The next time I spoke to President Kennedy was in December of 1965. It was during his ten hour visit to South Vietnam; he was on a tour of the Pacific and while in flight between Japan and Australia, made a detour. I came in from directing operations in the Mekong Delta after my presence was directly requested by the President. I ended up cooling my heels in the dim light of an air conditioned Quonset hut for a couple of hours while the President reviewed a line of awestruck troops and got a bunch of optimistic reports from Westmorland and his boys.
I jumped to my feet after being caught cat napping when the door flung open, and the President was escorted in by his Secret Service detail. He returned my salute and insisted we take a seat in a couple of fold up chairs usually reserved for company clerks. After about fifteen minutes of catching up, the President came to the point. “General Westmorland has just spent five hours explaining in great detail how this war is as good as won. How the Viet Cong and Ho Chi Minh are ready to throw in the towel if we just deploy another infantry division and expand our list of bombing targets into Laos. Colonel, I want your honest opinion, is that a prescription for victory?”
I did not hesitate in giving my honest answer. “No, sir,” I replied. “You will need to send four more infantry divisions and expand your targets not only to Laos but Cambodia as well. I would also recommend sinking Soviet trawlers in the Gulf of Tonkien before they can off-load the estimated 2,000 tons of armaments and personal they are slipping into North Vietnam per month. You do that, and you will achieve victory - in five years.”
The President nodded and thanked me for being honest; we shook hands and he got back on Air Force One and flew out of South Vietnam - the press was not allowed to report he was there until he left lest the Communists try to shoot the plane down. In his memoirs, John Kennedy stated that he came back from his visit to South Vietnam utterly convinced that an outright military victory would take too long and cost too many lives. He began making discreet inquiries through the Red Chinese embassy in Paris, recruited Henry Kissinger from Harvard to be a secret negotiator and opened one of his back channels to the North Vietnamese. It would be more than two years of on again and off again negotiations before a settlement was reached and the legacy of that agreement is a debacle - there is no South Vietnam today-but it got us out of that quagmire with our dignity intact.
I was in Iraq in the spring of ’68, as part of Operation Jaguar - the covert war against Khomeini’s Iran. At the time I was one of 5,000 active duty military personal and more 200 intelligence operatives deployed in the Persian Gulf to keep the Ayatollah boxed in; ran into Al Haig there, it was a smaller world than I imagined. He was the one who passed on the bad news to me about Bobby and Dr. King just after I got back from a night time reconnaissance mission into Iranian territory; had to excuse myself and walk out into the desert for awhile and as I watched the sunrise, my thoughts were elsewhere. I did wonder where Vance Harlow was right then; the man had become a ghost.
But there was little time to sort out the past; I had a busy few years ahead of me.
I was brought back to Washington briefly to work on Lyndon Johnson’s NSC: I was there with LBJ when he met with Chairman Mao on a French warship anchored at Hong Kong in February of 1970. I am visible in the iconic photo of the two of them shaking hands on the deck, the tall Texan President towering over the short Chinese dictator. I helped wrap up the occupation of Cuba and was there as the last American troops pulled out and a popularly elected government took over - a goal we reached before the end of Johnson’s first year in office. Do I feel bitter that the Cuban people freed Fidel Castro from prison as soon as they could? Not really, it was just their way of poking us Yankees in the eye after the occupation; in the end, Fidel got to go live in exile under Communist rule in the Russia rather than ramming it down the throats of his countrymen. I was tapped to go to Saigon and plan the evacuation when the South went down the tubes. There have been some tough times in my life, but February 1972 was one of the worst as I had to make lists of those who were to be given preference for admittance to the United States while telling others they had to get in line with everyone else for a visa. I was not on the last helicopter out, but close to it.
