by David Nasaw
Bobby’s first assignment for McCarthy’s committee was to compile statistics on foreign commerce and prepare a report on the extent to which British and Greek shippers were trading with Communist China. Five months later, after completing the report, he resigned. His problem was not with McCarthy, whom he liked, or the anti-Communist crusade, which he supported, but with Roy Cohn, his nominal boss, who preferred grandstanding to research and, Bobby Kennedy was convinced, was going to get McCarthy and everyone who worked for him into trouble.
After leaving the committee, Bobby remained loyal to McCarthy, as did his father. McCarthy was vulgar, scanted on his research, relied on an unscrupulous twenty-five-year-old as his chief counsel, lied when he thought he needed to, employed demagogic language and tactics, and drank too much. But these were not sins unique to him. He was being singled out for criticism, Kennedy believed, because he was a Catholic who spoke his mind and angered leftists who were either Jews or allied with Jews.
In July 1953, the month Bobby resigned, J. B. Matthews, the anti-Communist crusader whom McCarthy had hired as research director, charged that “the largest single group supporting the Communist apparatus in the United States is composed of Protestant clergymen” and that “at least 7,000 Protestant clergymen had served ‘the Kremlin’s conspiracy.’” When three leaders of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, including Monsignor John A. O’Brien of Notre Dame, asked President Eisenhower to repudiate Matthews’s allegations, he did so, calling them “deplorable” and “unjustified.”
Furious that Notre Dame, a Catholic institution whose board of lay advisers he would soon join, had allowed one of its faculty members to publicly criticize McCarthy, Kennedy wrote Father Cavanaugh, the former president of Notre Dame, to complain. “I don’t think it does Notre Dame any good to have Father O’Brien signing petitions for the Christians and Jews with Notre Dame behind his name; in fact, I think it does it immeasurable harm. I always thought that organization was completely dominated by the Jews and they just use Catholic names for the impression it makes throughout the country. I was disgusted to see him sign a petition to fire Matthews and I know nothing about Matthews. I am not suggesting eliminating freedom of speech but I certainly am against using the name of Notre Dame for the benefit of that type of organization.”3
The senator from Wisconsin, spiraling out of control into depression, alcoholism, and a frighteningly self-destructive sense of his own importance, fired Matthews, but instead of retreating, launched a new investigation of subversives in the U.S. Army. Early in 1954, six months after he had resigned as assistant counsel to the subcommittee’s Republican majority, Robert Kennedy was hired by the Democratic minority. On April 22, 1954, when the Army-McCarthy hearings were broadcast live on television to some twenty million Americans, Bobby Kennedy, twenty-nine years of age but looking much younger, could be glimpsed in the rear of the hearing room, behind Democratic senators John McClellan, Henry Jackson, and Stuart Symington.
The hearings ended in mid-June 1954, with McCarthy having lost the support of the millions who had watched as he growled, snarled, and bullied his way through the proceedings. His colleagues were now prepared to take action against him. On July 30, 1954, Republican senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont submitted a resolution of censure. Senator Kennedy, who had never had any use for McCarthy, asked his chief aide and speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, to prepare a speech explaining why, though he disagreed with Flanders’s broad condemnation, he intended to vote for censure. That speech was never given, as the Senate leadership, instead of calling for a vote, referred the Flanders resolution to special committee.
