Without saying a word to anyone milling around in the corridor, Mr. Powers stopped at a door and knocked; from inside the suite came the sound of voices, they were loud…and angry, but muffled just enough so as to keep me from understanding what was being said. They fell silent, and the door opened just wide enough for someone to step out into the hall. He was a younger man, and though he was wearing a business suit similar to the Secret Service, from his bearing, I pegged him for being military and not just any branch of the service, but Marine. This hunch proved to be correct when Powers addressed him as Colonel and said, “This is the guy who can clinch the case.”
The Colonel nodded and crossed the corridor to another suite, opening the door and beckoning me to follow. “John Compton,” the Colonel said, “do you recognize either of these gentlemen.” I stood in the doorway looking at two men sitting on the edge of a bed, both looked as if they were about to be marched in front of a firing squad. The oldest of the pair I did not know, he had the features of a man who’d drunk too much Ancient Age, smoked too many unfiltered cigarettes and was starting to pay the price. I did recognize the other; he was wearing the same fine linen summer suit and still sporting a black bow tie. It was the man who had given me the manila envelope with the bulge in the bar on that day back in July. That is what I told the Colonel and Dave Powers, who were both standing in the room.
“Johnny my boy,” said Lyndon Johnson, who stepped out of the bathroom as soon as I made my identification, “I’m so sorry you had to get caught up in this shit, but it just couldn’t be helped.”
Kevin McCluskey
September 1964
The Los Angeles riots were a potential disaster for us; it is never good for any incumbent President when a major American city is turned into a war zone. By flying there at the height of the trouble, Kennedy earned some good press and more than a little credit for helping calm a deteriorating situation. The problem came with the footage of looting and burning by mobs of black Americans coming not a month after the President signed the Civil Rights Act; millions of nervous white suburban voters had no trouble making the connection; within days, Goldwater’s speeches began sounding a most unsubtle theme: the Negroes are out of control, and it’s all Kennedy’s fault. “Over and over,” the Arizona Senator proclaimed at the first debate in San Francisco, “this administration has given aid and comfort to those who excuse the robber, the looter, the mugger; over and over this administration has extended an open hand to those who have no respect for law and order, those who sow dissension and rancor, those who have no respect for property. And what do we have to show for it, an American city in flames.”
I thought the President gave it back twice over when Goldwater basically said he’d bayonet demonstrators who engaged in sit-ins because they were a threat to public order. “The right to redress grievances is guaranteed by the Constitution to every citizen, no matter the color of their skin. More to point, it has fallen to this generation to take up the great unfinished business of American history, business that has been left unfinished since Appomattox; business that refuses to go unfinished any longer. The unfinished business of equality between the races will not go away; it will not be intimidated and silenced by the threat of a bayonet, a police dog or a fire hose. I have met this problem head on and dealt with it as the moral crisis it is: Senator Goldwater believes he can brutalize the righteous cause of aggrieved Negro Americans into submission. He is wrong.”
The effect of the first debate was to harden the poll numbers in place with the President ahead by no more than 5 points at best; Kennedy had come off good enough to fire up Democrats, but Goldwater, whom I thought had come off as angry and hard-hearted, had told his fervid supporters exactly what they wanted to hear and they loved him for it. More to the point, the Senator’s tactic of lumping Civil Rights protestors in with street criminals and looters scored points with a lot of blue collar Democrats in the North - again, I remembered the Wallace rally in Wisconsin during that long ago primary in the early spring.
The plan had been for the President to put Goldwater away in the first debate and pull into an insurmountable lead and ride it all the way to November. When things did not work out that way, Bobby Kennedy was furious; according to some accounts which trickled down to us on the lower rungs, there were some intense meetings behind closed doors at the headquarters down on Pennsylvania Avenue. If anyone thought the gloves were coming off, there was one problem, John and Bobby Kennedy never put on gloves in the first place. We just kept on doing what we’d been doing, only more so.
