JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President (34 page)

Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach reported that his agents had received “a considerable number of telephone calls over the weekend” regarding the Mollenhoff story and Ellen Rometsch, including five from the press secretary Ed Guthman. During his first call, Guthman had asked DeLoach to persuade the New York
Daily News
not to carry the Mollenhoff story. DeLoach refused, and in subsequent calls Guthman asked him to prevent the AP from picking up the article. DeLoach explained that he did not have the personal contacts at the AP to accomplish this, adding that “it was not within the province of the FBI to kill the story.” During their final conversation Guthman told him, “The President was personally interested in having this story killed.” DeLoach replied that the FBI had interviewed Rometsch in July and furnished the results to the attorney general. He advised Guthman to make his own statements to the press “without dragging the FBI into this matter.”

•   •   •

J
ACKIE
HAD
PROPOSED
BUILDING
a home in Atoka after they had been unable to extend the lease on their rented house in the Virginia hunt country. He resisted at first, but capitulated after she went into a sulk. (
She knew he could not tolerate a sulker
, a weakness Billings called his Achilles heel.) He insisted on a modest house. She agreed to keep it under $40,000, but the cost rose to $60,000,
then to almost $100,000
by the time it was completed. When he brought Bartlett to see the foundations he was already in despair. The hills were claustrophobic, the grass brown, the trees bare. “
Can you imagine me ending up
in a place like this?” he asked.

He had agreed to build the house before he or Jackie had visited Camp David, the presidential retreat in the wooded hills of northwestern Maryland. They had assumed that because the Eisenhowers had loved Camp David so much, they would naturally hate it. They were pleasantly surprised when they finally went and returned often, leading him to ask Jackie, “
Why are we building
Atoka when we have this wonderful place for free?”
She had a similar reaction
, telling Chief White House Usher West, “If only I’d realized how nice Camp David really is, I’d never have rented Glen Ora or built Wexford,” the name she had given their new house, hoping it would persuade her husband to like it.

Wexford had been completed that summer, but instead of immediately moving in, they had rented it to strangers, an arrangement a reporter likened to a woman allowing someone else to wear her new mink coat first.
While driving with West to the warehouse
where they stored their furniture in order to choose some items for Wexford, she asked him if a president had ever sold a house while he was in office. West was not sure. “Well, do you have any idea what the repercussions would be if I were to sell Wexford?” she asked. He guessed that she would realize twice what they had paid for it.

She could have gone to Wexford while he was in Boston. Instead, she had taken the children to Camp David because she wanted them to experience their new house for the first time as a family. She was so concerned that he might find an excuse to avoid coming that weekend that she persuaded Princess Galitzine to join them, telling her, “
John detests the country
and loves the ocean and doesn’t want to come. But if
you
come it may persuade
him
to come.” She may have also wanted Galitzine as a counterweight to Lem Billings, who had accompanied Kennedy to Amherst and would be coming with him to Wexford. For thirty years he had been a constant Kennedy family houseguest at Palm Beach, Hyannis Port, or wherever Jack and Jackie happened to be living.
He had arrived at the White House
a week after the inauguration, moved some clothes into a third-floor room, and came and went at will, often tagging along to Virginia and the Cape, prompting her to whisper to West in mock despair, “
Oh, Mr. West, he’s been a houseguest
every weekend since I’ve been married.” She tolerated his constant presence—she had no choice—but if there was ever a weekend when she might have wished he might stay away, it could have been this one.

