by David Nasaw
Kennedy arranged for a meeting in New York City of experts to solicit their proposals. The “experts” assembled, with no knowledge of or experience with retardation, came up with large, general programs on “mental health rather than ones targeted on retardation.” “I felt,” Eunice recalled, “that the Foundation should be staffed with people previously interested in mental retardation . . . and that we should support programs designed specifically to serve the mentally retarded themselves.” She asked her father to “‘give Sarge and me six weeks and we’ll get back to you with a plan.’ He said, ‘OK—but if you haven’t anything in the next six weeks I’m going ahead with the plan of today.’”12
As a Kennedy, Eunice held no one in awe, except perhaps her father and the pope. She was now in her middle thirties, as gaunt as her brother Jack, with as toothsome a smile, and every bit as driven. Unlike her brothers, she couldn’t go into politics. With two small children at home, she felt that it would not be right for her to take on a full-time job or appointment. Yet she too had been brought up to do something worthwhile with her life, to be of public service in some way. Her solution was to take a more active role in the family foundation.
Though a grown woman, Eunice Kennedy Shriver still needed her father’s approbation, sometimes, it appeared, more than anything else. As Sarge wrote Kennedy, Eunice was possessed of an “ever-present desire—deep and emotional—to be important in your mind & heart. As she often says, you are the greatest father in the world. You must know she has a ‘father complex.’”13
She had to have been delighted when Kennedy agreed to her proposal. Though she had no expertise in mental retardation or scientific research, if her father thought her qualified to take on this project, then she must have been qualified to do so. She and Sarge dropped what they were doing and spent the next few months traveling the country, interviewing researchers, lining up consultants to serve on an informal advisory board, and drawing up the guidelines for the new grants. By the time they were done they had met with dozens of experts on and practitioners in the field of mental retardation.
Kennedy was so impressed by their work that he asked Sarge to become the foundation’s first executive director and Eunice its first executive vice president, a position she would relinquish only on her death. (The post of foundation president would be reserved for her brothers.) “I am withdrawing, more or less, from the work of the Foundation,” Kennedy wrote Brandeis president Abram L. Sachar, who had applied for funding in the spring of 1959. “I have explained to my son-in-law that we are anxious to explore the possibility of doing something with Brandeis, and I am sure you will be hearing from him. When he has the situation lined up, I can get into it myself.”14
Although Eunice and Sargent Shriver were committed to the Catholic Church and its institutions, they recognized, as Kennedy did, that the church did not have the expertise or financial resources to focus on the research mission the foundation intended to pursue. Instead, they solicited proposals from the “topside” people in the nation’s research universities and teaching hospitals. In early 1959, the foundation awarded a grant of $1 million, the largest for research in mental retardation ever given, to Massachusetts General to establish the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Laboratories for Research on Mental Retardation. Negotiations for additional grants, Kennedy explained to a priest who had requested funding for a “Catholic Guidance Center in Trenton,” were already under way “with Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Wisconsin and Yale whose faculties include many of the outstanding research men.” A year later, in February 1960, the foundation awarded a grant of $1.26 million to Johns Hopkins.15
As large as these grants were, they were not enough. Only the federal government, Kennedy had noted in his letter to Cardinal Spellman, had the resources to attack the problems. Regrettably, in fiscal 1956, Congress had allocated only $750,000 to research on retardation, $500,000 for a survey of projects currently under way and $250,000 to the National Institute of Mental Health. “NIMH staff members privately doubted whether as much as $250,000 could be well spent on a subject as unglamorous as mental retardation.” That would change, dramatically and suddenly, when a Kennedy entered the White House, unleashing a torrent of energy, expertise, and money focused on the problems that the Kennedy foundation had addressed itself to after 1958.16
