America's Reluctant Prince

by Steven M. Gillon

  While Jackie and Ari lived on the Christina, the children stayed in what Tina described as a “functional house” with four bedrooms aligned along a terrace. John shared a room with Anthony; Tina bunked with Caroline. It was here on this deserted beach that John would form a lifelong friendship with Anthony, who shared his sense of humor and adventure. The two cousins were roughly the same age—Anthony was a year older—and they spent the school year in different countries: Anthony in England, John in the United States. Despite their physical distance, they were raised more as brothers than as cousins. “Jackie and Lee took a joint approach in raising their children,” recalled Gustavo Paredes, whose mother, Providencia, had worked for the Kennedy family since the 1950s. “There was a lot of flow between the households. Jackie thought of Anthony and Tina as her own, and Lee thought of John and Caroline as hers.” Even as young men, John and Anthony possessed what Tina referred to simply as “a special chemistry.”

  What Tina remembers most about John was his unbridled energy. He was in a constant state of motion. When he wasn’t waterskiing, he was fishing or exploring the beach. He also enjoyed playing practical jokes and used to chase Caroline around, trying to spray her with a hose. It was always entertaining to watch John at mealtime. “John always felt he should have twice his regular portion,” she recalled, “but most of it would remain on his plate.”

  Meanwhile, the children did not see much of their mother while on the island. There were people watching over them, but Jackie was never one of them. “She taught me how to waterski, but mostly she would come and see us at the end of the day when we finished swimming,” Tina recalled. “She lived on the yacht with Ari and kept her own schedule. Even if she wasn’t there, you knew she was around, and you felt her presence.”

  I learned about John’s affection for his stepfather when he took me for a tour of his mother’s Fifth Avenue apartment in the 1980s. As you walked down a corridor past the library, you came to a T-junction. I did not see the rooms to the right, but if you turned left, John’s bedroom was on the left and his mom’s on the right. On the wall outside John’s bedroom, the family had hung what appeared to be a four-foot-long sheet of plexiglass over dozens of family photos—not the ones that appeared in magazines but photos they had taken themselves. Although Mrs. Onassis, John, and Caroline were among the most photographed people in the world, they, like most families, had their own private memories. I was surprised by the number of photographs showing Aristotle Onassis with John. One captured John jumping off a boat into the ocean; another depicted Onassis and John fishing. Nearly all the photos had been taken on Scorpios or the ocean. I knew so little about John’s background at the time that I did not know about his memories of Scorpios. I remember asking, “John, where are all these photos taken?” He said that for a while he spent summers on Scorpios with his stepfather. “It was a magical place,” he reminisced.

  During the first few years of her marriage, Jackie jetted back and forth between Greece and New York. Except during summers, John and Caroline remained based in New York, where they were often left in the care of servants. According to Kathy McKeon, “[T]here were long stretches of time” when they were home without their mother. However, Jackie would call every night she was away, checking on their schoolwork. Once when his mother was gone, John developed a bad case of bronchitis, and Mrs. Onassis hired a private nurse to look after him. After John recovered, the nurse, Phyllis, invited John to a show with her son, Robert Chambers. (Shockingly, in 1988 Chambers would be convicted and imprisoned for having strangled to death an eighteen-year-old woman in Central Park two years earlier during what he claimed was “rough sex.”)

  John’s enchanting summers on Scorpios came to an end when his mother’s relationship with Onassis started to fizzle. By the end of 1972, they remained married in name only. She spent most of her time in New York, while he stayed in Greece. He began complaining about her spending habits. She regularly overspent her monthly allowance and then pleaded for more money. One time, when Jackie lost $300,000 in the stock market, which represented nearly all of her liquid capital, he refused her requests to replenish her account. Aristotle made a point of being seen in public with his former lover, opera singer Maria Callas. He started leaking stories to the press about Jackie’s exorbitant spending habits. In November 1972 he even arranged for photographers to take pictures of her sunbathing nude on Scorpios—photos that made their way into Larry Flynt’s pornographic magazine Hustler.

  Neither John nor his mom knew about Ari’s role in arranging for the photographs, but John was very much aware of the strains in his mother’s marriage. He and his sister were still spending time on Scorpios during the summer, although less than in previous years. During the school year, Caroline, who had enrolled at Concord Academy in Massachusetts, was insulated from the angry fights between her mother and Onassis. But John, who was attending school in New York, had a front-row seat. He overheard the loud arguments and saw the screaming headlines in the New York tabloids, where his mother’s marital woes were regular fodder. Ari had doted on him a few years earlier, but now he was largely absent and indifferent. It was all very confusing for a young kid who had trouble holding on to father figures. He resented the way Ari now treated his mother, but he did not hold a grudge and always maintained warm memories of his time on Scorpios.

