I also tried to resolve a question that had always bothered me: What was it about John’s psychological makeup that made him so restless and willing to take risks? (Anyone who has ever been in the passenger seat of a car driven by John knows what I mean when I talk about risky behavior.) I spoke with a psychologist who offered a fascinating theory that potentially explained his restlessness and shed new light on his death. It’s all very speculative, but based on my own observations, I found the comments plausible.
I was also fortunate that a number of people who had never spoken about John before were willing to share their stories with me, and even those who had already spoken offered new insights. Michael Berman, for example, who had been John’s friend and business partner for more than a decade before their ugly falling-out over George, had refused to even mention John’s name for the past two decades. But he sat down with me for more than twenty hours of interviews. President Bill Clinton, Tina Radziwill, Carole Radziwill, Elizabeth “Biz” Mitchell, Pasquale “Pat” Manocchia, Barbara Vaughn, Charlie King, Julie Baker, and many others, also participated in extensive interviews for the first time.
In addition to hundreds of hours of interviews, I gained access to Secret Service and FBI files that had been previously sealed. I went through the normal procedure for filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, but when my requests and appeal were denied—the Secret Service claimed it had no record of anyone named John F. Kennedy Jr.—I filed a lawsuit. As part of the settlement, the Secret Service turned over more than five hundred pages of documents that offer a fascinating glimpse into the tortured relationship between John’s mom and the men assigned to protect him. “She was difficult,” observed Secret Service agent Clint Hill. These documents expose the frustration of agents trying to protect John while abiding by Jackie’s often unreasonable demands. The presidential libraries were more cooperative and processed thousands of pages of documents in response to my FOIA requests. The William J. Clinton Presidential Library alone released more than thirteen thousand pages of new materials.
Usually biographies chronicle the lives of great people who have left a tangible record of accomplishment. Or they examine a notable person’s life through the lens of their celebrity. While John was both accomplished and a celebrity, no serious examination exists of his life or considers his impact on American culture and history. Although he never had the opportunity to achieve his full potential—he had “every gift but the gift of years,” his uncle Edward Kennedy said in his powerful and emotional eulogy—John, like the magazine he founded, seemed to foretell our own era, in which the line between celebrity and politics, entertainment and government, grows increasingly hazy. In the years since his death, that line has only become more distorted. This book is not just a look back at a handsome, magnetic person who died too soon. It is also a prism through which to consider the world we live in today.
Finally, many people speculate about the impact John might have had if he’d lived, raising the prospect that he might have one day returned to the White House as president. It’s possible, but I believe that John should be remembered for the authentic life that he lived and not for what he might have become.
CHAPTER 1
“I WAS PROUD OF THE LITTLE GUY”
At 12:22 A.M. on November 25, 1960, John F. Kennedy Jr., who weighed six pounds and three ounces, was born in a Washington, DC, hospital to the future president and first lady of the United States. He became the first baby ever born to a president-elect.
A physician reported to the press that the delivery had been a “normal caesarean” and that both mother and baby were now resting safely. The supervising nurse also told Secret Service agent Clint Hill, stationed just outside the operating room, that the delivery was successful and that both mother and child were “doing fine”—but that the newborn had been placed in an incubator “as a precautionary measure.”
However, according to Ira Seiler, a second-year pediatric resident who assisted in the delivery, the situation was actually more complicated. In a 2013 oral history, Seiler claimed that when John emerged, the anesthesiologist held him by his ankles and slapped his buttocks. After several minutes, John’s face turned blue. Seiler realized that John was having trouble breathing and told the other physicians that he needed to be intubated. “He handed the baby to me, and I passed a tube into the trachea of the baby,” he reflected. “I then handed the infant back to him to breathe into the baby.” But the anesthesiologist appeared nervous, perhaps because he was holding the child of the future president, and accidentally knocked out the tube. Seiler grabbed John, reinserted the tube, and spent the next six minutes breathing air into his lungs. The doctor literally breathed life into the newborn. A nurse who was in the room said that John would have died had Seiler not intervened.
A few minutes later, John was transferred to the intensive care nursery. He was diagnosed with hyaline membrane disease, now called respiratory distress syndrome, which is common in premature babies. The condition results from a deficiency of a substance called surfactant, which helps keep the air sacs in the lungs open. Without it, an infant’s lungs collapse with each breath, making it harder to get enough oxygen. In some cases, the baby becomes so exhausted it gives up and stops breathing.
As the drama in the delivery room unfolded, the Secret Service tried reaching President-elect John F. Kennedy, who had left Washington earlier that evening and was flying to Palm Beach, Florida. A few minutes before landing, the pilot called him into the cockpit and informed him that his wife had been rushed to the hospital. This news was the only information available at the time. As soon as his plane landed, JFK pushed through a crowd of several hundred fans to an office, where he phoned the floor nurse of the maternity ward and learned that Mrs. Kennedy was already in surgery. He told the Secret Service that he needed to return to Washington immediately. Instead of taking his plane, he decided to jump on the much faster press plane that was already refueling.
