Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy
Page 22
MCHUGH: Sir, I’m appalled but …
JFK: Well, I’m appalled, too.
MCHUGH: Yes, sir.
JFK: Now, the thing is, the thing of the matter is, I’m gonna get that furniture, and I just told Sylvester and you can talk to him. I want to find out if we paid for that furniture because I want it to go back to Jordan Marsh.
MCHUGH: All right, sir.
JFK: Then I want, that fellow’s incompetent who had his picture taken next to Mrs. Kennedy’s bed, if that’s what it is. I mean, he’s a silly bastard! I wouldn’t have him running a cathouse! And that Colonel Carlson [sic], who let in Larry Newman and those reporters. Is he crazy, too? Christ, they’re all incompetents! Is that the way they are throwing money around over there? You better look into it, and especially when you told me that they hadn’t spent a cent.
MCHUGH: Why, sir, this is obviously …
JFK: Well, this is obviously a fuckup.
MCHUGH: That’s right.
JFK: That’s right.
CALL ABOUT FILMING OF PT-109, DATE UNKNOWN
The story of PT-109 and JFK’s heroics rescuing his crewmates had been integral to his rise as national political figure in the 1950s, and the campaign of 1960. When Hollywood decided to issue a film version of the story, JFK was interested to a highly personal degree, and even was given the right to choose the lead actor, Cliff Robertson (Peter Fonda and Warren Beatty were also considered). The film was released in 1963 and achieved only modest success. This conversation shows him following the course of the film’s production, concerned that the film will be too long.
JFK: Yeah.
AL6: But the big miss that I made is Lawford7 had already talked to Steve Trilling.
JFK: Yeah.
AL: So that when I got to Warner,8 Warner said, “Well,” he says, “you know where this is coming from?” And I said, “Well, I know the President and his family are very concerned about this.” And he said, “Well,” he says, “it’s coming from Lawford because Lawford already talked to Trilling.”
JFK: Who’s Trilling?
AL: Trilling is Warner’s number-one boy.
JFK: Yeah, yeah.
AL: So Peter had already talked to Trilling …
JFK: Yeah, well I told him not to.
AL: … and delayed some of the impact that, I got …
JFK: Yeah.
AL: … by putting your message in.
JFK: Yeah.
NAVY LIEUTENANT (JUNIOR GRADE) JOHN F. KENNEDY AT THE HELM OF PT 109, SOLOMON ISLANDS, 1943
CREW OF PT 109, SOLOMON ISLANDS, 1943
PT 109, SOLOMON ISLANDS, 1943
AL: However, I will keep following them and, uh, keep you advised.
JFK: Well, they know what they’re doing, but I do think, myself, that two minutes, two hours and twenty minutes for that kind of a picture is pretty long. Of course, they all get to think it’s a work of art and they can’t change anything.
AL: [laughs]
JFK: But that seems like a long night, and there’s no doubt Pat felt it.
AL: [laughs] Right. Well, we’ll keep chiseling away on him and I think we can get him to cut some of …
JFK: Can he get somebody out there to look at it that he’s got confidence in?
AL: What?
JFK: Can he get somebody out there to look at it that he has confidence in?
AL: You mean some, an objective viewpoint?
JFK: Yeah, some fellow who just knows something about movies.
AL: Well, unfortunately, by this time he has shown it to enough people that have patted him on the back. You know, the old Hollywood yes men.
JFK: Yeah.
AL: And of course, some of his hardheaded distributor people have looked at it and they’re usually pretty damn objective in their comments …
JFK: Yeah.
AL: … and they have said it was good and so he’s kind of got his neck bowed right now.
JFK: Yeah.
AL: He feels that he’s got a good product.
JFK: Yeah.
AL: But we’ll …
JFK: Well, he has got a good product, it’s just a question of whether there’s too much of it. Well, in any case, that’s his judgment finally.
AL: We’ll keep working on it.
JFK: Okay, good, Al.
AL: Fine, bye.
MEETING WITH ECONOMIC ADVISORS, DECEMBER 12, 19629
JFK: I’d like to make sure that, in that, I don’t know, if we have a recession in ’63, then we can assume we won’t be having one in ’64, but we can go through ’63 and sort of a plateau, and it looks kind of tough in ’64. I’d hate to see us go to the people in ’64 … you know, the one that would ball break [garbled] me more would be to have people think we’re in a recession … [garbled] I’d like to be in a position to have something in that economy, I think it ruined Nixon in ’60, in the major industrial states. …
If you’re running for reelection in 1964, what’s the thing you worry most about? The recession? That’s what I’m worried about. [several voices] Otherwise we’re liable to get all the blame for the deficit, and none of the advantage of the stimulus for the economy.
