178 “Eunice can hardly wait”: RK to JBK, Jan. 4, 1960, JPKP.
178 “she was direct”: Deeda Blair interview.
178 “make Jack laugh”: AH, p. 429.
178 “fantastically dogged”: Liston, p. 55.
178 “It was not an easy”: Sargent Shriver interview.
178 The handsome scion of: Liston, pp. 14–36.
178 Sarge and Eunice were married: ibid., pp. 53, 63–66.
179 “boy scout”: ibid., p. 71.
179 “unruffled courtesy”: ATD, p. 146.
179 a successful program that: ibid., p. 607.
179 “you never get the feeling”: Liston, p. 176.
179 “a person capable of penetrating”: Sargent Shriver interview.
179 “I never saw Jack act”: Eunice Shriver interview.
Chapter Fifteen
180 The first flashpoint: ATD, p. 329; Horne, p. 290.
180 “The President was watching”: Rostow OH; Ward OH.
181 “a special relationship”: Brandon OH.
181 “rather have [David’s] judgment”: AH, p. 504.
181 “David belonged to all three”: Horne, p. 307.
181 Not only was Gore’s: HTF, p. 563.
181 “English political society”: ATD, p. 83.
181 At Oxford, Gore lost: The Times, Jan. 28, 1985.
181 They shared a sense: Pamela Harlech interview.
181 Both men were sons: ibid.; Duke of Devonshire interview.
181 “I think he had deep”: Harlech OH.
182 A member of Parliament: HTF, p. 563.
182 “He took a very keen interest”: The Sunday Times, March 28, 1965.
182 During the campaign: Evening Standard, June 4, 1968.
182 When Gore met with Kennedy: Daily Mail, Jan. 9, 1962.
182 “must come to Washington”: ATD, p. 424.
182 By that time: ibid., p. 423; HTF, p. 563.
182 “David fitted exactly”: Duchess of Devonshire interview.
182 “Speaking with the bluntness”: ATD, p. 335.
182 The British government opposed: Horne, pp. 291–92.
182 “deepest anxiety”: Macmillan, p. 329.
182 “languid Edwardian”: ATD, p. 375.
182 “a sharp, disillusioned”: ibid., p. 376.
183 “elegance, information”: AJ, p. 8.
183 “common experiences”: Horne, p. 288.
183 Macmillan disliked Joe: ibid., p. 280.
183 “I ‘fell’ for him”: Harold Macmillan to JBK, Feb. 18, 1964, HMA.
183 “They were astonished”: Duchess of Devonshire interview.
183 Kennedy’s bond with Macmillan: KE, p. 558; ATD, p. 376.
183 The President had already: ATD, p. 333; Harold Macmillan Journal, Mar. 26, 1961, HMA.
183 “pressed very hard”: Macmillan Journal, Mar. 26, 1961, HMA.
183 “Kennedy obviously thought”: Brandon OH.
184 “in order not to be”: Macmillan Journal, Mar. 26, 1961, HMA.
184 “worthy of engaging”: ATD, p. 329.
184 “Kennedy was ready”: Rostow OH.
184 Operation Pluto: Alsop I, p. 221.
184 “He tried to keep”: Dillon interview.
184 Kennedy considered several options: Macmillan, p. 353; ATD, p. 232; Rostow OH.
184 “a complete muddle”: Macmillan, p. 353.
185 As originally conceived: ATD, pp. 237, 243.
185 “Boss, it checks out”: Dickerson, p. 72.
185 “We were led to believe”: McNamara OH.
185 Arthur Schlesinger expressed: ATD, pp. 240, 255.
185 “curious atmosphere”: ibid., p. 250.
185 Rusk seemed dubious but: PK, p. 80; ATD, p. 250; Newsweek, May 1, 1961.
185 he questioned the likelihood: ATD, pp. 247–49.
185 “He couldn’t quite bring”: Alsop I, p. 226.
185 “the issue forever”: Rostow OH.
185 “The President was quite passive”: Sorensen interview.
