America's Reluctant Prince

by Steven M. Gillon

  On January 17, 1998, when he gave his deposition in the Jones case and denied having had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, Clinton unknowingly stepped into a legal trap. What made this incident different from all the other allegations was that it raised the possibility that the president had committed an impeachable offense. The list of possible crimes included suborned perjury (bribing someone to commit perjury), perjury, and obstruction of justice.

  John and I had several conversations about the scandal as the story unfolded. What I remember most was his escalating anger. He resented how money was being poured into efforts to bring down Clinton and the hypocrisy of many politicians, such as House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had his own history of infidelity. He lashed out at the “sanctimonious prude” Ken Starr for setting up a perjury trap. He also could not understand why the media, including respectable publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, obsessed over the story, often at the expense of covering more meaningful issues. John had a point. From January until the Senate trial the following winter, the Associated Press assigned twenty-five full-time reporters to the story, resulting in 4,109 total pieces, or an average of eleven stories per day on just this topic. The evening news broadcasts for the three major networks, along with Fox News, devoted 1,931 minutes to the scandal—more than the next seven topics combined.

  The scandal broke at a key moment in the evolution of the media industry. When George launched in 1995, it stood largely alone in its quest to merge politics and pop culture. But by 1998, everyone had started joining the act. Political talk shows were cheap to produce, and the Clinton scandal turned talking heads into media stars. Cable television, which expanded its reach in the 1990s, filled the airwaves with chat shows: Hardball, Rivera Live, Crossfire, Washington Unwrapped, and The Beltway Boys. At the same time, comedian Bill Maher started hosting Politically Incorrect, which included actors, rock stars, and politicians along with his unique brand of biting commentary.

  Just as John was trying to humanize political leaders, a cultural shift was occurring in the opposite direction. Berman and Kennedy viewed the merge of politics and popular culture as a positive development and one that could be harnessed to reach apathetic voters and make them feel better about their elected leaders. There was, however, already emerging a darker side to this merger. A key starting point occurred in 1988, when the Miami Herald staked out the home of Gary Hart, front-runner for the 1988 Democratic nomination for president, to catch him having an affair with a young model named Donna Rice. (The two were later photographed together on a boat aptly named Monkey Business.) In 1992 the Star, a supermarket tabloid, published a story about Gennifer Flowers, who claimed she had had a twelve-year affair with then presidential candidate Bill Clinton. The story forced Clinton and his wife to sit down on the popular television news program 60 Minutes to discuss their marriage.

  These two events, and others that followed, symbolized the blurring of lines between mainstream media and sensational tabloid exposés. Television networks increasingly hustled to feed the twenty-four-hour news cycle with scandal and innuendo. Mock reporters stood alongside serious journalists to interrogate Flowers. “Did Governor Clinton use a condom? Will you be sleeping with any more presidential candidates?” asked “Stuttering John” Melendez, who worked for radio shock jock Howard Stern. Soon enough, Matt Drudge, who had broken the Clinton-Lewinsky story and who thrived on gossip, was competing with mainstream news organizations. Time magazine once dubbed Drudge “the king of the new junk media.” But whatever his critics called him, Drudge still could be seen on NBC’s venerable Meet the Press, mingling with the paragons of the Washington press corps.

  Technological changes helped create and sustain the new politics of scandal. In his 2005 bestselling book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, journalist Thomas Friedman of The New York Times described how technology and globalization were flattening hierarchies and removing the middleman between manufacturers and consumers. The same phenomenon impacted journalism in the 1990s, as technology broke down traditional ways of providing information. In the past, editors and producers decided which information was newsworthy. But the proliferation of information outlets—the internet, all-news cable TV channels, talk radio—removed mediating institutions and allowed people to choose for themselves which news sources to trust. While roughly 60 percent of adults watched television network news regularly in 1993, fewer than half did so in 1998. Major newspapers suffered a corresponding decline. Digitization quickened the pace of news and privileged gossip over fact. “The digital age does not respect contemplation,” observed James M. Naughton, former executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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  The Lewinsky scandal uncomfortably highlighted the flawed assumptions upon which George rested. John had misread history. In 1995 he and Michael Berman had launched the magazine with tremendous enthusiasm, convinced that Bill Clinton’s election signaled a new age of optimism and a powerful affirmation of the benefits of government activism. Technological transformation would galvanize a new generation of voters by turning political leaders into pop icons. But John proved wrong on both counts. Instead of establishing a positive view of government, the decade witnessed a reactionary conservative backlash, and the same technology that enabled Clinton to forge an emotional bond with Democratic voters would later be responsible for fueling the scandal that almost destroyed his presidency. While Clinton was impeached in the House, the Senate did not remove him from office, and ironically, he left the White House in 2001 with sky-high approval ratings in polls.

