“It means that we’ve got to go”: O’Donnell and Powers, pp. 159–60.
“When the question of West Virginia”: Bradlee, Conversations, p. 26.
“He knew that if he dropped”: Pitts, p. 161.
“The reversal was, of course”: Salinger OH.
Around this time: O’Neill int.
“Give Me That Old Time Religion”: Humphrey quote, Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 253.
“pretty well avoided the religious”: Billings quote, Pitts, p. 161.
“Nobody asked me if I was a Catholic”: O’Donnell and Powers, pp. 166–67.
“Young man, I should tell you”: Battle OH.
“I believe West Virginia brought”: Salinger OH.
had been in the “wor-ah”: Bradlee int.
Ben Bradlee knew: Ibid.
“basic strategy was a psychological one”: Salinger OH.
“We were running the campaign”: Ibid.
“They went through West Virginia”: Author interview with Charles McWhorter.
“I’d give my right testicle to win this one”: Bartlett OH.
“If Jack were beaten in West Virginia”: Macdonald OH.
“The Kennedys asked us to sweat”: Bradlee, Conversations, p. 27.
“Kennedy ignored Jackie”: Ibid., p. 28.
CHAPTER TWELVE: CHARISMA
“We talked to the governor”: KOD.
The Kennedy treatment: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 247.
Even with this agreement: Dutton OH.
“I’m not running a popularity contest”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 213.
After West Virginia he was convinced: Author interview with William J. Green III.
“I could tell, as Governor Lawrence”: KOD.
“It was still the last moment”: Moynihan OH.
“This organization, this Kennedy-for-President”: Horton OH.
“God, why won’t he be satisfied”: Bill Blair, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
Eleanor Roosevelt would arrive: Author interview with Lester Hyman.
“riverboat gambler”: Bradlee, Conversations, p. 18.
“He was having throat problems”: Ibid., pp. 30–31.
“six regions, and every region was manned”: KOD.
“looked like an impartial newspaper”: Salinger OH.
“It was the goddamndest thing”: Robin Cross, J.F.K.: A Hidden Life (Boston: C. E. Tuttle, 1992), p. 78.
“I wasn’t any Chamberlain-umbrella”: Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 573–74.
“We seized on the opportunity”: Salinger OH.
“There were a few rough Irishmen”: KOD.
“I was really digging at Johnson pretty hard”: Salinger OH.
With Lyndon Johnson’s arrows: KOD. “Adlai called Daley and said to Daley, ‘I have a lot of support in the convention and I am going to place my name before the convention. I would like to know from you how many votes I can count on out of the Illinois delegation?’ Mayor Daley said, ‘Well, Governor, you know I have always been for you. I supported you for the governorship. However, it is too late now, I think you are making a mistake. In answer to your question, Governor, in all candor the answer is none. You will not get one vote from the Illinois delegation.’ ”
Despite some packing of the galleries: Bradlee, Conversations, p. 31. “At first glance it looked as if everyone on the floor was screaming and waving something. But a careful look showed most of the delegates sitting quietly, half-hidden by demonstrators.”
“operation was slick”: Author interview with John Ehrlichman.
“If Kennedy wants Johnson”: Dallek, Lone Star Rising, p. 575.
“ ‘Well, I’d just as soon’ ”: Salinger OH.
“It was a case of grasping”: Schlesinger, Journals, p. 75.
“Don’t worry, Jack, in two weeks”: Joe Sr. to JFK, Bartlett OH.
“They sat rapt, then content”: Theodore White, The Making of the President, 1960 (New York: Atheneum, 1961), p. 178.
“I took the telegram to him”: Pierre Salinger, P.S.: A Memoir (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 89.
“meeting of 150 ministers”: Account of the organized religious campaign to defeat Kennedy drawn from Shaun A. Casey, The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 146–49.
“It was night and we were late”: William Atwood, “In Memory of John F. Kennedy,” Look, December 31, 1963.
“ten times after we got”: KOD.
“In the end, he alone made”: Ibid.
“meanest, nastiest-looking”: Author interview with Robert S. Strauss.
“to satisfy this audience”: KOD.
The loud daily barking: Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), p. 41.
Jack’s ongoing transformation: Sutton int.
“I wonder where Dick Nixon”: Author interview with Dave Powers.
“Kennedy took the thing”: Author interview with Don Hewitt.
“He was nervous”: Harris int.
Bill Wilson had been a young: Author interview with Bill Wilson.
“He and I were standing there”: Hewitt int.
“The design was that we attack”: Wilson int.
Once the two men were: Description of candidate rehearsal based on CBS recording of the event.
“Nixon looked awful off camera”: Salinger OH.
“Ted Rogers, who was Nixon’s”: Wilson int.
“Five minutes to airtime”: Ibid.
“erase the assassin image”: White, p. 285.
“That son of a bitch”: Fawn Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 427.
“What the hell is this?”: Wilson int.
“I had the impression that”: Schlesinger, Journals, p. 88.