During the September War in 1973, I helped oversee military aid to Israel after it was invaded by Egypt and Syria along with the airlifting of American troops into the Middle East when the Soviets sent a Red Army division to Egypt to stave off total defeat after the Israeli counterattack routed the Arabs. I was at the Pentagon when the first word came that Iran was exploiting the super-power confrontation by launching an invasion of Iraq; later I was in the Situation Room when President Humphrey made the call on the hot line to Andropov to diffuse the potential conflict in the Suez where American and Russian soldiers faced each other across the canal, fingers on their triggers. We owe the Ayatollah a debt of thanks for giving both sides a reason to pull back before it escalated into Armageddon, but at the time, all anyone remembers was the disruption to the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf and the recession it caused.
Afterward, things got seriously screwed up for awhile in the wake of the “Secret War” revelations; I personally have no knowledge of who might have helped pass classified documents to Daniel Ellsberg or his subsequent murder. I do know that I was very lucky, a lot of good men were dragged before the Senate investigating committee and had their lives ruined after giving testimony that earned them jail time and bankruptcy.
The buildup to the invasion of Cuba came under great scrutiny with accusations that the evidence linking Castro to Dallas was faked; I testified as to my role in developing Operations Plan 365, and though the inquisitors on the Senate investigating committee came awfully close to the subject of my meetings with Marcello and Trafficante, I was never asked a question which would have forced me to take the 5th. During this same time, I heard rumors that both CBS and the New York Times were looking into stories concerning a secret meeting between President Kennedy and a cabal of blackmailers during the 1964 campaign. Both news organizations supposedly spiked the story after being contacted by the former himself, who offered evidence that debunked their “leads.”
Nevertheless, I was on pins and needles for more than a year, fearing a headline which would have put me at the center of a scandal; a lot of guys believed Hubert Humphrey could have done a better job of invoking national security to contain the damage done to lives and reputations. I thought Ellsberg’s leaks had already done enough injury, no use looking for another scapegoat, but for years afterward, if you wanted anybody to say something nasty at staff reunions, all you had to do was mention Humphrey’s name.
I breathed a sigh of relief when Nixon beat Brown in ’76, because whatever his faults, Richard Nixon had a real interest in keeping the lid on secrets like the Hotel Adolphus. Many people were curious as to why John F. Kennedy was so quick to offer advice and support to his bitterest political rival during Nixon’s eight years in office; it was no mystery to me.
Some would say the general’s star I earned after President Kennedy personally added my name to the promotion’s list just before he left office was a payoff. And I don’t care what some would say. I got my second star two months after Nixon was sworn in and a new job offer to be deputy director of the CIA; I accepted and after thirty years of active duty, exchanged my uniform for a suit and tie. I served under Director Vernon Walters during some challenging and rewarding times. These were the years of the thaw in relations with the Soviets when there finally was a summit in Stockholm between Nixon and Andropov, which came in the aftermath of the Polish uprising where the Soviet leader had ordered 50,000 Poles massacred in retaliation. It was Iran’s continued aggression that forced the two super power rivals to work together; during the joint American-Soviet military actions in the Persian Gulf, I helped coordinate intelligence between Marshall Grechko and my old friend, General Haig. My long years of public service came to an end shortly after Nixon defeated Senator John Glenn and won a second term in 1980; t
hus I avoided the scandals of Nixon’s second four years. President-elect Dole tried to lure me back with an offer of the director’s job at the Agency in 1984, but once retired, I made a vow to stay retired, and I kept it.
After he left office, I saw former President Kennedy about twice a year, usually when he’d stop in Washington on his way from Hyannis Port down to Palm Beach and get together with people from his administration for drinks and cigars. The talk would seldom be about the past; President Kennedy was always focused on the now and what lay ahead in the future. He never spoke of his brother and what might have been. During the Johnson years, he never said anything disparaging about his successor despite what I’d heard about how the last thing he wanted was for LBJ to succeed him; I think the long shadow of the Adolphus had something to do with it. He was less kind toward Humphrey, saying at one point, “Hubert was perfectly happy to sit on his Goddamn ass and let South Vietnam go down the fucking toilet, all of it could have been avoided if he’d just sent the bombers back in to stop the North before they got rolling.” Kenny O’Donnell later told me he wouldn’t have been surprised if the former President hadn’t marked Reagan’s name in 1972.
