Surrounded by Enemies (24 page)

What has happened in this country over the past two and a half years is an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must. There are no historic or legal precedents to which I can turn in this matter, none that precisely fit the circumstances of a private citizen who has resigned the presidency of the United States. But it is common knowledge that serious allegations and accusations hang like a sword over our former President's head, threatening his health as he tries to reshape his life, a great part of which was spent in the service of this country and by the mandate of its people.

The simple fact is that a former President of the United States, instead of enjoying equal treatment with any other citizen accused of violating the law, would be cruelly and excessively penalized either in preserving the presumption of his innocence or in obtaining a speedy determination of his guilt in order to repay a legal debt to society. During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.

While John Kennedy received a pardon from President McCormack, Lyndon Johnson did not. His plea deal with the Justice Department eventually derailed all continuing investigations, in both Washington, D.C. and Texas. He grumbled to Lady Bird, “They’ve turned me into Aaron Fucking Burr.” On May 13, 1966, Lyndon Baines Johnson surrendered himself to authorities of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Texarkana, just 175 miles east of Dallas, Texas, where his most serious crime had been committed, and began serving his ten-year sentence.

Johnson immediately unleashed the same skills he had honed on U.S. senators while running the United States Senate. Soon the inmates he served with knew him as “Lyndon,” and he became extremely popular. The warden stated, “All issues here end up in Lyndon’s cell before they get to my office.” LBJ, it turned out, was a born deal-maker. If he couldn’t make them in the congress or the White House, the prison yard would serve just fine. He is widely credited with improving the quality of food served to inmates when he began a hunger strike to denounce the injustice of his own preferential prison menu, stating, “I won’t eat another bite until everyone here gets the same square meal they give me.” His hunger strike was ended with Texas steak and shared with every member of the penitentiary. He died in prison at age 64, on January 22, 1973.

An exact identification of all the conspirators and participants in the Dallas ambush has never been fully accomplished. It has become something of a national parlor game, full of speculation. While shadowy, some definition has emerged with time.

First, it is generally accepted that Lee Harvey Oswald was aware of and recruited into the conspiracy, although his death before full evidence could be presented at his trial means we will never know for certain if he was an actual member of a shooting team or “just a patsy,” as he had maintained. We do know that Corsican mobster Lucien Sarti was convicted of being Oswald’s backup, with or without Oswald’s knowledge. A jury said in 1976 that Sarti, dressed in a Dallas police uniform, had fired several of the bullets that hit the Kennedy motorcade from the grassy knoll area behind the picket fence.

We also know that the Central Intelligence Agency’s Bill Harvey was convicted of having recruited Sarti and others to take part in the plot. Actual CIA planning was never shown, however, and Harvey has always contended that he acted as a classic rogue element within the agency. Harvey’s boss, James Angleton, was a constant suspect. He denied any involvement and no prosecutor ever managed to mount a case against him.

U.S.-based members of organized crime also were under suspicion, but none ever made it to court. Johnny Roselli, Santos Trafficante, Sam Giancana and Carlos Marcello all were, to one degree or another, believed to have participated in CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro and suspected of transferring that working relationship to targeting John Kennedy. Active cases existed against Roselli and Marcello, who were both viciously murdered before charges could be filed. Trafficante and Giancana also died mysteriously. Prosecutors leaned heavily on Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby to testify. Two days after he met with them, he died in a car accident.

Federal prosecutors mounted a case against Antonio Veciana, the leader of the anti-Castro group Alpha 66. The jury found him not guilty. Even though the majority of jurors believed he had been involved, they simply felt the government had not proven its case.

Texas oilman Clint Murchison also was taken to court and, as with Veciana, the jury came away loathing him as a person and acquitting him as a conspirator.

And so it went. Trial and error.

Today, it is generally believed that the main plotters escaped punishment because they had planned carefully, never stating explicitly what they wanted or expected. The men who carried out their wishes either managed to stay silent or were silenced by violent means. Over and over, men were found to be victims of shocking suicides, or robbery-turned-homicides. In some cases, particularly with some of the Mafia leaders, the deaths were not mysterious at all. They were outright murders, designed to send a message not to talk, a message that was heard.

