Surrounded by Enemies

by Bryce Zabel

  That same summer, on July 18, 1969, a young political intern named Mary Jo Kopechne drowned under mysterious circumstances at a party Senator Edward Kennedy attended on Chappaquiddick, off the eastern end of Martha’s Vineyard. No charges were filed, but Teddy’s excuse, that he was too inebriated to drive and thus could not have been at the wheel of the car, had most people convinced the night was not among his finest. The police report stated that a Kennedy cousin, Joseph “Joe” Gargan, Jr., was the driver. An inquest into the incident failed to lead to charges in the case, but it left a lingering suspicion about Teddy’s own behavior just over a year before he would face the voters in his reelection bid.

  In 1970, Teddy surprised no one when he announced he would not be seeking reelection for a second Senate term. He told his close friends that he was following his brother Jack’s example of leaving to avoid being a distraction from the important business facing the nation. At the news conference, however, the youngest Kennedy brother smiled and said he intended to serve as his brother Jack’s chief of staff.

  In a precedent-smashing, mind-blowing turn of events, the supposedly disgraced and humiliated ex-President was going to run for his old Senate job in his home state. The world simply could not believe this was happening. Most loved the move, particularly after they heard JFK’s explanation, which he laid out in private more than once. “It’s the biggest finger I can give the sons-of-bitches,” said the former President. “I’m still standing, and they know I know who they are.”

  The legendary Kennedy self-deprecating humor was called into action again when reporters asked if it wasn’t wrong to act like a Senate seat could just be handed from one brother to another. “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” warned JFK. “So far, Teddy is all talk.”

  End of an Era

  In November of 1970, the eldest still-living Kennedy brother was elected in a landslide by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (defeating Josiah Spaulding) and became, once again, Senator John F. Kennedy. He was welcomed back to the U.S. Senate in January 1971 by a crowd that mostly contained the same names and faces as the crowd that came this close to voting him out of office for high crimes and misdemeanors five years earlier. He became the most sought-after guest in the Senate cloak room and used his position to push aggressively on the issue of nuclear arms reduction treaties.

  In his first years as a junior senator, from 1953 to 1960, the younger John Kennedy seemed to most to be a man in a hurry to get someplace else. The second time around, however, from 1971 to 1977, Kennedy was a man at peace with who he was and where he was. By all accounts, he was a far superior representative of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in this twilight of his career.

  Jack and Teddy became the new Kennedy power team. Edward Kennedy had never wanted anything more than to be trusted by John Kennedy to be his number two, a position that had seemed impossible to attain during the JFK presidency. But Bobby was now finding his own footing. He had served Jack nobly, loyally and passionately, and he was spent. He retreated into academia and practiced politics as an observer and not a participant whenever possible.

  Together with Jacqueline Kennedy, former President Kennedy moved back to a Georgetown home just three blocks from the one he lived in back in the 1950s. Friends noticed that they spent far more time together in the 1970s than they had when they were supposedly living in harmony in the White House.

  They fell into old routines like having breakfast together while each read something different, occasionally interrupting to point out an item of interest. To the end of his days, John Kennedy found reading the New York Times a great diversion, telling his brother Robert, “The most goddamn frustrating thing is, I still read this crap and it’s not even about me anymore.” JFK, however, refused to read Top Story, preferring Time for his newsweekly. The magazine had selected JFK as its “Man of the Year” twice — once in 1962 and again in 1966 — an honor commensurate with his fall from grace.

  The former First Couple did not go out much, but when they did, they preferred a dinner party with old friends to a social engagement at some large Washington, D.C. event. Those always came stocked with photographers whose editors had told them to come back with Kennedy photos or not to bother coming back at all. Jack and Jackie were still the toast of the town, or at least the most interesting couple on the guest list.

  The Kennedy family managed to hang together more closely, too. Jackie became more comfortable with the clan gatherings she had formerly despised and even played touch football with the boys once or twice. Jack, Bobby and Teddy established an easy familiarity and comfort that had eluded them in the pressure cooker of the White House. Watching President McCormack and then President Nixon and commenting was so much easier and carried far less personal risk.

  Even the haters of the Kennedys seemed to take a step back. They were still hated, of course, by the extreme right, but they were not considered an immediate threat to the safety of the nation. In later years, Robert Kennedy confessed that this was his motivation in not pursuing a political career of his own. He had lived through his brother’s brush with martyrdom and had resolved that, however it turned out, he was through. In actual fact, all three of the Kennedy brothers — John, Robert and Edward — had taken a private family oath to never seek the presidency. They agreed to be happy without it, and besides the occasional twinge of regret that comes from knowing one of them could probably have defeated the existing candidates of any particular year, they seemed to accept the decision with great high spirits.

  For nearly six years, then, John Kennedy lived a life that he enjoyed immensely. He was able to watch his children grow up, to fall back in love (or, as doubters maintained, to fall in love for the first time) with Jackie, and to practice club politics in the United States Senate with his little brother Ted, who seemed to be naturally drawn to the rhythm and mood of the congressional lifestyle. There were family gatherings, sailing trips, old friends and a true appreciation for what it meant to be alive, something that only a man who has nearly been killed can ever truly experience.

