JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President (39 page)

It is important to restate what now divides Cuba from my country and from other countries of this hemisphere. It is the fact that a small band of conspirators has stripped the Cuban people of their freedom and handed over the independence and sovereignty of the Cuban nation to forces beyond the hemisphere. They have made Cuba a victim of foreign imperialism . . . a weapon in an effort dictated by external powers to subvert other American republics.
This, and this alone, divides us. As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible
[emphasis added]. Once this barrier is removed, we will be ready and anxious to work with the Cuban people in pursuit of those progressive goals which a few short years ago stirred their hopes and the sympathy of many people throughout the hemisphere.

Here again was his message for Castro: better relations with the United States did not require that he renounce socialism or even communism, only that he detach himself from Moscow and cease attempts to export communism to other nations in the hemisphere.

During the flight back to Washington he told Smathers, “
God, I hate to go out to Texas
.” He added that he had “a terrible feeling about going.” His “terrible feeling” was that the feud between Vice President Johnson and Texas senator Ralph Yarborough would sabotage the trip. “
Look how screwed up it’s going to be
,” he said. “You’ve got Lyndon, who is insisting that Jackie ride with him [in motorcades]. You’ve got Ralph Yarborough, who hates Lyndon and Johnson doesn’t want Yarborough with him. . . . They’re all prima donnas of the biggest order, and they’re all insisting that they ride either with me or with Jackie. The law says the vice president can’t ride with the president. . . . I just wish to hell I didn’t have to go. Can’t you think of some emergency we could have?”

He told Powers, “
Thank God nobody wanted to kill
me today!” He made this kind of comment so often that Powers usually shrugged it off. This time, he added that if anyone tried to kill him with a high-powered rifle outfitted with a telescopic sight, he would do it during a motorcade, when there would be so much noise and commotion that no one would be able to point and say, “It came from that window!”

WASHINGTON

L
incoln remembered Tuesday
as a day when “there was no hurry, no tension, no hustle” and Kennedy was memorably relaxed. After noticing that O’Donnell and Powers were absent, he asked her, “Where are those clowns?” Exhausted after Florida, she explained. “We were on that trip too,” he said, “but we are here, aren’t we, Mrs. Lincoln?”

He sat in a rocking chair
in her office between meetings, his head resting against its back, one leg across a knee, speaking slowly and pensively as he rocked. He talked about his encouraging reception in Florida, why he had refused police protection in New York, the wonderful photographs of John in
Look,
and how the Bobby Baker scandal might affect his reelection campaign.

“You know, if I am reelected in ’64,” he said. “I am going to spend more and more time toward making government service an honorable career.” He considered it absurd that in the Space Age someone who had become chairman of a congressional committee because of his longevity could tie up a bill and prevent it reaching the House floor for a vote. In his second term, he said, “I am going to advocate changing some of the outmoded rules and regulations in Congress, such as the seniority rule,” adding, “To do this I will need as a running mate in ’64 a man who believes as I do.” As if thinking out loud, he continued, “I am going to Texas because I have made a commitment. I can’t patch up those warring factions. This is for them to do, but I will go because I have told them I would. And it is too early to make an announcement about another running mate—that will perhaps wait until the convention.”

“Who
is
your choice of a running mate?” Lincoln asked.

Staring straight ahead, he said without hesitation, “At this time I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon.” Sanford was a logical choice. Kennedy was impressed with his economic and antipoverty programs, and he represented the enlightened “New South” that the president needed to court in 1964.

Lincoln had not seen Johnson in the Oval Office for almost a month and had already suspected that the president was considering replacing him.
Sanford would later say
that although he and Kennedy had never discussed the vice presidency, he did not doubt that the conversation had occurred as Lincoln had reported it. He knew that the president had become exasperated with Johnson, but thought his comments might have been “one of those things that you say . . . just to get it off your chest.”

Johnson’s close relationship with Bobby Baker, and the likelihood that he would be tarred by the unfolding scandal, was reason enough for Kennedy to consider replacing him. He had also become increasingly worried about the prospect of a Johnson presidency, telling Jackie several times, “
Oh, God, can you ever imagine
what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?”
In 1964, Sorensen would ask Jackie
to comment on a draft manuscript of his book about her husband’s administration. Her markings deleted or modified every complimentary reference to Johnson. Where Sorensen had written that Kennedy had “learned from Lyndon Johnson,” she noted, “I don’t think he learned anything about campaigning from Lyndon Johnson—because Johnson’s style always embarrassed him.” She criticized Sorensen’s statement that the two men had enjoyed “a deep mutual respect,” writing, “I think you overstate this a bit—from JFK’s side,” then crossed out the entire sentence. She told Sorensen that his “glowing references” to Johnson did not “reflect President Kennedy’s thinking,” adding, “You must know—as well or better than I—his steadily diminishing opinion of him then. As his term progressed, he grew more and more concerned about what would happen if LBJ ever became president. He was truly frightened at the prospect.”

