Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy

by Caroline Kennedy

  What would he talk about? About his own past and—

  Well, I asked him about the times in prison, and everything—his life. And yeah, he'd talk about some of that. Or else he'd talk about people there, or make a little joke. He always was so—I've written it all down somewhere, everything we talked about, so maybe I can find it. It's the only thing I ever wrote down.

  Oh, good. No, let's find that and the Library should have a copy.23 The other big thing that happened in the fall of '61, or another one, was the resumption of nuclear testing by the Soviet Union and then—which confronted us with the problem of whether we should resume nuclear testing or not.24 That was an old interest of the President's, was it?

  Yes. I can remember him being so worried at the time about our resuming, and how long you should—you could possibly put it off and then everyone—I mean, that was a terrible time for him. There was nothing that worried him more through—would it be '61 and '62?—than all this testing. But it started so long ago. Because I can remember when David Gore came to Hyannis the fall we were married—would be October or November 1953—and he was doing something at the UN on disarmament and he and Jack were talking. And you know, it was the first time I'd ever heard—it seemed so extraordinary—you never saw it in newspapers here. That you should sort of disarm or come to some agreement and then that would be possible without selling out or—you know, when you always thought all the Bertrand Russells25 and "ban the bombers" and people were all sort of "pinks"—I mean, I just thought this from reading David Lawrence26 in the newspapers. And I remember then—from then on, Jack started to say in his speeches that it was a disgrace that there were less than a hundred people working on disarmament in Washington—or less than ten, maybe.

  Less than a hundred.

  Less than a hundred. But he said that in all—and I think he said it all through his Senate campaign.27 He certainly said it all through his campaign for the presidency, you know, but it started so long ago that he was thinking about that. And in a way, then David Gore came back again—in maybe '58 or—yes, or '57—I don't know what year he and Sissy came to the Cape. Again they'd be talking about that. And I remember when Harold Macmillan resigned last summer.28 Well, Jack was so sad for that man—that he should have to go out in all the messy, sad way he did, you know, and he said, "People really don't realize what Macmillan has done," and he said he was the greatest friend of the Atlantic Alliance. But he said this nuclear disarmament thing—he just cared about that for so long. So that's what I tried—and then he sent him this touching telegram and I remember poor Macmillan then.29 Not many people were saying nice things to him. And David asked if the telegram could be made public, and Jack said, "Of course." And that's what I tried to put in when I talked to him on Telstar30 just last week on Jack's—what would have been his forty-seventh birthday. You know, the things that I knew that Jack thought about him, and I found that telegram and read it and tried to say what Jack had said about him—and I kept thinking, "I just hope de Gaulle's listening." Not that anything matters now.

  I have the impression that we would not have had a test ban treaty if both the President and the prime minister had not been so deeply committed and forced the issue so constantly on their advisers.31

  I know. I know that's true, and I also think having David Gore here at the time made it—

  Indispensable, yes.

  Yeah. Sometimes—well, we can go into that relationship at another time, but so many things happened. He would come for dinner, and something awful would be going wrong in British Guiana or somewhere, and he would—all the time of Skybolt he was with us—and he would call and everything would be kept smooth. But what I just wanted to say about—I was thinking when I thought of Jack and Macmillan really making this test ban thing possible—of just how outrageous of de Gaulle. Of the one thing that really matters and that egomaniac not to be associated with that when that's going to be the one thing that matters in this whole century. And then Graham Sutherland, who's a painter, who I saw a couple of weeks ago about doing a picture of Jack—but he said something to me so interesting. He said, "The extraordinary thing about President Kennedy was that power made him a better man," and he said it made so many people worse men. He knew Winston Churchill. He painted him. He said Winston, you know, became less nice—and of course, it made Adenauer meaner. And of course, de Gaulle was the classic example. Well, it made—Jack a chance to work for good and I really think Harold Macmillan too.

  Do you have any memory of the President's impression of people like Arthur Dean, or McCloy or Foster, in connection with the test ban?32

  Not really.

  This again was one of those prolonged things that kept dragging on for a long time.

  PRIME MINISTER HAROLD MACMILLAN AND JACQUELINE KENNEDY IN FRONT OF NUMBER TEN DOWNING STREET, LONDON, 1961

  U. S. Dept. of State/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

  Yeah. And oh, the discouragement, and then you just think of Arthur Dean. I remember I used to feel sorry for him—just sitting in Geneva all his life—because I'd been in that depressing city. And now that's the kind of thing you wouldn't talk about at night. But I don't remember hearing him say he was disappointed with anyone or—I remember him saying wonderful things about Harriman—

  Yes. When Harriman came in at the end it was a—I think the Russians feel that when Harriman is sent to negotiate that the United States means business, and that that was absolutely necessary to—33

  And it was very touching, Jack's relationship with Harriman, because, of course there were all these young men around, and here was this man who went back so many administrations. But he just kept going up and up, didn't he?—and getting to do more and more important things, and then Jack was so happy, saying for Averell—well, he was so happy for Averell Harriman really after the test ban treaty, he thought—you know, that "That's really quite a crown." And there'd been something in Teddy White's book, a little footnote, about Averell Harriman, saying that he had done all these extraordinary things in foreign policy, but that domestically everything he'd done was disastrous.34 And I remember Jack feeling sort of sorry for him when he read that part of the book and feeling so happy that this crowning thing came at the end for Averell Harriman.35

  In—

  I gave him a copy of the test ban treaty which the Archives36 did especially for me—you can't tell it from the original—when we left his house after he lent it to us after November.

