In the same back room in which we had met twice before, Vance Harlow and I sat down at the same table and to talk. There were some complications, which did not surprise me, no truly risky venture is without them; it’s what makes the reward ever so sweet.
Harlow informed me that I had competition, there was someone else out there willing to pay big bucks for the same merchandise. This was quite a turn, for it seemed the “sundry individuals,” as Harlow referred to them, knew the value of what they possessed and had made inquiries to other interested parties who might be willing to pay well to get the dirt on JFK; bottom line: I was being outbid on my own deal. “It’s no different than you letting it be known that you’re in the market for a vintage 1939 Cadillac,” Harlow said, “and the man down the street with one parked in his garage realizes what he has, and in turn, lets it be known that he’s sitting on a treasure he’ll only part with for the prettiest penny, no matter who pays it.”
Now, you don’t get as me rich in Texas by being stupid, and my first reaction was that I was being shaken down by a bunch of lowlifes, the kind of people who would put a tape recorder under a bed or break in and rifle through files. Then I realized the obvious; these new bidders had to be the Kennedy’s themselves or maybe some of old Papa Joe‘s rich cronies who could always be counted on to open their wallets in return for God knows what kind of back scratching favors.
A lot of good people in this situation would have royally lost their tempers right then and there at the prospect of a crasher coming in and taking their own game away from them, but I’ve played my share of Five Card Stud, and nobody leaves the table a winner and mad at the same time. Instead, I asked Harlow what proof he could give me that it was worth my time to stay in the game. Always let them know you are willing to walk away, works when you’re buying a Cadillac, works anywhere else.
Harlow reached in his jacket pocket and produced an envelope. “Thought I might need this,” he said as he pushed it across the table. It contained a photograph, obviously taken at a distance and blown up, of two men standing in what appeared to be a lobby, engaged in conversation, and by the smiles on their faces, they seemed to be getting along quite amicably.
Harlow explained what it all meant. “The younger of these guys is Lt. Colonel Martin Maddox, USMC and who has lately been occupying an office in the White House basement where he reports directly to the President; much of the final work and planning for the invasion of Cuba was done by the very able Colonel Maddox. The other gentleman, who looks like he chews rusty nails as a hobby is Carlos Marcello and this picture was taken at the Town and Country Motel, an establishment outside of New Orleans owned by Mr. Marcello. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you who Marcello is and how he makes his living, it is not exactly common knowledge, but he and a number of his associates had a large investment in hotels and casinos in Batista’s Cuba; all lucrative businesses which were confiscated by Castro when he took over. Why is an honorable member of our armed forces enjoying the company of a Mafia Kingfish? Because they’ve just reached a deal of mutual convenience whereby in return for vital information about Cuba that will be of great help to the United States military in the upcoming invasion, Marcello and his partners will get all of their property back in a post-Castro Cuba. In effect, American boys will die liberating the island in part so that a bunch of Mafia crooks and murderers can go back to doing business as usual. That’s it in a nutshell: Kennedy in bed with Mafia goons; that really ought to tarnish his glamorous image quite a bit if the American public learned of such conniving.”
It was good enough to make me want to continue, but I asked about the other allegations Harlow had mentioned at our last meeting: the romps with the whore in the White House and the secret medical history, what proof could show me that they were legit. He had nothing in hand at the moment, Harlow told me, since the “sundry individuals” were not showing anything more until they saw the money; he only had the picture because it was a gesture to prove they were serious. But, he added, before I made any decisions, it might interest me to know that the woman Kennedy fornicated with at the White House could well be an East German spy, and he had it on good authority that inside the President’s secret medical file was the diagnosis of a certain nasty “social disease.”
There was no way I could walk away from proof that Kennedy was both a degenerate and a traitor; I would not rest until the confirmation was in my hands. I wanted it all and quoted a figure to Harlow, one which I will not reveal for obvious reasons, but suffice to say, it was a more than fair price and would have made all the “sundry individuals” wealthy men for the rest of their lives.
Harlow said the amount I had just quoted “might be a tad shy of the mark.” The other potential bidders had fat wallets, and I would need one myself if I wanted to trump them.
I then informed him that I wanted to raise my bid, but would need time to raise the money, hopefully a couple of weeks, but maybe a month or more.
“That sounds fair enough,” Harlow said, “and I am on your side in this, after all, if you hadn’t had the guts to put the money up in the first place, no one would be looking at the possibility of going home rich. But we’re dealing with some real shithouse rats here; they have no loyalty except to what puts a buck in their pocket, and they‘re always looking for an angle. For this reason, some of them have been quite enterprising, so much so that they have discovered who is putting up the money and have tried to make personal contact with you in an attempt to eliminate the middle man and strike a deal on their own.”
This was news to me. “I can assure you I have spoken to no one about our arrangement, no one at all.”
“I know you did, Wade, but one of those shithouse rats approached the lovely Miss Brennan and tried to have her pass on a message to you. Lucky for you, I intervened and told her a lie with a ring of truth to it, and made sure things did not progress any further. But now Miss Brennan is a bystander who can link you and me, if only by a third party association. It’s the kind of thing which under the right circumstances could put us at the same defendant’s table.