During the investigations of the mid 70’s, former President Kennedy let it be known that if anyone who had served in his administration were having trouble finding a lawyer or paying legal expenses, he would cover them. His legacy took a real hit in the wake of the Ellsberg revelations, it seemed like all at once, all the skeletons of the 1960’s came tumbling out of the closet, including some unsavory stories of extra maritial affairs as some of his many women began to talk. Newsweek ran a cover with the image of an old Kennedy campaign poster now splattered with mud and grime. A lot of those who had been critical of the invasion of Cuba, the firebombing of North Korea or the escalation in Vietnam came out of the woodwork to even old scores and slander reputations. At one point it got so bad that the former President was actually booed and called a war criminal during an appearance at Princeton, while some other so-called institutions of higher learning canceled their invitations for him to come and speak altogether. I’d contrast the way the former President was treated with the way the faculty at Berkeley practically fell at the feet of Che Guevara when he spoke there a few months later while on his book tour of the United States. If any of this bothered John Kennedy, he never let it show.
At some point, Mrs. Kennedy stopped accompanying him on his trips, by 1980, she and the two boys were living full time in New York while the former President spent the bulk of his time in Florida, and not without female company. There was never an actual separation, nothing on paper or an announcement and all comments were left to the tabloids. I read all twelve books John Kennedy wrote after leaving the White House, including his two-part memoirs, his authoritative history of the U.S. Navy in World War II, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize, and those two spy novels. If the man had put his mind to it, he could have been another Ian Fleming.
I had a chance to get in on the ground floor when former President Kennedy put together a group of investors to buy up a half dozen failing daily newspapers, but passed on what I thought was a risky venture because I had kids to put through college at the time. Later, I could have kicked myself when even a thousand dollar original investment would have been worth ten times as much in return.
As the former President’s health began to decline, our get-togethers became less frequent. His deteriorating back forced him to use crutches in private even before he left the White House; ten years later, a bad day would put him in a wheel-chair, although never in public where he always put his best foot forward. As the years went by, there was intestinal surgery for the removal of a malignant tumor, a severe bout with a respiratory infection, and an attack of angina which led to a diagnosis of coronary artery disease. It was tough for a man who had worked so hard as President to project an image of physical vigor. He barely got through his speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention in Atlanta; the tape clearly shows his sons and a secret service agent hurrying over to help him off the stage. What no one saw was the oxygen he had to take as soon as they were out of sight.
There was a big gathering of former Kennedy Administration officials in Palm Beach in the fall of 1991; there hadn’t been such a reunion in nearly two years. When President Kennedy arrived it was obvious he’d lost some weight and was moving noticeably slower; his hair was snow white, and the lines around the eyes were deeper, for the first time, John F. Kennedy could actually be called elderly. But there was nothing wrong with his mind, there were lively discussions about the Soviet Union, which was in the process of brutally trying to keep its Eastern European Empire together, not to mention the ongoing problems in their Asian republics, where the spread of Islamic fundamentalism from Iran threatened to set off a civil war. “Well, if LeMay was here,” I remember the former President saying, “he’d blame it all on me for not letting him bomb them back to the Stone Age in ’64.”
One other remark by President Kennedy stands out in my mind. After a lively take-down of the recent best-selling critical book, False Promises, False Starts: A History of the Kennedy Years by Paul Johnson, he said, “You know, if things had worked out a little differently in Dallas, who would they have had to blame for ruining the 1960’s?” It was the only time I remember him directly referring to the events of November 22, 1963.
