by Bryce Zabel
As events unfolded during the march toward impeachment, even John Kennedy’s popularity could not hold off the blowback from his years of incautious behavior. The cascading revelations felt like a betrayal to most voters. Like Jackie Kennedy responding to her own marriage, the relationship with voters now felt like a sham. The question to be decided was whether or not the relationship could be saved.
Few would have enjoyed the resulting spectacle even if it had been unleashed in a vacuum where no attempt had been made on Kennedy’s life. As experienced in the shadow of that violence, everything seemed dirty and lethal at the same time. The curtain had been pulled back on anti-democratic plotters that would assassinate an American President as a matter of convenience, power or greed. Now it seemed as if the President might have unleashed some of these destructive forces on himself.
One result of Kennedy’s reckless behavior and all the arguments about it was confusion. Suddenly the ground under the debate about the attack on the President shifted to Kennedy himself. Shadowy conspiracies were difficult to understand and nearly impossible to prove. Affairs, sex scandals and drug-taking could be talked about by the common man and woman, and talk they did. The leaks of the FBI files accomplished exactly what the leakers had hoped. The subject was changed. It made no difference that it was a crime to gather some of this information or to leak it. Overnight, it seemed, there were so many potential crimes to discuss that the average person could hardly be blamed for throwing up his hands in frustration at the mess of it all.
John Kennedy is not the only president who has ever faced an impeachment by the House of Representatives and a trial in the United States Senate, but his story is surely the most tragic. Indeed, since the Kennedy case, impeachment has been threatened or acted upon with sufficient regularity (Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush) that it seems more like a parliamentary vote of no confidence than the last-ditch constitutional remedy the Founding Fathers intended it to be. Each party, the Democrats and the Republicans, has embraced the process in what many now view as a partisan tit-for-tat.
In late 1965, however, it had been nearly a full century since the impeachment of any President of the United States had been seriously contemplated. Ironically, the story of how Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, had been kept in office by a single vote in his Senate trial was one of the stories that John Kennedy had written about in his Pulitzer-winning book, Profiles in Courage. Not a single person with a conscious memory of that earlier event, however, was even alive in the mid-1960s. Everything in the process felt like the first time.
The War Not at Home
Historians now seem to agree that the implosion of John Kennedy’s reputation shocked most Americans even more than the failure in Vietnam. Yet revisionist thinking also has it that seeing his power slipping away through the fall and winter of 1965-66, Kennedy stiffened his resolve to prevent the United States from becoming fully involved in a land war in Asia while he still had the chance.
Even as Kennedy’s efforts to save himself politically dissolved, so, too, did any chance to prop up the South Vietnamese government. He knew that his choices had narrowed. Having straddled the middle ground longer than he ever thought he would, JFK now realized he could either turn up the heat with a vast new commitment of American military power, or he could wind it down and let it end. There seemed to be no responsible choice in between.
So, even as the House, and then the Senate, debated what to do about the Kennedy presidency, the still-incumbent commander-in-chief decided the war in Vietnam must end. In a series of three executive orders, President Kennedy declared a halt to all aerial bombing of North Vietnam, forbade American military advisers from operating in active combat roles, and organized the U.S. forces in established military bases where they would plan their eventual return in six months’ time.
The Kennedy administration then asked the North Vietnamese for peace talks through diplomatic channels. The talks began, but the North’s military campaign continued. Kennedy’s withdrawal literally showed that the South Vietnamese forces had no real will to fight. It became only a matter of time, a deathwatch. The reorganization on the ground did not go smoothly. It was no secret that the Joint Chiefs felt this was a suicidal retreat and were slow to implement. One unnamed, high-ranking U.S. commander said, “We were hoping to run out the clock on him. Stall long enough for the bastard to get his ass thrown out of office, then cut a better deal with the next guy.”
Back in the United States, the public was deeply divided. A plurality actually favored withdrawal of forces, but favoring it in the abstract and watching it happen on the nightly news was something else. And the people who were opposed saw this as another example of why Kennedy had to go. In their view, he was simply too weak and too naïve to continue to serve as President of the United States.
By refusing to deepen American involvement in the war under his own authority as commander-in-chief, President Kennedy had practically dared Congress to demand that troops be sent. As it turned out, the majority of representatives and senators favored war only if the President would take the ultimate responsibility. Without the cover of his leadership, the hawks in Congress fell surprisingly silent. The unexpected gift of Kennedy's troubles may very well have been the saving of hundreds of thousands of lives in Southeast Asia.
In the end, the Vietnam situation did not gain the President any support, and it probably cost him some. He took the actions he did for practical reasons. He opposed widening the war, and he knew he could end it if he moved quickly. His presidential power was waning.
