Jack Kennedy

by Chris Matthews

  Kennedy had dark forebodings. “Ever since the longbow,” he would tell a trusted visitor to the oval office, “when man has developed new weapons and stockpiled them, somebody has come along and used them. I don’t know how we can escape it with nuclear weapons.”

  Still Kennedy clung to the fading notion he might be able to shift the two-power rivalry between the United States and the Soviets to peaceful pursuits. He understood that the real contest between the USA and the USSR was over authority in the “Third World.” The rising peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America were looking to see who was winning, which system—democracy or Communism—best suited their needs and their hopes.

  The ability to conquer space mattered greatly in this quintessential Cold War struggle to be top gun. The way to win was by looking like a winner. Unfortunately, through 1961 the Soviets had held the competitive edge. The launch of Sputnik four years earlier in 1957 had thrown America off stride, and the flight of Yuri Gagarin in April 1961 had done the same again, making the Russians seem invincible by virtue of their superior technology.

  But on February 20, 1962, the balance of power, when it came to achievement in space, was restored. On that day, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, circling the globe three times in Friendship 7. A marine among the original seven American astronauts picked by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1959, Glenn met with President Kennedy at the White House both before and after the flight. Even space—especially space—isn’t free of politics, John Glenn well understood. Kennedy knew “we were actually superior to the Soviets and that that’s what we were out to prove.”

  Glenn’s triumphant space flight proved the boost NASA needed. What it had lacked before were bragging rights. “I think one reason my flight got so much attention was that we sort of turned the corner in public opinion at that point.” In fact, conquering space offered an unprecedented thrill for the American public. Suddenly it seemed as if all things extraordinary were possible under the young president’s leadership. The dark shadows cast by the unchecked arms race were forgotten for the moment. Yet, however urgent the question of nuclear disarmament was, it was far from the only crisis facing John F. Kennedy.

  • • •

  In the fall of 1961, Walter Heller, who chaired the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, came to tell him that it was crucial to the economy that steel prices get brought under control. Because the industry’s high prices drove up costs across the board, they had the effect of crippling America’s ability to compete with foreign producers.

  Kennedy acted. To keep American steel in the game, Kennedy went in and won an agreement from the United Steelworkers to cut back their wage demands. In March 1962, industry executives and top union officials gathered at the White House and emerged from the meeting having agreed to defer increases. While the president had no right to tell the steel companies how much to charge, the deal was clear: labor would keep down salaries, the executives would hold back on prices. Afterward, JFK called both sides to thank them for making concessions in the national interest. The union men, when he talked to them, seemed especially pleased to hear the president praising them for their sacrifice.

  Then came trouble. Roger Blough, chairman of United States Steel, requested a meeting. From across the cabinet table he handed Kennedy a press release. His company was raising the price of steel 3.5 percent. “Mr. Blough,” JFK said, “what you are doing is in the best interest of your shareholders. My shareholders are every citizen of the United States. I’m going to do everything in the best interest of the shareholders, the people of this country. As the president of the United States, I have quite a bit of influence.”

  Blough, Jack realized, had already released the announcement. “You have made a terrible mistake,” he said. “You have double-crossed me.”

  To Ken O’Donnell, it was a shocking episode. “These guys felt they were so powerful they could stiff the president of the United States without consequences.” He also saw how livid his boss was. “He was white with anger.” Big steel had betrayed its workers and “made a fool of him.” Discussing it with Ben Bradlee, Jack explained he wasn’t about to take a “cold, deliberate fucking.”

  The president’s credibility was now on the line because he’d acted as broker. Labor leaders, he knew, would never trust him again. The steel industry, meanwhile, assumed, “wrongly, he could not or would not do anything.” O’Donnell, who’d watched him at work in Massachusetts, knew what sort of surprise they were in for. “You find out about these guys in these steel companies, where they have been on vacation, who they have been with on vacation,” he instructed.

  His instincts told him where the corporate chiefs were vulnerable. “I don’t think U.S. Steel or any other of the major steel companies wants to have Internal Revenue agents checking all the expense accounts of their top executives,” Kennedy told Red Fay, who, before becoming undersecretary of the navy, had himself been a Republican businessman. “Too many hotel bills and nightclub expenses would be hard to get by the weekly wives’ bridge group out at the Country Club.”

  The next day, Attorney General Robert Kennedy announced that, under the antitrust laws, a grand jury investigation into the steel industry’s pricing had been ordered. Subpoenas to produce documents were served on U.S. Steel. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara instructed the Pentagon to purchase steel “where possible” from companies that had not raised prices. Later that day, in a press conference, Kennedy addressed the issue: “. . . the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans.” By the next night, eight steel companies that had announced price hikes canceled them.

  The president’s response to the pullback was to congratulate the steel companies for honoring the public good. “Kennedy’s style of politics: you never paint a guy into a corner,” O’Donnell later observed. “You give the other fellow as much credit as you can. So, he wants a statement thanking the steel companies for realizing their commitment to the United States Government was more important than their commitment to their stockholders.”

