The Kennedy Brothers: The Rise and Fall of Jack and Bobby (41 page)

Kennedy had meanwhile traveled to Europe to strengthen Allied relations. Detente with the Russians would only be possible, he believed, if NATO, with its exposed eastern flank, was strong. In late June, following French president de Gaulle’s public conclusion that America ultimately would fail to defend Europe and his refusal to support the test ban treaty with the Soviets, the president flew to Europe. In Frankfurt, from the towering chamber of Paulskirche, Kennedy set forth the terms of America’s commitment: “The United States will risk its cities to defend yours because we need your freedom to protect ours.” The next stop was Berlin, where over a million Germans had turned out to greet him. As Air Force One was taxiing in, the president asked O’Donnell, “What was the proud boast of the Romans?
Civis Romanus sum?
Send Bundy here. He’ll know how to say it in German.” Bundy came and translated this as
Ich bin ein Berliner
, which Kennedy wrote down and then asked, “Now tell me how to say in German: ’Let them come to Berlin.’” The president was first taken to the Berlin Wall and looked out over the mined and wired no-man’s land that had cost the lives of hundreds and the freedom of thousands. The sight seemed to incense him. The wildly emotional reception of the 500,000 Berliners who were packed into the Rudolph Wilde Platz only seemed to fuel this sensation. Kennedy gave one of the greatest speeches of his life, the crowd roaring with each ringing phrase. “We’ll never have another day like this one,” he remarked after it was over. On the world stage, the president’s demeanor and mastery of symbol had never seemed so sure. He was tacking smoothly among the currents of his time, shaping them with his own view of history, his romantic sense of self, and his passion for peace.

The entourage then flew to Ireland, where Kennedy, with his unending store of affectionate satire, teased and charmed his way through a sentimental journey. He made a point of quoting the once-banned James Joyce in a speech in the Dail. When his hosts made perhaps a bit too much of his antecedents in New Ross, Kennedy referred in his remarks to a huge ugly building bearing the sign, Albatross Fertilizer Plant. “If my great-grandfather had not left New Ross,” he said, pointing to the building, “I would be working today over there at the Albatross Company.” “Shoveling shit,” he added in a low voice for those alongside him.

Fortunately for Jack, that particular job in his administration had fallen to Bobby. As the president dined with Prime Minister Macmillan on the evening of June 29, he was interrupted by an urgent call from his brother. The
New York Journal-American
that day carried a story with the headline: HIGH U.S. AIDE IMPLICATED IN V-GIRL SCANDAL. The lead read: “One of the biggest names in American politics — a man who holds a ‘very high’ elective office — has been injected into Britain’s vice-security scandal.” The article did not name the individual but it became obvious that it was President Kennedy himself.

At the time, the so-called Profumo Affair, in which the British minister of war, John Profumo, had shared the favor of a prostitute with the Soviet naval attaché in London, was about to bring down the Macmillan government. The problem for President Kennedy was that a woman he had had sex with several times in 1960, an Anglo-Czech prostitute named Maria Novotny, was allegedly linked to a Soviet vice ring at the UN, and kept appearing in the investigation of the Profumo scandal. As Bobby Kennedy moved to batten the hatches, forcing the
Journal-American
to drop the story or face an antitrust suit, Hoover was busy prying them back open. The FBI observed and recorded the attorney general’s confrontation with the Hearst newspaper and later independently confirmed the truth of the story via an investigation by its London office.
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The president had meanwhile taken the case for the test ban treaty to Capitol Hill. The prospects for passage by the required two-thirds majority looked unlikely. The generals were restless; some were angry. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Arthur Radford, called the treaty “a dangerous mistake.” General LeMay commented that he would have opposed the treaty were it not for the fact that it had already been signed.
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Senior Southern Democrats like Senator Richard Russell (of “war is our destiny” fame) indicated that they would not support the treaty unless the administration gave ground on its civil rights bill. The attorney general, who was leading the legislative charge on the civil rights bill, let Russell, Fulbright, Ervin, and other senators know privately that there could be no linkage between the issues. The White House formed a bipartisan group of prominent Americans and, under the personal direction of the president, began running TV ads and lobbying individual senators. One by one the senators fell in line. By the middle of September, Larry O’Brien was confident that the administration could muster two-thirds of the senate. On September 24, by a vote of 80 to 19, Jack Kennedy won his greatest legislative victory.

