All the Way with JFK: An Alternate History of 1964

by F. C. Schaefer

  I brought Miss Brennan into the proceedings because I wanted to assure her full complicity and what’s wrong with having a lovely blonde in the room when there is dickering between men of business.

  Everyone was in place by eight in the evening and the thing got underway. The first prospective entered the suite, and produced from a briefcase a file filled with photos exposing Operation Mongoose, the secret three year effort to overthrow Castro, specifically by way of an alliance with certain Mafia goons who, in return for their cooperation, would get all their hotels, casinos and whorehouse back in Cuba once the Commies were kicked out. One picture showed Sam Giancana, the head of the Chicago Outfit sitting down with the CIA station chief in Miami, while others concerned Carlos Marcello and Santos Triafficante in similar situations. This was offered as proof the Administration was in bed with organized crime.

  Personally, I considered Castro to a far worse menace to the United States than a bunch of greasy Italians and getting him out of Cuba was surely a case of the ends justifying the means. But Kennedy was a threat to America too in his own way, and the sight of him making illegal deals with known pimps and murderers would not set well with the millions of honest American.

  Of course, I and my partners had the necessary skepticism and questioned the prospect extensively as to how this evidence came into his possession and to its authenticity; after all, photos can easily be faked and doctored in any camera shop these days. What we heard was the testimony of an inside man, one who had been involved with Mongoose from the beginning, and before that had a working relationship with a number of those Mafia bigwigs. When asked why he was doing this besides the ample financial reward, he replied with a list of names and then told us: “They were my brothers, one was killed on the beach at the Bay of Pigs, the other was put in front of a firing squad by Castro, they died while that son of a bitch Kennedy sat on his ass in the Oval Office and did nothing. The invasion came four years too late for me, and I’ll never forgive him.”

  When it was pointed out that all the contacts between the President and the mobsters were through low-level officers, thus giving him the alibi of claiming they were “off the reservation” so to speak, our attention was directed to a particular photograph, which showed a clean cut young man shaking hands with a laughing Marcello. This young man, we were informed, was a colonel in the Marine Corp and worked out of a basement in the White House. “He talks to Kennedy every day.” That was the cherry on top, so to speak and good enough proof for me.

  But the plan was to hear out everyone and then talk money; the first prospect was excused, and Miss Brennan went down the hall to fetch the second one; though a familiar face to anyone familiar with Presidential politics, this man was a proxy for someone far more powerful who wished to remain behind in their suite rather than show their face, I will say they were someone with an understandable grudge against Kennedy.

  This prospect also had a briefcase, from which he produced a medical file belonging one Dr. Max Jacobsen, a man referred to by many of his patients as “Dr. Feelgood.” The patient this file belonged to was the President of the United States, and its contents were pure dynamite. It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Kennedy’s image of vigor and good health was nothing but a lie and that his true condition had been covered up and hidden from the American people. This cover up had led the President to seek treatments from this Dr. Jacobsen that were dubious at best and a threat to his ability to carry out his duties as Commander in Chief. The short of it was this “Dr. Feelgood” was jacking Kennedy up on amphetamines and injections of God knows what to combat his back pain; it was nothing but high class “speed,” and I’ve known men in the oilfields who took too much of that stuff to keep going and then walked right out in front of a truck as though it wasn’t there. Now we had a guy in the same condition with his finger on the nuclear button. In addition, Dr. Jacobsen’s file revealed that Kennedy suffered from Addison’s disease, a life-threatening thyroid condition which had also been hidden from the American voters. That, and the fact Kennedy was treated for gonorrhea in the past, as if he’d been a hard up sailor just off the boat and prowling the Yokohama docks for tail.

  This was damning evidence indeed, yet it was obvious the good Dr. Jacobsen had not simply turned over this most sensitive file to men with more than a grudge against the President. This prompted some intense questions as to how the file was obtained. “I have no firsthand knowledge of how these papers left the office of Dr. Jacobsen,” was the reply from the prospect, “and anything I might tell you would be conjecture and hearsay. All I know is that they were given to me by some concerned citizens who wanted the truth about the President to come out. That is my story, and I suggest it be your story if we conclude our business amicably and you are ever questioned in the future about how they to be in your hands.”

  The next prospect had a briefcase in his hand when escorted into the suite by Miss Brennan; he could best be described as a lobbyist who traveled in the same social circles as the President. His evidence consisted of a top of the line recorder and the tape of a young woman who gave her name as Ellen Rometsch, who described in graphic detail a number of sexual encounters between herself and John F. Kennedy. Judging from the photograph accompanying the tape, Miss Rometsch bore a striking resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor; she was what could loosely be called a “party girl,” one of the many such women who worked for the disgraced Bobby Baker at the notorious Quorum Club in the Carroll Arms Hotel, where they would entertain members of Congress after a long day. It had been the job of our third prospect to procure women for the President and bring them to the White House, where they often serviced Kennedy by the pool after he took a swim for his bad back, an affliction which limited his positions during sex according to Miss Rometsch.

