The New York Times: “A group of the nation’s most knowledgeable gun experts, meeting in Maryland, agreed that, considering the gun, the distance, the angle and the movement of the president’s car, the assassin was either an exceptional marksman or fantastically lucky in placing his shots.”
And Tom Wicker, in the Times, quotes the doctors in the emergency room, Malcolm Perry and Kemp Clark: “Mr. Kennedy was hit by a bullet in the throat, just below the Adam’s apple…This wound had the appearance of a bullet’s entry. Mr. Kennedy also had a massive, gaping wound in the back and on the right side of the head.”
Shot from the front? Oswald was shooting down, from behind.
Gossip flying.
Kenny O’Donnell: “Crossfire…There were shots from behind the fence ahead of the car.”
Dave Powers: “like riding into an ambush.”
Someone—can’t remember who—said he was told the CIA believed there were two shooters.83
Rumor: the limo came to almost a complete stop before the second shot.
Rumor: Jack was going to drop Johnson in ’64.
Rumor: Bobby called the CIA an hour after he got the news and asked, “Did you guys have anything to do with this?” and someone came over to walk him around and swear they didn’t.
NOVEMBER 29
Life magazine, with pages of black-and-white frames from the 8 mm. film of the assassination.
It still seems like a movie—after the scene is done, Jack will go back to his trailer, wash the makeup off, and see what fun there is to be had that evening.
What I can see —what I look at for a long time—are the images of Jackie, scrambling away from Jack, getting pushed back into the car, holding him as his blood stains her skirt.
And then I see myself, late in the afternoon, making dinner. I hear shouts. In the street I hold my poor dead boy as his blood pours over me.
The sounds Jackie made—they were surely the same sounds I made.
Animal grief, no thought behind it, no words formed. I hear Jackie’s scream, my scream, again. I think we will always hear it.
NOVEMBER 29
Lyndon Johnson appointed Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission.84
Jack hated Allen Dulles.
I said: You went to Langley and pinned the National Security Medal on his chest.
You praised him to the heavens…
NOVEMBER 30
Aristotle Onassis was here for the funeral.
Georgetown gossip: He stayed at the White House.
This can’t be true.85
DECEMBER 1
Secret Service gossip: The weekend before the assassination, Jack was in Palm Beach. Without Jackie. But not alone.
At a pool party, one of the women pushed him in. Or pulled him in. Whatever happened, he hurt his back—and had to wear his full brace.
He was wearing that brace in Dallas.
Without it, he would have slumped when the first bullet hit him.
With the brace, he was a sitting target when the second bullet hit him.
And the second bullet is the bullet that killed him.86
DECEMBER 8
They say 800,000 people lined the procession route, that 175 million watched it on television.
It’s wrong, but it’s so human, so understandable, that the memory most people will have of Jack is his funeral.
Not what he accomplished, not what he dreamed, but the drummers and the horse and the boy saluting and Jackie in the veil.
And now this Life piece with Jackie, talking about “Camelot.”
King Arthur. Queen Guinevere. That was always Jackie’s fantasy: European, royal. And magical: “One brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.”
She hammered the point: “There’ll be great presidents again, but there’ll never be another Camelot again…It will never be that way again.”87
Genius. Who knew she had this artistry in her, waiting for the right moment?
Her man. Finally, all hers. A romance never to be repeated, never to be equaled.
DECEMBER 9
The New York Times: Several people said they had seen Oswald firing at a practice range twice within three weeks of the assassination.
DECEMBER 11
I tell friends my head is full of fog, that I am useless, and they tell me they feel the same way.
But one thought is clear, and all mine, and only mine, and I have it every waking moment: If I was any influence on Jack at all…on race and poverty and Vietnam…if I moved him away from safe ideas to dangerous ones…then I am partly responsible for his death.
DECEMBER 22
Harry Truman—the president who established the CIA—published a piece in the Post. His conclusion is astonishing: “I would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the president…There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.”88
DECEMBER 23
A long piece in the National Guardian by a lawyer named Mark Lane.