Years later, Ambassador Harriman remembered his visit to Hyannis Port shortly after returning from Moscow, where he had initialed the test ban treaty. The president had been his usual brisk self, looking ahead to the fight on Capitol Hill. As Harriman was leaving, JFK invited him to say hello to his father, who was sitting alone on the porch of his house. As Jack briefly explained to him what Harriman had just achieved, the old man looked sharply at Harriman. How different they were, thought Harriman — the old man a reactionary; his son “a genuine statesman.”
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August 7, 1963

Boston

J
ackie had been through this before. Seven months pregnant. Alone. Her husband off in Europe or working round the clock in Washington. Rumors of his infidelity swirling around them. She had spent most of July on Squaw Island off Cape Cod in a rented oceanfront property. Although she had had serious difficulty in previous pregnancies, she continued to smoke and, according to one account, receive intermittent injections of vitamins and amphetamines from Dr. Max Jacobson.
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Behind closed doors, Jackie remained a mercurial character. Exuberant one hour and cold silent the next, she could be wistful and satiric in the same sentence. She had an impressive gift of mimicry — the pious, corny LBJ was but one voice — and off camera would often dress with unkempt abandon. As a public persona, however, her discipline and brilliant self-concept as the ultimate American woman were paying off. Everywhere she went, whether on shopping trips to New York or on state visits to foreign countries, she was drawing big crowds. Jack was the first to see it. Her soigné beauty, the Cassini and Halston dresses, the pillbox hats, and her fabulous sense of scene created an aura for the first couple that was nearly royal. Her talent went well beyond fashion, however. It was she who designed and helped execute the huge, glittering ball for Ayub Khan on the grounds of Mount Vernon, the intimate and elegant dinners for Malraux and Agnelli, as well as the White House performance of Pablo Casals. In 1963 Jack may have been a popular president, but Jackie had emerged as a star.

At Jackie’s core was an iron will. She coldly accepted Jack’s philandering (even with Pamela Turnure, her press secretary), continued to fox-hunt despite a dangerous fall, and cultivated close and constant friendships with the painter William Walton and Roswell Gilpatric, the deputy secretary of defense. Her love for her husband, despite the bruises and the distances, never failed her. The presidency became their relationship and then their locus of new love. They teased each other constantly. A painting entitled
Arab in Desert Seated on Carpet with Tiger,
which hung in the West Sitting Room of the White House, became an in-joke. On the reverse of the painting was a biblical inscription: “It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and angry woman.” Jack or Jackie would look knowingly at the painting to make the point.
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There was no great conversion of her wayward husband to a loyal mate, but Kenny O’Donnell’s schedule in 1963 reveals them spending hours alone together in the family quarters in the late afternoon.

That summer was a triumphant time for Jack Kennedy. His civil rights legislation was moving slowly through the Congress, a testament to his tenacious negotiations with its leaders.
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He had been greeted in Europe as the West’s conquering hero, and in early August the Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed in Moscow — a signal victory for the administration. Two days later, the president received word that Jackie had gone into labor. On August 7 she delivered her baby five weeks prematurely at the Otis Air Force Base hospital. Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, as he was christened, immediately developed a lung infection that often afflicts premature infants. At first, the infection was not regarded as serious, and Jack, after flying up from Washington, was able to wheel the baby into Jackie’s room. When the infection persisted, Patrick was moved to Children’s Hospital in Boston and then to Harvard’s School of Public Health when his condition worsened.

