Killing Lincoln/Killing Kennedy (58 page)

This horrifying image of a Buddhist monk self-immolating became one of the most enduring images of protest against the Vietnam War.
(Malcolm Browne/Associated Press)

*   *   *

It is 5:45
P.M
. on May 29 in Washington, D.C. President John Kennedy has had a busy day of back-to-back meetings in the Oval Office. Yet his burgundy tie is neatly cinched around his neck and his tailored navy blue suit coat looks as immaculate as when he put it on after his 1:00
P.M.
nap. Right now, JFK is needed in the Navy Mess, on the lower level of the White House. He rises slowly from his desk, stretching his back as he does so, then begins the short walk downstairs.

The president has no illusions over what is about to transpire. Today is his forty-sixth birthday. His staff has abruptly disappeared, leading him to believe that they have already made their way to the Navy Mess for what is supposed to be a surprise party.

The cares of the world are never far from Kennedy’s shoulders, even during a time of celebration. So as he walks to a party in his honor, there is a third incendiary situation looming over his administration. This problem has nothing to do with race or religion or war. Instead, it is about that most primal of all human longings: sex. And it has far more potential to end his presidency than does Birmingham or even Vietnam.

JFK has long been aware that revelations about his philandering would ruin not only that carefully burnished image of him as a family man but also his political future. Now he need look no further than Great Britain to see exactly what that downfall might look like. John Profumo, a dapper forty-eight-year-old British war hero and politician, has been caught having an affair with a twenty-one-year-old call girl named Christine Keeler. Profumo is married, and his wife, former film star Valerie Hobson, has chosen to forgive him. If Profumo were any other man, the embarrassing story might end there.

But John Profumo is also Britain’s secretary of war and one of the most powerful men in the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. And not only is Christine Keeler sleeping in his bed, but she is also having sex with a deputy Soviet naval attaché. When first confronted about his affair in the House of Commons, Profumo denied it. On June 5, he will be forced to admit that he lied. A disgraced Profumo will be shunned by his colleagues and forced to resign.

Profumo will disappear from the government and high society. His humiliation will be so complete that he will undertake extraordinary measures to seek redemption. He will volunteer to scrub toilets at a London shelter for the poor—a penance that he will continue to perform long after Queen Elizabeth restores his social status in 1975 by making him a Commander of the British Empire.

Prime Minister Macmillan is not guilty of a single indiscretion, but he is the man ultimately responsible for any secrets Profumo might inadvertently have leaked to his mistress. Seventy-one percent of the British public is in favor of either Macmillan’s resignation or the chance to vote for a new prime minister via an immediate general election.

John Kennedy is riveted by the scandal. The similarities between himself and Profumo are too many to be ignored: both are nearly the same age, both have glamorous wives, both are decorated World War II veterans, and both men even go by the nickname Jack.

But there is no comparison in their womanizing. JFK’s indiscretions go far beyond those of Profumo. John Kennedy has been extremely fortunate so far that no women have stepped forward to boast about bedding the president. And he has no reason to believe that any of the women who spent the night in the White House were spies. But as his brother Bobby reminds him, even one woman going to the tabloids could ruin him. The damage would go far beyond the innuendos Marilyn Monroe spread around Hollywood before her untimely death.

The irony is that Jackie’s pregnancy has made John Kennedy more devoted to his wife and family than ever before. His staff has continued to see the president and First Lady holding hands and spending far more time together—though only Jackie bears witness to the president saying nightly prayers on his knees. Back in March, Secret Service agents were stunned when JFK actually showed up at the airport to greet Jackie, Caroline, and John upon their return from a trip. “The president had clearly missed his family and was eager to see them,” agent Clint Hill will later write.

As Jackie’s pregnancy becomes more visible, the Kennedys are spending more weekends together at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland that Dwight Eisenhower famously named for his grandson. Situated on 125 acres in the Catoctin Mountains, the thickly forested retreat features miles of trails for walking, a large main cabin known as the Aspen Lodge, a putting green, a driving range, a skeet-shooting facility, horse stables, and a heated outdoor pool. Wire fences patrolled by Marine Corps guards ring the entire facility. Best of all to the Kennedy family, Camp David is one of the only places in the world where a Secret Service agent does not hover nearby every minute of the day. The marines are deemed enough to protect the First Family.

Now, in the Navy Mess, it is Jackie who leads the chorus of “Happy Birthday” the instant her husband enters the room. He feigns surprise as a glass of champagne is slipped into his hand and his staff gathers around to present an array of gag gifts.

But Jackie Kennedy has more surprises up her sleeve. For the party later moves from the Navy Mess to the presidential yacht,
Sequoia
. Only family and a few close friends are invited. As
Sequoia
cruises slowly up and down the Potomac, the quiet birthday gathering turns into a raging party. Dom Perignon 1955 flows, and music from a three-piece band blares in the aft salon. The Twist has gone out of style, but it’s the president’s favorite, so the band plays Chubby Checker again and again. Secret Service agent Clint Hill will later say that he’s never seen John and Jackie Kennedy having more fun together, “doing the twist, the cha-cha, and everything in between.”

Despite his infidelities, President Kennedy was devoted to his family, shown here on Easter Sunday, 1963.
(Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

The cruise is set to end at 10:30, but JFK is having so much fun that he orders the skipper to take her out for another hour. And another. And yet another, all the while ignoring the lightning and rain that keep Bobby, Ethel, Teddy, and the rest of the party indoors.

