Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (No Series)
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27
“the only civilizing influence”: Author interview with Gore Vidal.
27
“Jackie flung herself on the bed—free!”: Vidal, Palimpsest: A Memoir, 374.
28
“Jackie…dared not look in”: Ibid., 375.
28
“gay as a goose”: Quoted in Sally Bedell Smith, Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House, 136.
28
“There are certain visceral dislikes”: Author interview with Vidal.
28
“The two people Bobby most hated”: Vidal, 350.
28
“They completely trusted him”: Author interview with Justin Feldman.
28
“My father was a believer”: Author interview with Matthew Walton.
29
“He was not out to get glory for himself”: Vidal, 360.
29
Walton visibly sagged: Manchester, 252.
29
“He was exactly the person”: Author interview with Vidal.
30
“Poets in Moscow have fans”: Notes on Moscow trip, Walton papers, JFK Library. 30 invited to take tea with Mrs. Khrushchev: Ibid.
30
“He was a man of peace”: Ibid.
30
Walton “detested” the new president: Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, 402.
31
“One time Bob wanted to invite Georgi to a party”: Author interview with James Symington.
31
“He gave me the creeps”: Robert Kennedy, In His Own Words, 338.
31
“You son of a bitch”: Quoted in Michael R. Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev 1960–1963, 578.
32
Bobby heatedly confronted his Russian friend: Pierre Salinger, P.S.: A Memoir, 254.
32
He said that Bobby and Jackie believed that the president had been killed by a large political conspiracy: Fursenko and Naftali, 345. Fursenko and Naftali based their account of the Walton-Bolshakov meeting on a memo that Bolshakov prepared for the GRU. Fursenko also interviewed Bolshakov in January 1989 before he died. In an interview for this book, Naftali observed, “It’s possible that Bolshakov exaggerated what Walton said to him to remind his superiors how close he was to the Kennedys. Bolshakov clearly liked the fact that he had become a player, and it’s possible he exaggerated a bit to get back into the inner circle. But I’d be surprised if he invented it out of whole cloth.” The authors note in their book that “the GRU material on Bolshakov has been corroborated in other cases and some of the details in this document have been corroborated.”
33
“irresponsible…act of backdoor diplomacy”: Thomas, 289.
33
“He just wandered around his office”: Quoted in Salinger, With Kennedy, 363.
2: 1961
35
“All war is stupid”: Quoted in Thurston Clarke, Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech that Changed America, 109.
35
“the principal reason Kennedy ran for the presidency”: Author interview with Theodore Sorensen.
37
“I had no choice”: Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 221.
37
“one foot in the Cold War”: Harris Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties, 68.
38
“the Goths have left the White House”: Quoted in Clarke, 208.
38
“I have never heard a better speech”: Admiral Arleigh Burke oral history, JFK Library.
38
“through a membrane in time”: Clarke, 200.
38
“The line in the inaugural address that is the most important”: Author interview with Sorensen.
39
“the only human being who mattered to me”: Quoted in Beschloss, 126.
39
a “puppet who echoed his speechmaker”: Quoted in New York Times, June 19, 1962.
39
“a little boy in so many ways”: Quoted in Clarke, 66.
39
Nixon himself was more generous: New York Times, June 19, 1962.
40
“I was against killing”: Author interview with Sorensen.
40
Sorensen was raised to view war with a deeply skeptical eye: Victor Lasky, JFK: The Man and the Myth, 164.
40
Ted would meet his first wife: Author interview with Sorensen.
41
“I’m sure that would have provoked them further”: Ibid.
41
Barry Goldwater promptly turned the Tribune article into a political issue: Newsweek, October 9, 1961.
41
“It didn’t bother him at all”: Author interview with Sorensen.
42
“He’s all hopped up!”: Quoted in Beschloss, 187.
43
Bissell wrote a friend: Richard Bissell Jr., Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 159.
43
Bill Walton was stunned to hear Dulles: Walton oral history, JFK Library.
44
“I’m not going to be able to change Allen”: Quoted in Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles, 408.
44
“gentlemen”…were not bound by the same moral code: Ibid, 484.
45
“We’ve got to persuade the president!”: Quoted in Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story, 270.
45
“It was inconceivable to them”: Walt Rostow, The Diffusion of Power.
46
The invasion was “on the brink of failure”: Bissell, 189.
46
the brigade leaders were to mutiny: Johnson, 75.
46
Burke…had also flirted with insubordination: Mario Lazo, Dagger in the Heart! American Policy Failures in Cuba, 294.
47
“but we are involved!”: Quoted in Wyden, 270.
47
“they had me figured all wrong”: Quoted in Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 274.
47
“our concept…is now seen to be unachievable”: Quoted in Miami Herald, August 11, 2005.
47
“The CIA knew that it couldn’t accomplish this”: Ibid.
48
“There was some indication that the Soviets”: Quoted in Washington Post, April 29, 2000.
