87 “fighting conservative”: Diary, p. 10.
87 “What about Communism?”: Hamilton, p. 774.
CHAPTER FIVE: COLD WARRIOR
89 Jack Kennedy knew well before: Parmet, p. 147.
89 Besides, he’d formed: Joseph P. Healey, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program. “I know he had felt a particularly warm regard and feeling for Senator Saltonstall, who had been very helpful to him in his years in Washington.”
91 “Don’t you think”: Sutton OH.
92 “Stop ’n’ Shop”: Sutton int.
92 Richard Nixon had just beaten: Roger Morris, Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician (New York: Holt, 1990), p. 293.
92 “So you’re the guy”: Sutton int.
93 “How’s it feel?”: Ibid.
93 “John wanted to know”: Author interview with Mark Dalton.
94 “People have always said”: Ibid.
94 “Listen to this fellow”: Ibid.
94 “I’d like you to meet Richard Nixon of California”: Ibid.
94 In the coming years Jack would be: Author interview with Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith.
94 “ ‘Kennedy is courageous’ “: Mark Dalton, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
94 “I told him that day”: Sutton OH.
94 “You can imagine”: Dalton OH.
94 McKeesport debate: McKeesport Daily News, April 17 and 25, 1947; July 21, 1960.
100 “So many people said”: Mary Davis, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
100 “And then I remember”: Kay Halle, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
101 “He was very particular”: Sutton OH.
101 “I would say that”: Davis OH.
102 “I got a call from”: Healey OH.
102 “I guess I’m going”: Ibid.
102 “My strong reaction”: Parmet, p. 183.
103 “lived for some ten years”: Healey OH.
103 “Curley was crooked”: Author conversation with Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr.
103 “I don’t know whether”: Edmund S. Muskie, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
103 “I’m going to debate”: Dalton int.
104 “I was never so”: Davis OH.
105 “At the hearing”: Author interview with Timothy J. “Ted” Reardon.
105 “He was not feeling well”: Davis OH.
105 “Emaciated!”: Author interview with George Smathers.
105 For a bon voyage: Jonathan Aitken, Nixon: A Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993), p. 136.
106 “That American friend”: Leaming, p. 192.
106 On those nights: Davis OH.
106 “He was someone”: Ibid. 106 “Thinking about girls”: Sutton int. 107 “He did have a lot”: Davis OH.
107 “He used to enjoy”: Bartlett OH.
107 Confiding that he voted: Ted Sorensen, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History (New York: Harper, 2008), pp. 146–47. Ted Sorensen reveals that in Profiles in Courage Kennedy was referring to Smathers and “decided, for reasons of senatorial courtesy, not to identify in his opening chapter the name of the fellow senator ‘who acknowledged to him one day during a roll call that he voted with the special interests on every issue, hoping that, by election, all of them added together would constitute nearly a majority that would remember him favorably while the other members of the public would never know about it, much less remember his vote against their welfare.’ I see no reason for anonymity now: It was his close friend, the late Senator George Smathers of Florida. Maybe Smathers was joking when he said that; maybe not.”
107 “because he doesn’t give a damn”: Bartlett OH.
108 “deeply preoccupied by death”: Smathers int.
108 “Quick”: Ibid.
108 “It was a bright, shining day”: Reardon int.
108 “Unless I’m very mistaken”: Joseph W. Alsop, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
108 “He used to turn green”: Ibid.
108 Billy Sutton recalls: Sutton OH.
109 “Did you ever read”: Dalton OH.
109 “As I look back”: Ibid.
109 “Another day I can”: Ibid.
110 “He was in terrible pain”: Goodwin, pp. 742–44.
110 “He always heard the footsteps”: Collier and Horowitz, pp. 207–9.
110 One of those who thrilled: Kenny O’Donnell background, Thomas, p. 50.
110 “took on the American Legion”: KOD.
110 “When we’ve got the map”: Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers with Joe McCarthy, “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), pp. 77–79.
111 “the Russians, by their actions”: General Lucius D. Clay quote, Perret, p. 156.
