by Bryce Zabel
What the Kennedys already knew and the public had yet to fully comprehend, was that the Warren Commission would be receiving testimony, files and theories from the FBI which, at that time, seemed to be leaning strongly toward pinning the matter on Oswald and moving on.
The commission had no funds or authority for independent investigation. It would have to make whatever case it felt needed to be made from other people’s evidence.
Oswald Casts a Shadow
Against the backdrop of this high-stakes gamesmanship, the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald loomed large. Oswald, who at the beginning had talked much more than anyone had expected, had suddenly gone quiet at the insistence of his attorney, William Kunstler. The New Yorker, however, was anything but quiet, arguing his client’s innocence regularly to all takers. The one thing that Kunstler said that grabbed everyone’s attention, however, was the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was going to take the stand in his own defense. Kunstler dropped this bombshell on a crowd of reporters outside the Dallas courts building after a hearing about whether Oswald’s federal troubles might supersede local jurisdiction.
My client is innocent. It is not up to him to prove that, as you all know, and he is under no legal obligation to testify, a right protected by the U.S. Constitution. It is up to the Dallas District Attorney to prove that he is guilty. Lee Oswald, however, will testify, under oath, that the only mistake he made on November 22 was coming to work at the Texas School Book Depository on a day when someone chose to shoot at the President of the United States. Powerful forces have framed him, ladies and gentlemen. He is exactly what he said on the day he was arrested. A patsy.
Day in and day out, Kunstler embellished his reputation as a radical firebrand and showed that he intended to carry out an aggressive defense of Lee Harvey Oswald. Besides proclaiming his client’s innocence, he declared that all of Oswald’s statements before he gained legal representation were obtained under duress and were therefore “inoperative” — the attorney’s word, which was later widely quoted and ridiculed.
When confronted with a statement from Dallas D.A. Henry Wade that a recovered bullet matched the gun that Oswald had bought by mail-order before the shooting, Kunstler was unfazed. “Henry Wade can say whatever he damn well pleases. He’s a state lackey, and they pay him to get convictions. He doesn’t care that he’s prejudicing the jury pool against my client.”
Kunstler would later say in his 1967 book The People Versus Lee Harvey Oswald that he was “preparing the battlefield.” He wanted to be the underdog, citing the fact that he was a New York Jew fighting in the buckle of the Bible Belt, and hoping that some of that would rub off on his client. He continually invoked his theory of a grand right-wing conspiracy that decided the President was too progressive. He railed against conspirators, real and imagined, with a vested interest in nipping change in the bud. By “change,” Kunstler meant peace talks, black civil rights and strengthening organized labor.
The irony, of course, is that the Kennedy men all seemed to agree with William Kunstler about the likelihood of conspiracy, even as they hoped the Warren Commission — which they had empowered as the official investigation — would come to the opposite conclusion. It was, to use a word favored by psychologists, a “cognitive dissonance” that would make living in the White House during 1964 the trickiest year yet.
Christmas Truce
By mid-December 1963 the nation was exhausted. It had been hit with the impact of what felt like a stressful brush-with-death of a family member, combined with the unsettled feeling that won’t go away after being mugged. America was high-strung and stressed-out.
Holiday shopping sales figures were headed for a historic low. Retail organizations implored President and Mrs. Kennedy to consider lighting more public Christmas trees but were rebuffed for security reasons. The First Lady’s social secretary Liz Carpenter explained the feeling in her own memoirs, tying the public’s down mood in part to the loss of the Kennedys’ infant son from respiratory stress disease: “People understood that the President and Mrs. Kennedy needed some time alone. They’d suffered the death of their son that year as well… and then what happened in November. It was just a bit too much for anyone.”
The mood of Christmas 1963 was one of somber and earnest prayer for many people. After the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis hung over the 1962 holiday season, now the ambush in Dallas hung over this one. America’s holidays had been hijacked by a couple of frightening and disturbing near-misses. Many people did without holiday parties and spent time with their families.
No one talked about politics, at least publicly. December had been declared the lull before the storm, but politics, particularly presidential politics, were gone only temporarily. In many homes of America’s political elite, there was a great deal of thinking and strategizing.
This current quiet, sold as respect for the dead, would end soon.
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Chapter 3:
An Election With Consequences
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January 1, 1964 - December 31, 1964
A Family Retreat
As a political matter, President Kennedy’s survival had taken an already uncertain electoral map and made it more fluid. Before Dallas, it had been assumed that the election would be close. Nothing had changed the White House perspective, even the bullets of an assassin.
One thing had taken a turn, however. John Kennedy had made separate comments to his brother, Kenneth O’Donnell and Theodore Sorensen that maybe he would surprise them all and “not go through it again.” It was a trial balloon, said without conviction, but still, it bothered them. They understood, however, that being shot at by professional assassins is something that changes a man.