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The Second Hoover Commission completed its work in the spring of 1955, just as Kennedy prepared for his four months in the South of France. One of its recommendations had been the establishment of a permanent presidential civilian watchdog committee for the CIA and other government entities engaged in intelligence gathering and interpretation. President Eisenhower accepted the recommendation, and in January 1956 wrote to ask Kennedy to serve on the newly organized President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities. Kennedy telegraphed Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA and brother of the secretary of state, that he was both “delighted and honored to serve on the consultants’ committee. I will enjoy the prospect of working with you and assure you that I will give my best efforts to be of any help that I can in this.”17
The board met infrequently and had only advisory authority, but because it was chaired by James R. Killian, Jr., president of MIT, appointment to it conferred no small measure of prestige. More important to Kennedy, it put him in closer contact with Allen Dulles. Kennedy already knew that part of Dulles’s portfolio was to oversee what future CIA director William Colby, who took over the Italian station in 1953, later referred to as “by far the CIA’s largest covert political action program untaken until then”: spending American money and using American influence “to prevent Italy from being taken over by the Communists in the next—1958 elections.” Some of the CIA money was funneled through the Vatican, which had become a critical agent in the anti-Communist crusade in Italy. Because the United States government had no embassy or official representative at the Vatican, Dulles sought to make use of Kennedy. Information leaked by Dulles to Kennedy was conveyed to Count Enrico Galeazzi, who could be trusted to deliver it to the appropriate authorities in the Vatican, including the secretary of state and the pope.18
“I have just returned from Washington,” Kennedy wrote Galeazzi on January 30, “where I participated in a meeting of a new board which has been formed by the President to supervise all the foreign intelligence agencies, including our friends in the CIA. . . . Very confidentially, I understand that you are aware of [Christian Democrat leader Amintore] Fanfani’s request for financial aid for the Christian Democratic Party. If you do not approve of what is being done, by all means contact me as soon as possible and tell me what should be done. . . . I saw the Cardinal [Spellman] in New York and told him that I had suggested to Dulles that he come to New York and see him and alerted him on the Fanfani request.”19
In March 1956, Kennedy began planning another of his “fact-finding” trips to Europe. “My position on President Eisenhower’s Board of Consultants,” he wrote Galeazzi at the Vatican, grossly exaggerating the importance of the advisory board, “brings me in close touch now with all questions of foreign policy and will probably necessitate some official visits to Spain, Italy, France, England, Germany and Switzerland during the coming summer. . . . Let me know if there is anything that should be looked after in connection with the Italian elections.”20
In May, he wrote Father Cavanaugh to ask for his help. “The situation in Italy needs the attention that you can give it. There are a great many things being contemplated that are most secret in nature and most important in their implications.” He then proceeded to break confidence and describe those “most secret” things. In 1948, the U.S. government had promised to funnel money through the Vatican to support the Christian Democrats in their electoral campaign against the Communists. The Vatican, expecting to be reimbursed, had secretly spent large sums of money on the campaign but had never been repaid by the Americans, “which was a terrible blow to the Vatican finances.” K
ennedy wanted Father Cavanaugh’s assistance in making sure the Vatican got what it had been promised. He also hoped that Cavanaugh would assist him in reaching out secretly to Vatican-funded and -sponsored “Catholic action groups” that were expected to play a future role in Italian politics. He closed his letter by asking Cavanaugh to “destroy it” as soon as he had read it.21
Kennedy, on arriving in Rome that summer, called on Colby, the CIA station chief. Colby briefed him fully on agency activities. According to Colby, Kennedy demanded to know the name of the “outside [Italian] officer” handling one of the agency’s programs. When Colby said he couldn’t disclose that information, “Kennedy bore in; clearly, he was out to prove that he was entitled to know all and every secret. . . . He sharply said that either he would be given the name of the outside officer or he would return to Washington and resign from the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.” Kennedy was given the name he had asked for.22
We do not know what Kennedy did with this name or any other information he gathered that summer on his self-initiated fact-finding mission. He was a man who knew the value of secrets and, no doubt, intended to make the best use of them.