MEETING WITH TREASURY SECRETARY DOUGLAS DILLON, SEPTEMBER 3, 1963
JFK: Well, the problem that I’m concerned about is, that we’re all going to be judged, I’m going to be judged, if they’re able to produce a crisis [unclear] in ’64, that’s going to say, because of, you know, all the problems we’ve had, here we’ve had price stability, and yet they keep mouthing the same old things. If I have to have happen to me what happened to the Eisenhower administration in the fall of ’60 [unclear], it would have cost the election. So I hate to get myself as vulnerable as that, at the mercy of bankers who I know would like to probably screw us anyway.
MEETING WITH POLITICAL ADVISORS TO DISCUSS 1964 CONVENTION10
JFK: Steve,11 on this question of the films and who’s going to do them. I thought that film Five Days or Cities in June was—have you seen that film? The guy who wrote the music was called Vershon or something, but God it’s good. Why don’t you get it from George Stevens. Five Cities in June. Look at it. I think the guy’s fantastic. I’d like to see what else he’s done, whether that just happened to be lucky. … Should they be made in color? They’d come over the television in black-and-white. I don’t know if maybe they’d come over the NBC one in color. Probably a million watching it in color and it would have an effect. I don’t know how much more expensive it is. Be quite an effect on the convention. The color is so damn good. If you do it right. … You’d have a film the first night, ahead of the keynoter. …
I think you can get the real story told if it’s a good speaker. That’s why the film’s gonna be—and you might lead off with the film, then the keynoter, because people are sick of it after half hour of watching anyway; if you lead off with the film, then the keynoter. … There’s no doubt, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a short one [film] on Franklin Roosevelt.
JOHN BAILEY: Well what you could do is on the Democratic Party is have the five Presidents of—that we’ve had since Cleveland, Wilson …
JFK: Well, this century. I think, I think Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman … but I think that Wilson’s good if you can get a lot of good film. Roosevelt, Truman, I think that’s a good idea—four Democratic Presidents—that’s a good idea.
BAILEY: And that way you—can bring you in at the end. …
JFK: But what is it that we can make them decide they want to vote for us, Democrats and Kennedy? The Democrats [are] not as strong in appeal, obviously, as it was twenty years ago. The younger people, party label—what is it that’s going to make them go for us? What is it we have to sell them? We hope we have to sell them prosperity, but for the average guy, the prosperity is nil. He’s not unprosperous, but he’s not very prosperous; he’s not going make out well off. And the people who really are well off hate our guts.
So that, what is it? There’s a lot of Negroes, we’re the ones that a
re shoving the Negroes down his throat. What is it he’s got, though? We’ve got peace, you know what I mean, we say we hope the country’s prosperous, I’m trying to think of what else. I think probably, we’ve got so mechanical an operation here in Washington that it doesn’t have much identity where these people are concerned. And they don’t feel particularly—I’m not, they really didn’t have it with Truman, only in that retrospect they have Truman … hell of a time. Franklin Roosevelt had it, even Wilson had it, but I think it’s tough for a Democrat with that press apparatus working. So I’m just trying to think what is it?—
[tape ends]
PRESIDENT KENNEDY AT THE HMS RESOLUTE DESK
“OUR LOT BECOMES MORE DIFFICULT,” PRIVATE DICTATION, NOVEMBER 12, 1963
This dictated memorandum, never before published, was recorded privately, in the same format that Kennedy reserved for events of high significance. It reveals him to be in a state of some apprehension and perhaps even low morale as he contemplated a bleaker than expected political picture in November 1963. The progress of the Civil Rights Movement had created major problems in the South, where reliable Democrats were becoming Republicans, and required considerable attention as he turned his thoughts to the hard campaign he would face in 1964. The exasperation with which he says the date, “Tuesday, November 12,” is quite out of character with the driving confidence so clearly on display in the vast majority of the recordings.
JFK: Politically, the news is somewhat disturbing, looking toward 1964. The election in Texas on the poll tax. The Republican meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, which, the Republicans were more optimistic than usual about the South. The slowness of the Congress, which is giving it a bad name, and therefore the administration, which is also Democratic. The hatchet job on the foreign aid bill, which has gone on more than two weeks, led by the liberals, supported by the Southerners and conservative Republicans.
All these make the situation politically not as good as it might be. In addition, the cattle growers are angry because of the increase in imports and the depression of their prices, which, while it comes about from their overproduction, is blamed upon us.
Tuesday, November 12, having difficulties in Latin America or the Alliance for Progress.12 The Argentines threatening to expropriate our oil. The Brazilians, the Brazilian [João] Goulart,13 ignoring the Alliance for Progress. Obviously, both playing a very nationalist game. And then the rumor that the Dominican Republic may break relations with us. They’re irritated with the United States for not recognizing, and making their lot more difficult. All this is, indicates a rising tide of nationalism and a lessening of their dependence upon the United States. In addition, they have a radical left who [unclear] at home, so that our lot becomes more difficult.
