All the Way with JFK: An Alternate History of 1964

by F. C. Schaefer

  What I saw and heard inside the conference room pretty much jibes with the official version and what historians have written since.

  Khrushchev came out swinging with his opening remarks, accusing the American government, and especially John F. Kennedy by name, of lying, scheming, breaking their word and committing military aggression against a peace loving nation whose only crime was to be part of the world-wide socialist revolution. Nothing short of an immediate American withdrawal from Cuba and the complete restoration of the Castro regime would make things right; he also warned that those who had planned and participated in said aggression should be tried for war crimes. There he was talking about me.

  “The Cuban people must have justice,” Khrushchev demanded. “This crime cannot be allowed to stand.” He then linked the invasion of Cuba to an American plot to thwart the tide of history which was leading toward the inevitable victory of socialism and the liberation of all victims of capitalist imperialism; the worker’s paradise of the Soviet Union, along their socialist brothers in North Korea, had every right to defend itself in any way it deemed necessary against such aggression.

  “Strike at us,” Khrushchev stated at the end of the opening remarks, “and we will strike back in kind, it is our right.” It was a performance worthy of the Soviet dictator in his prime, back when he was banging his shoe in the U.N. and despite whatever misgivings he might have had in private, the man gave a full-throttled defense of everything the junta had done while he was under house arrest.

  There has been much criticism of the President because he did not respond in kind or rebut Khrushchev point by point when his turn came; nor did he mention the assassination attempt in Dallas and the trail of evidence leading back to Havana. He only briefly mentioned the invasion of Iran, saying the people of that country might have something to say about crimes against humanity. Instead he brought up the increased tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the situation on the Korean peninsula and in South Vietnam, making it clear that their job at this summit was to deescalate the tensions and restore stability to the world.

  “The greatest crime against humanity, Mr. Chairman,” the President said as he summed up, “would be for us to leave this summit with nothing accomplished; to simply sit here and trade accusations and recriminations. It is a tragedy for all those who have died up until today, but starting tomorrow, those who perish will be because of a criminal act, and we will be the guilty parties.”

  I was sitting in the back of the room behind the President while he was speaking and through it all, his tone was one of calm and reason. To have thrown a documented list of Soviet atrocities in Iran back in Khrushchev’s face would have accomplished nothing.

  The morning session went on in the same vein for two hours, with Khrushchev pounding his fist and making accusations, and the President countering that done was done, and the only thing to be settled was how they went forward. “I think we’ve cleared the air enough,” the President commented when the morning session broke up. As soon as the President left the conference room, he asked for a pen and paper and dashed off a note on the back of an aide’s briefcase, folding it double and giving it to the Indian Foreign Minister to hand deliver to Khrushchev. This is what I witnessed, with no knowledge of the note’s contents, but having no reason to doubt the President’s assertion that he was merely informing the Soviet leader that he was welcome to send a naval transport to Havana and evacuate Andreyev’s troops.

  Twenty minutes later, I was witness to the Foreign Minister’s return with a note from Khrushchev for the President; this prompted a quick huddle among the President, the Secretary of State and Mr. Bundy. A minute later those three men slipped quietly from the room, moving so deftly as not to be noticed. It was not until the President returned three-quarters of an hour later did we learn of the private meeting he’d just had with Khrushchev in the hotel’s floral garden. Of course it was not truly a one on one as the Soviet leader was accompanied by Brezhnev and Gromyko, who discreetly stood by and let Khrushchev tell the President that if he proposed a reasonable date to have all American troops out of Cuba at the next session, he would be willing to reciprocate in kind on Iran. The Soviet leader offered his hand, and they shook on the deal.

  And just like that, the breakthrough was accomplished.

  When the sessions resumed, the President threw out the proposal of a one-year deadline for both countries to have all their troops out of Cuba and Iran respectively; Khrushchev gave a blustering response, but, good as his word, did not reject the idea of a withdrawal date out of hand. I noticed that while old Nikita was haranguing, the President was furiously writing on a legal pad which he quickly passed to Secretary Rusk; once it was the turn of the American side to respond, the Secretary put on his glasses and calmly read off a five-point plan to ease the immediate tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, which included a ten-month deadline to get all foreign troops out of Cuba and Iran along with the immediate standing down of all American and Soviet armed forces worldwide.

  Again, Khrushchev snarled and growled and got the withdrawal date changed to nine months, then after another forty minutes or so of the pretense of haggling, agreed to the President’s five points. It took another hour to get everything typed up and ready for signature.

  I was in the room through all of it, though sitting off to the side, and what I’ve just recounted is what I’ve told various historians in the years since. There were no “secret” or “side” deals made, and I’ve disputed anyone who has said otherwise since that day. D’nesh D’Sousa and I really got into it when we jointly appeared on the “O’Reilly Factor” just last year after he’d written some screed purportedly exposing President Kennedy as a sellout who let pass a chance to win the Cold War right there in New Delhi.