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POLS THINK KENNEDY WILL BE ADLAI’S RUNNING MATE, read the headline in the Boston Globe on March 4, 1956. “When supporters of Adlai Stevenson discuss a possible running-mate for their candidate, they seldom fail to mention young Jack Kennedy of Massachusetts. . . . Kennedy would seem to have the necessary Democratic assets. He is young (38). He is handsome. He is liberal, but not radical. He is a Navy veteran with a brilliant record. . . . He is a vote-getter of proven ability. . . . He is a strong Stevenson supporter.” All of this was no doubt true, but there remained substantial obstacles in Jack’s way, including his youth, health, failure to vote against McCarthy, and Catholicism. There was little to be done about the youth issue, other than point out that Teddy Roosevelt had also been a young vice president. The health issue would, the Kennedys believed, disappear as soon as voters saw how hard he campaigned. The McCarthy problem would never disappear but would haunt his candidacy in 1956 and again in 1960. Fortunately, only a minority of voters would continue to hold it against him that he had not risen from his hospital bed to vote for censure.
It was the Catholic question that overshadowed every other one, especially for Democrats with memories of the Al Smith debacle in 1928.
Kennedy was against his son campaigning for the vice-presidential nomination from the moment it was mentioned as a possibility. The objection he voiced most often and most loudly was that the Democratic ticket was going to lose, and when it did, fingers would be pointed at the Catholic on the ticket. He had other concerns as well, which he voiced to Charles Wyzanski, chairman of the Harvard Board of Overseers, who was attempting yet again to get Kennedy to contribute money to his alma mater. The two had lunch on April 11, 1956, at the Tavern Club in Boston. When Wyzanski mentioned that he had heard that Kennedy was against his son running as vice president, Kennedy responded “that he had nothing like so much influence with his son as people tended to suppose. Only the other day,” he told Wyzanski, “Senator Kennedy had voted to extend federal regulation over natural gas companies despite the fact that this was against the financial interest of his father (who was one of the largest individual owners of stock in natural gas companies). More important, the Ambassador stated was the fact that if JFK were then to run for vice president it was not clear that he had the stamina to withstand the strain, and even if he did, people would contend that his health was not good enough to bear the rigors of the Presidency if the office devolved upon him. The Ambassador said that the saddest day of his life was the day ‘Joe’ died; he thought of it every morning; and he didn’t want another son to die.”23
Ted Sorensen had early in 1956 started assembling data and constructing the argument that a Catholic candidate on the national ticket would add more votes than he would take away. He claimed, based on his research and pushing the numbers a bit to support his thesis, that (1) the Catholic vote would be pivotal in key cities in fourteen states with 261 electoral votes, not one of which Stevenson had carried in 1952; (2) while most Catholics still voted Democratic, the “Catholic Democratic vote was noticeably off in 1948—and showed a critical decline in 1952”; (3) Catholic candidates for state office had, in 1952, run ahead of the national ticket; (4) the Al Smith myth was just that. Smith had been beaten in 1928 for a number of reasons, not simply because he was a Catholic. Although Sorensen would later acknowledge the report’s “limitations as a scientific analysis,” there was no discounting its potential political impact. To protect Kennedy from the charge that he was pushing himself too aggressively as a national candidate, which he, in fact, was, Sorensen arranged for John Bailey, the Connecticut state chairman of the Democratic Party and a Catholic, to claim authorship. Under Bailey’s name, Sorensen’s report was distributed to Democratic operatives, Stevenson supporters, and the press. Material from it would later be published, in full or in part, in several magazines, including U.S. News & World Report and Time magazine.24
The more the press trumpeted the findings of the Sorensen-Bailey memorandum, the more Kennedy feared that a trap had been set for his son. Worse than denying Jack the nomination because he was a Catholic was giving it to him because he was a Catholic. Even Clare Boothe Luce, one of Jack’s “greatest rooters,” Kennedy wrote his son in late May, “hopes you will not accept the nomination for the Vice Presidency. She has many arguments, not the least of which is that if you are chosen, it will be because you are a Catholic and not because you are big enough to do a good job. She feels that a defeat would be a devastating blow to your prestige, which at the moment is great, and non-partisan.”25