185 “frankly for a vacation”: TCY, p. 99.
185 They stayed at: Earl E.T. Smith, The Fourth Floor: An Account of the Castro Communist Revolution (Smith II), p. 222; Julia Amory interview.
186 “Kennedy wasn’t a great”: TCY, p. 99.
186 “He loved Earl”: Charles Bartlett interview.
186 A graduate of Yale: Smith II, pp. 4, 5, 7.
186 For the next eighteen months: ibid., pp. 20, 30, 174.
186 “Castro’s own boy”: Charley Bartlett to JFK, ND (probably April 1961), Bartlett Papers, JFKL.
186 Shortly after Batista: Smith II, pp. 230–34; KT, p. xxxvi.
186 continued to belittle: Schlesinger interview; Laura Bergquist Knebel OH.
186 “the pro-Castro elements”: Earl E.T. Smith to JFK, Feb. 21, 1961, Evelyn Lincoln Papers, JFKL.
187 “My father said”: Earl E.T. Smith Jr. interview.
187 But Mac Bundy and Schlesinger: TCY, pp. 107–108.
187 “What the hell has happened”: ibid., p. 107.
187 “He told me . . . he expected”: Spalding OH.
187 Ben and Tony Bradlee, who were: Ben Bradlee interview.
187 Although there had been: Fuerbringer interview.
187 With the assistance of: ATD, p. 261.
187 A similar article: TCY, p. 109; PK, p. 83.
187 “In Miami everyone is talking”: Charles Bartlett interview.
188 “did not land on Khrushchev’s desk”: Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 91.
188 However, neither the Soviets: ibid., p. 93.
188 Out at Glen Ora: Paul Fout interview; Eve Fout interview.
188 “striding suddenly into”: Slater, p. 79.
188 The initial air assault: ATD, p. 270; PK, p. 90.
188 He lied unintentionally: Arthur Schlesinger OH-CU; ATD, p. 271.
188 When the cover story: TCY, p. 115; ATD, pp. 272–73.
188 At 2 p.m. on Sunday: PK, p. 92; Spalding OH.
188 “menacing the field mice”: Time, Apr. 14, 1961.
188 Late that afternoon: PK, p. 91.
188 “sat on in silence”: ATD, p. 273; TCY, p. 116, cites Schlesinger interview with JBK as well as Lem Billings Diary for Apr. 29, 1961.
189 “Kennedy understood part”: Dillon interview.
189 After a day of fighting: PK, p. 92.
189 “an impish look”: Time, Apr. 28, 1961.
189 Jackie twirled: Beale, p. 63.
189 After the First Couple left: PK, p. 93; Time, Jan. 5, 1962; ATD, p. 279; JWH, pp. 270, 272.
189 “his normal quota”: Time, Apr. 28, 1961.
189 Jackie later told Arthur: TCY, pp. 123–24, citing draft for ATD at JFKL.
189 “so upset all day”: HTF, pp. 697–98.
189 “That’s the only time”: Spalding OH.
189 “He had this golf club”: AH, p. 336.
189 “a crime which has revolted”: Newsweek, May 1, 1961.
190 “suffered heavily in prestige”: DBD, Apr. 28, 1961.
190 Harold Macmillan privately: Horne, p. 296.
190 “should have committed”: ibid., p. 300.
190 In all likelihood: ATD, p. 295.
190 “sour fog of failure”: Time, Apr. 28, 1961.
190 “sadder and wiser”: NYT, Apr. 21, 1961.
190 “against the advice of Rusk and Bowles”: ibid.
190 “had serious misgivings”: NYT, Apr. 28, 1961.
190 “I think a public panel”: Charley Bartlett to JFK, ND (probably April 1961), Bartlett Papers, JFKL.
190 Instead, Kennedy appointed: ATD, p. 292.
190 “admirable, nice figure”: PR-JFK, vol. 1, p. 49.
190 “It’s just like Eisenhower”: ATD, p. 292.
190 “I would have been impeached”: Time, Jan. 5, 1962.
190 “Before the Bay of Pigs”: AH, p. 336.
