Yet he never completely gave up on his original cause, the one which most clearly engaged him. In a New York speech before a room filled with supporters that was taped and aired on the networks days later, he hit on all his hawkish themes, but he ended with these remarks, “Yet we in America do not seek a state of perpetual conflict, with its endless stockpiling of weapons, both conventional and nuclear, until both us and the Soviets are crushed under the weight of our own enormous arsenals. We do not seek to live in a world of never ending fear and suspicion, where enemies eternally connive against one another. We are not satisfied to forever live on a planet with half the world walled off from the other half. What I will never stop working for is a world free from strife, fear and despotism. What I hope to one day see is a world at peace, not just for my own children, but all the children of this earth.” I do remember those words very well.
The other thing Kennedy never failed to mention was the cause of equal rights, even when it might have cost him votes in some quarters, and I don’t mean just the South. Maybe it was the stinging criticism he’d received from the far left of the party for compromising on the Civil Rights Act, but in nearly every speech there were at least a few lines about “making America a better nation by making it a more equal nation for all of its citizens.” When he went up to Michigan or in the steel towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio and stood before blue-collar audiences filled with men and women who feared integration would mean blacks competing for their jobs or moving into their neighborhoods, Kennedy looked them in the eyes and said that “making sure the doors of opportunity would be open wide to both black and white” would be his top domestic priority in a second term. These were not exactly welcome words with some local Democrats. I was asked by more than one Mayor or Congressional candidate during the campaign’s final swing through the industrial Midwest if I would pass on to the President that it would be most appreciated if he would not say anything overtly about civil rights during meetings ahead of a Presidential visit.
The only time I felt anything like outright fear while doing this job was when I learned the President would be making a foray into the Deep South, specifically having Montgomery, Alabama and Jackson, Mississippi added to the itinerary after a visit to Florida. What I remember most vividly was the Whites Only signs on the public restrooms in the state capitol buildings in both towns, seemingly shining with defiance. Then there were the Colored signs over the water fountains. They were freshly painted as if to remind everyone that the men running these states planned on keeping segregation around for a long time. How could the President who had just signed the Civil Rights Act be welcome in such a town, much less his advance man? Luckily for me, the campaign had sent in a big gun ahead of my arrival, Lawrence O’Brien himself had paid quiet visits to both Montgomery and Jackson and worked out a plan which somehow satisfied both the President and the segregationist local politicians.
The press called Kennedy’s venture into enemy country a token gesture. In truth, it was an attempt to blunt Goldwater’s surge in the region, to depress his vote totals by even a few points with very conservative white voters, which could pay-off in Texas and Florida. Moreover, it was an attempt by the President to make sure all of his bridges to the Southern Democrats hadn’t been burned yet; there would be many political battles in the second term where he would need all the good will he could get.
Larry O’Brien made it clear the President would be speaking to an integrated rally in Montgomery, and all the state’s Democratic elected officials made it plain they would not attend; in the end, it was arranged for Kennedy to speak at a ballpark once used by a Negro League team. I arrived in Montgomery late in the day before Air Force One was to touch down, filled with dread at having to deal with one of the most notorious Southern demagogues in recent American history. To my surprise, everything was moving smoothly, and everyone was cooperating, although publicly, Governor Wallace was making it appear as if he was having nothing to do with the “mixed race” rally for the President. Behind the scenes, he instructed the State Police to give the Secret Service everything it asked for and to make sure some of the city’s more vocal and active racist elements were elsewhere during the President’s visit. “Son, we’re not going to have a repeat of Dallas here,” the Governor told me in his office in the Capitol building. “No, sir, John F. Kennedy is going to get a welcome worthy of the good people of Alabama.” He fixed with a most steely gaze as he spoke these words, and I wondered if they were really a threat. The unsmiling Superintendent of the Alabama State Police standing beside him made me think as much.