111 Back home, the pursuit: Nixon’s exposure of Hiss, account of Hiss case, drawn from Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon: Volume I: The Education of a Politician 1913– 1962 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), pp. 169– 72, and Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (New York: Random House, 1997), pp. 5–7.
111 For denying that: Parmet, p. 245. In February 1952, a speaker at an anniversary evening at Kennedy’s Harvard club told the gathered alumni how proud he was that their college had never produced “a Joseph McCarthy or an Alger Hiss.” Kennedy jumped to his feet. “How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor!” Angry, he left the dinner early.
111 “The responsibility for the failure”: Congressional Record, January 29, 1949.
112 “a sick Roosevelt”: Parmet, p. 210.
113 “Isn’t this something”: Bill Arnold, Back When It All Began: The Early Nixon Years (New York: Vantage Press, 1975), p. 14.
113 Jack wanted what Nixon now had: George Smathers, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program. “I think Jack was that competitive. When I won, he figured he could do it. And at the same time in 1950 when I won my race—my big race was in the primary in May—Nixon ran for the Senate in California against Helen Gahagan Douglas. . . . And I think all of that worked on Jack and started him with the idea that when the time came he would run.”
113 “This rivalry developed”: Dalton OH.
113 “I think the thing”: Sutton OH.
113 “I’m up or out”: Lawrence O’Brien, No Final Victories: A Life in Politics—from John F. Kennedy to Watergate (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), p. 17.
113 “I’m going to use”: Smathers int.
CHAPTER SIX: BOBBY
115 Whichever happened: Healey OH. Joseph Healey: “I remember him saying to me flatly that regardless of what was going to happen in terms of what the then incumbent governor of Massachusetts, Paul Dever, was planning to do, that he was not going to run for another term as congressman. He said to me one day, and I think that these are his exact words, ‘I would rather run for governor or the Senate and lose and take the shot, than to go back and serve another term as congressman.’ ”
116 “I’ve decided not to run”: O’Neill, p. 105.
116 “pain in the ass”: Collier and Horowitz, p. 155.
117 As Jack traveled with his brother: Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 120.
117 More important: Getting to know RFK on Indochina trip, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), pp. 90–93.
117 As Jack was flown from Tokyo: Addison’s complications and evacuation to Okinawa, Collier and Horowitz, p. 156, and Bobby Kennedy’s foreword, Profiles in Courage, pp. xv–xvi.
117 “worms”: Referring to members in Congress, O’Brien, No Final Victories, p. 17.
117 He’d already begun spending: KOD.
118 “if he was going to get anywhere”: Charles Spalding, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
118 “So, I think, he made”: Ibid.
118 When I was in Boston last week: Meet the Press, December 2, 1951.
119 “You can never defeat the Communist”: Ibid
.
120 “unconscious of the fact”: Boston Globe, November 20, 1951.
121 The very first recruit: O’Brien, No Final Victories, pp. 11–14.
121 One day on Capitol Hill: Ibid., p. 18. “. . . [O]n a Sunday in March we had dinner at Kelly’s Lobster House in nearby Holyoke. Kennedy was not long in getting to the point. ‘Larry, I’m not going to stay in the House,’ he told me. ‘I’m not challenged there. It’s up or out for me. I’m definitely going to run for state-wide office next year. I don’t know many people in western Massachusetts and I’d like your help.’ ‘What are you running for?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know yet,’ he admitted. ‘I want to run against Lodge, but if Dever makes that race I’ll run for governor.’ ”
122 Larry O’Brien: “Republicans were respectable. Republicans didn’t get thrown in jail like Jim Curley . . . ,” ibid., p. 29.
122 “Larry, I don’t look forward”: Ibid., p. 27.
122 “For the Kennedys”: Jack Newfield, Robert Kennedy: A Memoir (New York: Dutton, 1969), p. 42.
123 “He called me and said”: KOD.
123 “lace-curtain”: Ibid.
124 “He started getting our attention”: Ibid.
125 “Lodge, killing off Walsh”: Ibid.