191 “that the odds would break”: Alsop OH.
191 “somewhat deviously”: Time, Apr. 28, 1961.
191 “soft” Stevenson man: RKHL, p. 122; DBD, Mar. 28, 1961.
191 “that will look pretty good”: ATD, p. 289.
191 “certain mistrust”: Richard Davies OH-CU.
191 McNamara emphatically: McNamara interview.
191 “do your intellectual”: ibid.
191 “became so disenchanted”: Gilpatric OH.
191 Stricken with guilt: TCY, p. 146.
191 moving his office: Anderson, p. 264; PK, p. 114; Dickerson, p. 72.
191 Bobby had appeared: ATD, p. 238.
191 “I need someone who knows”: Sorensen interview.
192 “Bobby was the only”: Collier and Horowitz, pp. 271–72.
192 Beneath the radar: TCY, p. 134.
192 According to Richard Bissell: ibid.
192 “people would be gratified”: RKHL, p. 155.
192 “given to believe”: TCY, p. 139.
192 Instead of shutting: RKHL, p. 123.
192 “some very naÏve questions”: Laura Bergquist Knebel OH.
192 “Bobby became very anti-Castro”: Davies OH-CU.
193 “If we don’t want”: TCY, p. 124.
193 “espionage, sabotage”: ibid., p. 375, citing RFK’s statement in November 1961.
193 “the failure of the covert”: Macmillan I, p. 353.
193 “I was ready to go”: Sidey I, p. 228.
193 “Vietnam would be next”: TCY, p. 161, citing Billings diary for May 7, 1961.
193 “we began to talk”: LG, p. 935.
193 Kennedy was asking: Alsop I, p. 148.
193 “I just don’t think”: ATD, p. 337.
194 For public consumption: ibid., p. 339.
194 But he also pushed: ATD, p. 335; Macmillan I, pp. 346–47; Rostow OH; PK, p. 112.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Biographers are accustomed to sifting and cross-checking facts, but writing about Jack and Jackie Kennedy also requires separating fact from myth—what might be called the Camelot variations. Whether in hagiographies or attack biographies, the Kennedys are often unrecognizable. Researching and writing this book was like restoring an old photograph: filling in the missing pieces, sharpening the blurred lines, removing the discolorations. I was helped in this effort by a wide spectrum of people. The most prominent members of the Kennedy circle provided the contours of the photograph
and the traits of its central characters. Many of the details came from people on the fringe of the Kennedys’ world. They supplied missing bits and pieces, which they recalled with the vividness of people watching history for the first time. I tested one memory against another—and against interviews, diaries and correspondence from the period, memoirs written in the decades after JFK died, and the most reliable accounts of historians and biographers.
Several dozen of the people I interviewed about their experiences during the Kennedy administration had not discussed them publicly before, and I am deeply grateful for their candor and willingness to relive events that were sometimes painful. Others had previously spoken about those years, and I thank them for their patience as I nudged them to dig even further into their memories for fresh anecdotes and insights. If I have overlooked anyone, I beg forgiveness in advance:
Marella Agnelli; Howard Allen; Susan Mary Alsop; Charles and Julia Amory; Cicely Angleton; Hugh D. Auchincloss III; Letitia Baldrige; Charles and Martha Bartlett; Kenneth Battelle; James Bellows; William and Deeda Blair; Elizabeth Boyd; Tom Braden; Benjamin Bradlee; Tony Bradlee; Elizabeth Burton; Liz Carpenter; Oleg Cassini; Otis Chandler; Marion Leiter Charles; Helen Chavchavadze; George Christian; Countess Marina Cicogna; John Coleman; Nancy Tenney Coleman; Nellie Connally; Janet Felton Cooper; Vivian Crespi; Walter Curley; Lloyd Cutler; Carmine De