  In 1975, the former President’s health began to fail. Whether it was the long-term grinding down of his Addison’s disease or the years of drug abuse to combat his various infirmities, he began to suffer one setback after another. Even so, after years of masking pain and disability, he was able to keep all but those closest to him unaware that he was dying.

  In 1976, John Kennedy announced that he would not be a candidate for reelection, just as Edward had done six years earlier. But Teddy did not step in to try to reclaim the so-called “Kennedy seat,” because he had come to believe the voters might hand him the first defeat in an election that the Kennedys had ever suffered, a distinction that he did not want.

  In presidential politics, John Kennedy even managed to stage a series of primary appearances with the young governor of California, Jerry Brown, the son of the man who had defeated Richard Nixon for the same office in 1962. His endorsement was sufficient to derail the candidacy of little-known Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. The general election of that year came down to a choice between two California governors — Jerry Brown for the Democrats and Ronald Reagan for the Republicans. Reagan defeated his Golden State successor, a rebuke that hurt Kennedy as much as Brown. JFK knew he would not see another presidential election, while Brown knew he had another shot in 1980 for a rematch.

  In the early summer of 1977, having celebrated his sixtieth birthday only a month earlier, John F. Kennedy died of heart failure. He was sailing with numerous members of the Kennedy clan on a hot summer afternoon and complained of indigestion. They came in early; Kennedy skipped dinner and went to bed. “Leave the light on,” he said to Jackie as his wife kissed him goodnight. He passed away in his sleep.

  In 1978, Jacqueline Kennedy wrote her own national bestseller, Leave the Light On. It detailed her life with John Kennedy in very personal terms and tried to reconcile the complex feelings she had about him as a leader, father and husband. She worked in the New Yo
rk publishing industry until her own death in 1994.

  Whodunit?

  To the extent that the Kennedy assassination attempt was ever “solved,” it occurred on January 23, 1983, the day the confession of Lyndon Johnson was finally unsealed, ten years after his death. In the handwritten page, LBJ had stated, “To my eternal shame, I was aware of and may have indirectly encouraged the irresponsible actions of others to make an attempt on the life of President John Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.” He concluded dramatically, “May God have mercy on my soul. Lyndon Baines Johnson.” Critics of the way the confession was handled have argued that LBJ should have been forced to turn evidence against others, particularly Clint Murchison, something he had steadfastly resisted doing, saying that if he complied, his life in prison anywhere in the United States “wouldn’t be worth the ass-hair on my beagles.” In national polls taken since that day, LBJ has consistently placed at the top of the least liked politicians in American history.

  That history can pivot in an instant has been made crystal clear by the case of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He had come so close to losing his life in Dallas. Had that happened, it is more than likely he would have become an instant martyr, and his many sins would have remained unknown. Lyndon Johnson, rather than being seen as one of the men who let the ambush happen, would have become President Lyndon Johnson, and all the charges and investigations involving him would likely have been forgotten. After all, the nation would have just suffered the death of a popular President; it might have been too much to bear to see Johnson impeached.

  With a Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office instead of a federal prison, the United States might have committed its blood and treasure to a losing cause in Vietnam. The 1960s might have been even more revolutionary than they were. Anything could have happened.

  Instead, Lyndon Johnson is remembered today as a corrupt player of rough-and-tumble Texas politics who ended his life in jail when he confessed, more or less, that he was involved in the Kennedy assassination plot. If he was not a leader of the conspiracy, he was still its highest ranking member.

  Strangelove’s Identity Revealed

  On Memorial Day in 2005, Strangelove’s identity, something that had become a national guessing game during and after the constitutional crisis, was finally revealed. The FBI’s Mark Felt was the source for Altman and Berkowitz. He was close friends with Hoover’s far closer friend, Clyde Tolson. Felt worked for Tolson since 1964 as the assistant director for the bureau’s training division. In coming out as the anonymous source, Felt talked about the emotional cost of his actions in 1965.

  I have never been proud of my role in leaking the Kennedy papers. At the time I rationalized that I was acting on behalf of Director Hoover, which I was, but I never asked the questions about what was in these files, how the information had been gathered, and whether it was appropriate to use it as a destructive force. I simply did my job as I was instructed by Tolson. President Kennedy made a lot of mistakes that these papers describe in detail, but he was the American people’s elected President. Yet men in our own government tried to execute him, and then I was their assassin when it came to his character.

  Felt managed to elude Altman or Berkowitz ever making his identity on the streets of Washington, D.C. by accepting a posting in Los Angeles before he leaked even the first document. He came forward near the fortieth anniversary of the Ali-Liston rematch and the “document dump.” Fighting pancreatic cancer, he said, “If I see President Kennedy wherever I’m going next, I want him to know what I’m doing now, and understand that the shame is mine.”