Within fifteen minutes, the president-elect was back in the air on his way to Washington. He had no idea that John had already been born before he took off. According to published reports, JFK moved to the front section of the plane, where the pilot handed him radio earphones relaying the unexpected message, “It’s a boy; both doing nicely.” Campaign press secretary Pierre Salinger then announced to the press on board: “We have just been advised that Mrs. Kennedy has given birth to a boy and that both mother and baby are doing well.” But Mrs. Kennedy recounted a different story. More than a decade later, when her mother-in-law, Rose Kennedy, was writing her memoir, she asked Jackie for her recollections of that evening. Jackie told her that JFK was told on the plane that his son had been born prematurely and that his health “was in doubt.”
A few weeks earlier, on November 10, 1960, President-elect John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, commonly referred to as Jackie, stood before reporters at the Hyannis Armory to greet the world’s media following his razor-thin victory over the current vice president, Richard Nixon. JFK was not only the first Catholic elected to the nation’s highest office; he was also the nation’s first celebrity president, who, along with the first lady, looked better fitted for Hollywood than for Washington. Both were extraordinarily photogenic: Jack, forty-three, with his thick, chestnut hair, penetrating blue eyes, and high-wattage smile; and Jackie, only thirty-one years old and eight months pregnant with their second child, her square face framed by stylish brown hair that gave her “the look of a beautiful lion,” observed The New York Times. Jackie stood proudly onstage beside her husband as he read from the congratulatory telegrams that he received from Vice President Nixon and from President Dwight Eisenhower. “My wife and I prepare for a new administration and a new baby,” he concluded.
While aides from previous administrations could guide JFK as he assumed the presidency, no playbook existed for how to raise two famous children in the television age. John would be the youngest child to live in t
he White House since Esther Cleveland had been born there in 1893, during the second term of her father, President Grover Cleveland. John Jr. arrived prematurely, just two weeks after the Hyannis press conference, and both he and his mother suffered from poor health for weeks afterward. Despite the unusual circumstances, Mrs. Kennedy was determined to give her children as normal a life as possible while growing up in the White House. She demanded privacy even as she and her husband competed to control media access to John and Caroline. The first lady also clashed with the Secret Service, insisting that it was not the agency’s responsibility to protect her children from accidents that were a natural part of growing up. She would battle the Secret Service until John was sixteen years old and lost his protective detail. Amid this conflict, having two youngsters in the White House undoubtedly added a casual informality to a typically staid setting. Caroline, born on November 27, 1957, was three years old when her father took the oath of office; John was less than two months old. Toddler John kept everyone entertained with his inquisitive personality, love of helicopters, and fascination with the military.
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Both Jack Kennedy and Jackie Bouvier had faced adversity throughout their lives but dealt with it in very different ways. Jackie’s father, John Bouvier, a wealthy New York stockbroker, was also a drunk and philanderer who flitted about the social scene in Manhattan and Long Island’s Hamptons. His wife, Janet Lee, an accomplished equestrienne, grew tired of her husband’s antics and filed for divorce in 1940, when Jackie was ten years old. Jackie had always been quiet and reserved, but the trauma of the divorce left her even more withdrawn and less trusting.
Jack, too, faced complicated family dynamics. The Kennedys were governed by the iron will of the family architect, Joseph P. Kennedy, who had made millions on Wall Street and in the film distribution business before serving as the US ambassador to Great Britain during the 1930s. By the 1950s, he had set his sights on creating a political dynasty and was willing to use his vast fortune to achieve that vision. Joseph had one overwhelming ambition—to have his oldest son elected as president. When Jack’s older brother, Joe Jr., was killed while flying a dangerous mission in World War II, Jack inherited his father’s burden.
“It was like being drafted,” Kennedy reflected. “My father wanted his eldest son in politics. ‘Wanted’ isn’t the right word. He demanded it.” JFK, who had already gained considerable attention by swimming in shark-infested waters trying to save his crew after a Japanese destroyer rammed into his patrol boat, PT-109, returned a war hero ready to fulfill his father’s ambitions. The political journey began in Boston in 1946, when Kennedy won a congressional seat. Then, six years later, he won election to the US Senate.
In addition to his domineering father, the pious and humorless family matriarch, Rose, was content to leave the task of raising her children to nannies and nurses while she traveled the world. But although Jack confronted numerous physical ailments during his life, including a crippling back condition, he dealt with hardship by reaching out to people and engaging openly with friends throughout his life.
In 1942 Jackie’s mother married Hugh Auchincloss, an heir to the Standard Oil fortune with estates in Newport, Rhode Island, and McLean, Virginia. Auchincloss demonstrated coolness toward Jackie and her young sister, Lee, and both girls remained very much emotionally attached to their biological father. Jackie went on to study history, literature, art, and French for two years at Vassar College before spending her junior year abroad in Paris. In 1951 she earned her degree at George Washington University. The following year, she secured a job as the Inquiring Camera Girl for the Washington Times-Herald newspaper. Jackie would stop random men and women on the street to ask them a question, such as “What is your candid opinion of marriage?” She’d record their answers, snap their pictures, and weave it into a regular column. She developed a complicated personality, simultaneously appearing to be both shy and charming. Jackie possessed a breathless, childlike voice that made her appear naïve, but she was entirely capable of making ruthless calculations to advance her ambitions.
