Killing Lincoln/Killing Kennedy (54 page)

The president and First Lady have never been more popular than they are right now, and never more synonymous with America herself. Also, they are closer than ever as a couple. The Secret Service has noticed that Kennedy seems less interested in other women. Friends have seen the couple shift their relationship from the professional formality that defined the first two years in office. There is a new tenderness to their time together and, in the way they talk to each other, a transformation that has made them history’s first power couple. The United States is “the most powerful nation in the world,” in the words of fashion designer Oleg Cassini, “represented by the most stunning couple imaginable.”

One glance around the packed hall gives evidence to Cassini’s words. Everyone from Supreme Court justices to senators to wealthy diplomats and oilmen are here to pay their respects. Even as the president’s speech brilliantly links the
Mona Lisa
and the politics of the cold war, it is Jackie who orchestrates every last detail of this very special night. The
Mona Lisa
may be dazzling—hidden though she is behind bulletproof glass—but the average partygoer spends only fifteen seconds staring at the painting, while some spend all night staring at Jackie. Her beauty, poise, grace, and glamour are unmatchable.

On this night, it is the First Lady, not the
Mona Lisa
, who owns the room.

*   *   *

Jackie has come to think of the Kennedy White House as a mythical place—what she will later describe as an “American Camelot.” The First Lady is referring to the Broadway musical starring Richard Burton as the legendary King Arthur, the lovely Julie Andrews as Queen Guinevere, and Robert Goulet as Sir Lancelot. In the play, Camelot represents an oasis of idyllic happiness in a cold, hard world. A growing number of Americans agree with Jackie that the Kennedy White House is a similarly mythical place and a bulwark of idealism in the midst of the cold war.

Even the president is inspired by
Camelot.
Many nights, Jackie will later admit, he plays the Broadway sound track album on his record player before going to sleep.

But there is a dark side to Camelot, one that JFK’s Secret Service detail knows all too well.

There is a flip side to the president’s popularity polls: 70 percent of the nation may love JFK, but another 30 percent hate his guts. Castro definitely wants him dead. In Miami, many in the Cuban exile community are bitter about the Bay of Pigs debacle and want revenge. In the Deep South, rage at the president’s push for racial equality is so widespread that southern Democrats say that their only smart political choice—if they are to remain in office—is to maintain their firm stand against his domestic policies.

Right here in Washington, the CIA is none too happy about rumors that JFK would like to place the agency under closer presidential supervision by putting Bobby Kennedy in charge. Also, more than a few military leaders at the Pentagon do not trust Kennedy’s judgment. The president has stated aloud that he thinks the generals are capable of attempting to remove him from office.

Finally, the Mafia, to whom Kennedy was once so close that mobster Sam Giancana referred to JFK as Jack rather than Mr. President, is angry that Kennedy is repaying their years of friendship by allowing Bobby and the Justice Department to conduct an anti-Mafia witch hunt. “We broke our balls for him,” Giancana complains, “and he gets his brother to hound us to death.”

JFK is aware of his enemies. And he knows the threats will not go away, no matter how often he shuts out the world at night by dropping the needle on his hi-fi and listening to
Camelot
.

*   *   *

If the Secret Service is aware of Lee Harvey Oswald, that fact is nowhere in any record.

Their ignorance is not unusual. Why would the powerful Secret Service be watching a low-level former marine living in Dallas, Texas?

Oswald and Marina are back together again. There is always a heat to their reunions, and their latest is no different. Marina Oswald is now pregnant again.

Despite their very different life circumstances, Jackie Kennedy and Marina Oswald are connected by the fact that they are two young women enjoying the life-changing early days of pregnancy. Jackie is due in September, Marina in October. And one more thing links them: like Jackie, Marina finds JFK to be quite handsome. Which makes her unstable husband more jealous than he usually is.

*   *   *

Lee Harvey Oswald’s life continues to be defined by a balance of passion and rage. On January 27, 1963, as crowds ten abreast line the streets of Washington to view the
Mona Lisa
, Oswald orders a .38 Special revolver through the mail. The cost is $29.95. Oswald slides a $10 bill into the envelope, with the balance to be paid on delivery. He keeps the purchase a secret from Marina by having the gun sent to his P.O. box and even uses the alias of “A. J. Hidell.”