  But the swords were sheathed only when the mission was accomplished. America’s competitiveness was restored, but revenge had also been extracted. Robert Kennedy later confessed the rough tactics employed. “We looked over all of them as individuals . . . we were going to go for broke . . . their expense accounts and where they’d been and what they were doing. I picked up all their records . . . I told the FBI to interview them all, march into their offices the next day! We weren’t going to go slowly. . . . So, all of them were hit with meetings the next morning by agents. All of them were subpoenaed for their personal records. I agree it was a tough way to operate, but under the circumstances, we couldn’t afford to lose.”

  When the action settled, Jack Kennedy didn’t like being left alone. If no one else happened to be around for the evening, he’d ask Dave Powers—now, like Ken O’Donnell, a presidential special assistant—to stay and have supper with him. They’d then spend the evening together until it was time for Dave to escort him to his bedroom. When he was finally ready to sleep, it’d be: “Good night, pal. Will you please put out the light?”

  What’s curious—and fascinating—are the fixed orbits JFK assigned to this circle of friends. He always exhibited great fondness for his “Irish mafia” of O’Donnell, O’Brien, and Powers, but they were never part of his social life. With the exception of Powers, who’d join him when nothing else was going on, these men formed an indispensable support team that could be dismissed at sundown. The same went for Ted Sorensen, who’d spent those four years with him in close quarters day after day, flying around the country. They’d become so attuned that Sorensen was practically an alter ego, yet he was never invited for an evening out with his boss.

  Novelty and turnove
r mattered in Jack’s personal world. And, naturally, there were rules. Chuck Spalding liked to say that nobody got as much as forty-eight hours with him. If you bored him, you got less. Anyone ever imagining he was an equal colleague soon knew better. Even social friends might step across invisible boundaries and pay the price. Ben Bradlee was “banished,” to use his word, for several months in 1962 for daring to mention to another reporter how sensitive Kennedy was to critical reporting. Proving Bradlee to be right, Jack gave him a protracted cold shoulder—a kind of grown-up’s “time out”—until eventually the Bradlees were returned to his good graces.

  In the White House, he didn’t leap up at dawn like some presidents, but read the newspapers in bed over breakfast. He regularly went for a swim before lunch, took a nap afterward, and then would have another swim before dinner. Kennedy was far from the healthiest president on record, but, clearly, he wanted to come across as that. In photographs, especially, he projected a smiling vitality. When it came to his ongoing medical problems—above all, the intractable back pain—he didn’t complain. Nor did he explain.

  As a married man, he’d decided not to forgo his bachelor pleasures. It seems not to have occurred to him. Lem had been right to try to warn Jackie at the wedding. But one of his affairs had an abrupt ending not of his own choosing. In March of 1962, he was visited by J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI, which had kept tabs on him during his Inga Arvad days, had now been chronicling his current relationship with a woman “of interest” to the Bureau. “Information has been developed that Judith E. Campbell, a freelance artist, has associated with prominent underworld figures Sam Giancana of Chicago and John Roselli of Los Angeles. Went on to note the phone calls back and forth between the White House and Campbell.” President Kennedy broke off the liaison with Campbell, who’d been introduced to him by Frank Sinatra, later that day.

  His affair with the free-spirited Washington socialite Mary Meyer was very different. This was a relationship of equals. Divorced at the time of their relationship, she’d been married to a top CIA strategist, Cord Meyer, and was the sister of Tony Bradlee. So well did Jack segment his life, he could be good friends with her brother-in-law at the same time he was sleeping with her. He’d regularly see Meyer, who was legendarily attractive and also unpredictable, at Georgetown and White House parties. Sometimes he’d even be the one inviting her to White House functions. “She’d be difficult to live with,” he once noted to pal Ben. But, then, he didn’t have to.

  Now that they’d been settled in the White House for more than a year, Jack had grown accustomed to being no longer able to avail himself of the absences necessitated by the campaign trail. His response was to start arranging his time to avoid being alone socially—even alone with Jackie, it seems—for any extended period. He used New York overnights, Palm Beach weekends, campaign trips, and Jackie’s summer-long departures to the Cape for “girling” with pals Chuck, Torby, or George Smathers invited along for company. If they went away together for a weekend, he invariably asked one or more of his pals along. Whether it was the Virginia hunt country, Camp David, Hyannis Port, or Palm Beach, he made a point to start calling around Tuesday to fill up the guest list. His nature seemed to render him unable to look forward to a weekend alone with his wife, or even a dinner, without the addition of outside company.

  Rachel “Bunny” Mellon was the close friend who helped Jackie restore the White House, close enough to have Jackie confide in her.

  “Jackie knew that he had this . . . feeling. But she sort of said, ‘Well, Jack’s got these girlfriends.’ She never griped about it, she said he could do what he wants.”

  Part of it, she believed, was that Jackie had a very “old world” view of men.