In Europe that summer, Joseph P. Kennedy continued to defend McCarthy. “I had dinner with Lord Beaverbrook a couple of times,” he wrote Bobby on August 15, 1954, “and the other night Lady Diana Cooper, the widow of Duff Cooper, asked me, ‘How much longer will McCarthy amount to anything in the United States?’ That, of course, rubbed me the wrong way because it was true pontification. I said he was the strongest man in the United States next to Eisenhower. Then I said to the small English group, ‘What have you got against McCarthy?’” Lord Beaverbrook objected to McCarthy’s “calling Marshall a traitor. He, Beaverbrook, had no objection to him saying he was a bad Secretary of State and that he had lost China for the world, but he said people just know he isn’t a traitor. I said I had never heard that he said he was a traitor by condemning him for being an incompetent; but my own feeling is that Joe went further than that. I then asked Lady Diana what she had against him. She said she thought people she talked with felt he ruled by fear and added, ‘You know we British don’t like anybody to do things like that.’ I said that was poppycock. . . . The only thing I regret is that they seem to be forgetting Cohn in the picture and concentrating on McCarthy.”4
Four days later, still incensed at the beating McCarthy was taking, Kennedy wrote his son Jack on the same topic. “All this poppycock about McCarthy having any effect on America’s standing in Europe is the biggest lot of dribble I ever read. Unless you’re a newspaperman or a politician, the masses haven’t the slightest idea what McCarthy stands for, what he does or what’s wrong with him, and 99% never heard of him long enough to remember him.”5
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His defense of McCarthy that summer was all the more remarkable given the fact that only months before he had experienced firsthand the damage that reckless accusations posed to innocent young men. In May 1954, Kennedy learned that reporter Jack Anderson, who was then working for Drew Pearson, was pursuing a story that Ted Kennedy had been dismissed from the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) training school “because of an adverse report which linked him to a group of ‘pinkos.’” Kennedy was livid and “sent word to Drew Pearson that if he so much as printed a word about this that he would sue him for libel in a manner such as Drew Pearson had never been sued before.” He then placed a call to J. Edgar Hoover and, after being informed he was “in a travel status,” was connected to Assistant Director Louis Nichols. Knowing that Nichols “had the Director’s confidence,” Kennedy told him that he was “sick of the Washington situation; that the Army-Stevens Hearings [usually referred to as the Army-McCarthy hearings] were a disgrace and that he simply was not going to tolerate his son being victimized in any way, shape or form.” Nichols promised that the bureau “would check into this matter immediately.” He later called Kennedy “back and told him that I could find no record and that we certainly had not investigated his son. . . . I told Mr. Kennedy that he was authorized to state, if need be, that he checked with the FBI and the FBI had not investigated his son.”6
This was the second time that the bureau had done Kennedy a big favor—the first was during Jack’s affair with Inga Arvad—and he was not about to forget it. In early July 1954, he invited Special Agent H. G. Foster to visit with him at Hyannis Port. As Foster wrote Hoover after the meeting, “He had met many many people who are great admirers of yours, but I believe that Mr. Kennedy is the most vocal and forceful admirer that I have met. I found him to be a forceful, outspoken gentleman who takes great pride in his friendship with you.”7
Kennedy’s flattery of Hoover was effusive to the point of near parody. “I think I have become too cynical in my old age,” he wrote the director in October 1955, “but the only two men that I know in public life today for whose opinion I give one continental both happen to be named Hoover—one John Edgar and one Herbert—and I am proud to think that both of them hold me in some esteem. . . . I listened to Walter Winchell mention your name as a candidate for President. If that could come to pass, it would be the most wonderful thing for the United States, and whether you were on a Republican or Democratic ticket, I would guarantee you the largest contribution that you would ever get from anybody and the hardest work by either a Democrat or a Republican. I think the United States deserves you. I only hope it gets you.”8
In December 1957, he reported to his local FBI contact in Hyanni
s Port that Teddy, who was at the University of Virginia Law School, had told him “that several people have talked to the students there and have more or less unfavorably slanted their talk against the FBI. . . . He stated,” the Hyannis Port agent continued, that “he has taught his children to respect the FBI, that it is provoking to them, as well as to himself, to hear anyone speak ill of the work of the FBI.” He suggested that the FBI send someone to the University of Virginia to “give our side of the picture as to loyalty and security investigations.”9
