, Bill Hudson takes the best photo of his life. Appropriately, it’s in black and white. He snaps it from just five feet away. The photograph is an image of a Birmingham police officer—looking official in pressed shirt, tie, and sunglasses—encouraging his German shepherd to take a chunk out of black high school student Walter Gadsden’s stomach.

The next morning that photograph appears on the front page of the
New York Times
, three columns wide, above the fold.

And so it is that John Kennedy, starting his morning as he always does by reading the papers, sees this image from Birmingham. Disgusted by what he sees, Kennedy makes a point to tell reporters that the picture is “sick” and “shameful.”

Just one look and JFK instinctively knows that America and the world will be outraged by Hudson’s image. Civil rights are sure to be a major issue of the 1964 presidential election. And Kennedy now understands he can no longer be a passive observer of the civil rights movement. He must take a stand—no matter how many votes it might lose him in the South.

Meanwhile, the reputation of Martin Luther King Jr. is on the rise. He will soon see the Birmingham situation resolved in his favor, thanks to the Children’s Crusade. After Bull Connor’s initial “victory,” the public pressure against Alabama authorities becomes so intense that change is inevitable.

This photograph of a nonviolent civil rights protester being attacked by police dogs brought the brutality of Bull Connor’s police force to national attention.
(Bill Hudson/Associated Press)

Despite the triumph, Martin Luther King Jr. and John Fitzgerald Kennedy are not on the same page. In fact, they are on a collision course.

*   *   *

Civil disobedience is not limited to the American civil rights movement.

Five days after the children of Birmingham peacefully march into that wall of water cannons and police dogs, and two days after a U.S. Army lieutenant is killed by the Viet Cong just outside Saigon, a crowd of Buddhists gathers in the South Vietnamese city of Hue. It is May 8, 1963, the 2,527th birthday of the Buddha.

The protesters have come to demonstrate against a new law set forth by President Ngo Dinh Diem that makes flying the Buddhist flag illegal in Vietnam. It is Diem’s great desire to convert his country to Catholicism, and vital to that effort is the systematic subjugation of the nation’s Buddhist majority. Diem—whose regime President Kennedy has long supported, but whose anti-Buddhist stance is contrary to American foreign policy—denies promotions to officials known to be Buddhist and looks the other way when Roman Catholic priests organize private armies that loot and demolish the pagodas where the Buddhists worship. To give his crusade credibility in the eyes of the American government, Diem insists that Buddhism and communism are the same—a suggestion akin to J. Edgar Hoover’s quiet belief that civil rights and communism are synonymous.

Now, as the three thousand unarmed Buddhist protesters gather near the Perfume River to voice their frustrations, government police and troops fire into the crowd. Bullets and grenades scatter the marchers, killing one woman and eight children in the process.

In the ensuing public outrage, Diem blames the deaths on his Viet Cong opponents—even though the police and army were clearly South Vietnamese. The so-called Buddhist crisis escalates when Diem refuses to punish the men who did the shooting.

Tensions grow throughout Vietnam during the month of May. Diem, like Bull Connor in Birmingham, appears to have the upper hand. Nothing can be done to end his reign of terror. On June 3, government troops once again attack Buddhists in Hue, using tear gas and dogs to disperse the demonstrators. But the crowd will not leave and continues to reassemble. Now the Buddhists turn violent, shouting obscenities at their government attackers. Finally, South Vietnamese troops pour an unnamed red liquid on the heads of Buddhists who are sitting in the streets praying. Sixty-seven of these men and women are taken to hospitals with burns covering their scalps and shoulders.

Unable to control the protesters any longer, Diem’s soldiers place the entire city of Hue under martial law.

Still, just as the Birmingham integration movement was losing steam before the Children’s Crusade gave it new life, so the Buddhist crisis has begun to bore members of the foreign press. Diem’s persecution of Buddhists has become old news.

But on June 11, 1963, a seventy-three-year-old Buddhist monk will give those reporters something to write about.

*   *   *

It is almost 10:00
A.M
. as Thich Quang Duc sits down on a crowded Saigon thoroughfare. He is dressed in a flowing saffron robe. Duc is an ordained member of the Buddhist clergy, a monastic who lives a meditative life of poverty. This morning he has chosen to protest the government crackdown on his beliefs by burning himself to death.

This is not an impulsive decision. Many within the Buddhist community have sought someone who would immolate himself to draw attention to their plight. Such a startling gesture can’t help but attract media coverage from around the world. Indeed, the day before, members of the foreign press were told to be in front of the Cambodian legation the next day if they wanted to see something special.

Not many journalists accept the invitation, so few are on hand to witness the gray Austin sedan driving slowly toward the intersection of Phan Dinh Phung Boulevard and Le Van Duyet Street. Three hundred and fifty Buddhist protesters carrying banners in Vietnamese and English that denounce the Diem regime follow right behind.