“He was likely to get himself”: Dean Acheson, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
“There was hardly a place”: The account of Martin Luther King’s arrest and the Kennedys’ effort to free him is drawn from Harris Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), p. 16.
“Last week, Dick Nixon hit”: Fay, p. 60.
“He’s a filthy, lying son of a bitch”: Goodwin, p. 105.
“Nixon wanted the presidency so bad”: Fay, 9.
“They’re much more concerned”: KOD.
“I was beginning to panic now”: Ibid.
“It started out like gangbusters”: Salinger OH.
“Ohio did that to me”: JFK quote, White, p. 21.
“All those people now say”: KOD.
“Nebraska has the largest Republican”: Horton OH.
“Does this mean you’re president”: Matthews, p. 179.
“What am I going to tell the press?”: Salinger OH.
“I want to repeat through this wire”: Telegram courtesy of Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace.
“Mr. O’Donnell, the president has”: KOD.
“Nixon was, in my opinion”: Author interview with Herb Klein.
“I think we are in enough trouble in the world today”: Richard Nixon, Six Crises (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962), p. 404.
“It was the difference between”: Klein int.
“He had done it by driving home”: Time, November 16, 1960.
“He wisely decided to concentrate”: Schlesinger, Journals, p. 93.
“I know there is a God”: Jack Kennedy quoted these from Abraham Lincoln during a speech in Muncie, Indiana, on October 5, 1960.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: LANDING
urgent phone calls were placed: Bradlee, Conversations, pp. 33–34.
President-elect Kennedy put a pair of Republicans: Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, pp. 131–36.
McNamara, showing no lack of toughness: Ibid., p. 133.
/> Looking to the liberal faction: Reeves, President Kennedy, pp. 26–27.
Now, as always, concessions needed to be made: Bartlett OH. “I always had the feeling that the decision on Bobby was not made by the President-elect, but I think by his father. I think he took his father’s position on it. I never had the feeling that Bobby had any great burning desire to be attorney general, that this was really almost forced upon him.”
“I think I’ll open the front door”: Bradlee, Conversations, p. 38.
“I think he hadn’t really thought”: KOD.
Kennedy’s “spokes of the wheel”: Ibid. “Roosevelt wanted them competing amongst themselves for what was best for him; at least in reading, this is what I gathered and the president gathered. President Kennedy did not want that; he did not want fighting amongst his staff. He did not want jealousy and infighting; he realized that there would be some competing for presidential favor, that is human nature. But, this was not a goal.”
There was little camaraderie: Parmet, p. 47.
Ben Bradlee, the Washington sophisticate: Bradlee int.
“The president-elect was a complex”: Wofford, pp. 67–68.
You’d see him sitting: Clifford quote, KOD.
“I remember he told me”: Bartlett OH.
“ ‘I’m going to keep the White House white’ ”: Sally Bedell Smith, Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 173.
Kennedy and Ted Sorensen working on inaugural speech in Palm Beach: Thurston Clarke, Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2004), pp. 23–27.
To some who’d once been at Choate: Hearing President Kennedy’s historic call to “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” several of his Choate classmates recalled headmaster George St. John’s use of a quite similar phrase. These included some of his Class of ’35 classmates, at least one of whom charged plagiarism in a survey taken by the school in 1985. Putney Westerfield, Choate ’47, volunteered this account to me:
“For five years I attended compulsory chapel five evenings a week after dinner. Usually the headmaster would quote from the Bible, or literature, or political figures, and make a point concerning how a Choate student should think or act. It was in this context that he would say, once every year or two: ‘Ask not what your school can do for you; ask what you can do for your school.’ Sometimes it might be mundane, like, ‘Be well-dressed and don’t smoke cigarettes when on the train to New York or Boston for vacations.’ Or: ‘Pick up a paper carelessly thrown on the grass.’ Or the campaign for a Christmas gift to each member of the school’s support staff. It took many forms.
“Listening to the inaugural address in 1961 I immediately related the two ‘Ask not’s.
“Many years later, when St. John’s ‘quote books’ (three volumes of them) were found, there was a quotation from Harvard dean LeBaron Briggs who wrote: ‘The youth who loves his alma mater will always ask not “What can she do for me?” but “What can I do for her?” ’ Clearly this was the inspiration source for George St. John who knew Briggs from his own Harvard days in the late 1890s. In 1911, as headmaster, he asked Briggs to give the commencement address at Choate.”
In Counselor, on p. 29, Ted Sorensen cited St. John as the “most credible theory” on the derivation of the “Ask not” exhortation. For whatever reason, he was not able to get Choate administrators to produce St. John’s “quote book” for him. On a visit to Choate in 2010, archivist Judy Donald showed me the “quote book” that contained the Briggs essay. It was right there on an early page of St. John’s loose-leaf binder, right below the hymns to be sung that day.
“greatly exceeded the boldest”: Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 114.
“The positions of the USA, Britain, and France”: Ibid., p. 303.
During those early weeks: Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer, Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), pp. 103–6.
Lem Billings arrived on Friday: Pitts, pp. 191–92.
He joined the couple, too: Ibid., p. 212.
