Killing Kennedy (9 page)

*   *   *

Amazingly, Kennedy’s approval ratings rise to 83 percent after the invasion, proving to the president that the American people firmly stand behind his actions against Castro. Behind the scenes, U.S. plots to overthrow the Cuban leader continue to be hatched, and Castro becomes openly defiant of Kennedy, further cementing the widespread belief that each man wants the other dead.

Meanwhile, even as Kennedy’s approval ratings temporarily make him one of the most popular presidents of the twentieth century, he knows that something must be done to restore America’s prestige among the international community. In an interview with James Reston of the
New York Times
, Kennedy sets aside the Cuban situation. Instead, he candidly admits that “we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place.”

Vietnam.

Small, and until now almost completely overlooked by America, the Asian nation is in the throes of its own Communist uprising. Now President Kennedy deems it vital to American security. In May 1961, JFK tasks Vice President Lyndon Johnson with a fact-finding trip to Vietnam, sending him farther away from the Oval Office than ever before.

The reasons have as much to do with national security as the president’s awareness of the toll that being powerless is taking on the vice president. “I cannot stand Johnson’s damn long face,” JFK confides to one senator. “He just comes in, sits at cabinet meetings with his face all screwed up. Never says anything. He looks so sad.”

When Kennedy’s good friend Senator George Smathers of Florida suggests Johnson go on an around-the-world trip, JFK is delighted, calling it “a damn good idea.”

Just to reinforce the journey’s importance, the vice president is allowed the use of a presidential airplane.

*   *   *

More than 110 men would not have died if JFK had canceled the Bay of Pigs invasion. And more than 1,200 freedom fighters would not have been captured and sentenced to Castro’s brutal prisons. The Bay of Pigs not only exposed flaws in Kennedy’s international policy, but it also eroded the power the voters had given him—even if this was unbeknownst to them at the time. Kennedy was indecisive at a time when he should have been resolute. He allowed himself to be misled. It is impossible to ascertain why. But there is no question that in the first major test of his administration, Kennedy’s leadership failed.

The harrowing days of April 1961 taught the Kennedy brothers an indelible lesson: they are on their own. Their advisers are not worth shoe polish. In order to restore America’s power position, the Kennedy brothers will have to find a way to defeat their enemies, both abroad and, especially, in Washington, D.C.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, the U.S. State Department has decided to return Lee Harvey Oswald’s American passport and allow him to return home. But while Oswald is quite anxious to leave the Soviet Union, he is no longer the unattached nomad who defected nearly two years earlier. He delays his departure until a time when Marina and their unborn child can travel with him.

He also delays telling Marina that they are going anywhere.

Finally, Oswald breaks the news. “My wife is slightly startled”—he writes in his journal on June 1, after finally telling Marina that they are leaving the Soviet Union, most likely forever—“but then encourages me to do what I wish to do.”

Marina is on the verge of leaving behind everything she knows for a life of uncertainty with a man she barely knows. But she accepts this hard reality because she has already learned one great truism about Lee Harvey Oswald: he always does what he wants to do, no matter how many obstacles are thrown in his path.

Always.

4

F
EBRUARY 14, 1962

W
ASHINGTON,
D
.
C
.

8:00 P.M.

The First Lady glides alone down a hallway, walking straight toward the six-foot-high television camera bearing the logo of the CBS eye. Her outfit and lipstick are a striking red, accenting her full lips and auburn bouffant hairdo. The camera will broadcast only in black and white, so this detail is lost on the forty-six million Americans tuning in to NBC and CBS to watch her televised tour of the White House. This is Jackie’s moment in the national spotlight, a chance to show off the ongoing effort to restore her beloved “Maison Blanche.”

Jackie pretends that the camera is not there. This is the way she goes through life as well, feigning ignorance and keeping a discreet distance from all but a few trusted confidants. Despite her practical detachment, Jackie is anything but unaware of her circumstance, having written and edited the show’s script herself, filling the document’s margins with small reminders about a piece of furniture’s history and the names of wealthy donors. She knows not only the renovation status of each of the White House’s fifty-four rooms and sixteen baths but also the complete history of the 170-year-old building itself.