President Kennedy next made news in May of the following the year when he endorsed Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination right before the critical California primary. It was no surprise JFK came out for Clinton; the Governor had served with the army in Cuba and in every speech, he made mention of his service there and his admiration for Kennedy. What was notable was that the endorsement came in the form of a written statement, read to the assembled press by his sons, John Jr. and Joseph Francis. A few weeks later there was a brief story in the papers about his being admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital suffering from “mild pneumonia.”
John F. Kennedy died at 9:30 p.m. on the evening of July 4th, 1992 with his wife and children at his bedside. I was watching the fireworks on the Mall at my home in Virginia when the special report logo flashed across the screen followed by the announcement. I sat there for minutes on end, feeling as if I’d been slapped across the face, snapping out of it only when my wife handed me a cloth to wipe away the tears running down my face.
His flag-draped coffin lay in the Capitol Rotunda for two days while Americans lined up down Pennsylvania Avenue for a chance to file past and pay their respects, then there was a funeral mass and burial at Arlington, near where Bobby rested.
A week to the day later, the phone rang in my home office in Virginia and the voice on the other end greeted me with, “Hello, Colonel, sorry to be so damn long getting back to you.” Despite the years, I recognized Vance Harlow’s voice.
He wanted to see me in person right away and gave directions, along with a request to bring along a tape recorder and plenty of blank tapes. That is what brought me to a modest ranch style home in New Port Richie, Florida, the next day, having taken a cab from the Tampa airport; inside my duffle bag were the latest model Sony recorder and a dozen cassettes.
It was quite the modest home for a man who I suspected of pocketing some big bucks in his day. I was greeted at the door by a woman who might have been in her 50’s at the most; she introduced herself as Helen and led me through the house to the backyard. “Vance could hardly sleep last night,” she said, “he’s so excited to see you.” There were pictures of children and young adults displayed prominently on a table in the living room: first day at school, birthdays and sitting on Santa’s knee, graduations; not unlike similar pictures back at my home in Virginia.
“It been too long, Colonel,” said Harlow as he stood to greet me in the back yard, “and there’s damn little time left.” He’d been sitting at a picnic table under a shade tree and beckoned me to take the seat across from him. He was an elderly man now, far older than myself, his days
of nimbly working in the shadows long in the past. Helen left us, saying she would bring back some ice tea.
He asked me about my family and how I was doing in retirement; the conversation turned to my time in Vietnam, and somehow we got onto what was the best movie made about that conflict; I fiercely defended my personal favorite, Apocalypse Dawn, the one which won Sam Peckinpah an Oscar. Then he asked me about President Kennedy and the last time I saw him.
“Bobby’s gone and now Jack’s at Arlington too,” Harlow said when I was finished. “And they knew how to keep secrets; so did Powers and O’Donnell and the rest, always doing the dirty work and cleaning up messes out of a sense of fanatical loyalty to all things Kennedy. But there were jobs too dirty even for them. That’s where I came in. Colonel, I got a story to tell if you’ll sit here and listen, think you can do that for me?”
I knew anything Harlow would tell me would be a burden and that maybe I should just excuse myself and leave, but I stayed and if you ask me why, I would say out of a sense of duty. Helen brought us our glasses of ice tea and then excused herself. When she was back in the house, I produced the Sony recorder at Harlow’s request and popped in a tape, then hit record. “Anytime you’re ready,” I told him.
“I made my living off my reputation,” Harlow said, “and my reputation was that of a guy who could get things done - no matter what. I got such a rep through years of hard work, first at the Bureau and then on the Rackets Committee, where I first met both Kennedy brothers. I was the guy who could always locate a witness or get the necessary evidence to close a case and guarantee a conviction. Moreover, I was dependable and knew how to keep my mouth shut no matter what. When I went into business for myself in 1959, an awful lot of well-connected people lined up to pay me good money to use my skills on their behalf. If some of these people were criminals, no matter, their money was green, and it says something that they had no problem with my past in law enforcement, including a stint in as head of the FBI field office in Miami.
All the Way with JFK: An Alternate History of 1964 Page 42