On top of that, he was magnanimous enough to let me and my fellow investors walk away with something for our trouble - some would call it a bribe to buy our silence, but threats and intimidation would have accomplished the same thing. It’s what most men in his position would have done; it’s what I would have done.
One thing I knew for sure as soon as I left the Adolphus, I’d been had by Vance Harlow; the only way Kennedy could have known what was happening was if Harlow had told him everything; I later came to understand how I’d been played all along. No one picked up when I called Harlow’s number repeated times
I called the Carousel Club. The owner told me a tale about not being able to get in touch with Harlow either; I knew he was lying.
In the days ahead, I could only speculate as to the vast conspiracy it must have taken to pull off what happened in Dallas on the last day of September. In the years since I have made discreet inquiries, but my hands have been tied; to reveal too much would have resulted in the kind of unwanted attention which would have led to appearances in courtrooms and before Congressional investigations, instances which would have required me to take the 5th.
I had no choice but to fold my cards and leave the table, but like any real Texan, I sat down at another table and dealt myself into a different game.
Dorothy Brennan
Octobers 1964
There are no words to describe the shock I felt when I opened the door to find John F. Kennedy standing there, not to mention the Vice President and a handful of Secret Service agents. I had enough wits about me to know that I was in something way too deep, that I had been manipulated by both Wade Harbinson and Vance Harlow and I now had to do whatever necessary to protect myself. So I got out of there as soon as it was possible, with the knowledge I could never be called to testify about what I didn’t hear and didn’t witness in the first place.
I would have fled the building, but a big Secret Service agent blocked my path and directed me to an empty room and shut the door; I sat on the bed and waited as the sound of scurrying footsteps was heard outside in the hall.
At last, when all the business had been concluded, Kennedy’s two flunkies, Powers and O’Donnell, came and got me.
I was never so apprehensive in my life as when Dave Powers and Kenneth O’Donnell took me in a hotel room and explained to me how I was complicit in more than a half dozen Federal crimes. “Miss Brennan, you have absolutely no idea what a prosecutor could make of your actions tonight,” said Powers.
“Extortion, blackmail,” said O’Donnell, “and considering the President of the United States was involved, treason is not out of the question.”
They went on to explain how just being in the room made me an accomplice, how even though I had done nothing more than pour drinks and serve snacks, I was still guilty in the eyes of the law. “You need to keep that in mind, Miss Brennan,” I forget which one said it. Then when they thought I was sufficiently scared enough (and I was scared) they said things did not have to come that, there was no reason why I should ever fear appearing in a courtroom. All I had to do was remain silent, to never mention being at the Hotel Adolphus, much less mention anything or anybody I’d seen or heard there.
“The President and Mr. Harbinson, have reached an agreement, so have all the other parties,” Powers said. “There is no reason why you shouldn’t walk away with something for your trouble either, Miss Brennan.”
That was it, first intimidate me and then buy me off, this after hearing evidence of the President’s lying, infidelity, and malfeasance in office. I told them they could have my silence if Kennedy and Harbinson had made some self-serving, face-saving agreement, but I would not take their money. I would go along because they’d threatened me, not because they’d bought me. Both men tried their best to talk me into taking a sum of money I could have used a lot. It clearly frustrated them that I wouldn’t take it and they obviously did not trust anyone who couldn’t be bought - shame on them.
Once I was free to leave, I discovered that Mr. Harbinson had already left the hotel and I no longer had a ride. Thanks, I get threatened with treason and then ditched. I went back to the empty suite to call a cab, and that is where the one good thing to come out of all this happened, I was asked out on a date by a guy who said he recognized me from TV and wanted to take me out to dinner; he had a Massachusetts accent thick enough to be cut with a knife which pegged him as one of Kennedy’s minion. He was also nearly half a foot shorter - I never dated guys shorter than myself. I told him to call me after the election when he would have a lot of free time since his candidate was going to lose November. He took me up on it; I thought it would be the last I’d ever hear from him.
And that is what happened to me at the Hotel Adolphus on the night of September 30th of 1964.
I encountered Wade Harbinson the next morning at the Sheraton; I was groggy after only three hours sleep, but I remember every word he said after ushering me into an empty conference room. “Neither you nor I were ever at the Hotel Adolphus,” he told me. “None of it happened, and if you ever say it did, you will be all alone, your name ruined and your life will never be the same in the worst possible way. Do I make myself clear, Miss Brennan?”
Not even an apology for leaving me behind.
I pulled myself together and did my job; the second Kennedy-Goldwater debate was to be held at the Dallas Trade Mart that night, and my hands would be full briefing the press. The Senator himself arrived in Dallas in fine spirits; both Clif White and Dick Kliendendst, who had been heavily involved with his debate prep in Arizona, were confident the Senator would not only hold his own against Kennedy, but really go on the offensive against the President’s coddling of Communists.
The rally held in downtown Dallas on the afternoon before the debate was the biggest one ever for a Republican in Texas. Looking out over the sea of faces, it was hard not to believe we were going to steal Texas right out from under Kennedy and Johnson. When the Senator told them, “This is your country, you built it, you paid for it, you’ve shed blood for it, and no one is going to take it away from you,” the roar in response nearly knocked us off the stage.
