by Bryce Zabel
Carlyle knew the publisher was correct. He and the Altman-Berkowitz team had been through five drafts of the story that was being called “The Secret Life of the President.” It was tight, fair and sensational. It left out as much as it left in. It was true, even if the sources weren’t on the record. And its timing was right.
Bobby Kennedy had called Carlyle earlier in the week to warn him that if the story were published, Top Story could be facing a lawsuit. “Are you telling me that as the attorney general or as the family’s lawyer?” asked Carlyle. Kennedy slammed the phone down and hung up.
Carlyle put a call through to the attorney general’s office. They were preparing to publish the story on Monday’s cover, he said, but because of the sensitive, personal nature of the material involving the President of the United States, he was willing to take the unprecedented step of allowing a representative of the President to read the story in advance. The representative would have to come to read it at the Top Story offices, however. If so desired, he would be provided a conference room and a secure line to call the Oval Office and discuss the content. If the President then wished to comment, arrangements could be made to incorporate those responses into the story. Robert Kennedy heard him out and announced, “I’ll be over in one hour.”
The Top Story offices were emptied of most of their staff while the Secret Service swept the area for bugs, and the conference room was prepared. It included a solid mahogany table, a telephone, a yellow legal pad, three No. 2 sharpened pencils, and a photocopy of the entire five thousand word article by Frank Altman and Steve Berkowitz. Exactly fifty-eight minutes after hanging up the phone, the attorney general arrived with two of his top aides, Ed Guthman and Nicholas Katzenbach. Carlyle tried to introduce himself and his reporters, but Kennedy brushed aside his pleasantries. “Where is the article in question?” he asked and was directed to the conference room.
Kennedy and his aides read the article with RFK finishing one page, handing it off to Katzenbach, who read it and handed the page to Guthman. After all three men had read the material, they could be seen in animated conversation with each other through the conference windows until Guthman noticed and closed the blinds. The last thing Frank Altman remembers seeing was the attorney general picking up the phone receiver in the middle of the table.
Two hours later, Kennedy and Carlyle went into private session, leaving Katzenbach, Guthman, Altman and Berkowitz all staring silently at each other. Carlyle remembers that the face of Robert Kennedy frightened him. “That article is malicious, defamatory and intolerable,” began the attorney general. “If you publish it, you will do the President of the United States and this country a great disservice at a time of maximum danger. While a free press is something that President Kennedy has always believed in, it is also true that a great magazine should aspire to more than this level of vile character attack. We ask that you reconsider your decision to publish this material if that is, in fact, your intent.”
Carlyle considered this and replied. “I understand that this is difficult material, and we are all aware of its potential for disruptive impact. However, at this time, there’s only only one thing that would cause us to reconsider our decision to publish.”
Kennedy was ahead of the editor on that one. “You wish to know if it is true.” Carlyle nodded. “There are elements of truth, elements of falsity, elements of misinterpretation, and an overall unappealing tone of hubris on the part of your reporters,” said Kennedy. “Neither the President nor I will address these charges generally or specifically. If you publish this, Mr. Carlyle, your career as a serious journalist will be forever destroyed. And that, I can confirm, is true.”
The meeting was over as quickly as it had begun. As Kennedy rose, Carlyle extended a hand that was not taken. “Please tell the President that this is not personal.”
Kennedy replied, “I’ll do no such thing.” With that, he exited the office and left with his aides, refusing to make eye contact with Altman or Berkowitz.
The Top Story at Top Story
The Monday, June 14 issue of Top Story (released, as was practice in those days, on June 7) carried the title “The Secret Life of the President.” It sold more than six million copies, almost all of them newsstand sales, more than three times its usual circulation of 1.6 million copies. This compares with Time’s circulation that week of about 3.3 million copies and Newsweek’s with 2.2 million copies. As predicted, Time featured a line drawing of the Gemini astronauts and Newsweek a photo of space walk simulation.
In its final form, the article began:
Throughout his political career, John F. Kennedy has appeared to be the loving husband with a storybook marriage to his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy. A Top Story investigation, however, has revealed that this public image has not been matched by private reality. Documents from a secret FBI surveillance file on President Kennedy, supported by this magazine’s own interviews and reporting, show another side. The John Kennedy who emerges here is a man foreign to most Americans and appears to be a serial adulterer who has engaged in sexual brinksmanship from his youngest days to more recent times as the resident of the nation’s White House. His actions may have placed his life, and by extension, the well-being of the nation at risk.
It was tough copy, and for readers who had virtually no inkling that it was possible, it was even more shocking than the events that had transpired in Dallas just nineteen months earlier. In the final analysis, Top Story had decided that half-measures would not do justice to the story’s comprehensiveness. Accordingly, it began in Kennedy’s adulthood, wove through his political life as a Congressman and a senator, and landed harshly in the Oval Office as President.
