by Peter Janney
The day after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended on October 28, 1962, Kennedy told senior White House adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “The military are mad. They wanted to do this.”15 Two weeks later, the president told Schlesinger, “The first advice I’m going to give my successor is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that just because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.”16 There were no winners or losers in this crisis. “The only victory was avoiding war. For that reason alone,” noted author James Douglass, “Kennedy believed, there must never be another missile crisis, for it would only repeat pressures for terrible choices that had very nearly resulted in total war.”17
In the aftermath of the missile crisis, Mary was officially invited to two White House dinner parties on successive evenings (November 8 and 9). She and Jack may also have spent some time alone, though it’s not known whether they would have done so at Joe Alsop’s house or Mary’s. However, “the most dangerous moment in human history” had taken a huge toll on Jack’s health. With increased infusions of cortisone to combat his stress during the crisis, many of his gastrointestinal symptoms reappeared and became more acute, as did his recurrent back pains. He also became noticeably depressed. Carrying the weight of the world and future of humanity for thirteen days would have easily crushed anyone. Yet, terrible as it had been, an opportunity was lurking on the horizon, something that both he and his counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, would soon realize.
But in the shadows, evil was very much alive, stalking not only the republic, but the president. Not only were the Joint Chiefs of Staff enraged that Cuba had not been attacked, they were also indignant that Kennedy had made concessions to Khrushchev. The Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 had already humiliated the military-intelligence establishment. The resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 was yet another cold shower of shame, devoid of American machismo.
Before its end, 1963 would become a defining year for America, and would be forever remembered for one earthshaking moment whose repercussions would be felt throughout the world. The year began with an unobtrusive tiny earthquake of sorts, not even noticeable except to a handful of insider journalists who at the time honored a “gentlemen’s agreement” not to reveal presidential indiscretions. And so, in January of that year, what seemed at first an insignificant event turned out to foreshadow an invisible tsunami, slowly making its way toward destruction. The augury would involve Washington Post publisher and owner Philip L. Graham.
During World War II, Philip L. Graham had trained as an Army intelligence officer. His acumen quickly elevated him to a position close to General Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific theater. There, Phil Graham made connections that would assist him for the rest of his life, including entrée with all of the CIA’s seminal, well-to-do operatives—people like Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner, Richard Helms, Cord Meyer, and Desmond FitzGerald. Being of the same social class, Philip and his wife, Katharine, were accustomed to mingling with CIA heavyweights in Washington, often gathering on Sunday afternoons for an extended cocktail hour before a legendary potluck supper salon. With his marriage to Katharine Meyer in 1940, Philip L. Graham had become a member of the wealthy Agnes and Eugene Meyer family (no relation to Cord Meyer). The family’s crown jewel was the Washington Post. Eugene Meyer had nursed the floundering newspaper ever since he bought it at auction in 1933. In 1946, he made his thirty-year-old son-in-law, Philip, its editor in chief and owner. Having earned some of the highest grades ever given at Harvard, Phil was certifiably brilliant, but also certifiably manic-depressive. Beginning in 1952, the editor in chief of the Washington Post was in and out of psychiatric institutions and intermittently mentally unstable.18
During the 1950s, the CIA initiated Operation Mockingbird, a project designed, the reader will recall, to influence the American media to slant news stories favoring the CIA’s agenda or point of view, particularly those having to do with international events and foreign policy. The program had been started by Allen Dulles’s top lieutenant Frank Wisner, a friend of Phil Graham’s and at one time Cord Meyer’s boss.19 Wisner successfully “recruited” a number of prominent journalists to the CIA, including his friend Phil Graham, who soon helped run Mockingbird within mainstream media outlets. Using newspapers, magazines, radio and television, even Hollywood, the CIA’s disinformation spin machine went to work shaping public opinion and perceptions, undermining the integrity and independence of an indispensable pillar of the democratic process.20
In addition, by late 1962, President Kennedy had appointed Phil Graham head of COMSAT, the new organization that operated America’s communication satellites. The position allowed Graham to access certain classified operations, including the CIA’s secret satellite surveillance system—the CORONA program—which provided aerial reconnaissance of the Soviet Union, China, most of Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.