I was in the audience at the Trade Mart when the Senator and the President took the stage at 8:00 p.m. sharp for the debate. Looking at John F. Kennedy standing up there behind the podium, I couldn’t help but remember what I’d learned about the man, not 24 hours before - liar and adulterer. It was enough to make me want to get up and shout the name Ellen Rometsch, just to see his reaction. I fantasized about slipping a question to Walter Cronkite, the debate moderator, asking the President if he’d ever been treated by Dr. Mark Jacobsen for gonorrhea. I was glad Mrs. Kennedy wasn’t there, what that poor woman must have had to endure; the official story was said she had a conflicting campaign appearance in Portland, Maine that night. The unofficial story said she refused to set foot back in the city where her husband had nearly gotten his head blown off as he rode beside her down the street.
In the debate, I thought the Senator came out swinging and scored points right away. “Mr. President,” he said in his opening remarks, “you have repeatedly let the Soviets off the hook, you have repeatedly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and the sons and daughters of this generation will pay the hard price in the far future for what you have done.” Throughout the next hour, Senator Goldwater hammered Kennedy for his embrace of Khrushchev and Chou at the summit; for his decision to withdraw from Cuba after Americans boys died to liberate the country; his decision not to unleash American air power against Soviet aggression in Iran; his betrayal of a staunch ally, the Shah; for the continued presence of a Soviet division in Cuba; for not sending more troops to South Vietnam; and for agreeing to meet with Khrushchev after the election for what promised to be “a sequel to Yalta.”
I’ll hand it to Kennedy; the man did not rattle when his failures were thrown in his face; he stood there and defended the un-defendable with vigor. He kept talking about pulling back from the “brink”
and making the “tough decisions.” There was a lot of talk about “having borne the burden and paid the price” to keep America safe and hold the free world together. The man tried to portray himself as someone who had stood on the frontline of the Cold War and kept it from turning into World War III. What absolute crap from a man whom I now knew as a moral degenerate. Kennedy also tried to make something of Senator Goldwater’s often repeated statement that extremism was no vice, claiming such views would inevitably lead to nuclear war. I loved the Senator’s comeback, “The difference between you and me, Mr. President, is that you are afraid to lob one into the Men’s room in Kremlin, while I am not.”
After the debate, as I made my way to the stage to offer congratulations to the Senator for doing a such a good job, I inadvertently found myself only a few feet from the President, and to my chagrin, he clearly recognized me from the previous night and gave me a knowing wink and a smile in return.
Inside the Goldwater campaign, we were ecstatic about the Senator’s performance in the debate, we felt he had given the country a clear alternative to Kennedy, one which most Americans couldn’t help but choose on Election Day. It only made us angry when the rest of the media claimed Kennedy had gone into the debate and succeeded in making his case that Goldwater was a shoot from the hip cowboy.
“What this country needs is a cowboy in charge, no apologies, that is what we’re going to tell the people,” was how Cliff White put it the next day as we flew out of Dallas.
It seemed to be sure winner and the first polls after the debate appeared to back it up: we were within 5 points of the President in the Gallup Poll and neck and neck in the Electoral College with the big states of Ohio, Florida, Illinois, California, and especially Texas, in contention.
It was going to take a lot of hard work, but we were going to pull it off.
Kevin McCluskey
October 1964
At the end of the night, I got another lecture from Dave Powers on the necessity of “ultimate discretion,” he didn’t have to tell me a second time after what and who I’d seen at the Hotel Adolphus that evening. The President of the United States, the present and a former Vice President, a Mafia bigwig and the dictator of the Teamsters, big rich Texas oilmen and a celebrity doctor, all together in one place at one time - that is the truth of it, though no one would believe it. That’s because none of them were about to talk and they made damn sure the rest us kept our mouths shut as well.
Oh, and there was one other person there that night: the most beautiful girl I ever laid eyes on. She was the former beauty queen who did press briefings for Goldwater, who’d been roped into the shenanigans, I later learned, by the campaign’s treasurer. There was a moment when she was alone while using the telephone and I seized the opportunity to ask her for a date. She said she didn‘t date guys shorter than herself. My response was to ask for her number, telling her I’d call after the election and maybe I’d grow in the meantime. “You do that and call me after the 3rd of November; all you Kennedy men will have a lot of free time after he loses.” Those were her exact words to me; I remember them after all this time. She thought she’d never hear from me again, but I’d gotten her number.