The president moved into an empty hospital room at the School of Public Health where the infant was convalescing in a high-pressure oxygen chamber. Jack would sit in a straight high-backed chair just outside the chamber, occasionally getting up to peek through the small porthole window in the door.

On the evening of August 8, Bobby flew up from Washington to join his brother. At around four the next morning, the president was awakened. After thirty-nine hours of life, the child’s heart had failed and he had died. Bobby waited with Dave Powers while Jack walked back into his empty hospital room and sat down on the bed and cried for a long time.
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Then they walked out of the hospital together and flew to Otis Air Force Base, where Jackie was recovering. Bobby again waited outside while Jack went in to see Jackie. As they held each other, she sobbed, “Oh, Jack. There’s only one thing I could not bear now — if I ever lost you.”
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At the funeral mass celebrated by Cardinal Cushing, Jack was disconsolate, crying openly during the service. No one had ever seen him like this. When it was over, he was the last to leave and put his hands around the tiny casket. Cushing walked over to him and whispered, “Come on, Jack, let’s go. God is good.” Patrick was buried in Brookline, not far from where his father was born.

But this was one tragedy he didn’t seem to shake, occasionally talking to Powers in the weeks that followed about his memories of the baby. One Saturday in early October, the president, Powers, and O’Donnell went to Harvard Stadium to watch Harvard play Columbia. Toward the end of the first half, Jack said he wanted to go visit his son’s gravesite. Eluding the press, they drove out to the cemetery. The president stood before the grave and looked at the headstone with the inscription KENNEDY on it and said, “He seems so alone here.”
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September 7, 1963

Havana, Cuba

A
t a reception at the Brazilian embassy in Havana, Fidel Castro approached AP reporter Dennis Harker to deliver a warning about American “plans to assassinate Cuban leaders.” Eyes ablaze, Castro told the startled Harker, “United States leaders should think that if they assist in terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.”
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At the same time Castro issued this warning, the Kennedy administration was preparing to launch a secret mission led by UN ambassador Bill Attwood to explore the possibility of coexistence with Castro. President Kennedy’s preference for a truce with Castro was finally taking precedence over his brother’s preference to eliminate him. lt was, however, too late. The Kennedys had lost control of the murder train in south Florida, and Johnny Rosselli and others were pursuing a new imperative — the killing of a president. The plot to kill Castro and his threatened retaliation would be their cover.

At the beginning of 1963, there were good reasons to terminate the policy of violence against Cuba.
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The get-Castro approach had failed. Moreover, American nonaggression against Cuba had been a Soviet condition for the withdrawal of nuclear missiles from the island. On January 4, 1963, McGeorge Bundy, reflecting the president’s judgment, reported, “There is well nigh universal agreement that Mongoose is at a dead end.”
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But if this was the prevailing sentiment at the White House and State Department, and even among the upper reaches of the CIA, it did not include the attorney general, who was continuing to plot Castro’s undoing. Here was the tribal aspect to Bobby’s hubris, based on personal loyalty to the anti-Castro Cubans. His friendship with Enrique Ruiz-Williams and Roberto San Roman brought in its wake a close collaboration with Dr. Manuel Artime, the political chieftain of Brigade 2506. In January, the attorney general invited Artime to join him and his wife on a skiing trip in New Hampshire. Artime thereafter went on a $1,500-per-month CIA retainer and, thanks to a directive from the attorney general, relaunched his movement with ample Agency funding.
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As a condition for such support, Artime and Ruiz supported the Kennedy plan to integrate the Bay of Pigs veterans into the U.S. armed forces. Nearly half the brigade members signed up for a special army training program at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Three hundred others, including former 2506 frogman Bias Casares and underground organizer Jorge Recarey, achieved officer rank after completion of the Special Officers’ Training Program at Fort Benning, Georgia, in March 1963.
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