Sapio; The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire; Wyatt Dickerson; Douglas Dillon; Joan Dillon, la Duchesse de Mouchy; Ymelda Dixon; Louise Drake; Joseph Dryer; Peter Duchin; Robin Chandler Duke; Nancy Hogan Dutton; Rowland Evans; Mimi Beardsley Fahnestock; Paul Fay; Justin Feldman; Myer Feldman; Dr. Frank Finnerty; Wendy Taylor Foulke; Paul and Eve Fout; Jean Friendly; Otto Fuerbringer; Alice Grimes Gaither; John Kenneth and Catherine Galbraith; Barbara Gamarekian; Katharine Graham; Gilbert “Benno” Graziani; George Griffin; Thomas Guinzburg; Lloyd Hand; Barbara Harbach; Patricia Hass; Nancy White Hector; Richard Helms; Reinaldo Herrera; Solange Herter; Lord Jenkins of Hillhead; Lady Bird Johnson; Horace Kelland; Joan Kennedy; James and Barbara Ketchum; Suzanne Roosevelt Kloman; Henry and Audrey Koehler; Polly Kraft; Richard Krolik; Wendy Vanderbilt Lehman; Piedy Lumet; William Manchester; Paul Manno; Jaclin Marlin; Anne Mayfield; Nan McEvoy; Enüd Sztanko McGiffert; Robert McNamara; Harry McPherson; Kay Meehan; Starke Meyer; Tom Monroe; Wendy Morgan; Letizia Mowinckel; Molly Vere Nicoll; Paul Nitze; Kenneth Noland; Lorraine Pearce; Scott Peek; Claiborne and Nuala Pell; Walter Pincus; George Plimpton; Leo and June Racine; Lee Radziwill; Dr. Judson Randolph; Marcus Raskin; James Reed; Jewel Reed; John Reilly; Bernard Ridder; Jane Ridgeway; Walt and Elspeth Rostow; Pierre-Marie Rudelle; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.; Marian Cannon Schlesinger; Sargent and Eunice Shriver; Hugh Sidey; Earl E. T. Smith Jr.; Theodore Sorensen; Richard Spalding; Natalie Spencer; Frank Stanton; James Symington; Anne Truitt; Stewart Udall; William vanden Heuvel; Jeanne Murray Vanderbilt; Sander Vanocur; Gore Vidal; Sue Vogelsinger; Janet Whitehouse; Sue Wilson; Perry Wolff; Jessie Wood; and Phyllis Wyeth.
I relied as well on numerous individuals who helped me in ways large and small with their suggestions and support: Jonathan Alter, Andy Athy, Andrea Ball, Peter and Amy Bernstein, Michael Beschloss, Kai Bird, Terry Bracy, Sarah Bradford, Tom Brokaw, Brock Brower, Sam Butler, Bernard and Joan Carl, Sasha Chavchavadze, Frank Chopin, Joanna Clark, Tim Clark, Payson and Kim Coleman, David Patrick Columbia, Bill and Pat Compton, Mary Copeland, Richard Craven, Robert Dallek, Peter Davis, Susan Sage Dillon, Dominick Dunne, Jim Dunning, Pat Dunnington, Joseph J. Ellis, Alex Forger, Mimi Gilpatric, David and Patty Goodrich, Ginny Grenham, Ed Grosvenor, Louise Grunwald, Selina Hastings, Gale Hayman, George Herrick, Jane Hitchcock, Walter Isaacson, Robert Isabell, Dorothy Jackson, Liz Johnson, Peter Kaplan, Penne Korth, Jonathan Larsen, Griffin Lesher, Susan Magrino, Kinsey Marable, Kati Marton, Clare Crawford Mason, Alyne Massey, Bonnie Matheson, Chris Matthews, William McCue, Charlie and Meriwether McGettigan, Robert Merry, Sir Christopher Meyer, Melody Miller, Linda Mortimer, Oliver Murray, Sheila Mutcher, Al Neuharth, Jeffrey O’Connell, Maryann O’Donnell, John Oliver, Rich Oppel, Maureen Orth, Patricia Patterson, Daune Peckham, Jean Perin, Tammy Pittman, Leezee Porter, Bill Powers, Delina Pryce, Sally Quinn, Carole Radziwill, Eugenie Rahim, Paul Richard, Terri Robinson, Tobie Roosevelt, James Rowe III, Ann Schneider, Aniko Gaal Schott, Tim Sellers, Martha Sherrill, Dolph Simons, Evelyn Small, Hamilton South, Francesca Stanfill, Jean Stein, Strobe and Brooke Talbott, Lane Taylor, Evan Thomas, Betty Tilson, Peter Tufo, Karen Vaughan, Hugo Vickers, Robin West, Heyden White, Robert White, Rosalyn Whitehead, Elizabeth Winthrop, Linden Wise, and Philip Zelikow.