Jack and Jackie met at a dinner party in 1952 when, according to the future first lady, the congressman and soon-to-be senator “leaned across the asparagus and asked her for a date.” Engaged at the time to stockbroker John Husted Jr., Jackie suddenly called off the wedding, convinced that the wealthy and well-connected Kennedy would be better suited to supporting the lifestyle she desired. Initially, JFK was reluctant to settle down, relishing his playboy role as what The Saturday Evening Post magazine called Washington’s “Gay Young Bachelor.” (Gay had a very different meaning in the 1950s.) He had fallen in love with Jackie, but that did not mean he was prepared for a monogamous relationship. Jack knew, however, that he needed to marry and start a family if he intended to become president one day.
Their marriage at the Auchinclosses’ Newport estate, Hammersmith Farm, the next year was a social extravaganza that attracted 1,400 guests, but Jack’s old habits almost brought their union to an early end. “At last I know the true meaning of rapture,” Jack wrote his parents while he and Jackie honeymooned in Mexico. “Jackie is enshrined forever in my heart.” But being in love with Jackie did not mean that he would be faithful. Kennedy friend Lem Billings recalled that what bothered Jackie most about being married to Jack was the “humiliation she would suffer when she found herself stranded at parties while Jack would suddenly disappear with some pretty young girl.” Nevertheless, she chose to overlook his indiscretions, and they decided to start a family. Jackie lost two babies. In 1955 she suffered a miscarriage after three months of pregnancy. In August 1956, a month before the baby was due, Jackie gave birth to a stillborn infant, a girl, before successfully giving birth to Caroline in November 1957.
In January 1960 JFK announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. With the help of his talented group of advisors, JFK carefully cultivated the image of a youthful, robust leader, hero of PT-109, and brilliant author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning book Profiles in Courage (1956). Tapping into the nation’s longing for youthful leadership after eight staid years of the Eisenhower presidency, JFK called for a bold effort to “get America moving again.” With a crisp Boston accent, Kennedy declared, “I run for the presidency because I do not want it said that in the years when our generation held political power . . . America began to slip.”
Initially, Jacqueline joined him as he traveled around the country, but when she became pregnant, her doctors instructed her to remain at home. Warned that she might have lost her daughter due to the stress associated with JFK’s failed effort to secure a position as running mate to Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson in 1956, Jackie was determined not to repeat the same mistake. But staying home did not stop her from contributing to her husband’s campaign. She wrote cover stories for popular magazines and filmed a number of television commercials. She recorded the first American presidential campaign commercial in Spanish and spent the final weeks of the campaign writing a syndicated column, Campaign Wife, that appealed specifically to women voters.
Despite Kennedy’s broad appeal, the election remained close till the end. Nixon skillfully capitalized on public concern over Kennedy’s inexperience, especially in foreign affairs. The even bigger obstacle, however, remained JFK’s Catholic faith. Anti-Catholic sentiment ran deep, especially in the Protestant South, and neither party had nominated a Catholic since New York governor Al Smith won the Democratic nomination in 1928. “If you vote for Al Smith,” cried a Protestant preacher, “you’re voting against Christ and you’ll be damned.” Smith may not have been damned, but he was trounced by Republican Herbert Hoover. Kennedy responded to the issue boldly. In September he stood before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association and declared, “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic.”
Television played a key role in Kenne
dy’s election. In 1960, 87 percent of American homes had televisions, representing a 25 percent increase since 1956. The turning point in the campaign came in a series of four televised debates between September 26 and October 24. Kennedy used the debates—the first ever televised between presidential contenders—to demolish the Republican charge that he was inexperienced and badly informed. He succeeded far better than his opponent in communicating his qualities of boldness, imagination, and poise. Kennedy appeared alert, aggressive, and cool. Nixon, who perspired profusely, looked nervous and uncomfortable. It is instructive that radio listeners were evenly divided over who had won the debate, while the overwhelming majority of television viewers gave Kennedy a decisive edge. The performance energized Kennedy’s lagging campaign, and the debates institutionalized television’s role as a major force in modern American politics. “That night,” the journalist Russell Baker reflected, “image replaced the printed word as the natural language of politics.”
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Over the next few weeks, while the president-elect laid the groundwork for his new administration, Jackie prepared for the birth of their second child. Instead of staying in Washington, JFK interviewed potential Cabinet members at his father’s six-bedroom, 8,500-square-foot, Mediterranean-style house that stretched across two acres of well-manicured lawns in Palm Beach. The campaign had left JFK both physically and mentally exhausted, and the relative seclusion of the family estate offered him the chance to regain his strength away from public view. Because she was unable to travel, Jackie stayed behind with Caroline at their Georgetown home awaiting the baby’s arrival. Given her previous difficult births, doctors recommended a caesarean, which was scheduled for mid-December.
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