By more so, it meant sharpening up the adds we ran against Goldwater, a week after the first debate, the “Daisy” spot began running on TV - the one that starts with the little girl plucking the petals off a flower and ends with a countdown, a nuclear explosion and an excerpt from President Kennedy‘s speech at Andrews Air Force Base right after he got back from the New Delhi summit where he said, “If we do not see our opponents as human beings, then all of humanity is doomed.” It was tough stuff, the Goldwater campaign cried foul, claiming the spot implied their candidate was a war monger; our response was basically “so what.” The ad was damned effective, especially with the independents we were trying to reach, but in the years since, I’ve had many a staunch Democrat tell me they thought the spot was a low blow.
The plan was to put Goldwater on the defensive, paint him as a cowboy who’d reach for the nuclear button like it was a six-gun; Kennedy would run as the rational President who’d stood up to the Communists in Cuba, Vietnam and Korea, but who was not afraid to extend his hand to Khrushchev in the hour of maximum danger and avert World War III. It was a point the President made at every campaign appearance from coast to coast. Goldwater and his surrogates fired back: by attacking the planned withdraw from Cuba as a sellout; by questioning why there was still a large Soviet contingent on the island, functioning freely in the city of Camaguey and giving sanctuary to many of worst characters in Castro’s regime; why was Castro still living like a king in a cell in Guantanamo Bay when he should have been marched before a Cuban firing squad months ago; how the Soviets had walked over two-thirds of Iran without a single American bomber being sent in to impede them; why was our staunch ally, the Shah, still in exile in Paris and not back on the Peacock throne; why had North Korea been allowed off the hook for the second time in a little more than a generation; why was South Vietnam being sold down the river after it was the victim of naked Communist aggression. After all these crimes and incompetence, how could the country trust Kennedy, the man who let an opportunity to win a decisive victory in the Cold War slip away because liberals are simply not tough enough to win.
After the first debate, the President hit the campaign trail hard, filling up stadiums and walking in parades in every city with a population over a hundred thousand from New England to the Great Plains, the part of the country where the most wavering independents could be found if the polls were to be believed. Because he had sat out the primary season and not made a partisan appearance until just before the convention at the end of August, Kennedy’s campaigning skills should have been rusty, but if that was true, the man got back up to speed in no time. Day after day, the John F. Kennedy of 1964 strode to the podium before massive crowds of cheering Americans and had them hanging on his every word as he spoke of a United States secure and at peace, with prosperity shared by all; and by all, he made a point of stressing, that meant the black man too. “Do not listen to the naysayer, the fearful, the angry and the bitter,” he told an audience in Akron, Ohio on the 20th of September, “America is not a nation in decline. Through this generation’s hard work and sacrifice, there is a great future ahead of us…if we have the courage and grit to grasp it.” I thought it was one of his best lines; a lot of credit is given to Ted Sorenson and his team of speechwriters, but it was the President who delivered them to such great effect.
If the President projected confidence before the American people, it was another story behind the scenes
as Larry O’Brien and Bobby Kennedy pushed everyone like we were down by 10 points. No one was cut any slack, and as a designated troubleshooter, my reports to headquarters cost a lot of party hacks their cushy positions in a dozen states by mid-September - no one was allowed to just take up space and ride coat tails.
I heard an earful out on the road as well.
Most memorable was my trip to Austin, Texas, where I did not have the pleasure of meeting the Vice President, but I got more than an earful from the state senator who was the assistant to the Chairman of Re-Elect Kennedy-Johnson in the Lone Star state. “You Goddamn Yankees,” he drawled to me in a conference room in the state capitol building, “always screwing it up. Kennedy could have at least waited until the second term to sign a Goddamn Civil Rights Act. And JFK wouldn’t be in the White House in the first place if it wasn’t for Lyndon and the votes he went out and got for Kennedy in Dixie four years ago. Now you’re expecting him to do it again and it’s damn near impossible because most Texans think Kennedy is siding with the niggers and Goldwater is the only one sticking up for white people.”