  On that day, the Soviets had fifteen divisions bogged down in Iran, facing a furious homegrown opposition growing stronger by the day, while in Eastern Europe, fear among local military units that they would be sent to the slaughter house in the Mid East had reached such a proportion that open defiance of the Soviets was growing by the hour - Polish, Hungarian and Czech infantry battalions had come together and voted to obey only orders issued in defense of their homelands. The Kremlin junta had truly made a hash of things, but the full impact was yet to be known.

  While the President and Khrushchev were settling things in the main dining hall, the Indian Foreign Minister had been in the ballroom across the lobby talking with Chou En Lai; the Chinese leader had proposed a complete American withdrawal from the Korean peninsula and Indo-China, positions which would greatly benefit North Korea and North Vietnam whom he claimed to represent. But everyone knew Chou was there to further the interests of Peking, whatever they might be. At the end of Kennedy and Khrushchev’s final session, the Indian Foreign Minister reported that negotiations with Chou were at an impasse and he was refusing even to consider a proposal for a simple cease fire the Indians had put on the table.

  This is what happened when the President learned of this development; with a translator in tow, he stepped around to the Soviet side of the table and engaged Khrushchev in conversation - they were quickly joined by Brezhnev and Gromyko. They spoke for fifteen minutes with old Nikita vigorously nodding his head several times, with another hardy handshake when they were done. Then the President spoke briefly with Secretary Rusk and Mr. Bundy before striding to the lobby and entering the ballroom where the meetings with Chou were going on.

  What happened next made was on the front page of every newspaper around the world the next day: John F. Kennedy shaking hands with an obviously surprised Chou En Lai. The meeting between them lasted barely a half hour, just long enough for the President to get Chou to agree to a de-escalation in Korea and Indo-China, an agreement which ultimately proved to be utterly worthless, but a line of communication had been established. I’ve always believed the President’s assertion that the decision to meet with Chou was a spur of the moment one.

  Th
e only thing left to do was a final signing of the agreement between Kennedy and Khrushchev, where Chou joined them - the only time all three leaders were together. The smiling President stood between the rather glum looking Communist leaders, an image that told the world the crisis, which had gripped it for weeks, was over.

  Back at the American embassy, orders were issued for all our military forces worldwide to begin standing down; this applied to four squadrons of B-52’s in Europe who were all fueled up with crews ready to fly into Iran to hit forward Soviet positions.

  On the trip home on Air Force One, the President sat down and explained to us his thinking and reasons for what he did and had accomplished the day before.

  “I knew going in the best I could get done would be the small stuff,” he said. “To simply get us and the Soviets off the path we were on; the path toward a fatal confrontation as bad as the one over the missiles in Cuba if not worse.” That is why he had kept the discussions in the area of stand-downs and de-escalations. “I knew they were all things the Soviets could live with in the end.”

  There were several times when he mentioned the deteriorating Soviet position in Iran. “If I had gone for anything that called for them to even acknowledge the possibility of defeat, the summit would have failed. It’s why I had no choice but to link Cuba and Iran in some kind of withdrawal deal; you can’t turn a huge military machine around on a dime, giving us anything more than a six-month deadline is a win and a chance to put our guy in Cuba and keep another Castro out.” The problem with exploiting the situation in Eastern Europe was that it amounted to playing with fire. “The Soviets aren’t going to let their satellites go and provoking a fight there is a sure way to a nuclear showdown.”

  On Khrushchev himself, the President said he was clearly not the man he’d met in Vienna three years before. “The man who walked into that summit was almost a shell of his old self, he could put on a good front and talk the talk, but something’s happened, and he’s clearly not in total control anymore.” Yet at the end of their negotiations, when the President had come around to the Soviet side of the table, he saw the old fire again. “I told Khrushchev I wanted us to get together right after the election in November - no time to waste waiting till the second term. Told him we absolutely had to talk about limiting and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons and making concrete progress toward reducing the tensions between us, to have something like what the French call détente. It’s time to talk about where we can cooperate and make the world a better place. And you should have seen how Khrushchev’s eyes really lit up when I said this. He grasped instantly what I was saying and was on board. I threw out mid-November in Stockholm for our next summit and Khrushchev ordered Gromyko to get to work right away on it.”

  On the meeting with Chou, President Kennedy had this to say, “There is just no Goddamn good reason why we shouldn’t be negotiating with the Chinese face to face - they represent nearly a fourth of humanity and keeping them in isolation is just untenable in the long run. I couldn’t let Chou hang up this summit; I had to get some kind of agreement to lower the tensions in Korea and Vietnam and thought it was well worth the political risk to go in there and shake his hand. I’ll catch political hell from Henry Luce and the rest of the old China Lobby for this, and an election year is the worst time possible to make a public gesture to the Red Chinese, but that’s the way things worked out.” He pointed out that Khrushchev wouldn’t even talk to Chou when he had the chance. “This is something we must exploit to our advantage,” the President emphasized, “in the years ahead.”

  I was later told that General LeMay was quite unhappy about ordering his bombers stand down when they were fueled up and ready to take off for Iran, but in public he was silent.

