The Kennedy Men

by Laurence Leamer

  Bobby’s name would always be linked with his obsessed campaign to convict Jimmy Hoffa, but his team of investigators went far beyond the Teamsters Union. He even investigated the New York Times, whose editorial support his brother would soon be seeking in his presidential race. He took startling testimony that the greatest paper in America had made payments to reach favorable agreements with the Teamsters. In all, the committee and its 100-member staff, interviewing 1,525, witnesses and taking testimony that filled 59 volumes of official hearings, presented strong evidence of corruption in at least 15 unions and more than 50 companies.

  Bobby’s critics on the left accused him of destroying unions, but he celebrated union reformers who stood up to corruption and whose victories would ensure a stronger movement. His critics on the right said that he avoided investigating Walter Reuther and the United Auto Workers, but in fact the committee looked at the UAW and found little seriously wrong. Sadly, this congressional investigation, the most monumental in half a century, achieved a result hardly commensurate with the enormous effort and resources put into it. Congress did enact a labor reform bill, and a year after the committee disbanded, twenty figures in labor and business had gone to jail. But as Bobby himself admitted, there was “appalling public apathy”; by the measure of congressional mail, practically no one in America cared deeply about labor corruption. Beyond that—and this was not something that Bobby conceded—he had helped make Hoffa a folk hero to the Teamster rank and file, a working-class Houdini who had wiggled out of all the handcuffs and jails in which his enemies had sought to confine him. The union president sat behind his nine-foot-long mahogany desk in a Washington office far more spacious and impressive than the Oval Office. He ate gourmet meals prepared by chef Jean Grihangne, and when he had eaten too richly, he worked out in the tiled gymnasium that he had built for his use. He had hopes of expanding the Teamsters into other areas of American life.

  As for Bobby, he too had become a hero to millions of Americans. “At thirty-three years old, this quiet little fellow is the most exciting guest we’ve had in years,” Jack Paar told his late-night audience on national television during Bobby’s appearance in June 1959. “I think that Robert Kennedy is the bravest, finest young man I know.”

  Bobby was a man who never forgot, and when he left the committee after three years in 1959, he was as consumed with the Teamster leader as when he had first met him. He believed that Hoffa stood at the center of a contagion of evil that had to be stopped or the whole nature of America would change. He had other work to do now in helping to elect Jack president of the United States, but it was clear that one day these two implacable enemies would meet again on another field of conflict.

  JJack did not have the same visceral feeling about corruption and evil that Bobby had. His most passionate political concern remained foreign affairs. In July 1957, Jack gave a speech in the Senate on the tragic situation in Algeria, where the French were brutally repressing a guerrilla movement seeking independence. The speech was a revelation to many. One of those listening that day was Howard E. Shuman, administrative assistant to Senator Paul Douglas. Shuman, like many of his peers, considered Jack “an extraordinary minor figure” in the Senate. Yet as the aide listened, he thought, “My God, this is really great stuff.”

  jack called for the United States to take the lead “in shaping a course for political independence for Algeria.” In that North African country, half a million French troops were fighting a people attempting to throw off the heavy yoke of colonialism. It was an ugly, vicious war, an endless cycle of torture, bombings, and reprisals. The bloody conflict was tearing apart not only Algeria but France itself. America had fought its own war for independence, and if not for the exigencies of the cold war, Washington policymakers might well have stood foursquare on the side of the Algerians. France, however, was a prominent member of NATO, and the Eisenhower administration stood with its ally and looked away from the tumult in North Africa.

  Jack was a determined student of history, and it appalled him how little his country had learned from its misguided support of French colonialism in Vietnam. He told his colleagues: “Did that tragic episode not teach us, whether France likes it of not, admits it or not, or has our support or not, that their overseas territories are sooner or later, one by one, inevitably going to break free and look with suspicion on the Western nations who impeded their steps to independence?”