  But here was the real kicker to Miss Rometsch’s story: the young lady was not an American citizen, but born on German soil, more importantly, that part of Germany overrun by the Red Army in the closing days of WWII and had grown up under Communist rule, something she embraced before escaping to West Germany and marrying a West German army officer who was ultimately posted to the embassy in Washington. It seems the fetching Miss Rometsch once belonged to a number of Communist youth groups during her time in East Germany and who knows what the hell else, possibly their intelligence services as well, which could have sent her to the West to act as a modern day Mata Hari. That is how it would look to a good many Americans when they discovered the truth.

  This was the equivalent of a political H-Bomb, and we knew it, but my partners and I gave this third prospect a tough questioning as to how he came to possess such a tape and what his motives might be beside the obvious financial ones. He claimed it was out of pure patriotism and love of country along with disgust for the President’s conduct; he had flown to West Germany and paid the destitute Miss Rometsch to reveal all after she and her husband were kicked out of the country at the behest of the President’s brother. He also gave us the alias she had used when signing in on the White House visitor’s log for her trysts with the President.

  That alias, when revealed to the public, would be as good as a confession we were told.

  We thanked the third prospect and had Miss Brennan escort him back to his suite, same as the others. Then my fellow investors and I got down to the business of deciding to whom we would make an offer and how much green with which we were willing to part.

  “Load for bear,” said Hoffa, “make all three an offer they can’t afford to walk away from. This is a goddamn war, and we need every damn weapon we can get our hands on.”

  “I see it the same way,” said Hunt, “those sons of bitch Kennedy’s play rough and to beat them we’ll need a mighty big dose of their own kind of medicine.”

  It turned out to be unanimous; we would make a good offer to all three prospects; the lawyer hired to make things appear nice and legal was instructed to get three drilling contracts ready to be signed. There wouldn’t be much haggling for sure, and th
e suitcases containing the cash would be handed over to the prospects - no doubt the highest payments ever made for “drilling rights.” Once all the business at the Adolphus was concluded, phone calls would be made to the proper members of the press - this was where the lawyer hired for the occasion would be most useful - and all of the “smoking guns” would be in the hands of reporters within hours. I estimated that before the day reached the noon hour, John F. Kennedy’s presidency would effectively be history.

  I opened a fine bottle of bourbon to celebrate and glanced at my watch, which said 9:05 p.m., the exact minute when the election of Barry Goldwater was assured.

  I took a sip and distinctly remember how sweet it tasted. I often think back to that moment and savor it in my memory; the instant, when all good things were not only possible but inevitable.

  I do so because the moment passed in the blink of an eye. There was a knock at the door, and Miss Brennan hurried to answer it; then everything changed.

  John Compton

  September 1964

  It turned out Lyndon Johnson knew exactly what he was talking about when he spoke as though his re-nomination for Vice President on the Kennedy ticket was assured. I thought otherwise that day in August at the White House when the ink of the President’s signature on the Civil Rights Act was barely dry. I was proven quite wrong not three weeks later in Atlantic City when LBJ proclaimed it was time to go All the way with JFK and stood with arms held high on the podium the night Kennedy gave his acceptance speech to the delegates and the country.

  I still didn’t want to take the Vice President’s offer to come work on the fall campaign having had quite enough of Washington DC for awhile. It was Senator Humphrey who convinced me to take Johnson’s offer. “Johnny,” he said, “you only think you’ll be happy back home, but after a week of watching the campaign on the news and reading about in the paper, you’ll jump on a plane, come back and beg Lyndon for a job. The work isn’t finished, in your heart, you know it and won’t be satisfied until it’s done.”

  So I took the position with Johnson’s campaign, and in doing so, ensured that I would have a role in one of the most unsavory chapters in the history of American politics.

  My official title was Assistant Coordinator for Kennedy-Johnson ’64, attached to the Vice President, in reality, my job was to keep track of Democratic fortunes in the Old Confederacy and make sure Lyndon Johnson was where he most needed to be to get him and JFK reelected.

  In the fall of 1964 that seemed like a thankless job, because Dixie, including Texas, had fallen hard for Barry Goldwater. Before Labor Day, the official opening of the campaign, Goldwater-Dirksen yard signs were turning up by the scores in suburban neighborhoods from Houston to Austin to Dallas and even Lubbock. A Goldwater rally in San Antonio on September, 13th drew the largest crowd anyone could ever remember in the Lone Star state for a non-football event. “We need a Federal government,” the Republican candidate thundered to the throng, “that neither steals your hard earned money or your sacred rights, guaranteed by the Constitution.” The good people in the audience roared back their hearty approval. Every loyal Democratic county chairman had a story to tell about life long, Yellow Dog members of the party who were jumping to the GOP that year.