In February 1966, the South Vietnamese government fell to forces loyal to North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh. The American withdrawal was underway simultaneously. The TV newscasts juxtaposed images of Viet Cong raising their flag over the old American embassy, against film showing U.S. soldiers cutting and running with their tanks and planes and helicopters. It was ruinous theater of the national mood, raising anger, and it was in the news along with the latest events from the Kennedy impeachment story.
Impeachment
Under the leadership of Speaker Ford, the House Committee on the Judiciary was encouraged to get the job done on the issue of impeachment before adjournment. That was originally scheduled for late October, but Ford said he would keep the House working until Christmas Eve, if necessary. Ford’s firewall was his determination that the fate of John F. Kennedy would be out of his House by 1966.
Impeachment, then, began with a ticking clock of approximately four months. That amount of time was considered short by virtually everyone but Ford, who remained adamant that JFK’s fate not derail the upcoming second session of the Eighty-Ninth Congress.
The Speaker further argued that the President’s fate was not a topic that should need great investigation, given the publicity to date, a statement that even members of his own party felt was simplistic and wrong. Yet it was Ford’s decision to make, and he had made it. Do whatever you feel is right, he seemed to be saying to the Congress, but do it fast.
The People’s Grand Jury
Most constitutional scholars consider the House Committee on the Judiciary, backed up by the full body of the House of Representatives, to be the equivalent of a grand jury. The lower body of the U.S. government is empowered to conduct official proceedings to investigate potential criminal conduct (i.e., treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors) and to determine whether criminal charges should be brought before the upper body (i.e., sent to the U.S. Senate for trial). As with a grand jury, the Judiciary Committee can compel the production of documents and command witnesses to appear and offer sworn testimony.
It is a common misconception that to impeach a President is to remove him from office. It only means that the House believes the charges are sufficient to generate a trial in the Senate. Only by approving at least one article of impeachment by a two-thirds vote can the Senate remove the President from office.
As for the case of President Kennedy, the House Committee o
n the Judiciary was authorized in the late summer of 1965 to consider the specifics and to gather and review the evidence. If deemed sufficient, the committee would write and debate proposed articles of impeachment. If the committee voted them down, that would be that. If committee members voted to send the articles to the floor of the House, a simple majority would impeach the President and send the matter to the United States Senate in January for a trial.
Naturally, it was not that simple. The mere act of considering a President’s impeachment can put the Congress and the executive branch into conflict and even trigger impeachable behavior that did not exist before impeachment was considered. The struggle over the recordings that were made by the White House, for example, became an issue debated by the Judiciary Committee as possibly justifying an article of impeachment.
House Politics
Since January 1965, the Republican party had controlled the House of Representatives by a single vote, 218-217, making their leader, Gerald Ford, the Speaker of the House. The Republicans also controlled the committee chairmanships. This became extremely important during the impeachment proceedings, because William Moore McCulloch, the Republican representing Ohio’s Fourth District, had replaced the previous chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Emanuel Celler, a Democrat from New York’s Tenth District.
Over the course of any congressional session, seats are commonly vacated by death, disability or personal issues that might cause an incumbent to resign while in office. This usually leads to a special election held within a few months, or the next general election, if that is feasible. Normally these elections have little importance other than being symbolic bellwethers of the electorate’s mood. The years 1965 and 1966 were anything but normal, though, given that House leadership teetered on a virtual tie between the parties.
On October 2, 1965, Edwin Edwards retained Louisiana’s Seventh District for the Democrats after the incumbent T. Ashton Thompson was killed in an automobile accident. This left the House still in GOP control, 218-217. Had Edwards lost, it would have put the Democrats behind by three votes.
However, falling right in the middle of the impeachment debate, in which the Republicans barely controlled the House of Representatives, was another election to be held on November 2, and it had the power to change history.
Ohio’s Seventh District had been Representative Clarence Brown’s since 1939. Brown died on August 23 in a Bethesda hospital, the same day that Gerald Ford declared he would support impeachment hearings. With only two months to campaign, Brown’s son, Clarence “Bud” Brown Jr., was set to run as a Republican against Democrat James Barry. If Barry could defeat the younger Brown, the Democrats would reverse the Republicans’ 218-217 majority in the House. Democrat John McCormack would become the Speaker, and Emanuel Celler would get back control of the Judiciary Committee. The Democrats poured money and volunteers into the campaign, hoping to score an upset win over the late incumbent’s son. In the end, though, Barry simply could not overcome Brown’s name familiarity in such a short campaign, and lost by a margin of 54-46 percent.
The House might still change leadership from Republicans back to Democrats in the future, but not in time to save the President of the United States, if his fate were to be decided along party lines.