Oswald has no special plans for his new pistol. Nobody has been making threats on his life, and for now he has no intention to kill anyone. He merely likes the idea of owning a gun—just in case.

*   *   *

January comes to an end, and with it the
Mona Lisa
’s stay in Washington, D.C. On February 4 another high-security motorcade drives the painting to New York, where “Mona Mania” reaches even greater heights.

January has been an amazing month for the president and Mrs. Kennedy. The glamour surrounding the
Mona Lisa
has temporarily overshadowed the fear of the cold war. Two years into the Kennedy presidency, and it is clear to the world that John and Jackie are in control of America’s fate.

Thus, Jackie Kennedy may be right: this might just be Camelot—or at least part of it. For her there is no dark side to the story—although it definitely exists.

When Jackie thinks of
Camelot
, she focuses on the final act of the play, where King Arthur regains his wonder and hope. But she overlooks the rest of the story.
Camelot
is fraught with tragedy, infighting, and betrayal. There is danger and death. More than half the Knights of the Round Table are slain before the final curtain falls.

And Queen Guinevere, the heroine with whom Jackie so identifies, ends up alone.

9

M
ARCH 11
,
1963

S
T
. A
UGUSTINE
, F
LORIDA

8:00 P.M.

The loneliest man in Camelot wants to be president of the United States.

Lyndon Baines Johnson stands bathed in a spotlight. His typewritten speech lies before him on the lectern, but he is not focused on the words. He’s more interested in the two tables of voters somewhere out in the audience who might just make that impossible presidential dream come true someday.

What Lyndon Johnson wants, above all else, is a return to power. He adores power. And he will endure anything to know that heady sensation once again.

Anything.

The vice president searches the room for the “Negro tables,” desperate to know if his political gamble will pay off.

*   *   *

Robert Francis Kennedy also wants to be president of the United States.

With five years to go before the 1968 election, an article by Gore Vidal in
Esquire
magazine’s March issue picks him to win the Democratic nomination over Lyndon Johnson.

Bobby Kennedy has become such a political force that even the vice president worries he is powerless to stop Bobby from winning in 1968.

It all seems so easy: JFK until 1968, then Bobby takes the White House, and then wins again in 1972, and then maybe even Teddy in 1976 and 1980. The Kennedy dynasty is poised to control the American presidency for the next twenty years. It’s almost a sure thing.

But there are no sure things in politics. And little does LBJ know that insidious forces are possibly targeting Bobby even now—plotting not only the attorney general’s downfall, but that of the entire Kennedy family political dynasty.

*   *   *

August 5, 1962. Marilyn Monroe lies naked facedown on her bed. She is dead. Police investigators see no sign of trauma. The Los Angeles coroner will later conclude that the actress died from an overdose of barbiturates. Yet her stomach is almost completely empty, with no pill residue whatsoever.

The public instantly chalks up Marilyn’s death to a life of excess. The tabloids have firmly established that she is a substance abuser. So there is little public outcry for a closer look at what happened to the glamorous actress.

But there is a darker theory circulating in the precincts of organized crime. Mafia lore suggests that the old Sam Giancana–CIA connection from the Operation Mongoose days is still quietly active. The theory holds that Giancana conspired to have Monroe murdered by a team of four hit men who entered her home, taped her mouth shut, and injected a lethal suppository of barbiturates and chloral hydrate into her anus. This was done to prevent the vomiting that often accompanies an oral drug overdose. The tape was removed from her mouth once she was dead, and Monroe’s body wiped clean.

Giancana’s motivation was revenge for Bobby Kennedy’s ongoing Justice Department investigations into organized criminal activity. The intent of the killers, according to that same Mafia legend, was to implicate Bobby in the murder. However, their plans went awry when Bobby was tipped off by anonymous sources that Marilyn Monroe had unexpectedly died. The attorney general then ordered Peter Lawford to arrange for a private eye named Fred Otash to go over Marilyn’s home with a fine-tooth comb to ensure there was absolutely no evidence of her involvement with the president or the Kennedy family. The two men cleaned up well, even taking Marilyn’s diary.

