Killing Lincoln/Killing Kennedy (50 page)

President Kennedy, with brothers Robert and Teddy.
(Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

There is another, even more personal, reason JFK wants his policies viewed in a popular light: his youngest brother, Teddy, is running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Something as catastrophic as a mishandling of this new Cuba situation could destroy any hopes of Teddy winning.

JFK is proud of his thirty-year-old brother’s bid for office but has given it a wide berth during the campaign. The president’s official statement on the matter was a terse “His brother prefers that this matter be decided by the people of Massachusetts and that the president should not become involved.” JFK bristles at the widespread media coverage of Teddy’s run, including a sarcastic
New York Times
column about the youngest Kennedy brother’s relative inexperience and other newspaper articles warning of a Kennedy dynasty.

None of this really bothers the president, personally. But he knows that if Teddy loses in the Kennedys’ home state, it will be a reflection on JFK’s political strength—or lack thereof.

The final, and by far the most important, reason the president doesn’t want word leaking out about the missiles in Cuba is that he does not want the Russian leadership to know that he is onto their secret. In that way, he believes, he can gain some control over the unsettling turn of events.

Because on the morning of October 16, as Kennedy leaves his bedroom and strolls down to the Oval Office to start his day, one fact is very clear: if the Soviets launch those missiles, the midterm elections, Teddy’s bid for office, and even the opinion of the American people won’t matter anymore. Because there may no longer be a Washington, D.C.—and there may no longer be much left of the United States of America.

Whatever happens next has nothing to do with being a Democrat or a Republican, and everything to do with what’s best for the American people. If anything shows how much JFK has grown since taking the Oath of Office, it is this resolve, at this moment.

*   *   *

At 10:00
A.M
. the president emerges from a brief meeting in the Oval Office with Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra, who spent nine hours in outer space two weeks earlier. JFK walks next door into Kenny O’Donnell’s office. The appointments secretary has previously voiced an opinion that America’s voters don’t care about Cuba anymore. “You still think the fuss about Cuba is unimportant?” Kennedy asks innocently.

“Absolutely. The voters don’t give a damn about Cuba.”

The president calmly shares with O’Donnell the news McGeorge Bundy delivered just an hour ago.

“I don’t believe it.”

“You better believe it,” Kennedy tells him before marching back to the Oval Office.

Two hours later, JFK steps away from his desk yet again. He joins Caroline in the nearby Cabinet Room, then shoos her back to the residence as he convenes the top secret meeting about the Soviet missiles. He takes a seat at the center of the table, not the head. Bobby sits across from him, as does LBJ. Eleven other men are in attendance, all handpicked for their expertise and loyalty to the president.

Photos taken by U-2 spy planes show that the Soviet missiles are still being prepared for launch, but for the time being, they probably lack the nuclear warheads that would make them lethal. The talk shifts to military options. After listening to the various opinions, the president provides his own list. The first is a limited air strike. The second is a broader air strike, on a broader number of targets. The third is a naval blockade of Cuban waters, preventing the Soviet ships carrying nuclear warheads from reaching the missiles.

Bobby, who has listened quietly throughout the seventy-minute meeting, finally speaks up, suggesting that a full-scale invasion of Cuba might be necessary. It is the only way to prevent Russian missiles from ever being placed on Cuban soil.

Even as military force seems like the only solution, JFK is still troubled by the question of motive. Why is Nikita Khrushchev trying to provoke the Americans into war?

The president doesn’t know the answer. But two things are apparent: those missiles must be removed and, far more important, those nuclear warheads cannot be allowed to reach Cuba.

Ever.

*   *   *

It is Saturday afternoon, October 20. John Fitzgerald Kennedy is spending the weekend in downtown Chicago, rallying the Democratic Party faithful at a fund-raiser.

Two days ago he met privately with Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko. It was Gromyko who requested the meeting, not knowing that the Americans had discovered that the Soviets had placed offensive missiles in Cuba. The topics of discussion were the goings-on in Berlin and Soviet leader Khrushchev’s pending visit to America. Kennedy skillfully guided the subject toward the topic of nuclear weapons. Gromyko then lied to the president’s face, stating most adamantly that “the Soviet Union would never become involved in the furnishing of offensive weapons to Cuba.”

For this reason, Kennedy now refers to Gromyko as “that lying bastard.”

The mood in Chicago is a radical departure from the tension in Washington. When Air Force One lands at O’Hare Airport, the president is greeted by an army of bagpipers and local politicians, and an estimated half million people line the Northwest Expressway to witness the president’s motorcade. After JFK’s speech at a $100-a-plate fund-raising dinner on Friday night, a fireworks show lights up the sky over Lake Michigan. As if by magic, the display features the president’s face in profile.

But the public adulation is a stark contrast to the private inner hell John Kennedy is living right now. He hasn’t even told his wife what is going on in Cuba. What will become known as the Cuban missile crisis is now four days old, and his ExComm team—short for Executive Committee of the National Security Council—is close to formulating an aggressive strategy to avert a nuclear attack. One hundred and eighty naval ships are being sent to the Caribbean. The army’s First Armored Division is being relocated from Texas to Georgia. The air force’s Tactical Air Command has transferred more than five hundred fighter jets and tankers to Florida and is hustling to find enough munitions to supply them.

The legendary Strategic Air Command has squadrons of B-47 and B-52 bombers ready to launch, the pilots sequestered in secure “Alert” facilities. Most of these long-range bomber bases are in the northern portion of the United States—Maine, New Hampshire, and northern Michigan. The primary reason for this is simple: it’s the shortest route to the Soviet Union, which has long been thought to be the primary target once war comes. The pilots and navigators are familiar with those coordinates and have practiced them for years. The straight shot down to Havana is brand-new territory.