“What would you do now”: Fay OH.
“Listen, Redhead”: Ibid.
But, clearly, the president: Pitts, p. 184.
for Rip Horton to: Horton OH.
“The presidency is not a good place”: Pitts, p. 184.
“The president is counting on you”: The account here of the early organization of the Peace Corps is taken from Wofford’s Of Kennedys and Kings.
“When he became president, Jackie changed”: Author interview with Rachel Mellon.
“Victory has a hundred fathers”: Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 289.
The disembarking Cubans had been assured by Agency officials: An “Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation,” revealed in 2011, said the CIA task force in charge did not believe it could succeed without becoming an open invasion supported by the U.S. military. The task force met on November 1960 to prepare a briefing for President-elect Kennedy. It failed to share with him its assessment that an invasion plan limited to the brigade of Cuban exiles could not succeed. The revelation came through a Freedom of Information request by the National Security Archive.
“Operation Zapata”: Jim Rasenberger, The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs (New York: Scribner, 2011), pp. 138–40.
Background on Guatemala coup: Ibid., pp. 61–62.
Kennedy and Bissell meet during campaign: Harris int.
Bundy and McNamara support Zapata: Rasenberger, p. 159.
But what really clinched it: Ibid., pp. 136–40.
“In a parliamentary government”: Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 115.
landing point shifted from Trinidad: Rasenberger, p. 139.
Castro rounded up: Ibid., pp. 323–25.
Prisoner exchange: Ibid., pp. 361–78.
“I probably made a mistake”: Schlesinger, Journals, 112.
“How could you expect the world”: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 103.
For the first time: Ibid, p. 95.
“I’m the responsible officer”: Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 290.
83 percent in a Gallup poll: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, 386. (That April 1961 number would be the highest in his administration.)
“In the months that followed”: Fay, p. 171.
Even on vacation in Hyannis Port: Ibid.
“I will never compromise the principles”: Ibid., pp. 172–73.
The French president expressed doubts: KOD.
His practical advice: Ibid.
even the appearance of negotiating: Ibid.
“snapping at him like a terrier”: O’Donnell and Powers, p. 296.
“Not too well”: Leaming, p. 309.
He tried everything: KOD.
Kennedy requested a third meeting: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 402.
“If that’s true, it’s going to be a cold winter”: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 171.
“I never met a man like this”: Hugh Sidey, “The Presidency,” Time, October 15, 1984.
“It will have to be for much bigger”: JFK to O’Donnell, Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 430.
“never come face to face with such evil”: Pitts, p. 220.
“Our position in Europe”: Ibid., p. 55.
“He’s imprisoned by Berlin”: Hugh Sidey, John F. Kennedy, President (New York: Atheneum, 1964), p. 218.
On June 21, he would suffer: Leaming, pp. 321–22.
“showcase of liberty, a symbol”: Kempe, p. 423.
Five days later, Senator William Fulbright: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 204.
“Why would Khrushchev put up a wall”: Kempe, p. 379.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: ZENITH
We’d agreed, as had the Soviets: Leaming, p. 337.
“fucked again!”: David Halberstam, The Best
and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972), p. 84.
“If we test only underground”: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 462.
With it came a new pressure: Leaming, pp. 378–80.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 551.
“hard-boiled . . . soft-boiled”: Bradlee, Conversations, pp. 52–53.
Kennedy’s national security team: Leaming, pp. 378–80.
“we were actually superior to the Soviets”: Author interview with John Glenn.
In the fall of 1961: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 482.
Afterward, JFK called both sides: KOD.
His company was raising the price of steel: Ibid.
“what you are doing is in the best interest”: Fay int.
“You have made a terrible mistake”: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 296.
“These guys felt they were so powerful”: KOD.
“cold, deliberate fucking”: Bradlee, Conversations, p. 76.
“wrongly, he could not or would”: KOD.
“You find out about these guys”: Fay int.
“I don’t think U.S. Steel or any other”: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 486.
“where possible”: Fay int.
“the American people will find it hard”: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 485.
“Kennedy’s style of politics”: KOD.
“We looked over all of them as individuals”: Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
“Good night, pal”: To Dave Powers, Smith, p. xiv.
He always exhibited great fondness: Bradlee, Conversations, p. 148.
Even social friends might step: Ibid., pp. 114–15.
He regularly went for a swim: Nancy Tuckerman and Pamela Turnure, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program. Nancy Tuckerman: “Yes, twice a day.”
“Information has been developed”: Perret, p. 346.
He’d regularly see Meyer: Bradlee, Conversations, p. 54.
Washington efforts: “Summary of Civil Rights Progress,” Box 63, Papers of the President, John F. Kennedy Library.
On September 10, the U.S. Supreme Court: KOD.
“I won’t agree to let that boy get to Ole Miss”: Ibid.
Jack and Bobby both were hoping: Ibid.
Jack was now involved in checking: Ibid.
Chris Matthews Complete Library E-book Box Set: Tip and the Gipper, Jack Kennedy, Hardball, Kennedy & Nixon, Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, and American Page 82