Killing Lincoln/Killing Kennedy (45 page)

The president’s only complaint about his wife is that Jackie has a profound indifference to fiscal discipline. She spends more money on clothes than the U.S.government pays him to be president. (JFK’s net worth is more than $10 million. He dedicates his $100,000 presidential salary to charities such as the Boy Scouts and the United Negro College Fund.)

Yet there is an enormous contradiction in the Kennedys’ otherwise charmed marriage. The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist.

There’s no way the First Lady can keep up. She’s raising a family, restoring the White House, and juggling a busy social calendar. Jackie would have to be superhuman to meet the president’s physical needs. Plus, he wouldn’t be satisfied with just one woman. The sheer volume of call girls, socialites, starlets, and stewardesses escorted into the White House whenever Jackie and the kids are away is beyond the realm of most men’s moral or physical capacities. It’s gotten to the point where the Secret Service no longer even checks the names and nationalities of all the women Dave Powers procures for the president.

More than one federal agent believes the situation is dangerous. The number of women who have access to the president is, of course, a security breach that could bring down the presidency, whether through blackmail or even, say, covert assassination via hypodermic injection. It is a topic of discussion among the Secret Service. But its job is to protect the president, not lecture him. The agents turn a blind eye to his behavior, and some even provide cover for him. Being a member of the White House detail means being married to the job, and the fifty to eighty hours of overtime every month can increase a Secret Service agent’s paycheck by more than $1,000 a year. An agent would be a fool to give that up for the sake of a morality lesson.

The White House press corps also looks the other way. The president’s private life is none of their business, or that of the public’s. White House reporters know that the president cherishes loyalty and will cut them off from full access if he doesn’t get it. Not a word about suspected infidelities is printed or broadcast. In fact, the Washington bureau chief for
Newsweek
, Ben Bradlee, a very close friend of the president’s, will forever claim to know nothing about JFK’s philandering.

Meanwhile, the president is having sex with Bradlee’s sister-in-law.

Sometimes the objects of Kennedy’s flirtations actually work in the White House, as in the case of Jackie’s secretary, Pamela Turnure, and Evelyn Lincoln’s assistant, Priscilla Wear. This makes the president’s courting easier from a logistical and security standpoint, but brings about its own unique dangers.

For instance, the president is quite fond of the occasional afternoon swim with the two twentysomething secretaries Priscilla Wear and Jill Cowen—nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle by the Secret Service. A Secret Service agent is always positioned outside the door to make sure no one enters.

But one day the First Lady appeared at the pool door, eager to go for a swim. This had never before happened. The panic-stricken agent barred the door and tried to explain to Jackie that she was not allowed to use the pool of the very White House she was so lovingly restoring.

Inside, JFK heard the commotion, quickly pulled on his robe, and fled the pool just before he could be caught. Agents would later recall that his large wet footprints and the smaller prints of his female swim partners left a very clear trail, which Jackie did not see, having left in a huff.

*   *   *

Even as one part of the president’s brain strategizes clever ways to deal with Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, and Charles de Gaulle, another part strategizes ways to have as much sex as he wants without Jackie walking in on him. And as Kennedy gets more and more comfortable in the White House, his affairs get more and more outrageous.

“We got to the point where we’d say, ‘What else is new?’” one member of the Kennedy Secret Service detail later remembered. “There were women everywhere. Very often, depending on what shift you were on, you’d either see them going up, or you’d see them coming out in the morning. People were vacuuming and the ushers were around. There were several of them that were regular visitors. Not when Jackie was there, however.”

When Kennedy goes more than a few days without extramarital sex, he becomes a different man—so much so that the Secret Service breathes a sigh of relief whenever Jackie takes the kids away for the weekend. “When she was there, it was no fun,” a longtime agent would later admit. “He just had headaches. You’d really see him droop because he wasn’t getting laid. He was like a rooster getting hit with a water hose.”

Sex is John Kennedy’s Achilles’ heel. Why in the world does he do this to Jackie? And what is he doing to the nation in the process?

*   *   *

Just a few short weeks after being named attorney general, Bobby Kennedy received a special file from J. Edgar Hoover, the pug-nosed and Machiavellian head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the file was evidence about the president’s extramarital affairs. It turns out that while the newspapers were looking the other way, the FBI had been tracking JFK’s liaisons since the late 1940s, because he was seeing a woman thought to be a spy for Nazi Germany. The file is Hoover’s idea of job security. He wants everybody to know the FBI will never be diminished—and that there’s nothing illicit going on in America that he doesn’t know about. For reasons of national security, not even the president of the United States is above the scrutiny of the FBI.

In early 1962, as President Kennedy’s visit to Palm Springs is being planned, a Justice Department investigation into organized crime reveals that singer Frank Sinatra is deeply involved with the Mafia. This is trouble for the Kennedys—Americans know that Sinatra not only supports the president but is also a close personal friend. And if that isn’t enough to compromise the attorney general and the president of the United States, their sister Patricia’s husband, movie actor Peter Lawford, is a member of Sinatra’s famous Rat Pack.

Making the matter more delicate is a brand-new file from Hoover delivered to Bobby just a few weeks before the Palm Springs trip. This one indicates that the president of the United States is having sex with a consort of Sam Giancana, not only one of the most notorious mobsters in the country, but also at the top of the list of Mafia kingpins whom Bobby Kennedy is trying to bring down. The woman’s name is Judith Campbell, and Hoover is describing her as a major security risk. Unbeknownst to Patricia Kennedy Lawford, her husband owes that affiliation to her family heritage. Sinatra has long wanted to be closer to the throne of power. Once he realized that the Kennedys were on the verge of becoming the most powerful family in America, he allowed Lawford into his inner circle. In addition, it was Patricia Kennedy Lawford who bankrolled the script for
Oceans 11
, assuming her husband would costar with Sinatra. But Dean Martin was given the role instead. Sinatra treats Peter Lawford like a hanger-on, suspecting that Patricia Kennedy Lawford, like most people outside the Hollywood bubble, will do almost anything to bask in the reflected glow of movie stars’ fame.