By 1962, Philip and Katharine Graham’s marriage had come apart and was in freefall. Estranged from Katharine, drinking heavily amid manic-depressive episodes, Phil and his new mistress, Newsweek reporter Robin Webb, were living together and hosting dinner parties for Washington’s social elite. Phil Graham and President Kennedy were also friends. According to some accounts, they had been known to philander together as a team. “The pair of them were sleeping around with the same people,” said Jean Friendly, wife of Post editor Al Friendly. Eventually, both Phil and Katharine Graham became aware of President Kennedy’s affair with Mary Meyer.21
In mid-January 1963, Phil and Robin Webb flew to Phoenix on the Post’s chartered jet. During one intoxicated evening, Graham intruded on dinner at the midwinter meeting of the Associated Press board of directors at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. Phil proceeded to ask if he could address the audience, at which point he became unhinged. According to David Halberstam’s 1975 account, Graham addressed his audience as “fat bastards” who were “afraid of the truth,” that he “wouldn’t wipe his ass with any of their papers.”22Newsweek foreign correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave, a witness, said the crowd became “thunderstruck” with disbelief as Graham “singled out various publishers and began to revile them.” Mr. de Borchgrave told author Carol Felsenthal that Graham’s “around the bend” but “brilliant” performance consisted of caricaturing all of the important media people present—including Otis Chandler of the Los Angeles Times, Ben McKelway of the Washington Star, and others, finally accusing them all of “having no balls.”23
But it was author Deborah Davis who, in 1979, based on her interviews with James Truitt, first claimed that Graham had told the crowd, many of whom knew him, that he was going to reveal exactly who was sleeping with whom in Washington, beginning with President Kennedy. It was at this moment that Graham revealed that the president’s “favorite was now Mary Meyer, who had been married to CIA official Cord Meyer and was the sister of Ben Bradlee’s wife, Tony.”24 Davis then claimed that someone at the dinner who witnessed Graham’s outburst called President Kennedy at the White House to alert him. This information allegedly came from James Truitt, who was at Katharine Graham’s house when a call came in for her, allegedly from President Kennedy himself. Katharine at that very moment was meeting with Post executives at her home. They began strategizing how to bring Phil back “forcibly” and commit him to a psychiatric hospital. According to Truitt’s statements to Davis, he himself apparently got on the phone with Kennedy and asked him to send Phil’s doctor, Dr. Leslie Farber, to Phoenix on a military jet.25
Over the years, there has been some controversy as to whether Phil Graham’s “meltdown” that January had actually included his blurting out the fact of Mary and Jack’s affair. Neither Bernard Ridder of the St. Paul Pioneer Press nor Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler, both of whom were present that evening, remembered any such utterances about Mary Meyer by Graham.26 William Shover, a young reporter at the time for the Arizona Republic-Phoenix Gazette, who was also present that evening, did confirm years later that Phil was present at the
event, and that he was drunk. “Phil was in the audience and asked if he could speak,” recalled Shover. “He walked up and took the microphone.” Though Shover didn’t remember any specific details, he did recall that “Phil became very emotional, overwhelmed with what he was saying, broke down, and started crying.” Shover also remembered Phil had been on a tirade against many members of the press that evening, but could not recall him talking about President Kennedy or Mary Meyer. He reiterated that position in an interview for this book in 2009.27
Ben Bradlee, who was not present at the Phoenix episode, has always maintained he never heard anything about Phil Graham mentioning the affair between Mary and Jack during the incident, and was adamant that if it had occurred, he and Tony would have come to know about it.28 Anne Truitt also went on record, saying, “James [Truitt] would have told me if Phil had mentioned Mary. It would have worried him terribly.”29 Anne assumed, of course, that Jim was confiding to her all that he knew, and that may not have been the case. The exact story of the event has remained unclear. Unfortunately, Katharine Graham’s own secondhand account of the event in her 1998 book Personal History was superficial and misleading. “No one present that night has ever told me exactly what happened or what Phil said,” Katharine insisted.30
The most intriguing investigation of this event, however, came from Carol Felsenthal in 1993 with the publication of her unauthorized biography of Katharine Graham, entitled Power, Privilege and the Post. Again, the Washington “grand duchess” attempted for a second time what she had done to the Deborah Davis book: She and her “pit bull entourage” tried to stop the Felsenthal publication. Felsenthal recalled “receiving pages of complaints from Kay’s lawyers,” hoping their intimidation might thwart her efforts to publish. It didn’t. They knew she was going to fight it, and so they eventually just disappeared.31
Not wanting to fall into the same pit as Deborah Davis, Carol Felsenthal made sure that her book was not only thoroughly and meticulously researched, but completely scrutinized as well. “Because of what happened with the Deborah Davis book,” said Felsenthal, “this book was vetted and re-vetted. I would have never been able to get away with something that wasn’t thoroughly checked.”32 In 1993, her book was also serialized in Vanity Fair, known for its rigorous fact checking.