KENNEDY CAMPAIGN SONG, 1960
Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy,
Ken-ne-dy for me!
Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy!
Do you want a man for president,
Who’s seasoned through and through?
But not so doggone seasoned,
That he won’t try something new.
A man who’s old enough to know,
And young enough to do.
Well, it’s up to you, it’s up to you,
It’s strictly up to you.
Do you like a man who answers straight,
A man who’s always fair?
We’ll measure him against the others,
And when you compare,
You cast your vote for Kennedy,
And the change that’s overdue,
So, it’s up to you, it’s up to you,
It’s strictly up to you.
And it’s Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy,
Ken-ne-dy for me!
Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy!
Kennedy!
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bradlee, Benjamin C. Conversations with Kennedy. New York: Norton, 1975.
Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Caro, Robert A. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.
Dallek, Robert. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 2003.
Dobbs, Michael. One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
Freedman, Lawrence. Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Fursenko, Aleksandr, and Timothy Naftali. “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
Kennedy, Caroline, and Michael Beschloss. Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations On Life with John F. Kennedy. New York: Hyperion, 2011.
Kennedy, Robert F. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: W.W. Norton, 1969.
Lincoln, Evelyn. My Twelve Years with John F. Kennedy. New York: D. McKay, 1965.
Mackenzie, G. Calvin, and Robert Weisbrot. The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s. New York: Penguin, 2008.
May, Ernest R., and Philip D. Zelikow, eds. The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997.
Naftali, Timothy, ed. The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy: The Great Crises (3 vols). New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.
Prados, John, ed. The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President. New York: New Press, 2003.
Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy (1961–1963). Washington: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1962–1964.
Reeves, Richard. President Kennedy: Profile of Power. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Rosenberg, Jonathan, and Zachary Karabell, eds. Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1965.
Sorensen, Ted. Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.
Sorensen, Theodore C. Kennedy. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.
Stern, Sheldon M. Averting “The Final Failure”: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
INDEX
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NOTE: Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. The letter n indicates footnotes.
A
Acheson, Dean, 46n–47n, 145
Adams, John, 18
Africa, 113n, 251, 252
meeting with advisors, 252
Ahmann, Mathew, 131
Alexander, Kelly M., 98
Alliance for Progress, 285
Americans for Democratic Action, 111–13
American University, 260
Amherst College, 18
AMVETS convention, iv
Anderson, George, 151
Apollo program, 220, 224
Asia specialists, meeting with, 265
Attlee, Clement, 46n
Auchincloss, Hugh D. “Yusha,” III, 24
Autobahn, 248
B
Bailey, John, 282
Ball, George, 145, 245, 254n
Baltimore Sun, 60
Barnett, Ross, 11
calls to, 101–6, 107–10
Battle Act, 49
Bay of Pigs, xv–xvi, 3, 51, 156, 240
Bell, Dave, 223, 225
Berlin, 17, 55, 57, 59, 145–46, 147–52, 154–55, 157, 159–65, 179–80, 189, 196, 210, 213–14
Birmingham, Ala., 111–13, 111, 133–34
meetings about, 114–21, 122–27
Blake, Eugene Carson, 131
Bosch, Juan, 240
Boston Globe, 39–40
Bouck, Robert, 2–3, 6
Boutwell, Albert, 122
Bradbury, Norris, 210n
Bradlee, Ben, 27–42, 29
Bradlee, Tony, 27–42, 29
Brandt, Willy, 157
Bridges, Styles, 41
Brown, Edmund “Jerry,” 67–69
Brown, Edmund “Pat,” 66, 67
call to, 67–69
Bundy, McGeorge, 3, 8, 145–46, 181, 182, 240, 248, 254n
Butterfield, Alexander, 6
C
campaign song (1952), 21
campaign song (1960), 287
Cannon, James M., 27–42, 43
Caro, Robert A., 78n
Carter, Jimmy, 6n, 60
Carter, Marshall, 140
Castro, Fidel, 157, 178
Celebreeze, Anthony J., 83, 184
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 3, 76, 78, 140n, 159, 256–58
Chamberlain, Neville, 137
Childs, Marquis, 76, 79
China, 206, 208, 210, 211, 215, 236
meeting on, 259
Churchill, Winston, 18, 46n, 50
Civil Rights Act, 94, 100, 122, 159, 270
Civil Rights Movement, 3–4, 10–11, 13, 17, 65, 80, 99–100, 270, 285
Birmingham and, 111–13, 111, 114–21, 122–27, 133–34
calls to Ross Barnett, 101–6, 107–10
March on Washington, 100, 122n, 128–29, 133
meeting with Americans for Democratic Action leaders, 111–13
meeting with civil rights leaders, 128–31,
meeting with Martin Luther King, 133–34
Civil War, 17, 100
Clay, Lucius, 57
Colby, William, 240
Cold War, 17, 55, 137, 202, 213, 219, 233, 252, 263n, 265, 271