In short, they were not happy with us in Texas as the date for the second debate between Kennedy and Goldwater, set for Dallas on the first day of October; as it turned out, that would not be my concern, for I was given specific other duties on the next to last day of September.
These are events I have never spoken of. Since for years I was told that if I did so, I would be investigated, hauled before a grand jury, forced to hire a lawyer and very likely be indicted for bribery and extortion. Over the years I have been asked many times about Dallas by investigative journalists, historians and crackpots of all kinds on what transpired the day before the second Kenney-Goldwater debate, and I always remained silent. I didn’t care so much about myself, but there were family considerations.
While on the trip to Austin, I received a call from the national headquarters, ordering me to drop everything, book a flight, and be back in DC before first light the next day. It was eleven hours later, at a little past 3:30 a.m., when I walked into Steve Smith’s office and was greeted by him and Dave Powers, who complimented me on the good job I was doing for the campaign, especially the discreet manner in which I had handled a number of sensitive chores on behalf of re-electing the President. “Kevin,” Mr. Powers said, “the Attorney General has been most impressed by work you’ve been doing for us; especially with the degree of discretion you’ve brought to the job. He has a special chore for you, something which has to be done ahead of the debate on Tuesday, and one that’s a hell of lot more important than anything you’ve done so far for the President. It’s going to mean turning around and going right back to Texas on no sleep. Think you can do it?”
I did not hesitate to answer in the affirmative, and yes, I knew damn well that “discretion” and “special” where synonymous with unethical.
I listened carefully and intently, as the instructions were given to me verbally, nothing was put on paper. I asked a few pertinent questions and then did exactly as I was told; twenty-four hours later I was sitting inside a DC-3 on the tarmac at Love Field in Dallas Texas. Also inside the plane were a half dozen trunks - the kind travelers used when they booked passage on an ocean liner - and two men hired to guard them-my job was not to let those trunks out of my sight from the time we took off at National Airport until they reached their destination in Dallas by way of a stopover in Baton Rouge.
At the airport, I made some phone calls; then we sat in the DC-3 and waited a few hours until the sun had set. During the wait, I ordered take out and talked baseball and hockey with the two hired guards; all the while making sure the trunks never left my gaze.
We loaded the trunks into another rental just after sundown and drove them to the appointed destination - one I had been given by Mr. Powers back in DC. It was the service entrance of the Adolphus Hotel; by the looks of the place when we arrived, we were not the only ones expected. There were a number of cars parked in the back alley and out on the street, I could hardly maneuver the rental truck up to the loading dock. Mr. Powers was there to meet us and I distinctly remember how he complimented me for being punctual - it was just after 9:00 p.m., the exact time we were to arrive. We unloaded the trunks and stacked them aboard a flat-bed cart, the kind used at the hotel to haul luggage. That’s the last I saw of the hired guards. They drove off in the rental, and I never saw either of them again. Accompanying Mr. Powers were a pair of Secret Service agents, who took over the duties of the hired guns, duties which did not include any type of manual labor, for I had to push the flat bed cart into the freight elevator that took us to an upper floor.
Once there, Mr. Powers directed me to push the cart down a long hall to a suite whose number I don’t remember now. What I do remember is the loud voice coming from behind one door as we passed, I could not make out the words, but more than one somebody sounded like they were not happy.
As soon as we were inside the room, Mr. Powers produced a set of keys and proceeded to unlock the trunks and open them. Their contents did not surprise me, for I had figured it out back in DC: rows upon rows of neatly stacked twenty dollar bills. How much it added up to, I would not venture a guess, but well into the six figures by the look of it. One thing was plain - it was obvious a lot of people besides me had carried brief-cases filled with money back to Kennedy ’64 headquarters.