Included in the book was Phil Graham’s reference to Mary Meyer and President Kennedy that evening: “Phil announced that he was going to tell them who in Washington was sleeping with whom, and that he might as well start at the top with John Kennedy, who was sleeping in the White House with Mary Meyer. While his audience waited for the next name to drop, he declared, ‘I don’t know what you other sons of bitches are going to do, but I’m going home now and screw my girl.’”33 Based on in-depth interviews with both Jean Friendly (who was not only one of Kay Graham’s closest friends, but also the wife of the Post’s managing editor, Al Friendly) and insider Elizabeth Frank, Felsenthal never received any request for a retraction of this statement, nor was she ever told that her account was inaccurate. In addition, according to Felsenthal, Ben Bradlee read her book and told a journalism class at USC that “he had read every entry [in the book] and he thought it was fair.”34
What was never disputed, however, was the fact that Phil Graham had been forcibly sedated, taken by ambulance to the airport, and flown back to Washington from Phoenix on the day following his outburst. Why was this so necessary? Equally mysterious, the following day, January 18, Phil’s mistress, Robin Webb, called the White House at 6:18 P.M. EST from Phoenix and asked to speak with the president.35 Whether she spoke to him wasn’t clear, but what was the purpose of her call?
Upon his return to Washington, Phil Graham wanted to be placed, according to the Deborah Davis account, at the George Washington University Hospital.36 Perhaps lucid enough to realize he might have been able to leave a university hospital more easily than a private psychiatric hospital, Phil may have become aware that Katharine had obtained a court order committing him to Chestnut Lodge. As early as 1952, Chestnut Lodge, a private psychiatric sanitarium, along with Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore, were regularly used undercover by the CIA. The Agency needed psychiatric facilities to deal with “indiscreet” employees—operatives who possessed or had access to high-level classified information, who were either “cracking up” or otherwise not conforming to established security protocols. According to one former CIA official, “Throughout the 1950s, Agency employees in need of psychiatric care, that I was aware of, either went to Chestnut Lodge or Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore.”37
Phil remained at Chestnut Lodge for approximately two weeks under the care of Dr. Leslie Farber and Dr. John Cameron. He finally convinced them to release him, whereupon he visited Katharine for one day, then flew to New York with his lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams. There, he plotted to wrest complete control of the Washington Post away from Katharine, changing his will at least twice over a period of several months, giving Robin Webb a controlling interest in his estate.38 All through the winter and spring of 1963, Katharine was both devastated and humiliated by the entire course of events, but determined to prevent the Post from falling into Phil’s control and ownership, even if it meant she had to have Phil declared insane.39
Phil Graham’s Phoenix outburst in January was further destabilizing. Contemplation of such a diabolical deed as the overthrow of an American president would need the kind of trustworthy tentacles that could stretch deep into the grinding wheels of media establishments. Around town, word had gone out: Phil Graham could no longer be trusted.40
Eleven days after the incident in Phoenix on January 28, Mary Meyer signed into the White House residence using her own name. Jackie, who was away at her rented hideaway, Glen Ora, decorating the family’s new Wexford estate, had become aware of the affair. According to Kennedy aide Godfrey McHugh, “Jackie knew about his [Jack’s] women.” She had, in fact, asked McHugh, a man she had once dated, to tell her about her husband’s women.41 Bill Walton, the closest to Jack, Bobby, and Jackie, uncharacteristically let it slip to author Ralph Martin: “You know, in the end, Jackie knew everything. Every girl. She knew her rating, her accomplishments.”42 But Mary wasn’t just another dalliance for Jack, and Jackie knew it. By 1963, Mary had become a fixture in the president’s life, as close a confidante as he was capable of having.