There are a few things which stick out from the end of the evening in my memory; one of them being a glimpse of John F. Kennedy relaxing by enjoying a cigar with his two close aides and LBJ after everyone left. They were in the suite where it had all gone down, and when I walked past, the door was open just enough for me to see inside. I was designated other chores, no puffing on a stogie for me, for I was loading money into a truck, and it was not the cash I’d shepherded into the Hotel Adolphus hours earlier. It seemed our side had not been the only ones who’d come there with a few dozen or so pieces of luggage crammed with packs of twenty dollar bills. They were secreted away in a room at the other end of the hall. The men hired to guard the stash having been paid for their trouble and dismissed. It fell to me and one of Johnson’s men to haul the satchels down in the freight elevator and stuffed into the back of one of the limousines. This turn of events was not part of the plan, for only when the job was done did a pair of ex-Texas Rangers show up - both having been called on short notice by the Vice President. They were packing two of the biggest revolvers I’d ever seen, along with the sawed off shotguns they were toting. It fell to them to chauffer the money to a bank in downtown Dallas - whose name I will not disclose even after all this time - where a manager let them into the vault at 12:15 a.m. for an unscheduled deposit.
Though I would have loved to have stayed in Dallas for the big debate with Goldwater, I was on a flight back to DC two hours after sunrise, I slept all the way, I would have slept the day away in my apartment, but as soon as I opened the door, there was a call to come down to Kennedy ’64 HQ on Pennsylvania Avenue. I headed there with the expectation being told of another brushfire somewhere threatening the President’s re-election and needing my immediate attention. What I got was a chair in Lawrence O’Brien’s office where he thanked me profusely for all my hard work in Dallas, how both Kennedy brothers really appreciated what I’d done. Then he said that if at any time in the future, I was asked about my whereabouts for the past 24 hours, I was to say I’d taken some R and R from the hectic pace of the campaign, driven to Ocean City, Maryland, and checked into the Holiday Inn. My name was already on the motel’s register and the room I rented for the night was #27, where I spent a day and a night catching up on some much-needed rest. Mr. O’Brien said there was little chance I would ever need to use such a story, but it paid to have one just in case.
I asked him if there was anything I should be concerned about and was told no, but who knew what might happen down the road.
Down the road indeed, there would more than one occasion in the years ahead when I was glad my name was on an old register at the Ocean City Holiday Inn.
John Compton
October 1964
I have not divulged the name of Bentley Braden’s accomplice; I will not do it here, simply because I was asked not to do so because the man was a friend of the President who found himself in desperate straits and was taken advantage of by Braden, who was nothing more than a conniving blackmailer. My presence there was necessary as I was one of the few, if only, persons who could place the incriminating tape in Braden’s actual hands. It was part of some delusional plot to influence the debate on the Civil Rights Act; only the Senators would not play along.
For most of the rest of the evening, I stayed in an adjacent hotel suite, pretty oblivious to what else was going on around me, that is until I was summoned by the Vice President to the room where he and the President, along with Dave Powers, Kenneth O’Donnell and the Marine in civilian clothes, were enjoying a cigar and one for the road. Indeed their suite looked as if had been the scene of quite the party earlier with a bar crowded with open liquor bottles, empty trays where snacks had been served, not to mention the ashtrays filled to over-flowing with cigarette butts and accompanying smoke still lingering in the air. This was the only time in the night I was in the presence of John F. Kennedy, who did take the time to shake my hand and thank me for all I had done. “Good men like you, sir,” he said, “are hard to find today, and I want you to know it won’t go unappreciated.”
Then the Vice President took me out in the hall and said there was a chore needed doing and since I was there, it fell to me. The next thing I knew, I was in another suite staring at more money than I could ever make in three lifetimes, all in packs of twenty dollar bills. They were stuffed inside carrying satchels; it was the kind of thing which made me think of the term bagman. “This is how you beat Goldwater in Texas,” said Lyndon Johnson, “not by ballots, but by bucks.” He told me who this money came from, and a story I still find hard to believe even though I know it to be true.
My chore, it turned out, was to transport this cash haul down to one of Dallas’s finer banks where it would be locked away in the vault. This I did with the help of the young man I’d seen in the hall e
arlier, he was from Kennedy’s national campaign and would not stop talking about the blonde girl, who worked for Goldwater, and how he’d asked for a date. “I’m going out with a beauty queen,” I remember him saying at one point, “and my brothers are going to crap their pants when they find out.” Good for him, but my older and wiser head was more than a little concerned about the finer points of the law, and just how many of them we might be breaking. Just following orders doesn’t cut it at a disbarment hearing.
I slept little in the next 24 hours; there was a big Kennedy-Johnson rally at a minor league baseball park in the Dallas suburbs at mid-day; twice as many as planned for showed up. When his speech was done, Kennedy waded into the crowd of ordinary Americans, shaking the outstretched hands with a most brilliant smile on his face. I’m sure the Secret Service had heart attacks, but it went a long way toward putting some bad recent history into the past, both for the city and the man.
At the debate that night, Kennedy stood toe to toe with Goldwater’s best bellicose cowboy act and answered him point by point: we intentionally didn’t fire on Soviet troops in Cuba because we were not at war with them; he never ordered the American Commander in West Berlin to surrender if Soviet forces attacked; we did not “finish the job” in North Korea and “bomb day and night” Soviet forces in Iran because those actions would have provoked a wider war. “Our objective was to remove the Castro dictatorship in Cuba,” the President said at one point. “This we accomplished, our other objective was to prevent a catastrophic world war between us and the Soviets from breaking out. This too, we accomplished.”
All the Way with JFK: An Alternate History of 1964 Page 32