  By 1998, numerous burdens weighed on John’s shoulders, but you would never have known it. He remained as fun loving and lighthearted as always. He spent long weekends at the Vineyard and took advantage of summer holidays—Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day—to invite close friends over to relax and play games while he served as cruise captain. Breakfast was open season, with everyone making his or her own. John enjoyed a multicourse meal consisting of cereal, eggs, and lots of bacon. His guests would then hop into a jeep and drive across the property to the beach, where John would organize touch football games. When not running around with the adults, John would traverse the dunes, playing with his friends’ children. For lunch, they would head back to the house, where Mrs. Onassis’s chef, who stayed on after her death, would have a hearty meal already prepared. In the afternoon, John would sometimes arrange trips into town or go waterskiing on the bay. After dinner, John loved to play a word game in which guests would either recite a real quote from Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations or make up their own. People had to guess what was real and what was not. The game produced some hysterical reactions, but few were as animated as John, who always clapped his hands while roaring with laughter.

  Tragically, the summer of 1998 would be his last full season on the Vineyard, and there would be few opportunities for laughter in 1999, as John’s world closed in on him.

  CHAPTER 11

  “THE ONLY PLACE THAT I WANT TO BE IS WITH ANTHONY”

  The last six months of John’s life were the most difficult since his father’s assassination. George continued its struggle to gain readers and attract advertising revenue. Amid this struggle, Hachette made clear to John that it planned to walk away from their partnership once their contract expired at the end of 1999. In his private affairs as well, John confronted the prospect of loss. While he adored his sister, their relationship had quietly soured over the past few years. Even more troubling, the two most meaningful people in John’s life were slipping away. Cancer intensified its relentless conquest of Anthony Radziwill’s body, while Carolyn grew still more distant and erratic. Despite all these problems, John remained resilient, exploring new opportunities that might keep his business afloat and salvage his marriage. On Friday evening, July 16, as John departed from Essex County Airport in New Jersey for a stopover on Martha’s Vineyard before continuing on to Hy
annis Port, hopeful signs suggested that his life might be getting back on track.

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  On January 6, 1999, the New York Post published a headline: “John Jr. Searching for New No 2.” The article announced that John was “searching for a hands-on editor for his George magazine to try to bring it to the next level.” The article appeared shortly after John attended a Hachette-organized meeting in Los Angeles with the syndication arm of Barry Diller’s USA Networks to discuss his possible participation in a George television show. John had always understood the value of extending the George brand to TV, but he insisted that whatever they created needed to focus on the magazine and not on him. It was clear to John, however, that Hachette was pushing for him to play a larger role. “Fuck this!” he shouted as he stormed out of the room. He then called David Pecker, and the two men engaged in what one George editor called “a fiery phone call.”

  Prior to this media ploy in January, the once promising relationship between John and Pecker had already begun disintegrating. Pecker blamed John for the magazine’s ongoing troubles. In the first quarter of 1999, ad pages dropped by 32.7 percent, and ad revenue tumbled 20.4 percent. When combined with the declines over the previous two years, the figures gave the clear impression that George was in trouble. Despite the fall, George still had a healthy one hundred pages of ads. But all the financials were moving in the wrong direction, which did not bode well for the future.

  While it’s true that George could sell more copies if John posed with his shirt off in every issue, the magazine confronted much bigger problems. Editorially, George remained of uneven quality and never found a clear way to distinguish itself from competitors or to create its own category. The highly partisan trial and impeachment of President Bill Clinton further complicated George’s mission. How could a magazine designed to celebrate the nobility of politics cover a story about the unseemly relationship between a White House intern and a dishonest president? The intersection between politics and culture turned out to be a far less savory place than John had imagined. His desire to project a neutral, nonpartisan message was rapidly overwhelmed by an angry partisanship dividing Americans into rival camps of liberals and conservatives. And the internal problems never went away, either: John never, even after four years, found a true editorial focus, and David Pecker and Hachette never committed to a subscription drive and the magazine’s long-term growth.

  John’s and David Pecker’s relationship devolved so badly that John worried Pecker was using him primarily to support other Hachette properties. John found himself on the road every few weeks meeting with enthusiastic advertisers, but for some reason, the ad pages in George continued to shrink. “John suspected Pecker was playing a shell game,” observed Richard Blow, “cashing in on John’s celebrity and using the money for his other titles.” John became convinced that Hachette was stealing from George, overbilling for back office work while keeping a larger share of the revenue than it was entitled to. At first glance, it did appear that Hachette was taking a $3 million bite out of George profits. That amount not only translated to smaller budgets for editors but also drained money from John’s own pocket, since his contract guaranteed him a percentage of the revenue that he generated. In the fall, John asked Biz Mitchell to help him find a forensic accountant. John arranged several secret meetings with the accountant at a hotel near the office. It’s unknown what, if anything, came of these meetings.

  That information, however, would have likely come to the attention of the top of the company. “There was just no way David Pecker didn’t know that John’s people [were] asking questions about the budget,” Biz recalled. “There’s not a chance.”