In the end, the President spoke before a “mixed race” crowd that had far more white faces in it than would have been expected; they were also quite respectful. A prayer was said by a local black minister, but he was followed by John Patterson, a former Governor who was reputed to be more pro-segregation than Wallace, but Patterson had also served in the Pacific and was a friend of Kennedy’s, proudly introduced “a fellow veteran and our nation’s President.” The national press openly speculated if Kennedy would deliver a pointedly pro-civil rights speech in the Cradle of the Confederacy. What he did say on that unusually warm day - he’d taken off his dark jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt - was an attempt to find some common ground on which both races could stand on in this deeply divided part of America. “The chains of a long dead past,” Kennedy said to the upturned faces, “must no longer bind us. We are all Americans, whether we are Black or White, North or South, and we all want the same things for our children: For them to live in peace, to enjoy the fruits of their labors, to have a glorious future in this great nation.”
After the rally, there was a “private” reception at the Governor’s mansion with Wallace and a gaggle of Alabama politicians. Along the streets of Montgomery, the reception was decidedly “mixed” in every way; here there could be found white men and women waving Stars and Bars with signs calling the President a Yankee Communist and suggesting he go back to Massachusetts or somewhere with a much warmer climate. On the other side, I remember seeing a middle-aged black woman in her Sunday best, standing on a corner enthusiastically waving Old Glory as the President’s limo passed. A block away there stood a group of white men, some in cotton shirts and sporting terminal flat top haircuts while others wore bib overalls, their faces as stony as the figure atop a nearby Confederate monument.
I was not on the inside when Kennedy met with Wallace, but from all accounts, then and later, the Governor put on his best Southern hospitality for the President. The two men spent most of the time talking about their mutual service in World War II and deliberately avoiding their differences. The President made a point of saying “he knew he could count on all their support on November 3rd” when he spoke to a room filled with some of the most diehard segregationist politicians in the country; reportedly everyone, including the President, smiled broadly when he spoke.
When the President’s party arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, it was greeted effusively by none other than Senator James Eastland, the man who had fought the Civil Rights Act tooth and nail in his Judiciary Committee and then all the way to the bitter end on the Senate floor. Yet there he was, acting as if he and John F. Kennedy had never had a difference between them, just two men who’d served in the Senate together. There would be much criticism and suspicion from the Civil Rights community over Kennedy’s campaign swing through Deep South; not without justification, they were fearful another compromise might have been struck behind closed doors just like the one which had gotten the Civil Rights Act through Congress, but had nevertheless, preserved Jim Crow.
One reason Wallace and the others put their best foot forward for the President was all the federal dollars flowing into their states through defense appropriations, which a lot of Alabama paychecks depended upon. I couldn’t help but remember the Wallace speaking at the VFW Hall in Wisconsin and the man who greeted the President at the Governor’s Mansion and not be struck by his hypocrisy.
I caught a lucky break when I was not needed for the President’s controversial visit to Havana that was run completely by the Southern Command and was grateful for it. While the President was in Cuba on the last weekend of the campaign, I received a message in Philadelphia, where I was looking over the plans for a Sunday rally, and ordered back to DC immediately. Two hours later, I walked into Steve Smith’s office, where I was met by Kenny O’Donnell, who informed me that the Washington Star was working on a story about attempted blackmail and a cover-up concerning the President and a visit to the Hotel Adolphus the night before the Dallas debate.
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out, my mouth felt as though it was filled with cotton and my knees went weak.
Colonel Martin Maddox
October-November 1964
The ripple effect from the Moscow coup continued to spread in the final days of the Presidential campaign, as with each succeeding day, it became ever more apparent that we were no longer dealing with a Kremlin interested in negotiation with the West. Reports flooded in from every embassy behind the Iron Curtain detailing mass arrests occurring there, especially among those East German and Czech military units which had balked at the rumor they might be deployed to Iran a few months earlier. Everything pointed to a mass purge which was only just beginning. The Kremlin sent the world a clear message when they rehabilitated such old Stalin-era figures as V. M. Molotov and Marshall Zhukov, rivals who had been ousted by Khrushchev nearly ten years before, who were now given seats at the table.