The article named names when there were two or more sources that could be cited by Altman and Berkowitz beyond the FBI files. In other cases, it described the participants in more general terms. Still, even by today’s standards of political scandals that seem to spring to life as regularly as the sunrise, it was unsparing.
The story it told began with the marriage of Jack and Jackie Kennedy in 1952 and allegations that even in their first year of matrimony there were extramarital affairs.
The article laid out dozens of sexual relationships with women who included foreign nationals, those with CIA connections, Mafia girlfriends, Hollywood starlets, and numerous White House employees. It reported the FBI files even included the possibility of drug abuse and use of prostitutes by the commander-in-chief during the Cuban Missile Crisis but that those allegations were unsubstantiated by other sources.
Better Late Than Never
In actual fact, the special edition facilitated one rare moment of agreement between the current occupant of the White House and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both John Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover declined comment.
In the immediate aftermath, however, the FBI’s Hoover was summoned to the Oval Office, where President Kennedy demanded to know what Hoover knew about the leaked material. Hoover denied any personal involvement as well as having any knowledge of who might have done it. It was the first time the two men had met since Kennedy had asked for Hoover’s resignation and had been rebuffed.
“While it is obviously too late to affect what has just transpired,” the President told the director, “I instruct you to turn over all similar files regarding other government officials and civil rights leaders including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as it is my judgment that you have abused your authority and can no longer be trusted to maintain physical custody of such files.”
Hoover replied, “I am unable to comply with your unjustified and misguided request. The files you seek do not exist.”
President Kennedy fired Hoover from his position on the spot, effective immediately. He instructed him not to return to FBI headquarters but to appoint an individual to act on his behalf. That individual would return under the supervision of federal marshals to retrieve Hoover’s personal belongings. With Hoover in the office, Kennedy called his brother, a
dvised him that Hoover was no longer in charge, and directed him to see to it that the ex-director adhere to the policy he had just laid out.
Hoover replied, “Mr. President, you have made a serious mistake here.”
“Yes, I have, Mr. Hoover,” replied the President. “I made it back in 1960 when I allowed you to remain in this job. I was, apparently, ill-advised to believe that you would exercise discretion over your personal control of sensitive material.” With that, Kennedy asked Hoover to leave, and he did so.
Hoover’s first words as a private citizen were spoken to secretary Evelyn Lincoln. “Good day, Mrs. Lincoln. That is a lovely dress you have on today.”
Ground Zero
The effect of “The Secret Life of the President” was immediate and monumental, impacting the body politic of Washington, D.C., the feelings of average Americans, the members of the conspiracy against the President, and the relationship between John Kennedy and his wife. People who lived through both the Dallas ambush and the revelation of the President’s affairs have consistently in public opinion polls rated the second event as even more significant than the first.
Although the White House had known it was coming for days, seeing the actual magazine, feeling its heft and flipping through its pages, gave it a dark power beyond mere words. Kenneth O’Donnell felt strongly that refusing comment for the article was only postponing the inevitable. John Kennedy simply could not remain President and pretend this article never happened. After all, almost everyone on the planet was going to hear and talk about it soon, and the allegations were sensational enough that they would not simply go away on their own accord. O’Donnell felt the team had no more than twenty-four hours to get their response together. “What is Mrs. Kennedy’s response?” he asked.
As of that moment, however, the President had not spoken to her and spoke with heavy sarcasm. “I think she and I should talk before I talk to the press, don’t you?” The meeting was interrupted by Evelyn Lincoln’s call stating that Mrs. Kennedy would like to see the President in the family quarters at his earliest convenience. The meeting broke up momentarily with the President going upstairs and Pierre Salinger heading to the White House Briefing Room.
The White House issued the following statement through the press secretary: “The issues inside the President’s marriage belong there and there alone, and are solely for the President and his wife to consider.” Of course, even as he was reading them, Salinger knew that they would not satisfy anyone, nor would they last longer than a single news cycle.
Neither John nor Jacqueline Kennedy has ever spoken to the media about the conversation that took place between them on the afternoon of June 7, 1965. Both, however, spoke to others who have spoken out.
It appears that Jackie was packing when the President arrived in the family living quarters. He asked her if she was packing for the weekend as she often did or perhaps something longer. “I haven’t decided, Jack. I will let you know, which is more than you have done for me.”
The President apologized and promised that such behavior would not continue in the future. He asked for her forgiveness. The First Lady lit a second cigarette from the one she was smoking and acknowledged a small fact that could only be appreciated between the two of them. “You have been better since that awful day.” It was the truth. Even before the events in Dallas, the First Couple had been working at falling back in love and had been making progress. After Dallas, they both felt driven closer together by the force of the tragedy.