It would have been surprising had she
not
been jealous of her husband’s relationship with Billings. They had roomed at Choate, traveled across Europe as students, lost their virginity to the same prostitute, and exchanged hundreds of candid letters (during their courtship, Jack had sent her one postcard). Their love affair was platonic for Kennedy, but more complicated for Billings, who was a closeted homosexual.
He had made a pass when they were teenagers
that Kennedy had rebuffed, but it had not damaged their relationship, and for Kennedy to continue their close friendship throughout his political career, at a time of great homophobia, was both reckless and courageous. His fondness for Billings puzzled outsiders.
Eunice called it
“more than a friendship,” adding, “it was a complete liberation of the spirit. . . . [Jack] was a completely liberated man when he was with Lem.” Kennedy knew that Billings had not only loved him longer than anyone outside of his own family, he loved him for himself.
Billings claimed to know
more about Kennedy’s personal life than anyone else, including members of Kennedy’s family, once saying, “He never had any secrets from me.” There is no evidence that Billings knew about Ellen Rometsch. But if Kennedy did confide in anyone that weekend, it would have been him.

The weekend could not have been more ill-timed. Aside from worrying about a potential scandal that might lead to his impeachment, Kennedy was monitoring an imminent coup in Vietnam that might become his next Bay of Pigs. He had too much on his mind to pretend he liked a home that he had never wanted to build and that had not turned out very well. But despite his reservations, Billings sensed that he was still excited by the prospect of seeing it for the first time, “
because it was brand new
and his own possession.” If so, his excitement was short-lived. There was nothing grand or distinctive about the fifteen-room yellow stucco ranch house stretching like a barracks across a small rise grandiloquently known as “Rattlesnake Mountain.” His own parsimoniousness, not Jackie’s design, was largely to blame. The house had a fine view of the Blue Mountains, a stable for Jackie’s horses and the children’s ponies, and a handsome flagstone terrace, but its interior was disappointing.
There were not enough closets
or spare bedrooms for his liking, and he considered the collection of suggestive Mogul miniatures that Jackie had hung in the dining room in questionable taste.
Nor did Wexford impress
Princess Galitzine, who was surprised to find a “modest house without a butler, gardener, or even a garden.”

Jackie was riding when Galitzine arrived
, so he fixed her a Bloody Mary and joked about picking up the telephone and calling Khrushchev. In an attempt to make conversation, she raised an uncomfortable subject: what he planned to do after 1968. “
You’ll be so young
,” she said. “Aren’t you afraid of being bored?” He feared boredom almost as much as death and was probably not in a mood to joke about his post–White House years, which thanks to Ellen Rometsch might arrive sooner than the princess imagined, but he gamely played along, saying, “I’ll probably nominate myself ambassador to Italy.”
Then he took her for a drive
, stopped for ice cream, and had to borrow money from his Secret Service agents to pay for their cones.

He maintained the easy banter
throughout dinner and a screening of home movies of Jackie’s cruise. “Next year, when I’m reelected, Jackie will stay at the house with the kids and I’ll come on the boat,” he joked, adding that he hoped Galitzine would join him and introduce him to her friends.

After the Onassis film, he screened one of his televised debates with Nixon. It is hard to imagine what possessed him to show it. Jackie and Billings had seen the debates live, and had probably watched the film several times. Perhaps he wanted to impress Galitzine or revisit happier times. He was suddenly no longer “the jokey, affectionate playboy” Galitzine had seen earlier that evening. Instead, he stared at the screen transfixed, reminding her of a boxer preparing to enter the ring.
During his 1946 campaign, Jim Reed had noticed
that he sometimes became so engrossed in a conversation that he was oblivious to his food, pulling a caramel from his pocket and chewing on it while spooning soup, or popping a marshmallow into his mouth while eating roast beef.
As the film flickered
across the screen, he grabbed Galitzine’s glass of champagne and drained it.

WASHINGTON

E
velyn Lincoln wrote in her diary, “
The President came in all excited
about the news reports concerning the German woman and other prostitutes getting mixed up with government officials, congressmen etc. He called Mike Mansfield to come to the office to discuss the playing down of this news report.”

Kennedy’s appointment book is blank from the time he returned from Wexford on Monday until one o’clock, when he went to the pool.
A note says, “Staff members conferred
with the President.”
The reporter Dan Oberdorfer writes
in his biography of Mansfield that “alerted by the administration,” Mansfield invited J. Edgar Hoover to his home on Monday afternoon, “where a meeting between Hoover, Mansfield and Dirksen would not attract attention from reporters who were swarming around the story.” Lincoln’s diary suggests that sometime that morning it was the president who alerted Mansfield.