And yet, as America will learn over the course of the broadcast, the First Lady does not come across as a pompous know-it-all. In fact, she doesn’t even like to be called “the First Lady”; she thinks it sounds like the name of a racehorse. This ability to laugh at herself gives Jackie that precious gift of appearing vulnerable and shy, rather than aloof, even as she speaks with an upper-crust accent. Many men find her sexy, and many women see her as an approachable icon. Throughout the first year of her husband’s presidency, her perceived accessibility has endeared Jackie Kennedy to America and the world.

President Kennedy made light of this when they visited Paris in June 1961, on a state visit to meet French president Charles de Gaulle. The Bay of Pigs had taken place just six weeks earlier, and JFK’s image had been vastly diminished in the estimation of many European leaders. But not so Jackie’s image. When Air Force One touched down at Orly Airport, she was hailed as the very picture of glamour, poise, and beauty. The president couldn’t help but notice the popping flashbulbs that followed in her wake. Speaking before a host of dignitaries at the Palais de Chaillot, JFK opened his remarks with somber tones as he delivered an apt description of his status in the eyes of Paris and the world. “I do not think it altogether inappropriate for me to introduce myself to this audience,” he said with a straight face. “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris—and I have enjoyed it.”

*   *   *

After her walk past the CBS camera, the First Lady starts her television special by narrating a brief history of the White House. Viewers hear her demure voice as images of drawings and photographs fill the screen. There is drama in her words, underscoring her emotional attachment to the building. She speaks in approving tones about Theodore Roosevelt’s addition of the West Wing, which moved the offices of the president and his staff from the cramped second-floor environs of the White House residence into a far more spacious and businesslike environment.

There is an air of tragedy in her voice as she describes how the White House had to be gutted in 1948. President Truman’s study floor had begun vibrating as if on the verge of collapse. An inspection revealed that the entire building was about to implode because it had not been renovated or reinforced for decades. “The whole inside was scooped out. Only the exterior walls remained,” Jackie says breathily as photographs of giant bulldozers tearing out the historic original floors and ceilings flash on the screen. “It would have been easier and less expensive to demolish the whole building. But the White House is so great a symbol to Americans that the exterior walls were retained.”

The First Lady finishes her monologue with a reminder that she has immersed herself in the details of all renovations, past and present: “Piece by piece, the interior of the president’s house was put back together. The exterior views were exactly those which Americans had seen throughout the century, except for the balcony on the South Portico—which President Truman added.”

The scripted words are a coy barb. Truman was roundly denounced in 1947 for adding the balcony, which was seen as a desecration of the White House’s exterior architecture. President Kennedy was initially nervous about Jackie’s restoration, fearing that she would come under the same sharp criticism as Truman. But rather than defer to her husband, as she does so often, the First Lady refused to back down. This “won’t be like the Truman Balcony,” she insisted, assuring her husband that her efforts would be viewed positively. Her focus would be the interior, finally finishing the work those bulldozers began in 1948. Her goal is nothing less than to transform the White House from the very large home of a bureaucrat into a presidential palace.

Mamie Eisenhower was once fond of referring to the White House and its objects as her personal property—“my house” and “my carpets.” She also had a passion for the color pink. Jackie, who doesn’t get along with her predecessor, has gotten rid of all of Mamie’s cheap furniture and carpeting and painted over the pink.

As Americans are about to see for themselves, the White House now belongs to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.

The First Lady once again steps before the camera to take viewers on a walk around her new home, now followed by the show’s host, Charles Collingwood of CBS. Jackie’s personal touches are everywhere, from the new draperies, whose designs she sketched herself; to the new guidebook she authorized to raise funds for the restoration (selling 350,000 copies in just six months). She has done away with oddities such as the water fountains that made the White House look more like an office building than a national treasure.