Jack listened to his father’s arguments but wasn’t swayed by them. “Arthur Schlesinger wrote to me yesterday,” he informed his father, “and stated that he thought it should be done and that he was going to do everything he possibly could. . . . Competition is mostly from Hubert Humphrey, who had his Governor make a statement that I would not be acceptable because of my vote on the farm bill. [Senator Kennedy had opposed the continuance of farm subsidies at present levels.] . . . I have done nothing about it and do not plan to although if it looks worthwhile I may have George Smathers talk to some of the southern Governors. While I think the prospects are rather limited, it does seem of some use to have all this churning up. If I don’t get it I can always tell them in the State that it was because of my vote on the farm bill.”26
Jack’s primary concern that spring was taking control of the Massachusetts Democratic Party from William “Onions” Burke, who had embarrassed Adlai Stevenson, the presumptive candidate in 1956, by running John McCormack as a favorite-son candidate and defeating Stevenson in the Massachusetts primary. Kennedy warned his son as strongly as he could to “leave it alone and don’t get into the gutter with those bums up there in Boston,” but Jack was convinced that to be a player on the national stage he had to gain control of his own state party. He organized a slate of candidates for the eighty committee seats that were up for grabs, outworked, outspent, outcampaigned, and outsmarted the party stalwarts lined up behind Burke, and installed his own people in leadership positions. The Stevenson campaign could not help being impressed, as were Democrats everywhere, including Joseph P. Kennedy.27
For a brief moment that spring, Kennedy considered the possibility that it might be in Jack’s interest to join the Stevenson ticket. “The political situation seems to be changing rapidly,” Kennedy wrote Lord Beaverbrook in mid-June. It appeared that Eisenhower’s health—he had suffered a massive heart attack in September 1955—might become a major issue. If Eisenhower decided not to run, the Democrats would have an excellent chance. If he did run “as a sick man—and he will have to,” Kennedy wrote Morton Downey, he might be beatable. In any event, Kennedy was considering returning from the South of France to attend the convention in Chicago. “We’ll watch
it from the sidelines for another week or ten days and if you get any real news, let me know.”28
By mid-July, Kennedy had decided that he had been right in the first place. Eisenhower was invincible. His recent illness, rather than a liability, had made him a stronger candidate, more sympathetic than before. “I think Eisenhower is the most popular man that we have seen in our time,” Kennedy wrote Sargent Shriver on July 18, “and to make attacks on him in the coming campaign is to me a sure way to commit suicide.” He advised Shriver, who during his years in Chicago had become close to Governor Stevenson and his advisers, that the Democrats should focus their attention not on Eisenhower’s illness, but on the fact that the nation needed a full-time president and Eisenhower was no longer prepared to be one. A Stevenson-Kennedy ticket, which now seemed likely, would, he concluded, “certainly do better than the last time,” but it would not win.29
“Talked to Jack twice,” he wrote his son Ted on July 18. “After conversation with Bill Blair [one of Stevenson’s top advisers] on Cape on Sunday, he is giving serious consideration to the job. Last night, however, he was worried because the New York Evening Post was coming out with an article that said he had Addison’s disease. I told him he should co-operate with the reporter and admit that he had had it but that the disease was not a killer as it was eight years ago, and I feel that it should be brought out now and not after he gets the nomination, if he gets it. He thought he might come over [to France] for a week to talk things over, but I doubt it.” Fortunately for Jack, the article did not appear, or if it did, no one took notice.30
As late as July 30, less than two weeks before the convention opened, Jack had still not decided whether to actively campaign for the vice-presidential nomination. “There are a great many pros and cons,” Kennedy wrote Galeazzi, “and I have been talking with him on the telephone frequently of late and I expect that I’ll hear from him a great deal in the next two weeks. . . . If the political situation gets very exciting, it will become necessary for me to resign my position on the President’s Board, at least until after the elections. I have written to the President and I am waiting to hear from him. Having a member of your family in this fight makes it a bit embarrassing. If Jack runs, I shall have to attack the Eisenhower administration; if he does not run, they may say because of my relationship with Eisenhower, I did not want him to run—so there you are! I will keep you posted in any event.”31