The Austin stops at the intersection. Thich Quang Duc gets out, gathering his robes about him as he does so. A cushion is placed on the street, and the aging monk sits down. He assumes the lotus position and begins to recite the words “return to eternal earth Buddha” over and over again.

Duc has come to this point in his life willingly, but nothing has prepared him for the moment when a fellow protester pours five gallons of gasoline over his bald head. The fuel soaks his robes and flows down his back until the cushion on which he sits is saturated.

The protesters gather in a circle around Duc to prevent the police from interfering. In one hand the monk holds a string of oak prayer beads. In the other he holds a match.

Duc lights the match.

There is no need to touch the flame to his person, because the fumes are enough to make his body burst into fire. His face, as seen through the flames, is a mask of pure agony. But Duc does not cry out or even make a sound. His skin turns black. His eyelids are fused shut. Yet as one minute passes, and then another, he still does not die.

The police cannot get to him; they are blocked by that protective circle of protesters. When a fire truck tries to get close enough to drench the monk with water, other monks throw their bodies beneath its wheels to stop it.

Finally, after ten agonizing minutes, Thich Quang Duc topples forward, dead.

His fellow monks lift the charred corpse into the coffin they have brought with them for this moment. The destroyed body does not fit, and one of Duc’s arms sticks out from the lid as they carry him back to the Xa Loi Pagoda. His heart, they discover later, despite the intensity of the flames, is not badly damaged. The monks remove it from Duc’s chest cavity and place it on display in a glass chalice.

In the months that follow, other monks will also martyr themselves. And one South Vietnamese official will even make the mistake of telling a reporter, “Let them burn and we shall clap our hands.”

As in Birmingham, this moment is the beginning of the end for those who hold power in Saigon. And once again, an Associated Press photograph will make the difference.

Malcolm Browne, the AP Saigon bureau chief, was one of the few journalists to witness the immolation of Thich Quang Duc. His picture of the burning monk horrifies people around the world. And as with Bill Hudson’s photo of police dogs attacking innocent protesters, that shot will become one of the most enduring and iconic images of the 1960s.

And again, John F. Kennedy will read his morning papers horrified by the photograph. Instantly, the president knows that his Vietnam problem has just escalated. He can no longer support President Diem. The world will turn on the Vietnamese leader after such a horrific image.

Diem must go.

This horrifying image of a Buddhist monk self-immolating became one of the most enduring images of protest against the Vietnam War.
(Malcolm Browne/Associated Press)

The question facing John Kennedy, his fellow Catholic, is how?

*   *   *

It is 5:45
P.M
. on May 29 in Washington, D.C. President John Kennedy has had a busy day of back-to-back meetings in the Oval Office. Yet his burgundy tie is neatly cinched around his neck and his tailored navy blue suit coat looks as immaculate as when he put it on after his 1:00
P.M.
nap. Right now, JFK is needed in the Navy Mess, on the lower level of the White House. He rises slowly from his desk, stretching his back as he does so, then begins the short walk downstairs.

The president has no illusions over what is about to transpire. Today is his forty-sixth birthday. His staff has abruptly disappeared, leading him to believe that they have already made their way to the Navy Mess for what is supposed to be a surprise party.

The cares of the world are never far from Kennedy’s shoulders, even during a time of celebration. So as he walks to a party in his honor, there is a third incendiary situation looming over his administration. This problem has nothing to do with race or religion or war. Instead, it is about that most primal of all human longings: sex. And it has far more potential to end his presidency than does Birmingham or even Vietnam.

JFK has long been aware that revelations about his philandering would ruin not only that carefully burnished image of him as a family man but also his political future. Now he need look no further than Great Britain to see exactly what that downfall might look like. John Profumo, a dapper forty-eight-year-old British war hero and politician, has been caught having an affair with a twenty-one-year-old call girl named Christine Keeler. Profumo is married, and his wife, former film star Valerie Hobson, has chosen to forgive him. If Profumo were any other man, the embarrassing story might end there.

But John Profumo is also Britain’s secretary of war and one of the most powerful men in the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. And not only is Christine Keeler sleeping in his bed, but she is also having sex with a deputy Soviet naval attaché. When first confronted about his affair in the House of Commons, Profumo denied it. On June 5, he will be forced to admit that he lied. A disgraced Profumo will be shunned by his colleagues and forced to resign.

Profumo will disappear from the government and high society. His humiliation will be so complete that he will undertake extraordinary measures to seek redemption. He will volunteer to scrub toilets at a London shelter for the poor—a penance that he will continue to perform long after Queen Elizabeth restores his social status in 1975 by making him a Commander of the British Empire.

Prime Minister Macmillan is not guilty of a single indiscretion, but he is the man ultimately responsible for any secrets Profumo might inadvertently have leaked to his mistress. Seventy-one percent of the British public is in favor of either Macmillan’s resignation or the chance to vote for a new prime minister via an immediate general election.