The new regime made itself clear on October 25th when Ambassador Dobrynin went to the State Department and handed Secretary Rusk a note informing the President that the Soviet Union was no longer interested in attending the summit in Stockholm unless the United States immediately agreed to pull all of its troops out of Cuba and restore the “legitimate government of the people,” end all military operations in South Vietnam, pay respirations to the “victims of aggression of in the People’s Republic of Korea,” and agree that Iran belonged within the Soviet sphere of influence. Each and every one of those preconditions was a non-starter - to say the least. It was noticed with some amusement that the note was signed by Andrei Gromyko, who evidently had survived yet another change in the wind inside the Kremlin.
President Kennedy took this reversal of fortune in stride. “We tried to meet Khrushchev half way; it was worth the effort, and it still is, despite what’s happened. Sooner or later, these new men in the Kremlin will get to the same place old Nikita was and realize there is no future in an unending stalemate. We just have to hold the line until they get there or more enlightened leaders take their place.” One thing the President was emphatic about, Barry Goldwater was not the man to deal with this new situation.
Our immediate concern was the Soviet military and whether it would be used to provoke a new confrontation with the United States, either by going back into Iran or by pouring gas on a brush fire somewhere in the third world. On the 26th of the month, a formal request for at least one regular army division and two more Marine battalions from General Westmorland arrived on McNamara’s desk, this based on an assessment of the situation on the ground in South Vietnam, and was prompted by a CIA report on an abrupt increase in Soviet military aid to the North following a secret visit by an unnamed “top Soviet official” only days after Khrushchev’s removal. It appeared the Kremlin had shown its hand.
The decision to throttle up in South Vietnam was made by the President as he flew back from a campaign stop in Jackson, Mississippi. The NSC had been meeting in the White House for hours going over options and not arriving at any which didn’t risk the imminent collapse of the South unless we acted decisively. I was on Air Force One when the President made the call, and despite what some have claimed long after the fact, the fear of being called soft on Communism by Senator Goldwater was never mentioned.
The iron hand of the new bosses in the Kremlin did solve one lingering problem. About ten days after the changing of the guard on Moscow, General Andreyev quietly let it be known that he was willing to discuss the subject of defection with General Abrams himself - one soldier to another. The negotiations took less than a day before an agreement was ready for the President to sign off on; all Russian nationals would be given the chance to stay in Cuba or travel to any country of their choice. An Indian trawler and a Hungarian transport would be made ready in the port of Santiago for any Soviet who wished to return to the Motherland by way of the Gdansk in Poland. The sticking point was the large number of former officials of the Castro regime who had found sanctuary inside Camaguey. Most would be allowed to leave, the exceptions being a list of names prepared by the Administration who would be turned over to the occupation forces. There would be a lot of criticism that the President bargained away a number of outright criminals, who had committed atrocities in Cuba, but it was a quick and final resolution to a thorny problem; the President took no more than fifteen minutes before he gave Abrams the okay. Within 24 hours, Andreyev and most of his officers laid down their arms; Andreyev chose to stay on the island of Cuba, while the American government began the difficult business of getting his family out of the Soviet Union - another condition of his defection. Sadly, most of the Red Army soldiers who returned home from Cuba spent many years in Siberian work camps.
With the Stockholm summit off, there was no longer any need to be bound by certain agreements made in New Delhi; the President quietly reversed his decision to withdraw all American troops from Cuba, we were there to stay for the foreseeable future.
The reason I was on Air Force One when the President made the call on Vietnam was because my presence had been requested at the President’s side during the remainder of the campaign, my chief duty was to brief the President three times daily on the ongoing crisis’s in Vietnam, Iran, Cuba, the Soviet Union and anywhere else trouble reared its head. John F. Kennedy did not want to be blindsided by any last minute blow-ups like the coup in Moscow, which had very nearly derailed his campaign.