  “She was a Bouvier and, how can I put it, I think she was strange enough not to be small. It was her fault to marry Jack Kennedy. I mean, she was attracted by him. She was fascinated by him. Regular, decent kind of guys, they would come down the road. She didn’t care who, but she married him. She married him because he was different.”

  The presidency offered Jack the chance to act on his old schoolboy’s love of heroes. In August, he invited General Douglas MacArthur to visit. Jack was entranced by the old soldier, respectful even when the eighty-two-year-old wartime general showed what the years and Korea had done to him. He told of his recommendation that his infantrymen each be issued “some kind of cartridge that would clear ten or fifteen yards in front of him.” He was talking about nuclear weapons carried in holsters! “If you could get me this type of atomic cartridge so that every soldier will have that,” he told of his frustrated efforts to win production of this new serviceman’s hardware, “one hundred men could stop a division.” Awestruck at the preposterous idea, Kennedy was true to form. He asked for details. “Let’s say that the cartridge would be fired, let’s say, at some man, or group of men, coming across a field at a hundred and twenty yards. It would hit one man and what? You just explode in a puff?”

  It must have occurred to the young president how much war had changed. Here was a revered military hero, a general for the ages, who’d come back to liberate the Philippines and win the war in the Pacific. Here was the genius behind the Inchon Landing in the Korean War, totally unaware of the menace posed by a minor nuclear explosion. Kennedy, the junior officer from World War II come back to lead his country, could not afford such anachronistic thinking, even if it survived among the top military men who now commanded the services.

  At the University of Mississippi as that fall semester began, a new student was under extraordinary scrutiny. The air force veteran James Meredith was seeking admission. He would be the first African-American to enroll—and in a rigidly segregated state, it wasn’t going to happen without trouble.

  Washington efforts to end discrimination were another issue on the Kennedy administration’s agenda. The main task up to this point, however, had been to encourage government contractors to hire more minorities. But even more radical social change was on the minds of civil rights leaders, and across the South, the educational system at all levels was under assault. Ernest Green and eight other African-American students had made history by integrating Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. In early May 1961, the first Freedom Riders—seven black, six white—had begun courageously riding buses throughout the South, challenging the rules of segregation.

  Now it was Ole Miss’s turn to join the late twentieth century, however unwillingly.

  On September 10, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Meredith. Supported by the NAACP—the pioneering civil rights organization founded in 1909 by W. E. B. Du Bois, among others—Meredith petitioned the university to admit him. The school continued to refuse, making it increasingly clear that the federal government might need to use force. As the crisis escalated, President Kennedy feared he was heading for a showdown, not just with one school or even one state, but with the entire South.

  Here is the recorded conversation between Kennedy and Mississippi governor Ross Barnett:

  Kennedy:

  Can you maintain this order?

  Barnett:

  Well, I don’t know. That’s what I’m worried about. I don’t know whether I can or not. I couldn’t have the other afternoon.

  Kennedy:

  You couldn’t have?

  Barnett:

  There was such a mob there. It would have been impossible.

  Barnett:

  There were men in there with trucks and shotguns and all such as that. Certain people were just enraged. Would you be willing to wait awhile and let the people cool off on the whole thing? It might be . . . two or three weeks, it might cool off a . . .

  Kennedy:

  Would you undertake to register him in two weeks?

  Barnett:

  You know I can’t undertake to register him myself.

  Governor Barnett continued to be intransigent. His stance put him in a long succession of Southern governors such as Orville Faubus, who’d summoned the Arkansas National Gua
rd to “protect” Central High. “I won’t agree to let that boy get to Ole Miss,” Barnett told Attorney General Kennedy. Jack and Bobby both were hoping they’d get James Meredith into Ole Miss without using federal troops, but Jack was also determined not to be caught unprepared. Aware of the shellacking he’d taken over the Bay of Pigs, what he intended to avoid was trusting anyone to share his agenda when their own was what mattered to them.

  Jack was now involved in checking out every detail, scanning the aerial photographs of the university’s campus and ascertaining such details as where military helicopters might land. When two thousand demonstrators, students and nonstudents alike, showed up on September 30 to protest Meredith’s registration, Kennedy, on the phone with Barnett, pressed him either to take charge or defer to the president. The university president was evasive and came across as increasingly unstable.

  The problem was whom they could trust to protect Meredith. As the day wore on, the U.S. marshals guarding him were being attacked by the crowd. Governor Barnett, claiming he couldn’t control the Mississippi state troopers—in fact, he’d secretly taken them off duty—refused to guarantee Meredith’s further safety. Kennedy had federalized the Mississippi National Guard but was reluctant to rely on them; he’d also positioned U.S. Army backup in Memphis.

  By late that night, the hostilities had increased to a level of violence that saw two men—one a journalist from Agence France-Presse—killed. Military intervention was urgently needed. There was now little option but to summon the waiting troops and pray they arrived in time. Nicholas Katzenbach, the deputy attorney general representing the Justice Department at the campus, confessed to his boss Bobby Kennedy his doubt that the marshals could hold off the rioting protesters until the U.S. soldiers appeared.