In the end, there was no doubt that a conspiracy had led to the ambush in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. There were two and possibly three teams in Dealey Plaza that fired as many as seven shots. The plot involved Texas oil money that hired both foreign and domestic sharpshooters who were managed by CIA rogue agents working with organized crime leaders in concert with anti-Castro Cubans. It was as complicated as it sounds, wildly improbable, and yet it happened.

A continuing source of pain and guilt to the former President was the incarceration of his great friend Dave Powers at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Norfolk. Powers had received an eight-year prison sentence for his role in disposing of the White House tapes and charges of interfering with the authority of the Secret Service to perform its duty to protect the President of the United States. The relatively spacious and campus-like atmosphere and architecture of MCI-Norfolk permitted a form of “community life” that was generally not available at other penal institutions of the time.

Kennedy knew that even though he had not asked Powers to destroy the tapes or to specifically thwart the Secret Service by bringing women into the White House, those acts had, indeed, been performed to his benefit. Kennedy visited Powers once a month, every month, from the time he left office until the time Powers was given early release in August of 1970. The two men were allowed to visit in private on the grounds and to smoke cigars together. After he was granted his freedom, Powers told friends that his privileges involved Scotch from a flask first used by Joseph Kennedy during the days of Prohibition, something that has always been officially denied.

John Kennedy had left Washington, D.C. a President who was separated from his wife and landed in Florida as a Catholic trying to avoid a messy divorce. For more than a year, there remained avid interest in where the situation stood between Jackie and him. It was a source of endless speculation and interest from the American public on the part of both friend and foe.

During this time, Jacqueline Kennedy moved to New York City with the children and enrolled them in private school. She rarely saw the former President when Caroline and John Jr. were handed off. It was all done through family members or other intermediaries. The tables had clearly turned. She had several rumored affairs. He minded his own business. Even when she was seen in public on the arm of another man, it was always explained that the gentleman was acting as an escort only.

In May of 1967, both Jack and Jackie were seen in a red convertible Ford Mustang in Cape Cod just before tourist season. By the summer, Jackie and the kids had moved back into the Hyannis Port home (she loathed the Palm Beach house) with this complex man, who both infuriated and enchanted her. The divorce papers were withdrawn as quietly as possible, given the inflamed tempers of the times and the heightened public interest.

President McCormack kept his promise to be only a caretaker President and did not seek reelection in 1968. He turned seventy-seven that year, and most voters appreciated his discretion. Instead of curtailing partisan politics, however, his announcement had the opposite effect. From the moment President McCormack took office, it seemed, he was a lame duck, and politicians by the droves in both parties began floating one trial balloon after another.

There was serious talk of Bobby Kennedy running in 1968, but he chose to step back from such an emotionally overwrought race. He accepted a teaching position with Harvard Law School, where his courses were standing room only on everything from the legalities of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the appropriate legal course to pursue with regard to the conspirators who targeted his brother. (He felt the death penalty would be too harsh and believed they should spend as much time in prison as possible in order to consider their treasonous behavior.)

John Kennedy’s 1960 nemesis, former Vice President Richard Nixon, took the Republican nomination that year, holding off a strong challenge from New York’s liberal Governor Nelson Rockefeller. With Lyndon Johnson and both Kennedys out of the running for the Democrats, and Vietnam contained as an issue, Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Senator Ed Muskie of Maine fought it out with a number of “favorite sons” holding on to blocks of votes, hoping to be kingmakers. Muskie took the nomination on a third ballot, when Humphrey threw his support behind him. None of the competition mattered in the end, as Nixon beat Muskie by a comfortable margin and returned the White House to Republican rule.

In 1969, former President Kennedy began a national book tour to promote what his publishers had hoped would be an autobiography but instead had become a call to action for Americans to retake control of their government.
Just Courage
— as the book was titled — led to a national reevaluation of his time in office, with sides being taken once again. The growing conservative movement focused on Kennedy’s transgressions, and the liberal community said JFK’s behavior simply could not be compared to the venal treason of the conspirators. His support, particularly among women, had dropped precipitously, but not enough to prevent his book from becoming the year’s best seller.