There was also, however, the issue of Marilyn’s phone records. These would show whom she was talking to in the last forty-eight hours of her life. The story goes on to say that Bobby Kennedy appealed to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to expunge those records. Not wanting to lose the chance to use Monroe’s death for political gain, the legend continues, Los Angeles police chief William Parker obtained a copy of those records and kept them in his garage for years, as blackmail evidence. The tapes, Parker would say, are “my ticket to get Hoover’s job when Bobby Kennedy becomes president.”

Peter Lawford will later claim that Bobby was in Monroe’s home that night, having flown down from the Bay Area, where he was staying with Ethel and four of their children. Lawford’s story, not confirmed by anyone, alleges that Marilyn was going to reveal her former relationship with JFK to the press and that Bobby was present in Los Angeles trying to do damage control.

The recollections of both Lawford and Mafia members have been dissected thoroughly. Neither has been proven true. Nor have the rumors that Bobby and Marilyn were having an affair of their own.

The facts are that Marilyn Monroe phoned Bobby several times throughout the summer of 1962. She was distraught over the end of her affair with JFK and was openly gossiping about it in Hollywood. The press had begun asking questions about the alleged affair, and it appeared that the matter might surface during the 1964 election. Yet the Northern California ranch where Bobby and his family were staying on the night of Marilyn’s death was an hour from the nearest airport and a five-hour drive from Los Angeles. That makes it highly unlikely that RFK could have slipped away without being noticed.

Any involvement by Bobby Kennedy in Marilyn Monroe’s death, whether it was suicide or murder, makes it a conspiracy theory without substance to this day.

There is no question, however, that Monroe’s going public could have been enough to sink a presidential campaign. JFK was perceived to be a dedicated family man. Details of a sordid affair with the flamboyant Monroe would have ruined the image of Camelot.

With family baggage all over the place, Bobby Kennedy knows he is anything but a sure thing for the presidency. Which means he must work extra hard to discredit his main rival, Lyndon Johnson, before LBJ does the same to him.

Meanwhile, Bobby Kennedy is quietly backing away from his anti-Mafia investigations.

No sense angering old friends unnecessarily.

*   *   *

LBJ is making new friends. He is thrilled by the presence of black voters at his St. Augustine dinner speech. It is a Monday evening, and the occasion is the four hundredth anniversary of the city’s founding, an event about which LBJ cares little. What matters are the symbolic reasons he flew to Florida in the first place: his courtship of black Americans.

LBJ’s brown eyes scan the mostly white audience in the Ponce de Léon Hotel’s ballroom. Finally, he locates the so-called Negro tables. The vice president insisted upon this act of integration when accepting the speaking engagement.

Johnson sees both tables right up front, a handful of black faces in a sea of white southerners. The people seated there nod their heads somberly as he speaks, appreciative just to be in the room. Tonight marks the first time that blacks have been allowed to eat in this fabled hotel, all thanks to LBJ. Two tables aren’t many, and the change is only for tonight, but at least Johnson can return to Washington bragging that he’s on the front lines of the battle for racial equality.

It’s a powerful feeling. Yet back in Washington, LBJ has all but forgotten what power feels like. On the road, he’s a big deal. People defer to him. He meets with local leaders. He is quoted in the local papers. People want to touch him or enjoy one of his patented high-energy handshakes, the kind where Johnson wraps his meaty fist around another man’s, then holds on for as long as they talk, forging a friendship and, in the old days back in the Senate, winning their vote.

But he is now invisible in Washington. For Johnson, the Kennedy White House is not Camelot. He compares the experience with another
c
word:
castration
. LBJ refers to himself as a “steer” or a “cut dog.” The president deliberately excludes him from important meetings, makes jokes about him behind his back, and ignores him at White House dinner parties—if he even bothers to invite him at all.