It’s 1:20 in the morning when the
Sequoia
finally docks. Washington is asleep. John and Jackie Kennedy are awash in the romance of a very special evening. The Birminghams and Vietnams and Profumos will once again confront the president in the morning, but for now those problems are very far away.

The man with six months to live doesn’t contemplate it, but those closest to him may remember his last birthday party as his very best.

12

J
UNE 22
,
1963

W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

L
ATE MORNING

“You’ve read about Profumo?” John Kennedy asks his guest.

The president and Martin Luther King Jr. walk alone through the White House Rose Garden. This is the first time they’ve met. Kennedy towers over the five-foot-six civil rights leader. Today is a Saturday and the start of a carefully orchestrated series of meetings between the White House and some powerful business groups to mobilize support for the civil rights movement. In a few hours, the president will board Air Force One for a trip to Europe, temporarily leaving the racial inferno behind. This will put control of White House business into the hands of Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy, whose feuding has reached an all-time high.

Before he goes, JFK has an important point to make to Reverend King. The president has hard evidence, provided by J. Edgar Hoover, that the civil rights leader has something in common with the disgraced British politician John Profumo.

In not so many words, the president is warning King to be smart and control his libido.

For both their sakes.

John Kennedy has thrown the power of his office behind the civil rights movement, but he has done so reluctantly. The president has no black friends. The nearest he comes to indulging in black culture is dancing to Chubby Checker. In John Kennedy’s world, blacks are primarily valets, cooks, waiters, and maids. His forefathers were poor immigrants from Ireland who quickly took advantage of America’s freedoms to achieve prosperity. JFK takes liberties for granted, even as generation after generation of children descended from slaves have never known such opportunities.

Bobby Kennedy is a driving force behind his brother’s new stand. Bobby has become such a zealot for civil rights that his first name is considered an insult in the South. John Kennedy’s finally standing up for the black man is a victory for Bobby as well.

May 1963 was a trying month, marked by confrontation after confrontation in Birmingham spurred by the racist Alabama governor George Wallace. The battles rage on. On June 11, after successfully ensuring that the University of Alabama was integrated, JFK delivered a major nationally televised address about civil rights. In a hastily written and partially improvised speech that would one day be counted among his best, the president promised that his administration would do everything it could to end segregation. He pushed Congress to “enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities open to the public.”

The very next day, civil rights activist Medgar Evers is shot dead in the driveway of his Mississippi home.

Integration, however, is not just a matter of doing the right thing. JFK’s commitment has far-reaching ramifications. For instance, some Americans equate civil rights with communism. The last thing Kennedy needs during the height of the cold war is to be branded a Communist
and
a Negro sympathizer—even though he knows that many in the Deep South will immediately make that improbable leap.

And then there is Martin Luther King Jr.’s womanizing. This fact is well-known throughout the civil rights movement. King spends the majority of each month away from his home and from his wife, Coretta, who knows not to question him about his faithfulness. According to FBI surveillance and the admissions of his good friend Ralph Abernathy, King has sex with prostitutes, hangers-on, and even other men’s wives. When pressed by friends, he does not deny the indiscretions, explaining that he needs sex to curb his anxiety during intense times when he is often very lonely. (Nearly a decade after Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in 1968, the FBI files on his private life will be sealed until the year 2027.)

Because Director Hoover believes King is a Communist, the FBI has been tapping King’s phones and bugging his motel rooms for a year and a half. Hoover is obsessed with bringing King down. The FBI chief describes the civil rights leader as a “tomcat with obsessive degenerate sexual urges.” Hoover fumes when King is named
Time
magazine’s 1963 Man of the Year. (Kennedy won in 1961; Johnson will win in 1964.) J. Edgar Hoover actually spends hours listening to the secret recordings made of King’s assignations. The president and attorney general are both informed of what is being recorded. Jackie Kennedy, who thinks King is a phony, will later remember her husband confiding the contents of a tape recording in which King “was calling up all these girls and arranging for a party of men and women, I mean, sort of an orgy in the hotel and everything.”

The most infamous King recording will take place on January 6, 1964, at Washington, D.C.’s Willard Hotel. As recounted in Taylor Branch’s
Pillar of Fire
, King is caught on tape saying, “I’m [having sex] for God. I’m not a negro tonight!”

None of these shenanigans would normally matter to John F. Kennedy. What King does in private is the good reverend’s business. But the president has thrown in with the civil rights movement. Kennedy and King, its most prominent voice, are politically shackled at the wrist—like it or not.

And the president doesn’t like it one bit. His alliance with King runs counter to every careful strand of his political DNA. There are enormous parallels between the two men. Kennedy can be impulsive in some aspects of his life, but he is precise and cautious when it comes to preparing for an election. King’s infidelities, alleged Communist sympathies, and relentless pursuit of civil rights make their public association an enormous political risk. Even standing here in the relative privacy of the Rose Garden with Martin Luther King makes Kennedy sweat. “King is so hot,” an exasperated JFK confided to Bobby before the reverend’s arrival, “that it’s like [Karl] Marx coming to the White House.”

Martin Luther King Jr. could not care less about the president’s discomfort. In fact, he’s turning up the heat. Dr. King is planning a mass demonstration for August, on the Washington Mall. This moves the civil rights battle from the Deep South and into full view of the Oval Office. “What if they pee on the Washington Monument?” a horrified Kennedy says when he hears the news.