  That's wonderful. It was in that winter that—in that fall and winter—that Hickory Hill began and in the winter of '62, there was a meeting at the White House which David Donald, who is a professor at Princeton, spoke about the Civil War.37 I wasn't there, but the President mentioned it to me later. He apparently found it stimulating.

  Yes, those seminars that Bobby did—well, Jack always wanted to go to them but he just wanted to go to hear you. I mean he'd heard that you'd finished Jackson and everything and it was an effort to go out, so finally when he heard there was going to be an interesting one, which was this Civil War-Reconstruction thing, he said, "Let's have it at the White House." It was the first one—it was meant to have been at the Gilpatrics. And it was so strange because I remember when the question period started, everyone was very quiet and rather nervous in the White House and the President there, and Jack asked Donald, "Do you think"—it's the one thing that was on his mind—"Would Lincoln have been as great a President if he'd lived?" I mean, would he be judged as great—because he would have had this almost insoluble problem of the Reconstruction, which, you know, either way you did it would have dissatisfied so many people. That was his question. And Donald, really by going round and round, had agreed with him that Lincoln, you know, it was better—was better for Lincoln that he died when he did. And then I remember Jack saying after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when it all turned so fantastically, he said, "Well, if anyone's ever going to shoot me, this would be the day they should do it."38

  Oh, really?

&n
bsp; I mean, it's so strange, these things that come back, because he saw then that he would be—you know, he said, it will never top this. Strange those things come back now.

  Had that Lincoln question that he asked Donald—one that he discussed before? Been on his mind?

  Oh, yes, because all the time we discussed it. The first year I was married, I took a course in American history at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service from Professor Jules Davids, who was this brilliant man. And I'd never taken American history and I used to come home full of these things and I was so excited—Thaddeus Stevens and the radical Republicans, I can remember. And these awful poems they were writing about Lincoln. And Jack was excited that I was so interested. And then when he was doing Profiles in Courage, I told him how great Davids was, and he had him do some research on it. So at that time, we would talk a lot about Lincoln and the Reconstruction, and, you know, if he lived and that—and that was back when we were married was '53, '54, and then his book was '54–'55—so we talked about it years before.

  There was another Hickory Hill meeting at the White House—Isaiah Berlin.

  Where they talked about Russia.

  Yes.

  Yeah, well, Jack loved that and he loved to just listen to Isaiah Berlin.39 I mean, that was the side—you should read this article in Show magazine now, which I think is quite unfair in its judgment of Jack but it starts from the premise that Melbourne was his favorite book and says what he really was most like were these great Whig houses and Whig liberal families who, you know, had everything and lived a stimulating life, yet cared. Well, he loved all those brilliant English people. He used to tell me about going to Emerald Cunard's40 when he was a boy in London with his father to listen. When we were in London together, we'd go to the old Duchess of Devonshire's for lunch and she'd have a couple of people around. I mean, he loved so to hear those people talk. Or hear David. You know, they knew so much, their educations were so incredible. That's when he was happiest. So he loved Isaiah Berlin.

  Do you want to say something about the relationship of David? Because I think that was a very fundamental thing in all this. I have the impression he talked with greater—more intimately with David than with any member of the—

  Yeah.

  —of his own cabinet.

  Well, I suppose—

  Outside of Bobby.

  Exactly. And if I could think of anyone now who could save the Western world, it would be David Gore. But—well, they started as friends obviously in London, and Kathleen, who was Jack's favorite sister, was Sissy's best friend. And, I guess, David was the closest of all those friends then. I mean, so many of them ended up with rather sad lives, or this or that.

  This is back in '38–'39.

  Yeah. Hugh Fraser was sort of a friend, but not very bright, and you'd always wonder if Hugh would get a job in some government and he never did, or it was a pathetic one. But whenever David was here, we'd see him and Jack used to say that David Gore was the brightest man he'd ever met. He used to say that he and Bundy were. But he'd say that David more so than Bundy because Bundy's intelligence is almost so—it's so highly tuned that he couldn't often see the larger thing around him. I mean, David was more rooted, more compassionate. I can't describe it.

  David has more wisdom, I think, than—Mac is a brilliantly intelligent man but David's judgment is more—

  And David has also the conciliatory sort of side that Jack did. You know, Bundy can get mad and then sort of arrogant and then make conciliation impossible. And Bundy in the missile crisis, when you think of that great mind, in the beginning he wanted to go in and bomb Cuba. And at the end, he wanted to do nothing. So, if you'd been relying on that great intelligence, look where we'd be? But—

  How often would he see David?