The assassination, he wrote, was a conspiracy. He lists many points that have been presented as proof of Oswald’s guilt, but that could be contested:
1) First reports said Oswald’s palm print appeared on the rifle. The FBI now states that “no palm prints were found on the rifle.”89
2) Paraffin tests on both hands showed that Oswald had fired a gun recently. A better test: the cheek, which would have been pressed against the rifle. Tests revealed no traces of gunpowder on Oswald’s face.
3) The New York Herald Tribune (Nov. 27) said: “On the basis of accumulated data, investigators have concluded that the first shot, fired as the presidential car was approaching, struck the president in the neck just above the knot of his necktie, then ranged downward into his body.” At the hospital, Dr. Malcolm Perry began to cut an air passage in the president’s throat; he made the incision through the bullet wound and described the bullet hole as “an entrance wound.”
There were more points, but I’m weary.
They all supported Lane’s conclusion: “If Oswald is innocent—and that is a possibility that cannot now be denied—then the assassin of President Kennedy remains at large.”
DECEMBER 24
In the New Republic, Jack Minnis and Staughton Lynd present questions about the FBI report of the assassination.
Like…if Jack’s car was seventy-five to a hundred yards away, moving about twenty-five miles an hour, how did Oswald, using a bolt-action rifle, fire three shots in 5.5 seconds?
Hubert Hammerer, a champion shooter at the Olympics, said that Oswald might have fired the first shot but he didn’t think one man could have fired three shots in five seconds with that gun.90
DECEMBER 25
Christmas with the boys. I made the ham with bourbon glaze. The boys pretended it made them drunk—my first laugh since…before.
DECEMBER 26
The saddest words in obituaries: “survived by his wife.”
DECEMBER 28
Reading poetry for solace.
“Time held him green and dying/ Though he sang in his chains like the sea.”91
DECEMBER 31
A quiet dinner with the Truitts. Anne made coq au vin from the Julia Child book, with little peas and mashed potatoes. Jim produced a terrific bottle of Château Gloria.
We talked about Paris, but it seemed distant, like a place we visited in a previous life, when we stayed out late and ate onion soup at 4 a.m. in Les Halles and just generally thought we were the nibs. And maybe we were, but no longer—we’ve seen too much.
My New Year’s poem:
Now we pay for what they did.
Ours is a golden misery.
62 Philip Graham (1915–1963) was publisher and coowner of the Washington Post. Under his leadership, the Post became a national newspaper, and the company expanded into television. His wife, Katharine Graham, was the daughter of the paper’s previous owner. He had
bipolar disorder, drank heavily, and suffered bouts of depression.
63 Curtis LeMay (1906–1990) was an Air Force general who was chief of staff of the Air Force from 1961 to 1965. In World War II, he commanded Air Force operations in Japan, including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was the king of the hawks: during the Cuban missile crisis, he wanted to bomb Cuba, and during the Vietnam War, he called for an expanding bombing campaign of North Vietnam. He veered into politics in 1968 as George Wallace’s vice presidential nominee.
64 As early as May 1961, Lyndon Johnson was convinced that the Vietcong couldn’t be defeated without a significant commitment of American troops. Almost all of Kennedy’s staff agreed. Kennedy did not. To buy time, he sent Gen. Maxwell Taylor to Vietnam. Taylor recalled Kennedy’s caution: “The last thing he wanted was to put in ground forces.” Taylor’s report—send 8,000 US troops to Vietnam—angered Kennedy. So did Robert McNamara’s assessment: 200,000 US soldiers would ultimately be needed. Still, Kennedy resisted. He tried again, this time sending John Kenneth Galbraith, who had no appetite for war, to Vietnam. Before Galbraith went, Kennedy explained a political reality: “You have to realize that I can only afford so many defeats in one year.” Meanwhile politicians and the press were beating war drums. So did the public—polls in the summer of 1963 showed that Americans were two to one for military intervention.