Understanding the look and feel of the White House was essential for my narrative, and Betty Monkman, the White House curator, gave several hours of her time to take me on an extensive tour. Barbara McMillan of the curator’s office provided additional help, as did William Allman, Ms. Monkman’s successor. John Castle, the current owner of La Guerida, Joe Kennedy’s Palm Beach villa, showed me his beautifully restored house and gardens, with Leo Racine, a longtime Kennedy family employee, adding valuable details. Jackie Kennedy’s stepbrother Yusha Auchincloss took me around Hammersmith Farm in Newport as he reminisced about visits by Jack and Jackie Kennedy during the presidency.
I am particularly indebted to William Manchester for graciously granting me exclusive access to his interview notes and other documents, which he used when writing Death of a President and Portrait of a President. These papers, which are stored at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, had been sealed for nearly four decades. They contain striking new details, especially about Jack Kennedy’s last
days and the thoughts and actions of his widow, friends, and associates after the assassination. My thanks to Joseph G. Lynch and James C. Stearns for introducing me to Mr. Manchester, a masterly historian whose work I have long admired.
I am also grateful for permission from the Joseph P. Kennedy Papers Donor Committee to use material from the Joseph P. Kennedy Collection at the Kennedy Library, which provided essential background and perspective on members of the Kennedy family. Paul Kirk, Joann S. Nestor, Tracy Goyette Cote, and Jennifer Quan all helped to expedite access to those papers. For expert guidance on the JPK papers and many other collections in the library, I am thankful to Deborah Leff, Megan Desnoyers, Sharon Kelly, Allan Goodrich, Maura Porter, Michael Desmond, Ron Whealan, James Hill, and others on the library’s dedicated staff.
My thanks as well to the trustees of the Harold Macmillan Book Trust for permission to quote from the former British prime minister’s letters and journals at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Helen Langley, Philippa Blake-Roberts, Caroline Mackenzie, and the Earl of Stockton smoothed the way for my use of this valuable
archive.
Howard Gotlieb of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University also kindly granted me permission to use material from the Myrick Land Collection.
Two largely unknown accounts of the period that offered fresh information about the Kennedys and their circle were the journals of Katie Louchheim, a Democratic party activist and State Department appointee, and the diaries of diplomat David Bruce, ambassador to Britain during the Kennedy years. My thanks to David Wigdor and Mary Wolfskill of the Library of Congress, site of the Louchheim diaries, and Nelson Lankford of the Virginia Historical Society, which houses the Bruce diaries.
Other skilled archivists who helped were Chris Carberry and Peter Drummie at the Massachusetts Historical Society; Linda Seelke and Claudia Anderson at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library; Caroline Preston, who catalogued the Theodore White Papers at Harvard University; Jeffrey Suchanek at the University of Kentucky Wendell Ford Research Center; and Christine Sears and Kenneth Cohen at the Winterthur Archives.
Assembling and digesting this research would have been impossible without the generous assistance of Mike Hill, a man of enormous enthusiasm and amazing resourcefulness. His ability to navigate the Kennedy Library and other archives helped me focus my investigations; his meticulously organized binders filled with clippings, letters, journals, and memos provided vital details to enrich my account of the Kennedy years. His cheerful optimism gave me a lift whenever I felt defeated by mountains of information. He even enlisted his wife, Becky, to help out from time to time. Above all, he became a close and trusted friend.
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