  Well, we'd see them a lot. We'd always see them. They would stay with us, usually on vacations, or they'd come for a weekend to Camp David, or the country, or the Cape. Or they'd come for dinner maybe once a month or so. You stopped asking them too much. We used to do it rather spontaneously, and of course they'd be involved in something official and then they'd get out of it, so I thought I just can't do that to them. So we didn't see them as much as we would have. We would have seen them every week if they hadn't been ambassador.

  It killed the Alphands, as it was.41

  And they'd always be talking on the phone. So many times, "Get me the British ambassador." And David would tell you sometimes of the extraordinary places he'd been when he was ferreted out to talk to Jack. And as I said, with David—well, there was this one thing about British Guiana which one night David really was worried about and Jack said, "Well, what shall I do?" and it was against rather our position, but David said, "You should call U Thant"42 and tell him whatever it was. So anyway, Jack did that and everything, you know, worked out well. And then this Skybolt thing—after Nassau,43 David came back to Florida with us and, of course, the next day the whole thing blew up. Godfrey McHugh came tearing in, saying, "Have you heard the wonderful news, Mr. President? They've just shot off Skybolt and it worked," or something. And Jack said, "What? Goddamn you, Godfrey, get out of here!" And he—so, anyway, he and David sat there and everything was so awful. And they called Gilpatric, and McNamara was away and then David went into another room and called Harold Macmillan. But you know, that closeness kept—well, I mean, everything could have blown apart between England and America then. And of all Jack's friends now, David Gore's the one, I'd say next to Bobby and me, he's the one who's been the most wounded.44 Perhaps that's not fair, but he's the friend that I'll always see for the rest of my life. So many of the others I can't bear to see because I miss—Jack's lacking. I mean, the Bartletts, the Bradlees, the people you saw like that. Anyway—

  Well, David is one of the—sort of intellectually and emotionally he's a rich person, and a generous one, and—

  And he's not—ambitious. I always kept hoping he'd give up his title and be prime minister one day, but I think he'll be foreign secretary. He's not—he doesn't have this drive that Jack did, but he still cares. I suppose he can do as much that way.

  Well, I've been after him too to try to get him to give up his title, but it's clear that he's probably not—not going to do it.

  It isn't because he cares that much about his title. It's just that he's never been pushy.

  That's right. He thinks if he does this it will signal the fact that he wants to be prime minister, which he thinks is an absurd thing for him to want to be. Well, of course, it isn't. In the winter of or in early spring of '63, one big thing, of course, was the steel crisis and—were you—you were around then?45

  And I remember how really outraged Jack was. You know, it's one of the few times—he really controlled his temper. I mean, you never saw him lose it, but just sometimes that flash. I mean, he was really—what Roger Blough did to him—

  He felt that Roger Blough had double-crossed him.

  Yes. I just remember the expression. His mouth was really tight. And you just didn't do that, you just didn't behave that way. Bobby said to me later that if we'd known the people like André Meyer or something, or had more friends in that community, perhaps it could have all been arranged with less bitterness. But then I can remember that it was back and forth between his office and the White House and calling everyone and getting—Clark Clifford was the one person they found who they thought the others would trust—and sending him up to negotiate and which person would back out. It was the man—I met him the other day.

  From Chicago.

  Was it Laughlin?46 Or whichever company first broke, and he was at the Library dinner for Jack. Oh, and then I remember Bobby saying to me later, November, that—Remember how it said in the press that the FBI got sent into everybody's home at night or something—the reporters—

  Woke up reporters at two in the morning.

  Bobby was talking about how awful J. Edgar Hoover's been since Jack died and the way he curries favor with Lyndon Johnson by sending him all these awfu
l reports about everyone. Bobby said that he'd always, you know, tried to deal so nicely with Hoover and whenever anything—anything the FBI ever did well, it was fine with him if Hoover took credit for it and anything the FBI ever did badly, you know, Bobby would take credit for it. And that was all the FBI, not Bobby, who sent those people in—which was what really caused an awful lot of the bitterness against Jack, wasn't it?

  Yes. Yeah. Sort of sounds like—

  I mean, I can't remember who they wrote up, or what reporter they would be waking up right now. But I remember Jack being upset at that.

  Arthur Goldberg played an active role in this steel thing and Ted Sorensen, I suppose, I imagine. But the President was really—

  It seems to me mostly Jack on the phone and Clark Clifford. But I suppose all the rest went on in the office—I don't know.

  Would you say that this—he was madder over this than anything else, on any other occasion in the administration?

  I think just after Roger Blough came in his office and told him that—you know, a flare. And as I say, the second closest thing I've seen to it is sometimes after the Germans have done one more damn irritating but relatively minor thing. Yes, I would say the steel thing. And then it changed from madness—I mean, all the time he was acting in the crisis, he wasn't acting out of madness and temper. Then it was just trying to see how you could—then he was working it like a chess board. Well, I guess you just don't do that.