On March 8, 1963, the Kennedys hosted their sixth and, as fate would have it, last White House dinner dance. Mary attended on the arm of Blair Clark, an old friend of Jack’s from Harvard. “I brought Mary to one of the White House parties,” Clark recalled in 1983, and “she simply disappeared for a half hour. Finally I went looking for her. She had been upstairs with Jack and then had gone walking out in the snow. So there I was, ‘the beard’ for Mary Meyer.”43 The bottom of Mary’s dress was muddy and wet, indicating that she had been walking outside. She later told her friend Anne Truitt that she had become “unhappy” and taken a walk. Upon returning, she couldn’t find Blair Clark, and so, according to Sally Bedell Smith, “Bobby Kennedy called a White House limousine, put her in the back and sent her home.”44
During the evening of the final dinner dance, Jackie told her dinner partner, Adlai Stevenson, “I don’t care how many girls [Jack sleeps with] as long as I know he knows it’s wrong, and I think he does now. Anyway that’s all over for the present.”45 A beleaguered, increasingly desperate Jackie, trying to save face, told Stevenson she and her sister had “always talked about divorce as practically something to look forward to.” Then she told him, “I first loved you” when she had met Stevenson in Illinois shortly after she and Jack were married.46
By March, Jackie had not yet announced publicly she was pregnant, but it appeared she had given Jack an ultimatum, just prior to that evening. Had Jack attempted to end the affair with Mary that evening, or had the two staged the contretemps to appear that way? Whether their split that night was real or not, the separation didn’t last long, at least officially. On May 29, Mary would attend the president�
��s forty-sixth birthday party on the presidential yacht Sequoia.
In April 1963, President Kennedy’s future trip to Dallas, Texas, was discussed privately between himself, Vice President Johnson, and his chief aide, Kenny O’Donnell. On April 23, Johnson announced plans for Kennedy’s trip to Dallas during a luncheon speech to Texas newspaper and radio station executives. The next day, the Dallas Times Herald wrote about the announcement.47
During the Easter weekend of April 13–14, special White House aide Joseph W. Shimon enjoyed the company of his daughter, Toni, who lived on Long Island with her mother. Shimon had worked in the White House at the highest levels. In 1963, he was assigned officially as a “Washington Police Inspector,” though he was also secretly working for the Justice Department and was a liaison to the CIA, having risen up through the ranks through the Metropolitan Police Department beginning in the early 1930s. Shimon had established a reputation for discretion in service to various presidents. He had won the confidence not only of President Franklin Roosevelt, but his successors as well. President Kennedy consulted Shimon regularly. The two were known to have taken numerous walks together on the White House grounds.48
Shimon had one child, a college-age daughter named Toni, with whom he was extremely close in spite of being divorced from her mother. During the 1963 Easter weekend, Shimon and his daughter Toni were walking near Shimon’s North Stafford Street home in Arlington, Virginia, when he revealed something to his daughter that would come back to haunt her. As they strolled together, Toni began to feel a sense of foreboding, suspecting she would soon be missing her father’s company once again. Something else was coming, however, something she couldn’t foresee.
“You’re on the outside and I’m going to hit you with something,” Shimon told his daughter. “Tell me right off the top of your head what you think.”