Still, she pointed out, she had agreed to look the other way only because his behavior was not public. Now that her husband’s infidelity was no longer secret, he had humiliated her, embarrassed their children, and allowed his implicit promise of discretion to be broken beyond repair. Their relationship had been on the road to recovery after Dallas, but she did not believe they could recover from this.
The President was dismissed by the First Lady. There would be changes made, but she was not thinking clearly enough to make them today. She had one immediate demand. No actual copies of the magazine should be allowed in the White House, and under no circumstances was Caroline or John Jr. to see it.
By this point, Robert Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, had arrived through the back entrance to the White House. Jack and Bobby met privately in the Oval Office, as they had done so many times before, in so many crises, and the younger man who had, more than anyone else, truly been his brother’s keeper informed him of Ethel’s mission.
She was sharing a good cry with Jackie, said Bobby, and when the tears were over, they would discuss business. Trust funds would be set up for Jackie and both children, great enough to provide for both of them for the rest of their lives, the funds approved by both Joseph Kennedy and Rose Kennedy. All Jackie had to do was to meet the press with JFK tomorrow, stand by his side, and agree not to initiate divorce proceedings so long as Kennedy was in office.
“My God,” said the President. “How did you get Dad to agree to this so quickly?”
Bobby shook his head. The truth was that this plan had been hatched back in 1959 and was ready to go if this day ever came to pass. The only real question was what Jacqueline Kennedy would do.
The reputation of President Kennedy had been forever changed by the events of this day. That battle could, at best, be fought to a standstill. The current strategy, agreed to by all the President’s men, was to shift tactics to basic political survival. John Kennedy would have to defeat attempts to drive him from office. That would be a bloody fight, but it could be won.
The Day After
For the first hours after the article was published, the reporting duo of Altman and Berkowitz owned the story and appeared to own it alone. Not only was nobody else touching it, but many journalistic organizations were expressing chagrin that Top Story had cheapened journalism forever by printing it, whether or not its facts were accurate. The reporting team and its editors were starting to swing in the wind. As it turned out, however, this condition was only temporary.
By Tuesday morning, it was Standing Room Only in the White House briefing room. Not only were the hundreds of questions raised by the Top Story article on the table, but so was the firing of J. Edgar Hoover, which had become public overnight but had not yet been confirmed by the White House. Altman and Berkowitz were treated as celebrities by some of their fellow reporters and as pariahs by a substantial group as well. The truth was, everyone now knew their names and everyone had read their work.
In the Oval Office, President Kennedy huddled with his advisers, discussing how to handle the questions they knew were coming. Of course the President would stand on privacy as regards to the actual names and allegations. That left plenty of room to discuss the peripheral issues. How was it possible that the FBI was keeping such a file on the President of the United States for so long? Why had it been leaked? By whom?
The firing of J. Edgar Hoover did much to draw the public’s attention to those issues. Reaction ranged from, “JFK should have fired him a long time ago,” the Democratic talking point, to, “This shows how dangerously out of control this President has become,” on the Republican side. Kennedy caught one break, however, in that Hoover decided to go into hiding himself, refusing requests for interviews, cursing at photographers and generally looking like a guilty man.
Finally, Mrs. Lincoln interrupted: “The First Lady is here.”
Together, President Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy walked from the Oval Office to the White House Briefing Room. This again was one of the times when the President needed no introduction, from Salinger or anyone else. There was an audible gasp from the hardened reporters when the First Couple entered. As they had in Dallas on the day of the assassination attempt, the two of them looked sensational. If there had been crying or arguing since the article’s publication, you could not tell by looking.
These days the idea of the political wife standing by her man who has been caught in a sex scandal is a cliché. We have seen it with President Bill
Clinton, Senator Gary Hart, and too many more to list. But in 1965, particularly in the White House, this was a first. The President stepped to the microphone, and the First Lady stood to the side. She seemed quiet and subdued, but she did not look defeated.
I’ll make a short statement, and then I’ll take your questions. Mrs. Kennedy will not be taking your questions at her request, and she asks that you respect her wishes. As is always the case here at the White House, multiple issues occupy our minds. The most important today, from the position of government, is the issue of the firing of FBI Director Hoover. I am the responsible officer of this government and that decision was mine. I made it not because of the article that appeared yesterday in Top Story magazine but because of what that article represented. According to both Mr. Altman and Mr. Berkowitz, who I see are here today, they began their reporting when FBI files were released to them without authorization. Additionally, those files deal with private matters that the Bureau should not have been investigating. Until yesterday, Mr. Hoover was the responsible officer at the FBI. He has approved illegal wiretaps of the President and also of other private citizens. He did not maintain proper custody of those files whether they were legally or illegally obtained. That is a fireable offense and so, the director has been fired. I’ll take your questions.