•   •   •

A
T
A
10:00
A
.
M
.
CEREMONY
in the Rose Garden
the president of the National Poultry and Egg Board and the president of the National Turkey Foundation presented Kennedy with a fifty-five-pound turkey. The Poultry Board president ceremoniously removed the gargantuan beast from his cage and introduced him as “Tom, one of our finer specimens.” A sign dangling around the creature’s neck said, “Good Eating, Mr. President.” Flashbulbs exploded and children from the White House school screamed, “He’s a real turkey!” As Tom gobbled and shook his brilliant red wattles, the president said, “On behalf of Mrs. Kennedy and the children, I want to tell you how pleased we are and how grateful. This is a great occasion for the American people. This is really an even sacred occasion.” Eisenhower had eaten his ceremonial turkeys, reason enough for Kennedy to spare Tom, but he also disliked killing animals and had not forgotten the appalling hunting expedition at Johnson’s ranch. He decided to spare Tom, saying in a mock-serious tone of voice, “It would be a shame, a terrible shame to interrupt a great line like Tom’s. We’ll just keep him.”

The U.S. ambassador to Ghana, William Mahoney, who had arrived early for a 10:30 meeting only to be dragged outside by Kennedy to witness the festivities, remembered the moment as “priceless.”
Back in the Oval Office
, Kennedy asked after Mahoney’s infant daughter. She had recently been born in a Ghanaian hospital and given the middle name Fitzgerald. Mahoney claimed that although his mother’s maiden name was Fitzgerald, they really had Kennedy in mind. He laughed and said, “Oh, come off it.” But Mahoney insisted she had been named for him, and could see he was touched.

Mahoney complained that he was tired of approaching President Kwame Nkrumah before the beginning of every General Assembly session to request that Ghana vote against admitting Communist China to the United Nations. Kennedy replied that he was hoping to improve relations with Peking during his second term. To that end, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Roger Hilsman would be delivering an address about U.S.-Sino relations next month that would “open the door a little bit.” He showed Mahoney a draft of Hilsman’s speech.
It called for improving relations
with the Chinese on the same terms that he was offering Castro—cease all attempts to export revolution and communism to third-world countries—and concluded, “We do not know what changes may occur in the attitudes of future Chinese leaders, but if I may paraphrase a classic canon of our past, we pursue today towards Communist China a policy of the Open Door: We are determined to keep the door open to the possibility of change, and not to slam it shut against any development which might advance our national good, serve the free world and benefit the people of China.” His intention to change U.S. China policy was not a secret.
He had told Marie Ridder
that it was on his agenda for his second term, and
Dean Rusk said they often discussed it
, and he thought Kennedy would have reached out to the Chinese in 1965.

He asked Mahoney, who had managed his campaign in Arizona in 1960, if he would help him again next year, when his likely opponent would be Mahoney’s fellow Arizonan Barry Goldwater. The news of Goldwater’s ascendency had not reached Mahoney in Africa, and he was stunned. “
You know, Mr. President
, you’ve got to give the opposition credit for having some sense. Just a little sense,” he said. “And they’re not, they’re just not that stupid.”

“Well, that’s the word that’s out, Bill. God, wouldn’t that be a delight.”

“It’s too good to be true.”

Mahoney had represented the NAACP in Arizona during the 1940s, winning several important school desegregation victories. He had missed Goldwater’s rise in the polls but had been following the civil rights bill. Referring to Kennedy’s June 11 civil rights speech, he said, “
I just want to tell you
that I’m just proud as hell of you.”

He laughed and said, “You know, I’m kind of proud of myself.”

He rose from his rocking chair
and picked up an article
titled “JFK Could Lose” that would appear in the next edition of
Look
.
After putting on his glasses (the first time Mahoney could remember him wearing them), he read portions out loud. It reported the results of a poll taken among residents of Silver Lake, a pivotal Iowa township that had voted for the winning candidate in seventeen consecutive presidential elections since 1896. Kennedy had beaten Nixon there by seventeen votes, but
Look
was reporting that twenty-nine of the voters supporting him in 1960 now intended to vote for Goldwater, while only fourteen of the Nixon voters were switching to him. “The outcome of the poll does not appear to reflect positive Goldwater strength so much as certain dissatisfactions with Kennedy,” the reporter concluded, “particularly over the Negro civil rights demonstrations.” It was a surprising statement given that Silver Lake was in a county of fifteen thousand people with only two black residents.