  The turning point in the relationship between Jackie and Ari occurred in 1973, when Aristotle’s twenty-four-year-old son, Alexander, was killed in a plane crash. Onassis’s daughter, Christina, had always resented Jackie, and she convinced her father that his wife somehow bore responsibility for Alexander’s death. She called Jackie “the black widow,” suggesting that she had tainted their family. “Before she came to us, she was by her American husband’s side when he died,” she fumed. “My unlucky father had to go find her and bring her to our shores. Now the curse is part of our family, and before long, she will kill us all.”

  Aristotle ultimately accepted Christina’s theory that Jackie was an evil influence and began laying the groundwork for a divorce. He successfully pressured the Greek government to change its divorce laws to limit the amount of money a foreign-born spouse could receive in a settlement, and he reworked his will, leaving Jackie $200,000 per year for life, plus $25,000 per year for each child until the age of twenty-one. The bulk of his fortune went to Christina.

  Ari’s mental and physical health declined in the months following his son’s death. He sunk into a deep depression, became increasingly unpredictable and moody, and grew obsessed with conspiracy theories that the CIA was responsible for the fatal crash. Jackie pleaded with him to see a psychiatrist, but he refused. On March 15, 1975, before he could finalize the divorce, Aristotle died in Paris of bronchial pneumonia. Jackie refused to accept his changed will and pushed for more money, declaring that she would accept no less than $20 million. Finally, after nearly two years of haggling, Christina agreed to give her $26 million on the condition that Jackie renounce further claims.

  Onassis was buried next to the same small chapel where he and Jackie had been married and where Alexander was interred. John had now lost a father, a father figure, and a stepfather before his fifteenth birthday.

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  In 1971 President Richard Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon invited Jackie, John, and Caroline to the White House for the public unveiling of the official portrait of President Kennedy. But Jackie found the memories of November 22 too painful and worried how her children would react to seeing the White House again. Even worse, Jackie feared, their reactions would be on full display in what promised to be a media frenzy. “As you know,” she wrote Nixon, “the thought of returning to the White House is difficult for me. I really do not have the courage to go through an official ceremony and bringing the children back to the only home they both knew with their father under such traumatic conditions. With all the press and everything, things I try to avoid in their little lives, I know
the experience would be hard on them and not leave them with the memories of the White House I would like them to have.” She asked if she and the children could “slip in unobtrusively to Washington, and come to pay our respects to you and to see the pictures privately?”

  President Nixon graciously agreed and on February 3 sent a presidential jet to fly them from New York to Washington. (Jackie requested that he not send the same plane on which she flew with her husband’s body from Dallas.) Despite their political rivalry, Nixon and President Kennedy had maintained a cordial, respectful relationship. “While the hand of fate made Jack and me political opponents,” Nixon wrote Jackie the day following the assassination, “I always cherish the fact that we were personal friends from the time we came to Congress together in 1947.”

  The evening proceeded without a hitch, except that John managed to spill his milk on Nixon’s lap. After their intimate dinner, the president took them for a tour of the Oval Office before going to the ground floor to see Mrs. Onassis’s official portrait. A few minutes later, they went to the Green Room, where they viewed the portrait of President Kennedy. They returned to New York that evening after a rewarding afternoon.

  That night, as she came to his bedroom to say good night, Jackie explained the story behind some of the photos that hung in his room. “There you are with Daddy, right where the president was describing the great seal,” she told him. “There, on the path where the president accompanied us to his car.” Later, John wrote Nixon a note thanking him for the visit, though he seemed more impressed by the White House chef than by the Oval Office where his father once worked. The “food was the best I have ever had,” he scribbled. “And the steak with the sauce was really good.” John confessed that he had few memories of the White House. “I don’t think I could remember much about the White House but it was really nice seeing it all again,” he wrote.

  Jackie also refused an invitation to attend the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, DC, later that year, despite pressure from Rose Kennedy. She told Rose that “for everyone else, this is the gala opening—but for me it is exceedingly difficult to go through another memorial to my dead husband and the father of my children with everyone staring—just like I couldn’t bear to have the portrait ceremony at the White House be public. Maybe that sounds cowardly, but they are also merciless—they want you there to sell tickets and make publicity and watch to see if you suffer.” Rose remained insistent that she attend the ceremony. “It is very important for you to be present at the opening of the center, dear Jackie, even though it may be difficult for you. Jack would want you there, and certainly we all do.” Jackie, however, stood her ground and refused to attend.

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  After a 1950 assassination attempt against President Harry Truman by two Puerto Rican nationalists that left one White House policeman dead and wounded two others, Congress enacted legislation permanently authorizing Secret Service protection for the commander in chief, his immediate family, and the president-elect. The day Truman left the White House, however, neither he nor his family received any further protection. That changed in 1962, when Congress authorized six months of protection for ex-presidents, but still not their families. Following JFK’s assassination, Congress extended coverage to Mrs. Kennedy, John, and Caroline for two years, and then again in 1967. It was not until 1968 that the Secret Service was required to safeguard the widow of a former president until her death or remarriage, while any minor children were granted protection until they reached sixteen years of age, unless they chose to decline protection.