  There was the essential reality. As Jack saw it, nationalism, not communism, was the unstoppable tide sweeping across Asia and Africa, and his nation, once a colony itself, had to ride with that tide, not against it. Within a few years, Jack’s words would sound self-evident. But in the summer of 1957, this was a daring, controversial statement that won him more condemnation then praise. Of the 138 editorials that Jack’s office clipped and saved, 90 of them criticized him.

  Among prominent Democrats, Stevenson was particularly incensed at what he considered Jack’s ill-timed, inopportune call for Algerian independence. Nonetheless, for the first time Jack’s voice had resonated with progressive intellectuals across America and the world. He had struck a deep resonant chord among the Algerian guerrillas listening to his words in French on the Voice of America and among other young Africans and Asians, who heard the voice of an America that had long been silent.

  Jack’s father was appalled at his son’s speech. He had no use for liberal moral posturing, hand-wringing, and loud moaning over the brutal realities of power in the world. Worse yet, if Jack was to become president, he could not be climbing out on limbs that might prove rotten or could be sawed off by his opponents safely ensconced on the ground. Despite his disapproval, Joe was as supportive as ever. “You lucky mush,” Joe told Jack over the phone. “You don’t know it and neither does anyone else, but within a few months everyone is going to know just how right you were on Algeria.”

  On a Saturday evening a month after giving his speech in the Senate, Jack appeared before the Americans for Democratic Action at the Astor Hotel in Manhattan. He had arranged to meet there with Arnold Beichman, a reporter who had just returned from an unprecedented visit with the guerrillas in Algeria that had been the basis of a Newsweek cover story. Jack had a genuine liking for brave reporters, and he asked Beichman to meet with him after the event. After Jack said his good-byes, the two men walked out of the Astor Hotel and along Broadway. Beichman told Jack that the guerrillas had heard his speech while sitting in their mountain hideaway. They had asked all kinds of questions as they sat eating lamb stew with their guest. Who was this man Kennedy? How come this Kennedy was so influential? Why couldn’t he get independence for Algeria?

  As they hurried along the late-night streets of Manhattan, Jack peppered Beichman with questions. Jack mentioned an Algerian lobbyist at the UN. It was a name that few people other than foreign policy experts on North Africa would even know, and Beichman was impressed. “What do you think of him?” Jack asked. “Is he to be trusted?”

  Jack kept talking as they walked into the Commodore Hotel on Lexington Avenue. Beichman was surprised that Jack was staying in such a second-rate hotel, but he followed him over to a bank of elevators where Jack pushed a button. “I’ve got a very important date,” Jack said, suddenly grinning. “Sorry I can’t invite you up.”

  18

  The Rites of Ambition

  Jack could have stepped forward now and stood as the great champion of colonial peoples, whether they resided in Algeria or Indonesia or Poland. At far less political risk, he could have stood his ground as an articulate spokesman for eventual Algerian independence. Instead, as was his pattern, he stepped gingerly back, telling his staff that he was “wary of being known as the senator from Algeria.”

  Just as nationalism and the struggle for independence was the great international moral issue of his time, so civil rights was the great domestic moral issue. On this issue, Jack was even more reluctant to take a leading role. He was instinctively a moderate, tempering his progressive instincts on
foreign policy and social issues with a conservative wariness of the dangers of wrenching change. He cared to some degree intellectually about the plight of blacks in the segregated South, but he did not have the liberal passion of his colleague Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, who cried out in a loud, fervent voice that enough was enough, wrongs had to be righted, and righted now.

  Jack stood with some of his more reactionary colleagues on several technical matters as the 1957 civil rights bill worked its way through Congress. Unlike the vociferous Humphrey, Jack was wooing southern Democrats to stand behind his presidential banner, but his refusal to stand forthrightly with his liberal colleagues was perhaps something more than narrow pragmatism. As he had with some of the procedural votes on McCarthy, he ended up looking like a man of expediency. The charge rankled him. “It’s awful … you know what they say about you, but they say this … [was] an attempt to appease the South,” he told Burns. “Politically it was a mistake.”