Jacqueline Kennedy had been traumatized by Dallas even more than her husband. She could not accept any more public invitations until further notice, said her new social secretary Liz Carpenter in such a way that it seemed untoward to even think of asking a follow-up question. In reality, the First Lady had practically moved out of the White House by January 1, heading with her children to Wexford, the newly-constructed family home on 39 acres in the Middlesburg, Virginia area, a place where the President himself had only been twice before. After a week there, however, she felt the entire area had been too commonly identified as a Kennedy retreat, and she began a cycle of visiting several locations short-term, moving out almost before she and the family had settled in, trying to keep her whereabouts and those of her children a mystery. To calm her decidedly manic behavior, she had been prescribed sedatives by her husband’s personal physician, Dr. Janet Travell.
And so, it was against this backdrop that Jackie Kennedy told John Kennedy that she was going into virtual hiding and that she expected him to curtail his own public activities as well. He could still do his news conferences and Rose Garden activities with guests if he wanted, but only if Bobby approved of security. Most importantly, she instructed him to stop taking risks outside the gates. No more wading into crowds, no more convertibles, no more windows for assassins. “I started to argue with her,” Kennedy explained in a 1969 interview, “but I thought she was right.”
The First Lady further demanded of the President that there would be no planned travel or public appearances for either of them for the entire month of January. They needed time to assess the situation. The President pointed out that he had spent plenty of time lately assessing the situation. “Not with me,” she countered.
With her husband's agreement secured, Jackie left with Caroline and John Jr. The President instructed his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, to make certain there was a daily note on his desk with the family’s current whereabouts. He also wanted to make certain he spoke to his wife and children every day. He instructed her to see to it that it was scheduled.
State of Whose Union?
President Kennedy then turned his attention to the January 8 State of the Union speech he was mandated to give to Congress. It had only a short mention of Dallas in it, a reference t
o the strength of America being tested again, as the country again proved itself to be stronger than any adversity thrown in its path. He talked about his budget, cutting a full $1 billion in Defense Department spending, owing mostly to Secretary McNamara’s campaign for better procurement practices and a shutdown of unneeded military bases. The total number of Americans working to support the Cold War effort was 990,000, a number that represented cuts to the civilian employment in the Defense Department by seventeen thousand employees, so determined was Kennedy to bring that number below one million. The President also cut the Atomic Energy Commission, limiting production of enriched uranium by twenty-five percent and shutting down four plutonium piles. Kennedy also called for more attention to the nation’s impoverished citizens, swift congressional passage of a civil rights bill, and a tax cut.
It was a businesslike speech, not a great one, certainly not by Kennedy standards. If anything, the rapid criticism delivered by Republican officials did, however, show how fast the country was moving on beyond Dallas. Said House G.O.P. leader Charles Halleck: “I hope that the administration’s newfound enthusiasm for economy is as great in June as it is in January.” House Minority Whip Les Arends called the President’s speech “patently a 1964 political campaign document.”
Life in a Foxhole
With the Union addressed about its state, and Jackie and the children in motion, Jack Kennedy hunkered down in the White House. The entire inner circle began to refer to the Oval Office as “the Foxhole.” The President clearly displayed signs of what we call today post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. He had tried to ignore or laugh off his feelings in November and December. Now, as the rest of the nation seemed to be turning a corner, he was turning inward.
A major snowstorm turned into a blizzard for portions of the northeastern United States between January 11-16 of 1964. All of the major cities from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia, New York City and Boston reported about ten inches of snowfall or more.
For those five days in Washington, D.C., it was so difficult to get around that the President could actually cancel nearly all of his meetings and obligations and just get some work done. Plus, he was in a lot of pain, and the cold seemed to aggravate his back. The bad weather did not, however, prevent one of Kennedy’s many lovers, Mary Pinchot Meyer, from stopping by twice, according to the testimony of Evelyn Lincoln, who had made sure the visits were not recorded in the White House log.
Jackie was snowed in up in Massachusetts, chain smoking L&M filtered cigarettes and trying to calm down. It didn’t help that on the first day of the blizzard, Surgeon General Luther Terry issued a report finding that cigarettes can cause cancer and urging all smokers to stop, advice the First Lady ignored.
Health issues were often hidden away from prying eyes in the Kennedy White House. What no one in America knew at the time was how important Dr. Travell had become to the health of the President and First Lady. During the fall of 1961, Travell had been giving the President up to several injections daily of procaine, a local anesthetic similar to Novocain. He was under her personal treatment for an adrenal ailment he lived with since his youth, constant high fevers, cholesterol levels that by today’s standards would be catastrophic, the inability to get a good night’s sleep, and colon, prostate and stomach problems.
The wide variety of pills and shots that Travell was administering to the President of the United States for these issues filled out the “medicine administration record” she kept. Yet it was not a complete accounting, not by far.
Dr. Max Jacobson had entered John Kennedy’s life back during the 1960 campaign. Known informally among patients as “Dr. Feelgood,” he had continued to make house calls to the White House and even shadowed the President on trips to foreign capitals, such as Paris and Vienna. Jacobson’s injections were also being enjoyed by the First Lady.