And Sinatra is correct. Despite numerous snubs, the Lawfords remain keen to be part of the Rat Pack “vibe.”

Thus, the woman who extended Sinatra’s invitation for JFK to stay in his Palm Springs home on his visit to the city is none other than Patricia Kennedy Lawford.

After reading Hoover’s Sinatra file, Bobby Kennedy tells the president to stay somewhere else in Palm Springs. Bobby doesn’t care that this slight might sever a long-standing political relationship with Sinatra, who not only campaigned extensively on behalf of Kennedy in 1960, but also worked overtime to coordinate the inaugural gala.

The truth is that Bobby has no choice. Sinatra has had repeated contact with ten of the biggest names in organized crime. The FBI reports detail not only the times and dates when the singer is phoning Mafia heads from home, but also reveal that the mobsters are dialing his private number. “The nature of Sinatra’s work may, on occasion, bring him into contact with underworld figures,” reads the report. “But this does not account for his friendship and/or financial involvement with people such as Joe and Rocco Fischetti, cousins of Al Capone, Paul Emilio D’Amato, John Formosa and Sam Giancana—all of whom are on the list of racketeers.”

The FBI has been keeping files on Sinatra since the late 1940s, chronicling his associations with other famous gangsters such as Lucky Luciano and Mickey Cohen. As early as February 1947 there were reports that he had vacationed in Havana with Luciano and his bodyguards, and that the trio were seen together at “the race track, the gambling casino, and at private parties.” What made these sightings so extraordinary was that Luciano had recently been paroled from prison and deported to Sicily. Such a high-profile appearance in Havana was his way of thumbing his nose at U.S. law enforcement.

President Kennedy was once close friends with Frank Sinatra, shown here in California.
(AFP/Getty Images)

The list of alleged associations goes on and on. Bobby’s true surprise about Sinatra, however, is not that the singer is connected with the Mafia. Rather, it’s that the FBI has evidence linking the Kennedy White House with organized crime through the singer. In fact, Hoover has years of files documenting the close relationship between Sinatra, the Kennedys, and high-profile members of the Mafia such as Giancana—who wears a sapphire pinkie ring given to him by none other than Frank Sinatra. The most damning bits of the report state that Giancana frequently visits Sinatra’s Palm Springs estate. Agents also found a number of calls from Giancana’s good friend Judith Campbell to Evelyn Lincoln, the president’s secretary, suggesting a clear link between the Kennedy White House and organized crime.

Frank Sinatra and John Kennedy have shared many laughs, many drinks, and, as the FBI suggests, a woman or two. In a separate investigation in February 1960, the FBI observed JFK at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas with the Rat Pack and noted that “show girls from all over town were running in and out of the Senator’s suite.” Sinatra and the Rat Pack sang the national anthem to open the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Sinatra has visited the Kennedys’ family estate at Hyannis Port and once startled guests by performing an impromptu concert at the living room piano. Sinatra even reworded his 1959 hit song “High Hopes” to make it an anthem for the Kennedy campaign.

There are also rumors that the Kennedys used the Mafia to help influence voters during the 1960 election.

The file is just a warning: Hoover is letting Bobby know that the connection between the Kennedys and organized crime is on the verge of becoming widespread public knowledge. And only Hoover can stop that.

Despite their significant history, JFK listens to Bobby and cuts Sinatra off in an instant. They’re done. The singer has become a snare that could potentially entangle Kennedy and bring him down—and no friendship is worth the presidency.
Ruthless
might be a word commonly associated with Bobby, but now and again the president can be just as cold-blooded.

*   *   *

Bobby phones Peter Lawford to break the news that the president will not be staying with Sinatra. Lawford owes his career to Sinatra. He fears the man and is reluctant to make the call to Sinatra canceling the presidential weekend.

So JFK himself gets on the phone to Lawford. “As President, I just can’t stay at Sinatra’s and sleep in the same bed that Sam Giancana or some other hood slept in,” he tells his brother-in-law. Kennedy then demands two favors. The first is to find him someplace else to rendezvous with Monroe during his weekend in Palm Springs. The second is to buck up and break the news to Frank.

Peter Lawford has no choice but to make the calls. Chris Dumphy, a Florida Republican, connects Lawford with Bing Crosby, solving Lawford’s first problem. The president’s womanizing is an open secret. Crosby, who is out of town, suspects what might go on at his house, but he doesn’t care. He’s worked in Hollywood long enough to know that infidelity is as common as sunrise.

Delivering the news to Sinatra is not so simple.

The forty-six-year-old singer has been anticipating this visit for months. He has purchased extra land next to his property and built cottages for the Secret Service. He has installed special state-of-the-art phone lines. A gold plaque has been hung in the bedroom the president will use, forever commemorating the night when “John F. Kennedy Slept Here.” Pictures of JFK are hung all over the main house. A flagpole is erected so that the presidential standard can fly over the compound. And most important, Sinatra has built a special new cement landing pad for the president’s helicopter. Sinatra is giddy about the visit. So giddy, in fact, that it doesn’t even bother him that the president will be rendezvousing with Sinatra’s former girlfriend, Marilyn Monroe.

The truth is, the Kennedys are somewhat embarrassed that Sinatra believes his home will become the western White House. It’s not that the Kennedy clan doesn’t like Sinatra—although Jackie can’t stand him—but they prefer to keep the flamboyant singer at arm’s length.