During those last days before the election, the public saw a confident man on the stump, firm in his vision for a second term and eloquent in his reasoning as to why he deserved one, what the voters did not see were the hurried meetings on Air Force One, calls to Secretaries Rusk and McNamara and CIA chief McCone, and the President, his face often in a frown from back pain, although more likely from the intelligence reports I’d brought him.
While much of the press was fixated on the rest of the world, a lot was happening in Iran. The picture painted by both CIA and British MI5 operatives for us was grim; it seemed the Soviet invasion had stripped away hundreds of years of civilization, and now with this Khomeini in charge, the whole country had reverted to the Middle Ages. The reports that got out detailed mass executions of those suspected of collaborating with the Soviets, of serving in the Shah’s government, or working too closely with the Americans. This last group included Iranians employed by U.S. corporations, especially the oil companies. Far worse were those who ran afoul of Islamic law, which had been made the rule of the land by the Ayatollah; I remember a gruesome picture of a man beheaded in the middle of a street in Teheran for the crime of “usury.” Things went from bad to worse when one of the CIA teams went missing; we later learned they were being tortured inside one of the Shah’s former prisons. Outwardly, the Administration’s position was that the Shah would return to Iran when events in the country “stabilized.” In private, the President made no secret of his disdain for the Shah, “a man who ran away at the first sound of gunfire.” In public, the President repeatedly said that he was not worried about Khomeini, who we “would work with to resolve the situation in Iran.” Through third parties, an attempt was made to open a back channel to Khomeini himself, this did result in a note from the Ayatollah himself; it was not encouraging as it opened with a demand for an apology from the President for American involvement in the 1953 restoration of the Shah after a coup had ousted him, along with an insistence that all tho
se in the CIA who had been involved in this action be punished. “This Khomeini is just Goddamn nuts,” was President Kennedy’s response.
The one event which sticks in my mind the most during the last week of the campaign was the President’s visit to Havana, even if it was for only a few hours. The visit took place on October 30th, and the original plan had been for the President to ride through the streets of the Cuban capital while receiving the cheers and accolades of a grateful and liberated people. Southern Command nixed the idea as soon as it was proposed; Bobby Kennedy tried repeatedly to overrule them as he wanted the visual of his brother being enthusiastically received in Havana to dominate the network news during the last weekend before Election Day. The truth of the matter was that there were no grateful crowds willing to surge in the streets to greet an American President, instead there were armed groups of Cuban vigilantes, determined to exact revenge on their former oppressors, and the organized resistance, made up of Castroites who had vowed to fight back against the Yankee Imperialists to the bitter end. In the end, the President stepped in and said he would do whatever the Secret Service and General Abrams requested. There was a ceremony at the airport and then a fast dash through the streets to the Presidential palace so that the next day, every daily paper in the country had a photo of a smiling John F. Kennedy standing behind the desk in Fidel Castro’s office. All in all, the President was on the island barely three hours.
It was a short visit by any measure, but the President took in a lot while he was on the ground: the lack of even the semblance of a provisional government to greet him; the armed American GI’s who lined the streets on the way to the Presidential Palace; the plumes of smoke rising over the city against a gorgeous blue sky, even though hostilities supposedly ceased months before; the crack of gunfire echoing in the far distance at the airport; the boarded up buildings everywhere; the desperate condition of the few Cubans the President glimpsed. Instead of being elated on the flight back to Washington, President Kennedy was pensive after a trip which was designed to highlight a political and military triumph. “The job isn’t done,” he said to a group of us while in the air. “I was a fool to have agreed to pull the troops out next year; there’s no way this island could be ready to govern itself in that time. I wanted the summit in Stockholm so much that I made a bad deal with Khrushchev on Cuba to get it, but we’re not bound by it anymore, and we’re going to do right by all those people who have lost so much.” They were noble sentiments; making them a reality would prove to be most difficult.
All the Way with JFK: An Alternate History of 1964 Page 36