  The timing of this battle with Hachette could not have been worse. John was trying to fulfill a lifelong dream to earn his pilot’s license, and in order to qualify, he needed to log hours in the sky. Earlier, John had asked for Biz’s permission to do so, knowing that he would be away from the office for long stretches of time. Biz did not like the idea of John sitting behind the wheel of an aircraft suspended twenty-thousand feet in the air. “I have driven with you,” Biz responded. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” She always declined his invitations to accompany him. “That’s all right,” he responded, “because Mommy and Daddy can’t fly at the same time because of what will happen to the magazine if we crashed.”

  Mitchell had good reason to be concerned. I, too, had driven with John and, given his aggressiveness, would not have wanted to be in an airplane with him at the controls. When driving, he would weave in and out of lanes, often at high speed. Once, when we were stuck in traffic, he steered the car onto the sidewalk. His flight instructors swore that John was a careful pilot, yet he was naturally absentminded and prone to take unnecessary risks. But he had been fascinated with airplanes and helicopters since childhood. “I have loved flying since I was a little kid,” he told Biz, repeating a story he had once shared with me. “You know that picture of me running into my daddy’s arms? Well, I am running to the aircraft behind him.” Whenever John spotted an interesting aircraft, he would call people to the window to witness it with him.

  John had started taking flying lessons in the 1980s but stopped at his mother’s request. She was well aware of the Kennedy family’s track record of flying mishaps. John’s uncle Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. died while piloting a dangerous mission over the English Channel during World War II, and his aunt Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy died in 1948 when a small aircraft in which she was a passenger smashed into the Cévennes Mountains in France. When John was three years old, his uncle Ted Kennedy was on his way to the Massachusetts Democratic Convention to accept his nomination for a second term as senator when his plane crashed due to bad weather. The pilot and the senator’s legislative aide both died, and Teddy was left with a broken back that bothered him for the rest of his life. More distant relatives, from Aunt Ethel’s parents to Aristotle Onassis’s son, Alexander, also perished in plane crashes. Yet this history had little impact on John, who eagerly resumed flying after his mother passed away.

  Biz agreed to let John pursue his flying fantasies, but after his fight with Hachette, John’s hours away from the office left her to contend with the fallout. After the contentious meeting in Los Angeles, John decided to fly his plane back to New York in order to gain the flying time needed to earn his pilot’s license. It was during John’s multiday flight in his small plane, a single-engine Cessna 182 Skylane, that Hachette decided to ratchet up the aggression. First, the publisher canceled Biz’s subscriptions to other magazines. “They were sending back writer contracts unprocessed,” Mitchell recalled. Hachette fired Negi Vafa, whom John had hired to organize George events, cut up her credit card, and escorted her out of the building. “They were clearly on the attack,” said Mitchell.

  While all of this was going on, John was calling Biz from pay phones in small towns as he made his way across the country. “I’m coming back, just sit tight,” he repeatedly told her. “Just don’t put up with anything, just ignore it, and I’ll be there shortly.” A few days after the publication of a second critical New York Post article, John returned to George and called Biz into his office. He looked tired and uncharacteristically frazzled, apparently overwhelmed by events unfolding around him. “He and I understood the situation was untenable,” Mitchell recalled. “He had urged me to stay and fight, but they had escalated the assault in the intervening days.”

  It was all too much for John to handle. Sitting with his head resting on his desk, John started sobbing inconsolably. “I don’t have very many good friends in the world, and you are one of my best friends,” he confessed. Now Hachette was trying to take her away. “I was surprised he was telling me how important I was to him and with this much emotion,” Mitchell reflected in 2018. “I felt very clear that he and I understood each other well, were close, and really enjoyed each other. But I tended to grant him his privacy, and as his employee, I guarded some of mine, a
nd that did not allow for the level of communication best friends usually had. I was surprised he was putting me in that small group of his closest people.”

  They both knew that she, as the “No. 2” who was allegedly being replaced, could no longer remain as the editor. The Post article, by conveying the impression that there was no one in charge at George, eroded her authority to lead the magazine. Biz did not pull any punches with John. “What really bothers me,” she told him bluntly, “is that you left me to handle this situation for all these days when you were calling me, telling me to just hang tough.” At the time, Biz was in a relationship with a man who had recently been diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, but she never used that misfortune as an excuse and always did everything John asked of her. “I always came through on my end,” she said, looking back. John and Biz “agreed that it would have been hell to fight our way through this, with Hachette on the attack, and that with my boyfriend in the hospital, I could use the time to be with him.” He never asked her to resign and instead offered to pay her the near equivalent of her salary for six months if she did not accept another job.

  Of all people, John knew the value of getting as much time as possible with a sick loved one. He had counseled Biz when she first learned of her boyfriend’s diagnosis. He had told her about his experience trying to be the best friend he could be to Anthony during his treatments. And within months, John would be facing the challenge, and the anguish, of supporting Anthony full on.

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  By the spring, it became evident to everyone that Anthony was rapidly deteriorating and living on borrowed time. Doctors informed Carole that his heart had expanded to three times its normal size. “Carole, he’s not going to recover from this,” a physician told her matter-of-factly. “I’m very sorry. I assumed you knew. Your husband is dying. He has a few weeks left at best.” It was the first time in five years that any doctor had stated with such finality that Anthony was going to die.