48
“So I took the information to Allen Dulles”: Author interview with Charles Bartlett
49
“at the decisive moment of the Bay of Pigs operation”: Quoted in Bissell, 191. 49 Kennedy was “surrounded by doubting Thomases”: Quoted in Beschloss, 134.
49
“I was probably taken in by Kennedy’s charisma”: Quoted in Gus Russo, Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK, 61.
49
“criminal negligence”: Quoted in Don Bohning, The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959–1965, 48.
49
“the boys killed during the botched Bay of Pigs operation”: Robert Maheu, Next to Hughes, 156.
50
“The [Bay of Pigs] failure was Kennedy’s fault”: Quoted in Russo, 20.
50
“absolutely reprehensible”: Quoted in Wofford, 350.
50
the worst American defeat “since the war of 1812”: Quoted in Beschloss, 129.
50
“Mr. Kennedy…was a very bad president”: Burke oral history, U.S. Naval Institute. By August 1961, Burke would be eased out as Navy chief, the first of several Joint Chiefs and high-ranking officers whom Kennedy would force into retirement as he struggled to exert his authority as commander-in-chief. After retiring from the Navy, Burke became chairman of the ne
w Center for Strategic Studies at Georgetown University. Out of uniform, Burke lobbied against Kennedy’s policies and continued to fume about the “amateurs” in the White House who were imperiling the nation. He made dark comments about the administration’s dictatorial tendencies, denouncing its drive to muzzle dissent within the government. He charged that his offices at Georgetown University had been broken into, suggesting the Kennedy administration was behind it.
51
“Those sons-of-bitches…just sat there nodding”: Quoted in Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power, 103.
51
Never again…would he be “overawed by professional military advice”: Quoted in Arthur Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, 290.
51
“Nobody is going to force me”: Quoted in Paul B. Fay Jr., The Pleasure of His Company, 161.
51
“Kennedy had contempt for the Joint Chiefs”: Author interview with Schlesinger.
52
“The episode seared him”: Quoted in L. Fletcher Prouty, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, 155.
52
Bradlee had urged him to replace [Dulles]: Benjamin C. Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy, 33.
52
JFK “came into government the successor to President Eisenhower”: Robert Kennedy, 246.
52
He asked Sorensen to start advising him on foreign affairs: Beschloss, 146.
53
where the Kennedy administration began becoming “a family affair”: Author interview with Peter Dale Scott.
53
“The two brothers often held these sessions”: Author interview with Fred Dutton.
53
There could be “no long-term living with Castro”: Quoted in Beschloss, 375.
53
“I am almost a ‘peace-at-any-price’ president”: Quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 430.
54
JFK “brought…the knowledge of history”: Quoted in “Recollecting JFK with Theodore Sorensen and Robert McNamara,” JFK Library forum, October 22, 2003.
54
“This nation is without leadership”: Quoted in Reeves, 196.
54
Because we live in a free society: Quoted in A. M. Sperber, Murrow: His Life and Times, 628.
56
“I had no doubt he had come to talk to me”: Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties, 197.
56
“My experience in government”: Quoted in New York Times, June 29, 1961.
57
“Since I have no greeting card”: Quoted in Goodwin, 195.
57
“when the people of Cuba once more have regained their freedom”: Quoted in New York Times, August 17, 1961.
58
“We are the revolutionary generation”: Goodwin papers, JFK Library.
59
“You should have smoked the first one”: Quoted in Goodwin, 202.
59
His enthusiasm for Guevara’s peace feeler: Goodwin papers, JFK Library.
60
Don’t make Cuba a geopolitical obsession: Goodwin, 203.
60
“kid playing with fire”: Quoted in Goodwin, 205.
60
Goodwin’s appearance quickly turned into a “pleasant session”: New York Times September 1, 1961.
60
calling on President Kennedy to get rid of the men who had been “wrong from start to finish”: Quoted in New York Times, November 13, 1962.
61
“I felt put down”: Laura Knebel oral history, JFK Library. Knebel later reported Kennedy’s provocative comments back to Guevara himself. “I’m going to tell you something funny that President Kennedy said after my last visit here, when he asked me about you,” the journalist confided to Che—an intimate gesture which does indeed seem on the flirtatious side. But Guevara did not want to play along. “He was a dedicated revolutionary not given to personal chitchat,” Knebel later recounted, seeming a tad disappointed. “He had a wife to whom he was devoted, and such frivolities as Kennedy’s remark, I think, were beyond him.” In truth, the womanizing Che’s devotion to his wife was a flexible proposition.
61
“They had never met but were fascinated by each other”: Tad Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait, 532.
62
democracy had an “unparalleled power”: Quoted in New York Times, December 18,1961.
62
“the most significant turn in U.S. hemispheric foreign policy.”: New York Times, July 22, 1962.