The president calls the First Lady from his Chicago suite. Jackie and the children are at the Glen Ora estate in Virginia.

“I’m coming back to Washington this afternoon. Why don’t you come back there?” he asks her. Jackie senses “something funny” in JFK’s voice.

“Why don’t you come down
here
?” she answers playfully. Jackie and the children have just arrived. The autumn weather is warm enough that Jackie is lying in the sun when she takes her husband’s call.

But something about that tone in JFK’s voice alerts Jackie. He knows how important those weekends in Virginia are to her and how much she treasures unwinding from the pressures of the White House. He’s never before asked her to cut a weekend short.

“Why?” the First Lady asks again. She will later remember the alarm she felt, realizing that “whenever you’re married to someone and they ask something—yeah, that’s the whole point of being married—you must sense some trouble in their voice and mustn’t ask why.”

But she asks anyway.

“Well, never mind,” JFK answers, not telling her his reasons. “Why don’t you just come back to Washington?”

Then, suddenly, the president changes his mind. At a time like this, he wants nothing more than to relieve his burden and be with his family. So the president finally tells Jackie about the possibility of a nuclear war.

“Please don’t send me away to Camp David. Please don’t send me anywhere,” Jackie answers. She now pleads with her husband, disregarding her safety. Jackie knows that in event of an attack, the family will be evacuated to the Maryland presidential retreat, which will take her and the children away from JFK—perhaps forever. “Even if there’s no room in the bomb shelter in the White House. Please, then I just want to be on the lawn when it happens. I just want to be with you, and I want to die with you, and the children do too.”

The president assures his wife he will not send her away. Then, instructing Pierre Salinger to explain to the press that he has a cold, JFK flies back to Washington, D.C. The
New York Times
will report that a “slight upper respiratory infection” is the reason the president is cutting short the three-day trip; the paper is unaware that the president is flying back to Washington in an effort to prevent global thermonuclear war.

Jackie and the children are waiting when he arrives.

*   *   *

There is no day and there is no night in the Kennedy White House as the Cuban confrontation escalates. The president is in such pain from his back that he gets around on crutches, further adding to the tension. He sleeps just one or two hours at a time, then rises and talks on the phone for hours in the Oval Office, before returning to bed for another short nap. Jackie sleeps with him now, whether night or day. Sometimes they sleep in his small bed; at others, in her bedroom, in the two double beds, which have been pushed together to form one large king. They often talk late at night about the crisis. Once, Jackie wakes up to see Mac Bundy standing at the foot of their bed to wake her husband, whereupon JFK rises instantly and disappears for several more hours of top secret phone calls.

Jackie will later remember these days and nights as the time she felt closest to her husband. She walks by the president’s office all the time, cheering him up by bringing the children for surprise visits. She arranges for dinner from a favorite Miami seafood restaurant to be flown to Washington. The president and First Lady often slip into the Rose Garden for a quiet walk, where he confides in her about the escalating tension.

When the president returns to his work, he is not alone—nor is Jackie. While Bobby Kennedy works closely with his brother, his wife, Ethel, and their three children are frequently at the White House. It is Ethel who gives White House nanny Maud Shaw a pamphlet on how to prepare children for nuclear war—a pamphlet that Jackie snatches away moments later. “Don’t you know that panic is catching? And that children are susceptible?” the First Lady scolds Shaw.

This is not the demure Jackie the public sees, but a fiercely protective mother and wife taking charge of her household.

For two days, the president and his small White House entourage debate the top secret threat to the United States. Photos taken by U-2 spy planes show that the Soviets are working around the clock to complete the missile sites, meaning that warheads could be launched toward the United States within a matter of days. No one “bitches it up,” in JFK’s words, by leaking this information to the press, even though it’s clear that some journalists already know. Not even the Congress is told.

On the night of Monday, October 22, the scene changes. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy appears on national television to inform America about the potentially lethal missiles in Cuba—and what he plans to do about them. The end of the world is no time to keep the American people uninformed.

*   *   *

“Good evening, my fellow citizens,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy greets the nation from his study at the White House. There are deep grooves under his greenish-gray eyes, giving him a haggard look instead of the vibrant, youthful countenance the nation is used to seeing.

JFK’s face is puffy from his chronic hypothyroidism. He wears a crisp blue suit, blue tie, and starched white shirt, though the television audience can see him only in black and white. It is 7:00
P.M.
in Washington, D.C.

This broadcast from the White House is quite the opposite of Jackie’s lighthearted tour of just ten months earlier. John Fitzgerald Kennedy must make the most powerful speech of his life. He does not smile. His face is stern. There is menace in his eyes. He is not optimistic, nor even hopeful. His words come out angrily, with a vehemence that shocks some viewers. Kennedy speaks the words of a man who has been bent until he will bend no more. And now he’s fighting back.

“Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.”

Here the president pauses, letting the words sink in. He then recounts Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko’s visit to his office the previous Thursday, quotes Gromyko on the subject of missiles in Cuba—and then calls Gromyko a liar, for all the world to hear.

“The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: Aggressive conduct, if allowed to grow unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war. We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere.”

The president’s cadence is quicker now, as he grows angrier and angrier. The word
Cuba
comes out as
Cuber
.

After his speech is done, the president will enjoy a quiet dinner upstairs with Jackie, Ethel, Bobby, and a handful of invited guests. Watching the speech, the president’s dinner guests—among them designer Oleg Cassini and Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill—are stunned to learn that their dinner will not be the typical easygoing White House gathering. Even though they will sip French wine in the newly redecorated Oval Room, on the second floor, and JFK, with his usual understated style, will play the part of the congenial host, the tension at the dinner table will be something they will remember for the rest of their lives.