Although it took as much brokering as the Kennedy-Khrushchev Summit of 1965, eventually President Richard Nixon invited John Kennedy to the White House in November of 1969 to greet the astronauts who had returned from the moon the past July. At the time, Nixon had gone to see the astronauts in their isolation quarters, where they had been placed to avoid lunar contamination. He had invited them to the White House after they completed a global goodwill tour on behalf of the United States.

The shadow that haunted Richard Nixon that summer and fall looked like his old rival John Kennedy, the man who had first challenged the United States to send a man to the Moon before the 1960s were over. Nixon’s own advisers fretted that their boss might look like he was trying to take credit for something that wasn’t his, particularly given that he had been in office less than a year. It only took some impertinent questions from some Democratic-leaning reporters to push them into the photo op of the decade.

The photo of an awkwardly smiling Neil Armstrong flanked by former President John Kennedy and current President Richard Nixon became almost as famous as the one with Kennedy and the Beatles. The odd men out, of course, were astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, both cropped from the photo by circumstance and artistic design. As JFK left the White House that day, he winked to Kenneth O’Donnell, who had accompanied him to their “old stomping grounds,” and said, “I still got it.” John Kennedy had begun the decade with his New Frontier and had left the decade with his flag firmly planted on the lunar surface.

That same summer, on July 18, 1969, a young political intern named Mary Jo Kopechne drowned under mysterious circumstances at a party Senator Edward Kennedy attended on Chappaquiddick, off the eastern end of Martha’s Vineyard. No charges were filed, but Teddy’s excuse, that he was too inebriated to drive and thus could not have been at the wheel of the car, had most people convinced the night was not among his finest. The police report stated that a Kennedy cousin, Joseph “Joe” Gargan, Jr., was the driver. An inquest into the incident failed to lead to charges in the case, but it left a lingering suspicion about Teddy’s own behavior just over a year before he would face the voters in his reelection bid.

In 1970, Teddy surprised no one when he announced he would not be seeking reelection for a second Senate term. He told his close friends that he was following his brother Jack’s example of leaving to avoid being a distraction from the important business facing the nation. At the news conference, however, the youngest Kennedy brother smiled and said he intended to serve as his brother Jack’s chief of staff.

In a precedent-smashing, mind-blowing turn of events, the supposedly disgraced and humiliated ex-President was going to run for his old Senate job in his home state. The world simply could not believe this was happening. Most loved the move, particularly after they heard JFK’s explanation, which he laid out in private more than once. “It’s the biggest finger I can give the sons-of-bitches,” said the former President. “I’m still standing, and they know I know who they are.”

The legendary Kennedy self-deprecating humor was called into action again when reporters asked if it wasn’t wrong to act like a Senate seat could just be handed from one brother to another. “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” warned JFK. “So far, Teddy is all talk.”

In November of 1970, the eldest still-living Kennedy brother was elected in a landslide by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (defeating Josiah Spaulding) and became, once again, Senator John F. Kennedy. He was welcomed back to the U.S. Senate in January 1971 by a crowd that mostly contained the same names and faces as the crowd that came
this close
to voting him out of office for high crimes and misdemeanors five years earlier. He became the most sought-after guest in the Senate cloak room and used his position to push aggressively on the issue of nuclear arms reduction treaties.

In his first years as a junior senator, from 1953 to 1960, the younger John Kennedy seemed to most to be a man in a hurry to get someplace else. The second time around, however, from 1971 to 1977, Kennedy was a man at peace with who he was and where he was. By all accounts, he was a far superior representative of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in this twilight of his career.

Jack and Teddy became the new Kennedy power team. Edward Kennedy had never wanted anything more than to be trusted by John Kennedy to be his number two, a position that had seemed impossible to attain during the JFK presidency. But Bobby was now finding his own footing. He had served Jack nobly, loyally and passionately, and he was spent. He retreated into academia and practiced politics as an observer and not a participant whenever possible.