  The reality was that if Jack’s chances for a presidential nomination had rested on his legislative record, he would scarcely have been considered a plausible candidate. He had no stellar record of bills stamped with his bold mark, as did Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas, another potential candidate. Nor did he stand at the forefront of a political issue, as Humphrey did on civil rights. Neither of these men, however, had the captivating persona that Jack was exhibiting on speaking trips that took him from Arkansas to New York City, Baltimore to Mississippi. He was deemed worthy of a Time cover in 1957, and major articles appeared in magazines ranging from women’s periodicals such as McCall’s and Redbook to mass general-interest magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and American Weekly, to more obscure, policy-oriented publications such as Foreign Policy Bulletin and the National Education Association Journal.

  As he flew from state to state and interspersed his days in Washington with one interview after another, Jack continued to be cursed by bad health. His bad back and Addison’s disease were burden enough. Then the dog that Jackie had given him for Christmas in 1956, when they were staying at his father’s New York apartment, set off such a severe allergic reaction that he had an asthma attack and the animal had to be given away. For a long time afterward, he became sick again every time the couple stayed in the apartment at 277 Park Avenue.

  On another occasion while he was in New York Hospital, Jack checked out to go to a friend’s house for dinner. The friend had a dog, and by the time Jack checked back into the hospital, he was breathing so badly from his asthma that the hospital staff became frightened.

  In the middle of September 1957, Jack developed an abscess on his scarred back that induced a high fever and such wrenching back pain that he entered New York Hospital. The doctors drained the abscess and put him on a heavy dosage of penicillin and streptomycin.

  Jack wanted to minimize the whole business, but a vibrant, youthful politician did not spend over two weeks in the hospital for his annual checkup. Dr. Janet Travell, his personal physician, wanted to tell the press that her patient had “a small abscess on his back.” Jack would have none of that. “You know, that’s a very ugly word,” he told her. “I don’t want to have an abscess.” Since there was an epidemic of Asian flu making its rounds, the word went out that Jack had “a virus infection.”

  Jack left the hospital on October 1 and flew to Hyannis Port. During his weeks in the hospital, Bobby, George Smathers, and Governor Foster Furcolo of Massachusetts had given speeches in his stead, but now Jack was about to fly to Canada to give a talk. He was so weak that he canceled a dinner that Lord Beaverbrook was planning for him on the trip so that he could rest.

  Dr. Travell had the impression that Jack was “discouraged.” Joe and Rose had brought Jack up never to be depressed, or if he was feeling low, never to admit it, not to himself, and certainly not to the world. It was a measure of how down he felt that he could admit that he was feeling downcast.

  “You know, what you need is a real good hot-tub bath,” Dr. Travell said. It was hardly a suggestion that seemed likely to bring on a dramatic change.

  “You know, I haven’t been in the bathtub since I entered New York Hospital because of the wound in my back,” Jack said, looking at the doctor. “I can’t go on with another great big gaping hole.”

  The words had a slight tinge of self-pity, an emotion unknown to Jack. “You don’t have a great big gaping hole in your back, and there’s no reason why you couldn’t get right into a hot tub and soak,” the doctor said as Jack stared at her in disbelief. “You haven’t seen what is there. It’s been covered by the dressing. You’ve got a dressing on it.”

  Jack took his bath, and Dr. Travell believed that it was “a cake of soap that saved the day and a hot tub bath.” But when Jack left to fly to Canada, he took the same scarred and aching body with him, and his health was hardly demonstrably improved.

  Jackie had an impeccable sense of how to memorialize special occasions. On their fourth wedding anniversary in 1957, she prepared an illustrated book titled “How the Kennedys Spoil Wedding Anniversaries.” The sketches were wondrously whimsical, but as always with Jackie, there was a subtle edge to her humor. The first drawing in the exquisite book portrays Jack lying in bed with the diligent Jackie at his side. In the second drawing the couple has changed places, and Jackie is in bed, while Jack watches over her. The pictures made light of an unpalatable truth. If they disclosed a hidden irony in Jack’s young wife, the gift also suggested that this was a woman who cared enough for her husband to sketch these gentle scenes of their marriage.