  I got off Air Force One with the worst case of jet lag I’ve ever experienced; I went home and slept for nine hours straight, then had my first home-cooked meal in two months. When I got back to the office, my main concern was getting Andreyev’s Russian troops out of Cuba, a problem which wasn’t solving itself.

  I believe I was reading over a situation report from Abrams’s staff when the phone on my desk rang. “I guess congratulations are in order, Colonel, you and Kennedy seem to have gotten a pretty good deal from the Russians over there in New Delhi.” I instantly recognized Vance Harlow’s voice. With no idea why he was calling, I thanked the man for his kind words. “Don’t thank me yet, Colonel, at least not until you hear why I’m calling this morning. In case you haven’t been keeping up with the news, this is a Presidential election year, and there are some big shots with a lot of money to waste who’ve let it be known they’re paying top dollar for any and all dirt on Jack Kennedy and his administration. I just want to let you know there are some pictures circulating of you taking advantage of the hospitality at Carlos Marcello’s Town and Country Motel from back when you and I made our little visit there in March. It could be a big problem if it ever saw the light of day. I like you, Colonel, and feel like I owed you a call.”

  Wade L. Harbinson

  June - July, 1964

  There were those who were impressed with the way John F. Kennedy handled Khrushchev, I was not one of them, nor was I alone, the Goldwater campaign set a record in fundraising in the week after that sham of a summit in India, where JFK let one sworn enemy off the hook for what it had done to the people of Iran, and then threw his arms around an equally devious foe, the Red Chinese. Not only did we get a great infusion of cash after Kennedy played patty cake with the Communists, but there were also record numbers of people enlisting in the cause and signing up to volunteer for Senator Goldwater, so in some small way JFK did us a favor.

  On the day Kennedy flew back from his Indian love fest with our Communist enemies, I finally received a call from Vance Harlow at last, saying he wanted to meet with me again in Dallas at the Carousel Club. At the time, I was quite impressed with his professionalism, how he was careful to never discuss any aspect of our business on the phone. He was later to tell me he had complete confidence in the discretion of the owner.

  I met with Harlow there on the afternoon of June 19th in the same back room where we’d met months earlier. My expectations for this meeting were high, summer was here, and the conventions were not far off, it was getting close to the time when it would be necessary to bring out the big artillery, and I was hoping to get the political equivalent of the A-Bomb from Mr. Harlow.

  “Let me ask you this, Mr. Harbinson,” he said after I shook his hand took a seat opposite Harlow, “are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this proposal? You sure you want to go down this road?”

  I had no doubt whatsoever, I told him, that you have to take risks if you want to get anywhere in life, and big rewards-like electing a great man President - require the taking of very big risks.

  Harlow was pleased with hearing this. He then went on to tell me he had made some discreet inquires of the kinds of individuals who would - for a price - deliver what I wanted. These inquiries had produced promising preliminary results, but it would take time, and furthermore, these people were no rubes, they knew how to drive a hard bargain. And in the unfortunate nature of these things, I had tipped my hand by offering a million dollars up front. The bottom line: I needed to be prepared to fork over more green to get what I wanted.

  I’m used to dealing with people who know how to drive a hard bargain, but if I was going to dig deeper into my pockets, then I wanted some idea of what I was paying for; all dirt is not the same, some of it will yield a fine field of corn, while another plot will get you nothing but thistles. I explained as much to Harlow, saying I was willing to pay more, but only for the former, not the latter.

  Harlow was silent for a moment, clearly weighing his words carefully lest he reveal too much too soon, the sign of a good negotiator. “Okay Wade, this is what you can get for your money,” he said at last, “I have seen documented proof that the Kennedy brothers are conspiring with known members of the Mafia to further their mutual inte
rests. I have also talked to individuals who claim they can get their hands on a ‘secret medical file’ on the President which will reveal a whole host of ailments John Kennedy has kept hidden from the American public. Then there is the allegation of a woman who says she regularly visited the White House to have sexual relations with the President of the United States. I’ve seen no proof of the latter two, but if I can get my hands on it, and if it proves to be true, I think it would be most worth the while.”

  A secret medical history; the Kennedy brothers in bed with organized crime; the President revealing himself to be an immoral degenerate; as far as I was concerned this was better than any Christmas morning And if all three could be proven to be true beyond the shadow of a doubt, then they would be well worth any price. I made it clear to Harlow that I would get the money to compensate any and all who could get the proof of John Kennedy’s unfitness for office. “When you want to bring down the big game, you got to load for bear,” is how I put it.

  “Good enough,” Harlow replied, “but let me remind you that these individuals I’m doing business with are not good patriots like you, Wade. They’re in it only for the money and expect to be well compensated for the risk of crossing the men who can call J. Edgar Hoover any hour of the day and night.

  I had no illusions as to the character of the people Harlow was dealing with, and I more than appreciated the risks involved, but with success within reach, it was not the time to go weak in the knees. I affirmed my commitment to Vance Harlow to see this through.

  “Good enough,” Harlow said, “but it will likely be well into the fall campaign before anyone delivers.”