  We were in trouble, and LBJ knew it, which meant there were plenty of flashes of the infamous Johnson temper behind the scenes, more than once I witnessed him tongue lash a loyal aide like Walter Jenkins to within an inch of his life. Yet he always treated me with respect, the worst I endured was a curt word after a long day. And there were a lot of long days as Johnson, grimly determined not to suffer the mortification of losing Texas in November, stumped across the state from Texarkana to El Paso as if he were running for Lieutenant Governor. The crowds which greeted the Vice President often had their enthusiasm well under control and his exhortations on behalf of Kennedy such as “We got a good man in the White House, a good friend to the farmer, the factory worker and the man who works the register at the Piggly Wiggly, and we are going to keep him there come November 3rd,” was no match for Goldwater’s fire and brimstone.

  The lavish praise heaped on Johnson for his help in passing the Civil Rights Act only made his stock plummet in Texas and the rest of Dixie; one well-heeled Austin home builder blanketed the state with billboards denouncing “Judas Johnson.”

  If Texas was bad, the rest of the South was worse, as white Southerners reacted with fury against a President who dared to sign even a watered down bill favoring blacks, as poll after poll put the Republican ahead all across the Deep South and the Carolinas. There was virtually no Kennedy campaign to speak of at all in Mississippi and Wallace in Alabama was ominously silent on the race now that he was not a candidate himself. There was talk Strom Thurmond would break party ranks and endorse Goldwater, the same thing for a least a dozen Democratic members of the House from the South.

  We were under the gun because a Goldwater sweep of the old Confederate states made the race extremely tight for Kennedy-Johnson in the Electoral College. Johnson’s diminished state was noted in Washington D.C. where a Mary McGrory column in The Washington Star on September 17th summed up the thinking among the Kennedy men: “It now appears as if JFK’s masterstroke in 1960 - the choice of LBJ as Vice President - threatens to come a cropper four years later as Johnson can no long guarantee Texas in the Democratic column or any other Southern state for that matter.”

  Then, just before Kennedy was set to return to Dallas for the first time since the assassination attempt, Johnson’s dour mood suddenly brightened, for no apparent reason, for as far as everyone knew, the men running the Kennedy campaign were still perfectly content to let him twist in the dry Texas wind.

  This was the state of things when, late on the evening of a hard day on the stump, the telephone rang in my Austin hotel room. The voice on the other side identified himself as Dave Powers, the assistant to the President, a man with whom I’d never spoken to before. Mr. Powers proceeded to ask me a number of questions about the day I visited Senator Russell’s office and the subsequent events. The upshot of this call was me giving Powers an assurance that I could finger the man who’d given me the manila envelope if the opportunity presented itself. “Good enough, Mr. Compton,” Powers said, “I shouldn’t have to remind you not to discuss this call or anything we have talked about. I’ll be back in touch with you in a few days.” Then he hung up, leaving me more puzzled than ever.

  But when the man who speaks to the President every day asks you to keep your mouth shut, you do as you are told. For the next three days, I went about the business of trying to get the ticket of Kennedy-Johnson re-elected. I even missed being there when Kennedy arrived at Love Field the day before the debate. I was a few miles away in the Dallas Hilton, trying to polish an upcoming speech for the Vice President to make him sound partisan and statesmanlike at the same time. I had just stepped out on the balcony to puff on a Marlboro when I was called to the phone. “Johnny, my boy,” LBJ’s voice boomed through the receiver, “I need you to do a great service for your country, for your party, and for me. I need for you to be outside the service entrance at the Hilton at eight o’clock tonight on the dot. Don’t let me down. Be there.” He did not give me time to respond before he hung up.

  That is how I came to be at the Hotel Adolphus on the evening of September, 30th, 1964.

  I did as I was told and was picked up at the Hilton by secret service agent in a black rental sedan who transported me to the rear of the Hotel Adolphus, where I was ushered inside by way of the loading dock and then up in a freight elevator to a high floor, where I was greeted by a contingent of agents, who tersely informed me to wait there.

  I really did not get nervous standing there in the hallway, surrounded by unsmiling and silent Secret Service agents. Was I under investigation? My mind raced as I recalled the events of the summer afternoon that began with the visit to Senator Russell’s office and ended with me handing the envelope over to Lyndon Johnson in the Vice President
’s office. I desperately tried to remember every action, every word spoken, during the hour and a half that began with me arriving at the Senator’s office and ending with my exit from the Vice President’s.

  Then a man rounded a corner and stuck his hand out. “Good to meet you, John Compton,” he said. “I’m Dave Powers; I believe we had a conversation on the phone a few days ago. Please come with me,” I followed him back around a corner and down a long plush carpeted hallway, passing multiple doors with room numbers affixed to them. “As you might have surmised, Mr. Compton, “Powers said as we walked. “Your presence here relates to our earlier conversation on the phone. I do apologize for the brusqueness with which you were compelled to be here, but I think you’ll understand.”

  At first, I thought the place was empty, but through the dim lighting, I began to make out silhouettes amongst the shadows at the far end of the corridor. As we grew closer, I easily picked out a few more Secret Service agents among them, but there were others there as well, including a young man wearing a suit and tie quite a bit more fashionable than the attire of the government men. One door was cracked open slightly, through it I glimpsed an older man sitting on the end of a bed, smoking a cigar; through the half open door I could feel this man’s gaze lock on me, and I had the distinct impression I was being “sized up.”