  There were persistent rumors that Joe had headed off a divorce by promising Jackie a million dollars if she would stay with her husband. There is no evidence that any such offer was made, and it hardly would have been enough of a payoff to keep a despondent Jackie in a dreary marriage. If her fidelity to her marriage was indeed purchased, she was the consummate actor, not only keeping the Kennedy name but also displaying interest in her husband’s career.

  “I was alone almost every weekend while Jack traveled the country making speeches,” she recalled. “It was all wrong.” Jackie had an intense inner life that even Jack did not fully know. She was a woman not simply of mood swings but of dramatic changes in her perceptions of the world around her.

  One day she would flirt with Jack with those gaminelike eyes, as her mother recalled, “writing him little jingles and poems and bringing him little presents with appropriate rhymes accompanying them.” Then the next time she saw him, she would be so coldly uncaring that Chuck Spalding believed that her feelings toward her husband had gone from love to hate.

  Only Jackie truly knew what she felt toward her distant, philandering husband, and this deeply private woman was not about to unburden her soul in the authorized American psychological fashion. “Look, it’s a trade-off,” she reflected later. “There are positives and negatives to every situation in life. You endure the bad things but you enjoy the good…. One could never have such a life if one wasn’t married to someone like that. If the trade-off is too painful, then you just have to remove yourself, or you have to get out of it. But if you truly love someone, well….”

  Jack would not have been a Kennedy man if he had not wanted to carry on his line, and it had been painful that it was proving so difficult for him and Jackie to have a child. It was both a relief and a blessing when, on November 27, 1957, Jackie gave birth by cesarean section to a squalling baby girl who her father declared was “as robust as a sumo wrestler.”

  “She’s easily the prettiest baby in the room, don’t you think,” the proud father asked the nurses. Jack took his friend Billings to the nursery at New York’s Lying-in Hospital and stood looking at the newborn through a glass window. “Now, Lem, which one of the babies is the prettiest?” he asked his friend, seeing no need to point out the obvious. Jack’s mother-in-law, Janet Auchincloss recalls that, when Lem made the mistake of pointing out another baby, Jack “didn’t speak to him for three days.”

>   Soon after the baptism of Caroline Bouvier Kennedy three weeks later at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Jack and his favorite carousing buddy, George Smathers, headed off to Havana for the first of two trips there. They were accompanied on one of their Cuban trips by Bill Thompson, who was often around Jack when pleasure was the aim.

  The Cuban capital was a corrupt, lascivious place, the product in part of an unholy alliance among President Fulgencio Batista, American business interests, and American mobsters. Jack had seen that the deadly hand of colonialism and neocolonialism was losing its grip all over the world and that America should stand with the rising forces of nationalism. By that measure, Jack should have supported the students at the University of Havana who had been bludgeoned when they protested the increasingly totalitarian regime. Jack, however, joined the millions of Americans visiting Havana to gamble at the casinos, drink Cuba libres, and, by their presence, help to sustain the dictatorship.

  Soon after his arrival, Jack met with Ambassador Earl Smith, a Palm Beach neighbor and the husband of one of his former lovers, Florence Pritchett. Smith was an apologist for Batista, full of tales of how the dictator was America’s stalwart friend and an implacable enemy of the leftist guerrillas in the hills. That conversation and a talk to the embassy staff were the sum total of Jack’s serious work in Cuba.

  Jack was not much of a gambler, but Smathers recalled that his friend took great interest in the floor show at the Tropicana Nightclub with its parade of gorgeous showgirls and a statuesque French cabaret singer and actress, Denise Darcel, whom he managed to meet. At the Hotel Nacional’s casino, Jack had his picture taken with the manager, Thomas McGinty, who had once been his father’s bootlegging partner. A picture is evidence of nothing more than that Jack had stood next to a gangster running mob-controlled gambling, but Jack was appearing with distressing frequency among those whose hands he should not even have shaken. In February 1958, for instance, an FBI surveillance team noted that on a speaking engagement in Tucson, Jack had been accompanied to church by a man the FBI identified as a close friend of Joseph Bonnano, a top organized crime figure.