65 Jackie Kennedy wanted a country home, both as a family retreat and as a personal one—in order for Jack to entertain other women, she needed to be away from the White House. Middleburg, Virginia, was the ideal choice: rich, private, a longtime favorite of riders and foxhunters. And convenient: twenty-five minutes by helicopter from the White House. In 1961, Glen Ora’s owner agreed to rent her six-bedroom estate on 400 acres to the Kennedys on the condition that they return it unchanged. Jackie loved the house and her life in Middleburg; she joined the Orange County Hunt, arguably the most prestigious in the country. In 1962, the Kennedys wanted to buy Glen Ora. The owner refused, and Jackie built Wexford, a five-bedroom ranch house—large enough so the president and first lady could have separate bedrooms—on thirty-nine acres. The cost infuriated Kennedy; by January of 1963, he had an accountant make sure the builder bought the cheapest materials. And still Jackie kept upgrading the plans. To Kennedy’s dismay, the house that was originally budgeted at $60,000 ended up costing $100,000. In 1964, Jackie sold Wexford for $225,000.
66 Blair Clark (1917–2000) and Jack Kennedy met at the Spee Club at Harvard and became good friends. In 1963, he was general manager and vice president of CBS News.
67 This was Mary’s first appearance at the White House since Phil Graham named her as JFK’s mistress. Mary had to know that many, if not most, of the guests would be looking at Jackie for a reaction to her presence. Jackie gave them nothing to gossip about. At dinner, she reportedly told Adlai Stevenson what she had said, in confidence, to others: “I don’t care how many girls Jack sleeps with as long as I know he knows it’s wrong, and I think he does now. Anyway, that’s all over, for the present.” What she didn’t say: The only lover she couldn’t tolerate was a social peer—Mary Meyer—and she had extracted her husband’s promise to end that affair.
That night, Mary made no effort to be inconspicuous. She wore an inappropriate, attention-getting dress—flowery chiffon, suitable for summer—and when she stumbled into the White House after her walk in the snow, her dress was wet and she looked disheveled.
As for Kennedy, his scene with Mary that night didn’t seem to distress him. As Gretchen Rubin notes in Forty Ways of Looking at JFK, he went to the pool with one woman at 1:30 a.m. and spent eighteen minutes with her, and then, at 2:40 a.m., he spent twelve minutes in the pool with another woman.
68 The music was bossa nova, and the song was “Jazz Samba,” by Washington guitarist Charlie Byrd, featuring saxophonist Stan Getz. It had just become the number one album. It stayed on the charts for seventy weeks.
69 Norman Cousins was editor of Saturday Review. After the bombing of Hiroshima, he became a crusader for world government and nuclear disarmament.
70 Charles F. Spalding (1918–1999) was introduced to Kennedy by his Yale roommate. He was an usher at Kennedy’s wedding and campaigned for him in 1960. After an early career as a screenwriter in Los Angeles, he founded an investment company. Later, he was vice president of Lazard. Proximity to Jack Kennedy upended his marriage. He made no effort to hide his infidelities; on one occasion, with spectacular ineptitude, he propositioned Lee Radziwill. In the West Room of the White House at three in the morning of November 23, 1963, Robert Kennedy asked Spalding to be the one to lift the lid of JFK’s casket and decide if it should be open or closed. “It would be better if it weren’t open,” Spalding said.
71 After the party, Kennedy twice invited Tony to join him on a state visit to Europe at the end of June. Years later, Sally Bedell Smith interviewed Tony: “He made a pass. It was a pretty strenuous attack, not as if he pushed me down, but his hands wandered. I said, ‘That’s it, so long.’ I was running like mad…I was pretty surprised, but I was kind of flattered, and appalled too.” JFK’s behavior struck her as “odd…but it seems odder knowing what we now know about Mary.”
72 William Atwood (1919–1989) was a writer for the New York Herald Tribune, a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson, Kennedy’s ambassador to Guinea, and editor in chief of Cowles Communications. In the fall of 1963, Kennedy sent him on a secret mission to Cuba to discuss the possibility of peaceful relations.
73 Wallis Simpson (1896–1986) was an American socialite who had been married twice when she met Edward VIII, duke of Windsor (then the prince of Wales), at a party. She became Edward’s mistress, leading to the “abdication crisis” in which he stepped down as king in order to be with her. They married in 1937.