“Kevin, I’m going to need you to sit tight,” Mr. Powers informed as he shut and locked the trunks, “and be ready to be of use the minute you’re needed. I don’t have to tell you because you’ve proved yourself over and over to the campaign and the President, but the reason why you’re here and what we’re doing here requires ultimate discretion.” I answered in the affirmative, ever mindful of what “discretion” truly meant.
That is what I thought in the moment I answered Mr. Powers, but I had no idea how much “ultimate discretion” this night would ultimately require from me. I was to learn and learn fast, starting minutes later when I followed Mr. Powers back into the hallway: an older man in a dark pinstripe was entering the room directly across from us; for an instant, the door was open, and I caught a glimpse of another man on the inside.
The other man was Richard M. Nixon.
Colonel Martin Maddox
September 1964
If someone in the waning days of the summer of ‘64 had have told me that my next field of battle would be a Dallas hotel room, and that it would be as fierce and decisive as any frozen ground I’d trod in Korea, I’d have said they were full of shit.
A week before the second Kennedy-Goldwater debate, I was informed by way of a phone call from the President himself that I would be accompanying him to Dallas. I asked the President why it was necessary for me to leave my post in DC for a purely political event. His reply was a familiar one, “Colonel, I need a man with your experience with me.”
As far as the press was concerned, I would be there in the Presidential party in an advisory capacity, and except for those few words from the President, I heard nothing more from the White House except for the departure time and when I needed to be at Andrews in order to be on Air Force One when it left for Big D on the morning of September 30th. I spent most of the trip sitting in the back of the plane while the President was huddled with closest aides and some of his most important advisors like Theodore Sorenson and Arthur Schlesinger, all of whom, I assumed, were prepping him for his second debate with Senator Goldwater. I was following the campaign with great interest and was well aware of how the first debate had been something of a success for the Republican candidate simply because of the perception that he’d held his own against charismatic Kennedy. So a lot was riding on this second encounter between Kennedy and Goldwater, and the President needed to do whatever he had to do to get back to his “fighting weight“so to speak.
We were 30 minutes from touching down in Dallas, and I was napping when an aide woke me up and relayed an order from the President that I come to his cabin immediately. I did
as requested and found a tired looking John F. Kennedy, with his shirt sleeves rolled up and without a tie, doing his best to relax. Also in the cabin were David Powers and Kenneth O’Donnell, the two closest to the President after his brother.
President Kennedy beckoned me to take a seat. “Colonel,” he said, “a short time back, I asked if you could remain silent while you heard events in which you took part described differently than you knew them to be. The events I am referring to is your trip last spring to New Orleans, and I’m asking you here and now what I asked you before: can you remain silent?”
Nothing had changed since our first discussion as far as I knew, so my answer was, “Yes sir.”
“Do not take this lightly, Colonel,” the President continued, “because your silence may open you to accusations that you are complicit in a lie and your honor will be impugned. Think you can deal with that?”
There are those who think I should have told the President that a United States Marine never simply stands there and let’s mud or worse be thrown on his character. All I can say is that they were not on Air Force One minutes from Dallas with John F. Kennedy looking you in the eye; there was no way I was not going to give the President the answer he wanted to hear.
“Yes, sir,” I said for the second time, “I can deal with it.” Although I’ve questioned the wisdom of my answer over the years, I’ve never regretted it.
Describing the crowd at Love Field as enthusiastic hardly does them justice on the day John F. Kennedy returned to Dallas; they went wild when the President walked off the plane and across the tarmac. The people in Dallas knew they had been given a second chance and they turned out determined not to let so much as a discouraging word ruin the moment. What President Kennedy was thinking as he came down the steps and approached the roaring crowd, kept at a safe distance by a chain link fence, I would not venture a guess, but there was no way he could not remember how close he came to having it all end in a split second on a street only minutes away.
All the Way with JFK: An Alternate History of 1964 Page 29