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I am promising myself every year that I will take it easy. I haven’t done too well so far, but I am hoping I will make a real effort in ’53.” Or so he had promised himself. But when the Republicans, on taking over the reins of government in 1953, convened a second Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, enlisted Herbert Hoover to chair it, and asked Kennedy to serve as a member, he agreed. The chance to return to Washington, if only on a part-time basis, was too good to pass up. He hired Bobby, who had resigned from the McCarthy committee, as his assistant and went to work.10
Herbert Hoover ruled the second commission, as he had the first, with an iron hand, which was fine with Kennedy, who supported him enthusiastically. He was “the least frequent dissenter” on the commission, “entering a public dissent on only one of the commissions’ 314 recommendations.” This time around, he attended commission meetings, ably chaired his subcommittees, participated in the writing of several of the reports, and introduced and pushed through proposals of his own. As he proudly wrote Rose in April 1955, he had gotten the commission “to recommend increased appropriations for basic medical research for cancer, mentally retarded patients and various others” and was “overwhelmed with thank-yous” from the directors of medical research clinics.11
He was delighted to be a Washington insider again, especially as it gave him the opportunity to leak classified information to J. Edgar Hoover as thanks for past favors and down payment for future ones. “President Eisenhower,” he told Agent Foster, who forwarded the information directly to the director, “had requested Hoover Commission to investigate CIA . He [Kennedy] advised that General Mark Clark would probably head up their investigative efforts. He also indicated he was leaving for Europe in just a little over a week and left the inference he expects to do some inquiring concerning CIA while he is abroad. He also advised it was his personal thought that President Eisenhower had asked the Hoover Commission to make this inquiry to forestall an investigation into CIA by Senator McCarthy.”12
Kennedy had no business divulging confidential information about possible investigations of the CIA to J. Edgar Hoover, who considered the agency the bureau’s chief rival. But he owed Hoover something—and information such as this was worth its weight in gold to the director. A firm believer in the ethics of the quid pro quo, Kennedy would continue to leak “insider” information to the director, who in turn, he hoped, would protect his boys by guarding whatever “insider” information he had on them.
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The Kennedy family had much to celebrate. In May 1953, Eunice married Sargent Shriver at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Cardinal Francis Spellman officiating. The reception dinner and dance was held at the Waldorf. The bride looked beautiful, the groom handsome, the bride’s parents glowed with delight.
The following month, Jack announced his engagement to Miss Jacqueline Bouvier, whom the New York Times identified as a “Newport society girl.” She was more than that, of course. She was the perfect Kennedy daughter-in-law: educated at Vassar, the Sorbonne, and George Washington University, from a good (if divorced) Catholic family, gorgeous, trim, with a quiet but rather wicked sense of humor, and unflappable. She was also genuinely interested in and admiring of her new father-in-law, and he of her.
The wedding was scheduled for September. Jack planned to spend his last summer as a bachelor traveling in Europe with his friend Torb Macdonald. His father did everything he could to stop him. He urged Macdonald not to accompany Jack, then relented but begged him to do what he could to protect Jack’s health—and reputation.
“Jack needs a rest. Unquestionably he has the best time with you. I am a bit concerned that he may get restless about the prospect of getting married. Most people do and he is more likely to do so than others. As I told you, I am hoping that he will take a rest and not jump from place to place, and be especially mindful of whom he sees. Certainly one can’t take anything for granted since he has become a United States Senator. That is a price he should be willing to pay and gladly. I understand your love and devotion to Jack and I know you wish him nothing but the best and I hope you both will have a good vacation.”13
Jack returned home, his reputation intact, to marry Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953, at Newport, Rhode Island, where her mother and stepfather lived, before hundreds of guests, hundreds more gawking onlookers, and dozens of newsreel cameramen and still photographers. Archbishop Cushing officiated. Kennedy, who had been uncharacteristically camera-shy through his son’s 1952 campaign for the Senate, came out of hiding to smile broadly for the cameras as he arrived at the church, then danced with his daughter-in-law at the reception and presented her with a stack of congratulatory telegrams.