  Ever since election night in 1960, when the Secret Service first took responsibility for guarding the Kennedy family, Jackie seemed to resent their presence—a resentment that grew after November 22, 1963, when they failed to prevent her husband’s assassination. Privately, she blamed them for the president’s murder. And although Senator Bobby Kennedy was not entitled to Secret Service protection, his death made her increasingly concerned that agents would be unable to keep her or her children safe. According to Clint Hill, who had been assigned to protect her while in the White House, Jackie became increasingly fearful and distrustful—and consequently, more demanding and difficult—after Bobby’s assassination. “She changed quite a bit after that,” he recalled. “She was angry at everybody. She didn’t trust the government. She didn’t trust the United States. She didn’t trust the Secret Service.”

  Following her marriage to Onassis, Jackie clashed repeatedly with the Secret Service. While she lost her protection upon marrying Onassis, her children did not. The correspondence between Jackie and the Secret Service, revealed here for the first time, exposed that mounting tension. Jackie was primarily concerned about John, who bristled under the tight restrictions and lack of privacy. Caroline appeared to have a good relationship with her agents and is rarely mentioned in the correspondence. It’s clear that Jackie blamed the Secret Service for some of John’s behavioral problems. She was convinced that not only were the agents a constant reminder of his father’s tragic death but also that they made him feel trapped, prompting him to become rebellious. Jackie also anticipated that when the agents would walk out of his life at midnight on November 24, 1976, the teenager might be unprepared to confront the new reality of fending for himself. She also pointed out that the agents were used to protecting adults, but they failed to recognize that children were different. John was evolving and needed to learn the skills necessary to succeed as an adult. It was difficult for her son to build character if he was protected from any form of adversity on a daily basis. Jackie was thus trying to establish a transition phase that would make it easier for John to adjust to life without the agents.

  The Secret Service, however, maintained that part-time coverage did not exist. While the agents acknowledged the legitimacy of her concerns, they insisted that they worked for the US government and not for her. By law, they were required to protect her children, and they were determined to carry out their duties despite her objections. Thus the stage was set for a series of clashes between Mrs. Onassis and the Secret Service agents assigned to John. Jackie laid down strict rules—rules that the agents believed prevented them from performing their duties.

  John lived in a protective bubble for the first fifteen years of his life. Now that he was a teen, he grew restive from the constant monitoring. He traveled often—the Caribbean, Paris, Argentina, Miami, Chicago, Washington, San Francisco, London, Lisbon, Montreal—and everywhere he went, agents followed closely behind. Whether John was attending school or a weekend barbecue, a man with sunglasses and a walkie-talkie stayed within sight. When he went skiing in Utah or Vermont, a Secret Service agent skied alongside him, as did a professional skier. They lodged in vacation homes protected by the Secret Service and the local police.

  While John appreciated that the agents taught him how to box, he grew increasingly annoyed by their constant presence. Instead of him taking the school bus, agents chauffeured John in a cream-and-tan Oldsmobile. One of John’s friends noted that during school, the agents sat in an office “with their feet on the desk and underarm holsters, reading the Daily News all day.” When they saw the agents looking for John, they would signal for him to hide. “It was always a game for us, trying to lose the Secret Service guys. But to John it was more serious,” recalled a classmate. “He just didn’t like the attention.”

  In November 1968, five months after the assassination of her brother-in-law, Mrs. Onassis took John on a shopping trip without informing the agents that her son would be leaving their rented home in New Jersey’s Somerset County, horse country, which the family used as a weekend retreat. She even went so far as to distract the agent at the rear of the house so that John could sneak out the front door. She later picked him up at a friend’s home. An hour and a half later, Mrs. Onassis and John came back home. Agent Jack Walsh wrote to his superiors, “When they returned, I told John that he should no
t leave the confines of the house without an agent with him. He promised he would let us know whenever he left in the future.” Walsh then addressed Mrs. Onassis, saying that “it would be appreciated if she did not take either of the children anywhere without first informing the Secret Service agent on duty.” She responded that John and Caroline were her children, so she did not need to notify anyone about what they did together. Walsh explained to her that the Secret Service was responsible for protecting her children, whatever the case may be.

  Reading the letter two decades later, Clint Hill believed that Jackie was “asserting her authority to let them know that she was in charge and they were going to follow her restrictions and her orders. If I had been there,” he added, “I would’ve recommended that she decline Secret Service protection and hire her own security force.” Mrs. Onassis, however, was not ready to decline protection. She believed it was possible to protect John from threats while still respecting his privacy.

  Two weeks after her conversation with Walsh, Mrs. Onassis detailed her concerns in a six-page letter to James J. Rowley, longtime director of the Secret Service. The problem, she stated, was that “there are too many agents, and the new ones are not ones who are sensitive to the needs of little children.” Given everything that they have experienced, she wrote, “I am sure you would agree that their peace of mind is as important as their physical security. They must think that they lead normal lives, and not be conscious of a large number of men protecting them from further violence; they must not be made conspicuous among their friends by the presence of numerous agents, or have the households in which they live thrown into turmoil by the inclusion of agents who do not care about them or understand their problems.”