74 Kennedy’s “sincerity” was pure self-deception. From the start of his presidency, he was reckless. Larry Newman, a Secret Service agent, quoted in The Dark Side of Camelot, by Seymour Hersh: “You were on the most elite assignment in the Secret Service, and you were there watching an elevator or a door because the president was inside with two hookers. It just didn’t compute. Your neighbors and everybody thought you were risking your life, and you were actually out there to see that he’s not disturbed while he’s having an interlude in the shower with two gals from Twelfth Avenue.”
75 As Mary knew, this effort was more than Kennedy made when Jackie lost a baby in 1956. That summer, he was cruising in the Mediterranean with his friend George Smathers and having a terrific time with any beautiful woman he could seduce. After he got the news, he stayed on the yacht for three days, until his father ordered him to come home or forget about a political career. Why was he so heartless? He confided in close friends: Jackie was sick of his infidelity and eager to show him she could be unfaithful, too. She’d had an affair…with William Holden. She’d told Jack about it. Then she was pregnant. Why didn’t he rush home? “I wasn’t sure I was the father.”
76 Kennedy described this trip as “the happiest three days of my life.”
77 In 1961, a Gallup poll reported the public approved of testing by a margin of two to one. Although public opinion and the military continued to oppose the treaty, Kennedy decided he’d stake his presidency on it. A massive White House PR campaign was successful—by September, 80 percent of the public supported it. On September 23, the Senate ratified the treaty by an eighty-to-nineteen vote. Ted Sorensen: No other single accomplishment in the White House “gave the president greater satisfaction.”
78 Jackie’s trip to Greece was long and, for Kennedy, awkward. Soon after she left, he wrote an undated three-page note to Mary:
Why don’t you leave suburbia for once—come and see me—either here—or at the Cape next week or in Boston on the 19th. I know it is unwise, irrational, and that you may hate it—on the other hand you may not—and I will love it. You say that it is good for me not to get what I want. After all these years—you should give me a more loving
answer than that. Why don’t you just say yes.
Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy’s secretary, didn’t send the note. Why not? The most likely answer: the death of the Kennedys’ newborn son on August 9 was followed by unprecedented displays of marital affection, and perhaps Lincoln wanted to protect the revival of their marriage. She kept the note. At a 2016 auction, it sold for $89,000.
Kennedy did go to Boston on October 19 for the All New England Salute Dinner to President John F. Kennedy, but he also flew there on Saturday, October 11, for the Harvard-Columbia football game. He left at halftime to visit his son’s grave, where he told Dave Powers, “Patrick seems so alone here.” He spent the night at the Sheraton Plaza Boston with his twenty-year-old lover, Mimi Beardsley.
Another letter went missing that month. On October 10, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a personal letter, proposing a nonaggression pact between the NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations and offering additional suggestions to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. State Department officials who opposed the Kennedy-Khrushchev disarmament plans intercepted the letter and didn’t forward it to the White House.
Also on October 11, Kennedy ignored the National Security Council and had McGeorge Bundy, his National Security advisor, issue National Security Action Memorandum 263—it was now official policy that the bulk of US military personnel would leave Vietnam by the end of 1965, beginning with “1,000 US military personnel by the end of 1963.”
79 This was the last time Mary saw Kennedy.
80 On November 21, just before he flew to Texas, Kennedy reviewed a casualty list for Vietnam: more than 100 Americans had died there. Malcolm Kilduff, his assistant press secretary, has recalled he was disturbed and angry: “It’s time for us to get out. The Vietnamese aren’t fighting for themselves. We’re the ones doing the fighting. After I come back from Texas, that’s going to change. There’s no reason for us to lose another man over there. Vietnam is not worth another American life.” On the other hand, as Garry Wills writes in The Kennedy Imprisonment, a speech that Kennedy was to have delivered on November 22 presented his escalation of American forces in Vietnam as a great success: The United States has “increased our special counterinsurgency forces which are now engaged in South Vietnam by 600 percent.”
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