Patricia was the next to marry, to British actor Peter Lawford, who though not a Catholic promised to raise their children as Catholics. In April, Patricia and Peter were married at the Church of St. Thomas More in New York City by Father Cavanaugh. The newsreel cameras were out in force again, and Joseph P. Kennedy looked perfectly regal in his formal wear. There would be stories, the most persuasive ones from Patricia and Peter Lawford’s son, Christopher, that Kennedy was disturbed at the prospect of his daughter marrying a Englishman, an actor, and a Protestant, but if he was, he never said so in public or in correspondence with family or friends.14
By the summer of 1954, the rapid expansion of the Kennedy family, with two sons-in-law, two daughters-in-law, and four grandchildren, had resulted in a “housing crisis” at Hyannis Port, as Rose would later put it. Bobby and Ethel would soon rent and then buy a house next door to the main house; Jack and Jackie would a few years later purchase their own just in back, followed by Sarge and Eunice, and Jean and Steve Smith, whom she would marry in 1956. But that was in the future.
Kennedy loved his children, warmly welcomed their husbands and wives into the family, and adored his grandchildren. But there were now a great many of them, and they all wanted to spend their summers at Hyannis Port. He enjoyed being a grandfather—but he also enjoyed a bit of solitude to read his mysteries and listen to his music in the evening. He had never been much of a disciplinarian and certainly didn’t want to become one now. “He didn’t want to have to tell them to be quiet—but couldn’t take the bedlam on a steady basis.” His solution was to hand over the big house to the children and spend the summer in a villa in the South of France.15
To his friend Morton Downey, he proudly explained that he had “no relatives anywhere in the world now except in my house this summer. Well. That’s the way life is!” “Grandpa is staying in Europe,” he cabled his oldest grandson, Bobby and Ethel’s boy, Joseph II, on his second birthday, “so he will live long enough to celebrate your 21st with you.”16
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We arrive on the 13th of July,” he wrote Albert Champion, whom he had asked to make the arrangements for the visit and hire a staff for the villa he had rented in Èze, six miles east of Nice. “Mr. Houghton and Mr. Reisman will be with me and my secretary, Miss Des Rosiers, and my masseur, Mr. Thomas Mushyn, who will need a room—not necessarily an important one—either in the same hotel or in the general neighborhood. I certainly would like to see your smiling face at Le Havre on our arrival and as we are bringing along a Cadillac car, maybe we should hire a chauffeur to pick it up and drive it to Paris, and then we could decide whether we wanted to hire him permanently or not.”17
As had become
his standard routine, his first stop after Paris was Rome to see Galeazzi and get the latest gossip about the new list of cardinals and Vatican intrigues. He was fascinated by the ins and outs of Italian politics, the machinations of the Communists, the maneuverings of the Christian Democrats, the back-channel influence of the Vatican. As a former diplomat, the father of a U.S. senator, and now a member of a federal commission, he was welcomed—or at least tolerated—wherever he went. On this trip, he spent a full day in Versailles at NATO military headquarters, where he was briefed by General Alfred Gruenther, the supreme Allied commander, Europe. He also made plans to meet with President Éamon de Valera in Ireland, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in England, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in Bonn, and General Francisco Franco in Spain.
His fact-finding excursions were the bookends to his summer abroad, most of which was spent at his marvelous villa. Even Rose, who visited for a brief time, was impressed. “Here I am in the Cote d’Azur,” she wrote her children in early August, “and it is beautiful, as you know, and as you have seen in all the travel catalogues. Your father and his confreres picked out a very beautiful house for us all. It is a villa on the water and is terraced in the front with 5 or 6 terraces of beautiful flowers, all very lovely and all very different. The same is true on the sides and all around are very lovely little garden paths where, if I was not a three-mile walker, I would be quite content to wander.” Albert Champion had staffed the villa with butlers, cooks, gardeners, chauffeurs, and even a lady’s maid who, when there were no ladies present, which was most of the time, did the “washing and sewing and what not.” The chef, Kennedy bragged to son Ted and daughter Jean, was the best “in all of France” and had worked for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor for ten years. “He can even make American ice cream as good as Pavillon.”18