Together with Jacqueline Kennedy, former President Kennedy moved back to a Georgetown home just three blocks from the one he lived in back in the 1950s. Friends noticed that they spent far more time together in the 1970s than they had when they were supposedly living in harmony in the White House.

They fell into old routines like having breakfast together while each read something different, occasionally interrupting to point out an item of interest. To the end of his days, John Kennedy found reading the
New York Times
a great diversion, telling his brother Robert, “The most goddamn frustrating thing is, I still read this crap and it’s not even about me anymore.” JFK, however, refused to read
Top Story
, preferring
Time
for his newsweekly. The magazine had selected JFK as its “Man of the Year” twice — once in 1962 and again in 1966 — an honor commensurate with his fall from grace.

The former First Couple did not go out much, but when they did, they preferred a dinner party with old friends to a social engagement at some large Washington, D.C. event. Those always came stocked with photographers whose editors had told them to come back with Kennedy photos or not to bother coming back at all. Jack and Jackie were still the toast of the town, or at least the most interesting couple on the guest list.

The Kennedy family managed to hang together more closely, too. Jackie became more comfortable with the clan gatherings she had formerly despised and even played touch football with the boys once or twice. Jack, Bobby and Teddy established an easy familiarity and comfort that had eluded them in the pressure cooker of the White House. Watching President McCormack and then President Nixon and commenting was so much easier and carried far less personal risk.

Even the haters of the Kennedys seemed to take a step back. They were still hated, of course, by the extreme right, but they were not considered an immediate threat to the safety of the nation. In later years, Robert Kennedy confessed that this was his motivation in not pursuing a political career of his own. He had lived through his brother’s brush with martyrdom and had resolved that, however it turned out, he was through. In actual fact, all three of the Kennedy brothers — John, Robert and Edward — had taken a private family oath to never seek the presidency. They agreed to be happy without it, and besides the occasional twinge of regret that comes from knowing one of them could probably have defeated the existing candidates of any particular year, they seemed to accept the decision with great high spirits.

For nearly six years, then, John Kennedy lived a life that he enjoyed immensely. He was able to watch his children grow up, to fall back in love (or, as doubters maintained, to fall in love for the first time) with Jackie, and to practice club politics in the United States Senate with his little brother Ted, who seemed to be naturally drawn to the rhythm and mood of the congressional lifestyle. There were family gatherings, sailing trips, old friends and a true appreciation for what it meant to be alive, something that only a man who has nearly been killed can ever truly experience.

In 1975, the former President’s health began to fail. Whether it was the long-term grinding down of his Addison’s disease or the years of drug abuse to combat his various infirmities, he began to suffer one setback after another. Even so, after years of masking pain and disability, he was able to keep all but those closest to him unaware that he was dying.

In 1976, John Kennedy announced that he would not be a candidate for reelection, just as Edward had done six years earlier. But Teddy did not step in to try to reclaim the so-called “Kennedy seat,” because he had come to believe the voters might hand him the first defeat in an election that the Kennedys had ever suffered, a distinction that he did not want.

In presidential politics, John Kennedy even managed to stage a series of primary appearances with the young governor of California, Jerry Brown, the son of the man who had defeated Richard Nixon for the same office in 1962. His endorsement was sufficient to derail the candidacy of little-known Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. The general election of that year came down to a choice between two California governors — Jerry Brown for the Democrats and Ronald Reagan for the Republicans. Reagan defeated his Golden State successor, a rebuke that hurt Kennedy as much as Brown. JFK knew he would not see another presidential election, while Brown knew he had another shot in 1980 for a rematch.

In the early summer of 1977, having celebrated his sixtieth birthday only a month earlier, John F. Kennedy died of heart failure. He was sailing with numerous members of the Kennedy clan on a hot summer afternoon and complained of indigestion. They came in early; Kennedy skipped dinner and went to bed. “Leave the light on,” he said to Jackie as his wife kissed him goodnight. He passed away in his sleep.

In 1978, Jacqueline Kennedy wrote her own national bestseller,
Leave the Light On
. It detailed her life with John Kennedy in very personal terms and tried to reconcile the complex feelings she had about him as a leader, father and husband. She worked in the New York publishing industry until her own death in 1994.