Continuing to read out loud, Kennedy quoted a farmer who had supported him in 1960 but now opposed him and had told
Look,
“I know the Negroes are here, but by God I think we’re giving them too much rope. It won’t be long before they’ll be running a Negro for president.” A farmer who still supported him had said, “So far as letting them go to the same schools and things, I think they would be better off to have their own schools and they would have a lot less trouble.” Another man said, “I think some Communists are behind this personally,” and another, “I think Kennedy is too lenient with them damn niggers.”

“
What do you think of that
?” he asked Mahoney.

He called it shocking and said, “Look, there’s only one way to go.”

“You’re telling me. And that’s where we’re going.”

Mahoney sensed that despite the bravado, Kennedy found the article unsettling. As they parted, he mentioned his forthcoming trip to Texas and the feud among Johnson, Yarborough, and Connally. At least Jackie was accompanying him, he said, adding, “She’s going all the way with me in ’64.”

•   •   •

A
TTWOOD
CALLED
B
UNDY
’
S
ASSISTANT
Gordon Chase on Tuesday morning to report that at 2:00 a.m. Lisa Howard had reached Castro’s confidant Rene Vallejo and put Attwood on the phone. (Attwood would learn later that Castro had been eavesdropping on an extension.) Vallejo had repeated Castro’s invitation to travel to Cuba to open negotiations, promising secrecy and tight security. Attwood replied that the White House wanted any preliminary talks preceding face-to-face negotiations to occur at the United Nations. Vallejo said he was unable to travel to New York, but would instruct Cuba’s UN representative, Carlos Lechuga, to discuss an agenda.
Chase wrote in a memorandum
of his conversation with Attwood, “The ball is now in Castro’s court. As soon as Lechuga calls Bill to set up an appointment for the discussion of an agenda, Bill will get in touch with us.”
Bundy called Attwood back later
on Tuesday to tell him that the president had decided that once he and Lechuga had agreed upon an agenda, he wanted to see him personally in order to decide what to tell Castro.

In Havana on Tuesday,
Castro told Jean Daniel
, “He [Kennedy] still has the possibility of becoming, in the eyes of history, the greatest president of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists. . . . I know, for example, that for Khrushchev, Kennedy is a man you can talk with. I have gotten this impression from all my conversations with Khrushchev. Other leaders have assured me that to obtain this goal [coexistence] we must first await his reelection.” After praising Kennedy for having “come to understand many things over the past few months,” he added, “If you see him again, you can tell him that I’m willing to declare Goldwater my friend if that will guarantee [his] reelection.”

Like Kennedy, who was pursuing a two-track strategy of seeking to negotiate with Castro while trying to overthrow him, Castro had his own double strategy. While encouraging clandestine talks with Attwood, he continued his attempts to subvert other Latin American governments. On the same day that Attwood summarized his conversation with Vallejo for Chase, Richard Helms, deputy director of plans at the CIA, was showing Bobby Kennedy a Belgian-made submachine gun the Agency had filched from a shipment that Cuban operatives were preparing to land on the coast of Venezuela. The arms were destined for a group plotting to disrupt that nation’s elections and foment a coup against President Romulo Betancourt. The gun’s Cuban army markings and serial number had been scraped away, but CIA technicians had applied acid to the barrel that restored them so they could be photographed before fading again. The gun and photographs were hard evidence of Cuban-sponsored subversion that violated the post-missile-crisis agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. After seeing the pictures, Bobby called the White House to arrange an immediate meeting between Helms and the president.

Kennedy studied the photographs
that Helms had spread across the Oval Office coffee table and asked how the Cubans had managed to land such a large cache of weapons on a Venezuelan beach. After he examined the submachine gun and slid it back into the canvas bag that Helms had used to carry it into the White House, Helms said, “
I’m sure glad the Secret Service
didn’t catch us bringing this gun in here.” Kennedy grinned, shook his head, and said, “Yes, it gives me a feeling of confidence.”

He held a final briefing on Tuesday
with Dean Rusk and Michael Forrestal before their departure for Honolulu and Tokyo. Rusk would cross paths in Honolulu with Lodge, who was returning to Washington to have lunch with Kennedy on November 24. From Honolulu, Rusk and Forrestal would fly to Tokyo with other administration officials to confer with the Japanese cabinet and prepare the ground for the president and First Lady’s trip to the Far East in January. After Rusk left, Kennedy told Forrestal that he thought the odds of the United States winning the war in Vietnam were about a hundred to one. “
When you come back
, I want you to come and see me, because we have to start to plan for what we are going to do now, in South Vietnam,” he said. “I want to start a complete and very profound review of how we got into this country; what we thought we were doing; and what we now think we can do. I even want to think about whether or not we should be there.”