Bobby was given the task of persuading Hoover
to see Mansfield and Dirksen. He called Hoover into his office at the Justice Department, and according to a memorandum written by Hoover, informed him that he and the president “had discussed the Ellen Rometsch case and the aspects of it which tied into the Bobby Baker case” and wanted him to meet with Mansfield and Dirksen about the matter before the Senate began its hearings tomorrow.
Hoover also noted that the president had asked him
to see Mansfield when they spoke by telephone on Sunday.

Hoover suggested that since the FBI
had already submitted a complete report on Rometsch in July, Bobby should simply read it out loud to Mansfield and Dirksen. Bobby argued that it would be better if the senators saw Hoover personally, since they were primarily interested in any breach of security in the Rometsch case (which was not entirely true) and would give more credence to whatever he told them in person (which was true). Once Bobby had squirmed and groveled enough, Hoover called Mansfield and arranged to meet him and Dirksen at Mansfield’s home.
Mansfield and Dirksen left no record
of what transpired. Dirksen died in 1970, and when Oberdorfer asked Mansfield about the meeting during a 1999 interview, he would only admit to having “a very faint memory” of it. Because Mansfield had an excellent memory, and this had been the only time he and Hoover had met, Oberdorfer was skeptical, and suggested he wanted to forget what had occurred because of its “seamy nature.”

According to Hoover’s memorandum
, the only firsthand account of the encounter, he read Mansfield and Dirksen the July FBI report on Rometsch. They asked him “a number of questions” that he answered “to their satisfaction.” He stated that the Bureau had reopened the case “in view of the current publicity,” but could “assure them there had been no breach of security.” Although the Bureau had found “no connection” between Rometsch and anyone in the White House, he said that a number of congressmen had been clients of these “call girls,” a statement he must have known would make them reluctant to pursue the sexual aspects of the scandal. When Mansfield expressed shock that immorality was so common among congressmen, Hoover suggested that he and Dirksen persuade members of their respective parties “to cut out the hi-jinks.”

Hoover told Bobby afterward
, “Senator Mansfield and Senator Dirksen were perfectly satisfied and willing to keep quiet.”
While Hoover was still in his office
, Bobby telephoned O’Donnell and said, “Everything is well in hand.” At the end of the call, Hoover noted, “Mr. O’Donnell extended an invitation from the President for me to have luncheon with the President on Thursday, October 31, 1963, at 1:00 P.M., which I accepted.”

Bobby Baker would later claim that by accepting Hoover’s assurances about Rometsch, Mansfield and Dirksen had saved Kennedy’s presidency. “
Had they not had that meeting
, and had the people who had relations with Ellen Rometsch been called to testify,” he told Oberdorfer, “. . . you guys in the press would have had the greatest field day in your history.” Kennedy had visited Mansfield’s ailing father in Great Falls because he was a thoughtful and humane man. He had offered Dirksen’s Democratic opponent tepid support because he liked Dirksen, and needed his help to move his legislative agenda through Congress. Had he been a different kind of man and politician, Dirksen and Mansfield might have been less inclined to accept Hoover’s assurances, and allowed the Rules Committee to investigate Baker’s sexual shenanigans.

Every newspaper that Kennedy read on Tuesday provided an opportunity for him to ponder his narrow escape. Unaware that the Rules Committee would not be exploring the party-girl aspect of the Baker scandal, reporters and congressmen considered Rometsch big news. The
Evening Star
published an eye-catching photograph of “the mysterious German beauty” who had been deported for “personal misbehavior.” The
New York Times
ran a photograph of her underneath the headline “Baker Inquiry Is Asked If German Woman’s Ouster by U.S. Involved Security,” and reported that Representative H. R. Gross of Iowa had given a speech on the House floor Monday demanding to know “if there was any element of security violation” involved in her “speedy” deportation.