63
“Latins were astonished that this young Yankee”: Quoted in Goodwin, 194.
63
“There’s even one from that bastard Somoza”: Ibid, 146.
64
“then I got it from these old-line CIA guys”: Author interview with Goodwin.
64
“our public posture toward Cuba should be as quiet as possible”: Goodwin memo, U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States, Vol. X, Cuba: 1961–1962, 646.
64
“we did not control the Joint Chiefs of Staff”: Author interview with Schlesinger.
65
“something would go wrong in a Dr. Strangelove kind of way”: Quoted in Boston Globe, July 28, 1994.
66
“like the cockroaches they were”: Gen. Curtis LeMay oral history, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library.
66
The Air Force chief stunned the capital: Washington Post, July 19, 1961.
67
“LeMay’s view was very simple”: Author interview with Robert McNamara.
67
“I went out to SAC for a meeting with Tom Power”: Author interview with Carl Kaysen.
68
“A prick like LeMay”: Author interview with Charles Daly.
69
presented the doomsday plan “as though it were for a kindergarten class”: Schlesinger, 483.
69
“The Kennedys used intimidation”: Hanson Baldwin oral history, U.S. Naval Institute.
69
“Nuclear conflict was very much in the air”: James K. Galbraith, American Prospect, September 21, 1994.
70
the “little brother” whom Clay said he could “not abide”: Quoted in Beschloss, 333.
71
“tasks many officers pursued with gusto”: Joseph A. Califano, Jr. Inside: A Public and Private Life, 95.
71
“General Walker…thought Harvard was the bad place”: Newsweek, December 4, 1961.
72
“I feel the general is being crucified”: Quoted in the New York Times, September 21, 1961.
72
Walker’s indoctrination program had been endorsed by…General Lemnitzer: Richard Dudman, Men of the Far Right, 59.
72
they wondered if there was the…possibility of such a coup: Ibid, 36.
73
“a serious blow to the security of the United States”: Quoted in Fred J. Cook, The Warfare State, 266.
73
“If the military is infected with the virus of right-wing radicalism”: Ibid, 270.
74
“the intervention of the military in politics has had disastrous consequences”: Washington Post, September 13, 1961.
74
“certain Pentagon brass hats”: Washington Post, September 18, 1961.
74
“trapped McNamara”: Newsweek, September 18, 1961.
75
the Fourth U.S. Army sponsored a two-day propaganda show: Washington Post, September 28, 1961.
75
the Armed Services Committee announced it would subject the McNamara crackdown: New York Times, October 6, 1961.
75
suggested a coup was in order: Cook, 265.
75
“you are riding Carolin
e’s tricycle”: Ibid, 29. When an account of this hostile exchange was later leaked to Kennedy friend Charlie Bartlett, who promptly reported it in the Chattanooga Times, Dealey denied that JFK made the icy response. “Bartlett’s quotations are unfamiliar to me,” said Dealey. “I think the whole story was cooked up by the administration.”
76
The president took the “frenzy of the far right a lot less seriously than I”: Vidal, 361.
76
He dispatched Bobby to meet with the Reuther brothers: Rick Perlstein: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, 149.
77
“a scornful 21-gun presidential blast”: Los Angeles Times, November 19, 1961.
78
[JFK] would be forced to confront their passions in a surprising place: Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1961.
78
praising Welch as a “dedicated anticommunist”: Dudman, 77 79 “riding on the left wheel all the time”: Quoted in New York Times, November 19, 1961.
80
“You must read the University of Washington speech”: Author interview with Sorensen.
80
“General Eisenhower listened intently”: New York Times, November 19, 1961.
80
“I don’t think the United States needs super-patriots”: Quoted in New York Times November 24, 1961.
81
when he “saw a band of black baboons”: Quoted in Wofford, 371.
81
“The tone of [the] meeting was deeply disturbing”: U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations, 1961–1963, Vol. XII, American Republics, documents 300–326. Bowles also wrote in his memo that White House aide Dick Goodwin, who attended the meeting, “vigorously supported” Bobby’s rash approach on the Dominican Republic. But in a recent interview, Goodwin denied Bowles’ account: “I never heard anybody saying we were going to burn down the consulate or do things like that.” Goodwin suggested that Bowles’s report on the meeting might have been colored by his bitter relationship with Bobby. “There was already an open feud between the two, which Bowles was destined to lose of course.”
82
“The McCarthy years had pounded into [the Kennedy crowd’s] heads a sense of inferiority”: Bowles oral history, JFK Library.
82
“Kennedy’s inability to…draw on the wisdom of Bowles”: Wofford, 381.
82
Kennedy bowed to the political pressure: Goodwin, 213.
82
“Fucked again”: Quoted in Beschloss, 296.
83
The president was in a reflective mood: Fay, 221.
84
“I asked him how he was feeling”: Quoted in Amanda Smith, Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph P. Kennedy, 697.