Blackout
Republican Chairman William McCulloch called the House Committee on the Judiciary to order on September 15. Its first order of business was a decision not to allow its impeachment hearings or deliberations to be televised. The decision was on party lines, with McCulloch casting the deciding vote. The GOP, having been stung by the Kennedy charisma going back to his 1960 debates with Richard Nixon and his standout news conference performances, wanted to make sure that TV would not impact their work. Also, the spectacle of the JCAAP hearings was recent enough that it served to end the debate before it started.
Kennedy friend and lawyer Clark Clifford represented the President’s legal team in these proceedings. In 1960, Clifford was a member of Kennedy’s Committee on the Defense Establishment and was appointed in May 1961 to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which he was chairing when asked to handle the impeachment defense. Over the years, Clifford served frequently as an unofficial White House counsel and sometimes undertook short-term official duties. When the President asked him if he would have any problem leading the defense team, Clifford had answered, “Mr. President, I do not approve of much of what I have read lately, but I know that you have been a good President for this country, and I will gladly defend you on the basis of that record.” Even though Bobby had no choice but to recuse himself officially, he continued to remain his brother’s closest confidante, and worked in an unofficial capacity with Clifford from start to finish.
After settling the rules, the committee attempted to decide the scope of its investigation. Members seemed to focus their main concern on the following issues:
Improper relationships that jeopardized the security of the United States or even the life of the President through reckless behavior.
Undisclosed presidential medical conditions and treatments that could have affected the safety and security of the United States during times of crisis.
Presidential approval and encouragement of extralegal activities of the CIA and the FBI.
In addition to these areas of interest, it was also up to committee members to seek all relevant testimony and evidence.
From a testimony point of view, it was decided to bring no woman before the committee simply on the basis of her having engaged in sexual relations with Kennedy, whether inside or outside the White House. Members also decided to bring no cases before the committee that had occurred before January 20, 1961, ruling out a great deal of what was in the FBI files. The decision did, however, leave in some difficult cases, including those of Ellen Rometsch, Judith Campell and prostitutes such as Suzy Chang, who were not U.S. citizens. Even Democrats on the committee were forced to reluctantly agree to investigate these cases.
Where Republicans and Democrats sparred the most was on the issue of the young women who were White House employees and were involved in relationships with the President. The laws in the 1960s were undefined about what constituted an improper workplace environment, and it seemed clear that none of these young women were physical threats to the President. All were known by the Secret Service agents on duty. Republicans wanted these women interviewed by counsel at the very least and got their way with their one-vote majority.
There was also the question of whether Kennedy had abused his presidential power by using Kenneth O’Donnell, David Powers or Evelyn Lincoln to procure or schedule the women involved in these sexual liaisons. All were fair game for compelled testimony, the committee ruled.
The medical condition of President Kennedy was another matter. There was no specific law to prevent a President from lying to the American people about his health, but if the President could be shown to have directed his personal physician to lie about his records, that would be another matter. There was also the issue of what drugs Kennedy was taking when, and whether or not they could have clouded his judgment at crucial times, such as during his meetings with Khrushchev or the Cuban Missile Crisis. All records were then subpoenaed. Dr. Janet Travell and Dr. Max Jacobson would be brought before the committee.
The third leg of potential charges was perhaps the trickiest of all. It involved the role of the President in overseas assassinations and coups in the Congo, Vietnam, Cuba and other countries. In some of these cases, if not most, the CIA had pushed for action that Kennedy had reluctantly agreed to, but as chief executive, the responsibility was his. Even FBI wiretaps of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had been approved because Hoover wanted them and the Kennedys had agreed in order to keep their own vulnerabilities secret.
Then there was the larger issue of which of these conceivable charges could have generated possible assassination plots against Kennedy. Clearly, sleeping with a mobster’s girlfriends could have triggered a reaction. Approv
ing plots to kill Castro could likewise have triggered counter-plots to kill Kennedy.
William Foley, the general counsel to the Committee on the Judiciary, knew better than most that Ford’s deadline was crushing and nearly impossible to meet. He saw two possible solutions: The committee would have to narrow the focus early, and it would have to fight the White House for the presidential recordings of Oval Office conversations.
“I believed that the committee would have to pick and choose its battles carefully, deciding which charges were most likely to lead to an article of impeachment in advance, and then investigate,” said Foley, “rather than cast a wide net and see what we caught.” In other words, they would have to make full use of what the Joint Committee on the Attempted Assassination of the President and the Warren Commission had learned, plus the journalistic output spawned by the FBI file leak, rather than start from scratch. The committee’s investigation would have to be supplementary and not primary, whenever possible.
Most importantly, thought Foley, committee members would have to get their hands on the White House recordings that Secret Service Special Agent Robert Bouck had disclosed before the Joint Committee on the Attempted Assassination of the President. Chairman McCulloch agreed, and asked Foley and his lawyers to prepare for battle.