On the same day that Kennedy’s humanity and sensitivity may have saved his presidency, he displayed these same qualities in a note to George Kennan, the eminent diplomat and historian whose last posting had been as ambassador to Yugoslavia.
Kennan had sent him a handwritten letter
praising his deft handling of Tito during the state visit. After noting that his sincerity could be “credited” since he was fully retired, he wrote, “I am full of admiration, both as a historian and as a person with diplomatic experience, for the manner in which you have addressed yourself to the problems of foreign policy with which I am familiar. I don’t think we have seen a better standard of statesmanship in the White House in the present century. . . . Please know that I and many others are deeply grateful for the courage and patience and perception with which you carry on.” Coming from the man who had invented the cold war strategy of containment and won a Pulitzer Prize for history (and would be called, at his death, “
the American diplomat who did more
than any other envoy in his generation to shape United States policy during the cold war”), it was an impressive testimonial, and for a president who cared so deeply about the verdict of history, a gratifying early review.
He responded on October 28
, addressing Kennan as “George” for the first time and writing, “It was uncommonly thoughtful for you to write me in this personal way,” and promising to keep his letter “nearby for reference and reinforcement on hard days.”

At an afternoon meeting on Monday, Kennedy and a majority of Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee formally agreed on a civil rights bill that would attract enough Republicans to win a floor vote. It was stronger than the administration’s initial bill and contained an FEPC provision, but weaker than what the liberals had wanted. Kennedy had to play some political hardball to achieve the compromise.
When the Illinois congressman Roland Libonati persisted
in raising objections, he suspended the meeting and left the room to call Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago. “The Judiciary Committee is trying to get a civil rights bill together and Roland Libonati is sticking it right up us . . . ,” he said, “standing with the extreme liberals who are gonna end up with no bill at all.”

“He’ll vote for it,” Daley promised. “He’ll vote for any goddamned thing you want.” He asked Kennedy to pass the phone to Libonati so he could deliver the news in person. Kennedy balked at such naked steamrolling and suggested that Daley call him later. “That’s better,” Daley agreed. “But he’ll do it. The last time I told him, ‘Now look it, I don’t give a goddamned what it is, you’ll vote for anything the President wants and . . . that’s the way it’s gonna be.”

“That’d be good,” Kennedy said.

After the Judiciary Committee left, Caroline and John came into his office to model their Halloween costumes. “
Do you think he will know who we are
?” Caroline asked Lincoln. She assured them he would be fooled. “Why, it’s Sam and Mary!” he exclaimed.
He called his father
in Hyannis Port and handed them the receiver so they could shout “Trick or Treat!”

Cecil Stoughton took a photograph. It showed the president seated at his desk laughing. Caroline was a witch and held a live black cat in one hand. John was a panda, “Peter Panda.” Their costumes were cheap plastic ones, the kind sold at Woolworth’s that any middle-class kid might wear.

•   •   •

L
INCOLN
WROTE
IN
HER
DIARY
that Tuesday had “started off with a bang.” There was a Legislative Leaders Breakfast, a final bipartisan meeting of House leaders prior to the Judiciary Committee’s vote on the civil rights bill, and a cabinet meeting during which
Kennedy scrawled “POVERTY
” in a bold hand on a yellow legal pad, repeatedly circling and underlining it.