My reply was succinct, “Doesn’t matter, all I’m looking for is the equivalent of a bullet to Kennedy’s head.”
“Be careful who you say that in front of in this town,” Harlow replied. I knew to what he was referring, but I didn’t give a damn. A Texan should never have to apologize for speaking honestly.
We left it there, but if I was going to have to up the ante and compete with Kennedy money, then I needed to bring in some big artillery myself. On the flight out of Dallas, I was thinking of whom I could call with the kind of deep pockets needed and who hated the Kennedy brothers enough to empty them.
I made it to San Francisco on the third day of the convention, in time to be the hall when the roll of states was called and Barry Goldwater became our nominee for President, I got to participate in the Vice Presidential selection process and I was quite serious in suggesting John Wayne for the second spot on the ticket, the Duke is a true American and a great patriot, beloved by millions; the kind of man who would be a real asset in a tough race and great contrast to those slick Kennedy’s. My council was not taken, politicians just naturally gravitate to other politicians, but I think Duke would have been a superb choice.
The day after the convention is when I took care of a dangerously dangling loose thread: I brought Dorothy Brennan aboard and gave her the lowdown lest she inadvertently do something which might put her and the whole campaign at jeopardy, since you never know what a blonde might do.
John Compton
July - August 1964
I’ll admit to being quite in quite a foul mood over the 4th of July, 1964, mainly because I felt all the hard work, good faith and sacrifice of so many had been utterly betrayed when Kennedy agreed to compromise the Civil Rights Act just to get it passed by the Senate. I was not naïve; I knew how politics worked, and the President clearly wanted to run in the fall on a record which included getting the Act through Congress,
something dear to the hearts of many liberals in the party.
Congress would not return to take up reconciliation until the second half of July, so I didn’t have much to do during this time period, so I watched the gavel to gavel coverage of the Republican convention in San Francisco. What I saw put my head back in the right place. The convention proved to be a frightening spectacle as the party of Lincoln became the party of Jim Crow, John Birchers, McCarthyites, right to work fanatics, and everyone else who wanted to repeal the 20th Century. And the adoration showered on Barry Goldwater by his dewy-eyed acolytes reminded me of nothing so much as the rapt audiences who shrieked Seig Heil in those old newsreels from Nazi Germany. When Congress came back to town a week later, I was ready to do anything to save America from Goldwater and friends. If that meant the passage of a flawed Civil Rights Act, then so be it.
As soon as Congress was back in session, new potential problems with the Civil Rights Act emerged; House liberals were threatening to sink the whole thing rather than voting for it in its present form, while Senator Dirksen, the lower half of the Goldwater ticket, was running on a platform which explicitly rejected any version of the proposed law; would he still be there for us. The broad coalition of Civil Rights workers, starting with Dr. King himself right down to the brave citizens out there marching were none too happy about the compromise and were quite vocal about it; a lot of big corporate money men who wrote checks for the re-election campaigns of a lot of Republican Senators were making it plain they sided with Goldwater.
Into this thicket, John F. Kennedy stepped, which was only fair since the compromise was his doing. He had the leader of the House liberals, Emmanuel Cellar of New York, come to the White House for a meeting and somehow brought Cellar around to the “half a loaf is better than none” point of view; Cellar returned to the House and pulled the plug on any liberal rebellion against the bill. There was a similar meeting with Dirksen, who, in the end, didn’t jump ship on us and neither did any of the other Republican Senators who had previously supported the bill. “The President didn’t have to go to all that trouble,” Senator Humphrey told me later, “Everett Dirksen is a man of his word and a true patriot; there was no way he was going to desert us once he was committed.”
The people the bill was ostensibly supposed to help were less than happy with these developments, and why not, it was far from the first time Black America was told they had to accept less than what they deserved. Dr. King put his best face on in public, telling reporters in Atlanta on July 20th the Act would “go a long way toward paying down a bill that has been long overdue.” In private, he was not so magnanimous we were told, something hinted at a few days later when Ralph Abernathy, King’s right hand, stated publicly that “a bunch of white politicians in Washington D.C. are doing nothing more than what they always do: promising and then not delivering.” Those words stung.
Nevertheless, the process proceeded, and an amended version of the Civil Rights Act passed both the House and Senate by the same margins as before on August 5th and the President scheduled a signing ceremony at the White House the next day. Senator Russell called it a “truly tragic day in the history of our great country and a terrible defeat for freedom,” although he surely knew it could have gone much worse for his beloved South, while Senator Humphrey told the press, “this day would see millions of Negro Americans unshackled from the degradation of Jim Crow.” He surely knew those words were not quite true.