  Another Torch Is Passed

  While Jack, Bobby and Teddy had agreed informally that none of them should pursue the presidency, pressure developed to see that at least one of John Kennedy’s children picked up his standard. Caroline was oldest, but she lacked the drive and ambition for a public life and, being a woman in those days, could realistically see that her chance of being elected President of the United States was small.

  The same could not be said of the former President’s son, John Kennedy Jr. The nation had fallen in love with him as a little boy hiding under his father’s desk. He had celebrated his third birthday just three days after the ambush in Dallas. When his father passed away, John Jr. was just sixteen years old.

  As he grew into young manhood, John Kennedy Jr. seemed to exhibit his father’s gene for risky behavior, but times were different and he was not married. In the mid-’90s, however, he entered into a relationship that changed his life when he began dating Princess Diana of Great Britain. She was already well on her way out of favor with the Royal family. At first, she and John tried to keep their relationship secret, but that turned out to be impossible for the two young celebrities.

  Their celebrity, however, transcended anything that Hollywood could confer. He was the son of the charismatic thirty-fifth President, and she was the blonde commoner who became a fairy-tale princess. Together they were explosive, both personally and publicly. And yet, for reasons that can never be fully understood, it worked. They each knew what it was like to be famous because of the fame of someone else.

  They wanted to date other people and did, off and on. JFK Jr. almost married former model and fashion-industry saleswoman Carolyn Bessette, but backed away at the last moment, literally breaking off an engagement two weeks before the ceremony. Diana nearly wed film producer Dodi Fayed, the son of an Egyptian billionaire. Yet by 1999, they were back together and by the end of the year they were married to each other. Some commentators believed that John had married a woman who reminded him of his mother, a classic beauty with intellectual passions of her own and only a passing tolerance for the formality of politics. “My parents stayed together,” he said. “It was hard, hard work, particularly for my mother. But seeing their final success, that made me believe that Diana and I could work out anything, and we have.”

  The rest of their narrative. as they became the darlings of two continents, could easily fill a Top Story special edition. Diana campaigned with John when he ran for United States senator in New York in the 2000 election, where voters gave him a victory with an incredible 63 percent of the vote.

  Senator John Kennedy Jr. was reelected in 2006 and 2012. This year, 2013, on the fiftieth anniversary of his father’s near murder in Dallas, Texas, he is being talked about as the odds-on favorite to win his party’s nomination for President in 2016. The nation has never had a First Lady from another country, but there is nothing to prevent it.

  Asked about his feelings on the eve of this anniversary of the event that led to his father’s political undoing, Senator Kennedy said, “My father was my hero when he was alive, and now that he’s gone my feelings in that regard have only deepened. We were all lucky to know him.”

  The Unmaking of the President

  Had John F. Kennedy died from the bullets fired by his would-be assassins on November 22, 1963, it is possible his reputation today would still burn brightly. Yet in a preternatural display of anticipation, lightning reflexes and bravery, Secret Service agent Clint Hill sacrificed his life to ensure the President of the United States would escape with only a few scratches and bruises.

  For Americans under age fifty, the wrenching agony of the assassination attempt on President Kennedy and the subsequent events that led to the premature end of his presidency are events from their parents’ past, things they’ve read about in history books. For those who lived through the political tumult of the mid-’60s, however, the memories brought to the surface by a phrase or a photo can be as stark and vivid today as they were so many years ago.

  Two strands of political DNA were twisted together by the incredible events that transpired during the twenty-seven months between November 1963 and February 1966. The first was JFK’s battle with the dark forces of conspiracy. Could faith in our democracy be restored in the face of the powerful expansion of a national security state that would try to execute the nation’s elected leader? The second strand was Kennedy’
s personal fall from grace, a monumental series of events, because we as a people had placed him on such a high pedestal.

  Hatred of President Kennedy led powerful men to plot his public execution. Their plan could have come from the mouth of the Leonardo DiCaprio character in Gangs of New York: “When you kill a king, you don’t stab him in the dark. You kill him where the entire court can watch him die.” Of course, there is another quote, widely claimed and attributed, that states when you plot to kill the king, you must in fact succeed.

  Kennedy’s response to the failure of the conspiracy was to plot against its members in the same way they had plotted against him. Their counter-response was to try to change the subject away from their own shadowy crimes and place the issue of Kennedy’s intimately personal foibles before the public. That Kennedy was forced to pay such a high price, even as many of the men who sought his death walked free, was the ultimate irony of that turbulent period.

  John Kennedy cheated death in Dallas only to face a fate that for him might have been even worse — the public exposure of his private double-life. Learning the truth was just as difficult for many Americans, who loved and admired him when they knew him less well. Being forced to face the whole picture — for Kennedy and for the nation — was something no one ultimately was prepared for, yet we all took the journey together.

  The sense of denial, anger and tragedy which hung over those days leading up to February 1966 may even have caused some to have secretly wished that our charismatic and vigorous leader had died in Dallas, leaving only cherished memories.