The Democratic and Republican House leaders agreed to support his compromise civil rights bill, and the Judiciary Committee approved it by a vote of 23 to 11. Fourteen Democrats and 9 Republicans voted in favor; all but one came from the North. (Despite Daley’s arm-twisting, Libonati voted against it.) The bill faced more hurdles in the House and had to clear the Senate, where Southern Democrats were threatening a filibuster, but Kennedy had won an important battle. Faced with choosing between a bill that stood little chance of passage but would have made him a hero to the civil rights movement and liberals, and one that was imperfect but might be enacted, he had chosen the pragmatic course. Anthony Lewis praised it in the
New York Times
as “
a notable political achievement
,” and
the
Boston Globe
called it
a victory in a “showdown battle . . . for a compromise civil rights bill.” It was also a victory for bipartisan cooperation and a president who had deftly engineered the compromise, but Halleck was the biggest hero. Some Republicans excoriated him for rescuing Kennedy’s bill on the eve of a presidential election year and dealing a setback to the GOP’s emerging Southern Strategy of opposing civil rights legislation in order to win formerly solid Democratic seats in the South and pick up white backlash seats in the North.
An anonymous House Republican
told a
Washington Post
columnist, “Kennedy’s going to get whatever credit there is for passing a bill, so why should we get him off the hook? This will cost us ten to fifteen new members from the South . . . and prevent us from getting any benefit from Northern white reaction against civil rights.”

Kennedy called Halleck that afternoon
to thank him. “I got a lot of mad people up here,” Halleck said. Kennedy commiserated, saying, “I got a lot of mad Negroes that are ready to come and throw rocks at me, but that’s all right.” Halleck said that he might not win reelection as minority leader, “but I don’t give a damn.”

That afternoon Kennedy convened an all-hands-on-deck meeting of his Vietnam advisers in the Cabinet Room that would prove to be his last opportunity to derail a coup.

Since he had told Lodge
on August 15 that he would leave everything in his hands, he had made so many conflicting statements and vacillated so much that his advisers must have been uncertain whether he welcomed or dreaded a coup. He had approved the controversial cable of August 24 green-lighting a coup, but attempted to rescind it two days later. He had told Walter Cronkite that if Diem did not enact reforms and dismiss his brother, the United States might cease supporting his government, and then told Huntley and Brinkley that his administration would continue providing military and financial aid to Diem regardless of what he did. He had sent Krulak and Mendenhall to Vietnam to determine if Diem could win the war despite the political turmoil, and when they failed to agree he had sent McNamara and Taylor. The generals plotting against Diem had signaled that a coup was imminent, and then developed cold feet when he pulled back from the August 24 cable. They were encouraged by his public criticism of Diem to Cronkite, then discouraged by how quickly he retreated from it. But after he announced the withdrawal of U.S. advisers and took steps to curtail several assistance programs, they took heart and resumed their plotting.

Throughout all this he never questioned the morality of encouraging a coup against a long-standing U.S. ally. Instead, he pressed for continual, up-to-the-minute assessments of the odds that it would succeed, and if those odds were poor, how he could stop it. He had told Lodge in his August 28 “Eyes Only for Ambassador” cable, “We note that you continue to favor the operation; we also assume your concurrence . . . that if this operation [the coup] starts, it must succeed. But it remains unclear to us that balance of forces in Saigon yet gives high confidence of success, and we need daily assessment from you on this critical point. . . . More broadly, we are assuming that whatever cover you and we maintain, prestige of U.S. will necessarily be engaged in success or failure of this effort. Thus we ask you present estimate of latest point at which operation could be suspended and what would be consequences of such suspension.” This cable was scarcely different from the one that Bundy, speaking for Kennedy, would send Lodge on Tuesday, October 29, following hours of discussions that afternoon.

Kennedy recorded the October 29 meeting
, activating the hidden microphones in the Cabinet Room as William Colby, chief of the Far Eastern Division of the CIA, was reporting that the pro- and anti-Diem forces in and around Saigon appeared evenly balanced, with approximately 9,800 troops on each side. Bobby added to his brother’s anxiety by saying, “We’re putting the whole future of the country and, really, Southeast Asia, in the hands of somebody [General Don, the intermediary with Lodge for the plotters] that we don’t know very well.” Rusk said that if there was a substantial number of senior Vietnamese officers who believed they could not win the war under a Diem government, then the United States assumed a “heavy responsibility” by thwarting them. Taylor disagreed, saying he had found “absolutely no suggestion the military didn’t have their heart thoroughly in the war.” The CIA director, McCone, thought that even a successful coup “would seriously affect the war” and “might be disastrous.”