Kennedy was well aware of how the compromises made him look, so he made a number of public gestures during the summer to counter this criticism, starting with his public call for a Federal investigation when those three Civil Rights workers went missing in late June. He appeared in the press room and made the announcement himself that J. Edgar Hoover was going to Mississippi to lead the effort to find Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. He also made public the transcripts of the telephone calls he made to local officials who were clearly dragging their feet, not just the one to Governor Paul Johnson, but also to Sheriff Lawrence Rainey of Neshoba County where the three went missing, who must have been mortified to pick up the phone in his office and then be verbally browbeaten by John Kennedy into promising to find those three brave young man no matter what it took. The good Sheriff could have told Kennedy they were buried in an earthen dam only a few miles from the jailhouse since he was in on the murders from the start, but that would have taken the kind of courage a coward is incapable of possessing. The story would not end well, and if JFK’s was grandstanding and using a crime for his own good ends, then so be it.
I was in the back of the room at the White House ceremony on August 6th where John F. Kennedy signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a quick visit to Atlanta by Robert F. Kennedy, followed by a closed-door meeting, but whatever was said, it was enough to get Dr. King to the White House that day. He stood behind the President as he put his signature on the bill and smiled for the cameras. I guess he figured three steps forward and one step backward was still progress. Senator Humphrey was to one side of King, while the Vice President was on the other; both men looking quite pleased, Johnson especially so, for he had seized the opportunity and made himself politically relevant again.
My own feelings at the signing ceremony were mixed: I was proud of everything we had done to get the Civil Rights Act passed, and I could take some comfort in the knowledge that my fingerprints were nowhere to be found on the compromises which watered it down.
Among President Kennedy’s remarks at the signing ceremony were words which touched on these feelings: “In the struggle to achieve a more perfect union, there will be more battles, more clashes between those who wish to see America live up to its promise of equality and dignity to every citizen and those who cling to the status quo of an unfair and unequal past. I have no doubt which side will ultimately prevail.”
With the signing ceremony over, I considered my work in Washington done; I was looking forward to practicing law again in Georgia. But on my way out the door, I was waylaid by Lyndon Johnson. “I’m going to have damn tough job this fall,” Johnson explained, “the President expects me to hold Texas for him and maybe save a few other Southern states. It’s going to be a bitch for Democrats in Dixie after today, but we’ve got to do it, I’ve got to do it, and you, Johnny, have got to help me.”
I got the full Johnson treatment.
The Vice President was talking like a man who was absolutely sure he was going to be re-nominated in Atlantic City in three weeks. This ran counter to the rumors which had been blazing through Washington all spring and summer which had Johnson being dumped in favor of Humphrey, Scoop Jackson or Stuart Symington. Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina was also on the list of possible replacements according to the latest gossip emanating from the Kennedy ’64 headquarters on Connecticut Avenue. That Bobby Kennedy was determined to have Johnson dropped, ostensibly because of his links to the Baker scandal, was common knowledge, and Bobby was the de facto head of his brother’s re-election campaign, which in the eyes of many, sealed the Vice President’s fate.
Yet, here was Lyndon Johnson, three weeks before the convention, talking as if his re-nomination was a done deal. I said yes to him then and there despite my better judgment and what all my good common sense was telling me. At the time, I chalked it up to Johnson’s legendary powers of persuasion and a momentary desire to tell him what he wanted to hear; I would be heading back to Georgia in a few weeks anyway, I told myself as I left the White House, as soon as Bobby Kennedy finally had his way.
Kevin McCluskey
August - September 1964
As a reward for ferrying money across the country, I received a promotion to “Assistant Coordinator” for Kennedy ’64, it was a meaningless title, but it reflected the esteem I was now held in by the top men in the campaign; I was no longer one of many troubleshooters, I was now the number one troubleshooter. The job was earned after I transported a quarter of a million dollars - mostly in twenty-five thousand or more increments f
rom different donors from around the country to Washington. No questions were asked and no explanations were given; being part of the Kennedy campaign meant you had to be something like a modern day buccaneer.
I had just settled into my new duties the week before the Democratic Convention.
It was held the last week of August, and the orders came down that it was to be a smooth sailing ship, which turned out not an easy accomplishment. Although there had never been any doubt as to the President’s re-nomination a few brush fires had broken out on the way to Atlantic City. The hottest one flared up from the South, where we faced the possibility of a mass walkout of on the convention floor of old Dixiecrats, who were traditionally chosen at white’s only state conventions were being challenged by local civil rights activists. There is nothing dirtier and nastier than when American politics meets the question of race. There would be no walk-out by Southern whites, those orders came straight down from the Oval Office; Kennedy did want to see the sight of lifelong Democrats denouncing him on TV and endorsing Goldwater.
I was tasked with telling Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that it was the President’s wishes that they withdraw their challenge from the credentials committee in the best interests of the country. “The country has just weathered a tough crisis, and we don’t need to accentuate internal dissension and strife at this time.” Those were the exact words I was told to say on the day before the convention opened to a group of black Mississippi citizens who had been beaten, threatened and jailed repeatedly for the crime of wanting to take part in the democratic process. Among this group was the formidable Fannie Lou Hamer, who replied, “I’ll pray to Lord Jesus for the country, but there’s been a tough crisis going on in Mississippi for a lot longer and we’re not going anywhere, and the country will just have to be fine with it.”
All the Way with JFK: An Alternate History of 1964 Page 24