At Bobby’s request, the President's medications were submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for analysis. The agency reported back that Jacobson’s injections included amphetamines and steroids. The President told his brother, “I don’t care if it’s horse piss. It works.”
Based on testimony of a nurse who had worked with Jacobson, the injections appear to have also included hormones, vitamins, enzymes and even animal cells. The result was what another client, author Truman Capote, called “instant euphoria,” a condition where one might feel he was flying like Superman, able to go seventy-two hours without sleep. The bottom line was that at least some of the “vigor” that was so embraced as a description of JFK’s activity level was chemically induced.
A future Congress eventually raised concerns about the potential national security consequences of such a concoction. These shots, while alleviating pain, made their recipients experience an exaggerated sense of personal power, something that Kennedy might have experienced often, including during the Cuban Missile Crisis, given that he took them throughout the years he’d been in office. Other side-effects included hypertension, impaired judgment and elevated anxiety. Between doses, mood swings were common. Over a long period, the dosages the President had been using could produce paranoia, schizophrenia, memory loss and even hallucinations.
In the beginning, both Jack and Jackie Kennedy were making use of the physician’s injections at least once a week and sometimes as often as three to four times weekly. Over the years, they had tapered off the regular use of Dr. Jacobson’s injections, at one point quitting altogether. It was too much. They needed to be in control.
But that was before someone had tried to kill him. JFK picked up the phone in the side office and told the operator to get him an outside line. Now he just needed to take the edge off and prepare himself for battle.
To Run or Not to Run?
Feeling energetic thanks to a snowbound Washington, D.C., with a schedule that had been cleared by his wife’s decree, John Kennedy reached out to the usual suspects. He invited the team from Hyannis Port to the Oval Office for lunch. The subject was the 1964 election.
To a man, Robert Kennedy, Kenneth O’Donnell, Pierre Salinger, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Theodore Sorensen, Dave Powers and Teddy Kennedy thought the President might be summoning them to tell them he would not be running for reelection. “First of all,” said the President, “I have made no decision yet on whether or not to run. I want to see where we stand politically.”
Before Dallas, when they did discuss the political situation, the Kennedys and their team of advisers believed the Republican nominee would be Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, a plainspoken Westerner whom the right wing of his party adored. He had announced his candidacy on January 3, describing the choice ahead between the Democrats and Republicans as a stark one. “As a general rule, one party has emphasized individual liberty and the other has favored the extension of government power,” claimed Goldwater. “I’m convinced that today a majority of the American people believe in the essential emphasis on individual liberty.” Goldwater then famously added the impromptu words that would become his campaign slogan. “And in your heart, you know I’m right.”
What Goldwater could not possibly understand as he uttered those words was how much his likely opponent (and friend) John Kennedy agreed with him on the subject. Wherever Kennedy had been politically at the start of his term in 1961, by early 1964 he wanted to accomplish only one thing before he left office, whether it be a year later in 1965 or, God and voters willing, early 1969. As much as anybody in politics, he wanted to curb the power of government to defy civilian authority.
Goldwater still had to win the nomination from a Republican party that tended to support mainstream conservatives like Dwight Eisenhower over political ideologues like Robert Taft. This meant that New York’s liberal Governor Nelson Rockefeller and moderate Governor Bill Scranton out of Pennsylvania had an outside shot at the nomination, too. O’Donnell said he wouldn’t put it past the Republicans to run Dick Nixon again either, although Nixon had lost the California governor’s race in 1962 and declared his retirement from pol
itics.
“It’ll be Goldwater,” stated Bobby, cutting the debate short. “At least we have to plan as if it will be. How do we assess his… electability?”
The consensus was uncertainty. Before shots were fired, it was going to be possible to paint Goldwater as a reckless man who could only drag the nation into trouble. Now, on their watch, the Kennedy administration had dragged the people close to a nuclear war one year and barely avoided a public execution of the President the next. Goldwater might start to look like the conservative choice in more ways than one.
President Kennedy listened to it all and summed up. “We can beat Barry if we can keep things calm and keep the economic numbers solid. If Dallas becomes an issue, I don’t know. I think it could be as close as ’60, with a chance that one of us gets more electoral votes and the other gets more popular votes. The nation is stirred up and restless, and we’re in a street fight.” No one in the room disagreed with his assessment.
The discussion pivoted to what, if anything, needed to get done now, regardless of the President's reelection decision. Bobby said they needed to form a committee to run the campaign.
The President shook his head, bemused. “First, as someone with no use for committees, I formed all of you into a committee up in Hyannis Port, and then we formed Earl’s commission, and now we have reconvened the original committee to form a new committee. Maybe we should adjourn while we’re ahead, gentlemen.”
Bobby continued with the news that he had cleared a name just in case. It would be called the Committee to Re-Elect Kennedy. It was pointed out that the acronym sounded like CREEK, as in something you were up without a paddle.