The First Lady has scoured storage rooms and the National Gallery, turning up assorted treasures such as paintings by Cézanne, Teddy Roosevelt’s drinking mugs, and James Monroe’s gold French flatware. President Kennedy’s new desk was another of Jackie’s finds. The
Resolute
desk, as it is known, was carved from the timbers of an ill-fated British vessel and was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. Jackie found it languishing in the White House broadcast room, buried beneath a pile of electronics. She promptly had it relocated to the Oval Office.

No one other than longtime household staff knows the White House and its secrets quite as well as Jackie. But despite her vast knowledge, there is also a great deal she does not
want
to know.

Foremost on that list are the names of the women her husband is sleeping with. And they are many. There is Judith Campbell, the mistress who serves as Kennedy’s clandestine connection to Chicago Mafia kingpin Sam Giancana—and who complains that JFK is less tender as a lover since becoming president. And twenty-seven-year-old divorcée Helen Chavchavadze, whom JFK has been seeing since before the inauguration. There are the girls brought in by Dave Powers. The president’s mistresses even include some of Jackie’s friends and personal staff. Jackie makes it a habit to leave for the couple’s Glen Ora estate in Virginia most Thursdays for a weekend of horseback riding. She does not return until Monday. The president has full run of the White House while she is away. So the list of his consorts grows by the day.

Jackie Kennedy is not stupid. She has known about JFK’s affairs since he was in the Senate. Her feelings are deeply hurt, but she sets the president’s indiscretions aside for the sake of appearances, for the prestige of being First Lady, and most of all because she loves her husband—and believes that he loves her.

The First Lady has a fascination with the European aristocracy and knows that it is common, perhaps even natural, for powerful men in Europe to have affairs. Her beloved father, John “Black Jack” Bouvier, strayed often. And her father-in-law, Joseph Kennedy, is notorious for his dalliances. The First Lady has no reason to believe that the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, will be any different. Besides, it’s a family tradition. “All Kennedy men are like that,” she once commented to Joan, the wife of JFK’s youngest brother, Teddy. “You can’t let it get to you. You can’t take it personally.”

Once, while passing through Evelyn Lincoln’s office with a French reporter, Jackie spied Lincoln’s assistant, Priscilla Wear, sitting to one side of the small room. Switching from English to French, Jackie informed the reporter that “this is the girl who supposedly is sleeping with my husband.”

However, despite outward acceptance, deep inside Jackie takes it very personally. From time to time, her friends notice the quiet sadness about her marriage. Even the Secret Service agents, who genuinely like and respect her, can see that the First Lady is suffering.

Even in the midst of her pain, however, the First Lady is practical. She makes a point to keep Kenny O’Donnell aware of the precise time she plans to leave for and return from any trip outside the White House, just to make sure she doesn’t stumble upon the president in flagrante delicto with a consort.

The First Lady has thought of taking a lover. She often dines alone with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. They flirt with each other and read poetry together. And when Jackie is in New York she visits the apartment of Adlai Stevenson, America’s ambassador to the United Nations. They always kiss when they say hello and enjoy trips to the ballet and opera together.

She is intrigued by these men and knows that there are rumors she has had a fling with actor William Holden, but it is her husband whose love she craves. Until recently their lovemaking was hardly spectacular. There was little attempt at foreplay—indeed, for all his sexual adventures, the president made love to Jackie as if it were a duty. She often wondered why he felt the need to sleep with other women and began to question whether
she
was the problem. Despite the adoration of millions of men around the world, there had to be some reason that her own husband seemed oblivious to her sexual charms.

Then, in the spring of 1961, when Jackie twisted her ankle playing touch football at Hickory Hill, Bobby’s Virginia home, Bobby asked his neighbor, Dr. Frank Finnerty, to treat the injury. Finnerty was a thirty-seven-year-old cardiologist who taught medicine at Georgetown University. He was also extremely handsome and likeable. Jackie found him to be a good listener. A week later, her ankle healed, she asked Finnerty if she could call him from time to time, just to talk. A surprised Finnerty was more than happy to agree.