126 Mark Dalton: Campaign manager of 1946, O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, p. 193.
127 Therefore, the first thing: KOD. O’Donnell: “I had said to Dalton, look we need to name a secretary or leader in each community to be a Kennedy man and then that person can form committees and set up events, but we can’t be sitting in this office doing it from 10 Post Office Square. Well, Mark Dalton would not even ask either the father or candidate if we could begin to do it, he was too afraid of them. I had nobody to get any action from. I would tell this [to] Dalton, Dalton would agree and say he would ask the old man or Jack, but he never would. He’d go to Morrissey, who’d bury it and nothing ever happened.”
127 He wouldn’t fire Dalton: Dalton OH. “The major thing at the time which came as a very grave disappointment and a very grave blow to me was that a release had been prepared by John Galvin announcing that I was the campaign manager of John Kennedy’s campaign for the Senate. John Kennedy never spoke to me, but John Kennedy would not issue that release.”
127 If Dalton was too weak: KOD. “I had told Bobby you got to come up here, this is just chaos. Dalton can’t handle it, he’s got to go and you’ve got to take over.”
128 “We arrived at the Ritz”: Healey OH.
128 a smart combination: The teas, Parmet, p. 250.
129 As David Powers would note: KOD. Dave Powers, as said to Sander Vanocur, saw that “the success of these receptions was because the only thing these poor working ever get in the mail was a bill. He said when some of these people got an invitation to have tea with the Kennedys, they were amazed. It was great, because these are all very poor people.”
130 “You’re talking two or three”: Ibid.
130 X-rays taken of Jack’s spine: X-rays are available for December 14, 1944, and November 6, 1950, medical records of Dr. Janet Travell at the John F. Kennedy Library.
131 “I must say”: Bartlett OH.
131 “The whole operation”: KOD.
131 “I knew the Kennedys well enough”: Ibid.
131 He phoned Bobby: Ibid.
131 Bobby hated what: Ibid. “He [Bobby] had no intention of coming up. He gave me the devil. He was really mad, he wanted me to do it, but it had to be him. It had to be someone with the authority to take on the father.”
131 Now that Bobby seemingly: Ibid. In a car ride meeting in mid-April, “he [Kennedy] threw Frank Morrissey out of the car . . . it was Bob Kennedy, the congressman, and myself and I had really, this was the closest I’d really seen him, in my life to this moment, or had substantive discussion with him. I recollect he was irritated and as I look back I think he was irritated because he felt I had in a sense been telling tales out of school to his brother, who was reporting to his father, perhaps instead of telling him, who I really worked for.”
132 “As far as I’m concerned”: Ibid.
132 “That was the day that Bobby”: Ibid.
132 “Bobby, as I recall”: Ibid.
132 “He got in the car”: Dalton int.
133 “He didn’t like the building”: KOD.
133 “I decided that I could”: Dalton OH.
133 “I didn’t become involved”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 94.
133 This was, just for the record: Bobby’s work on 1946 campaign, Ibid. , p. 64.
134 “Yes, Dad”: Thomas, p. 60.
134 “Our secretaries were making”: O’Brien, No Final Victories, p. 36.
134 At their April 6 meeting: KOD.
136 “Lodge was always on the popular side”: Horton OH.
136 “Lodge’s Dodges”: Ted Reardon took down the leather loose-leaf binder from the top shelf of his closet to show me it. It was nearly a half century since it had been put to very good political use.
136 “The major credit belongs”: Healey OH.
136 “Any decision you wanted”: KOD. 137 “How much money”: Ibid.
138 “Don’t give in to them”: Ibid.
138 “Nobody went to one”: Ibid.
138 “The ‘tea party’ technique”: Fraser OH.
138 The reason, according to O’Donnell: KOD.
139 “We appreciated the fact”: Ibid.
139 “We’d be in those homes”: Ibid.
140 “kicked the living hell”: Matthews, p. 88.
140 Here Joe Kennedy: Ibid., p. 87.
141 “buy a fuckin’ “: Ibid.
141 “100 percent”: Ibid.
141 “Well, for Christ’s sake”: Alastair Forbes, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program.
141 “I told them I’d go up”: William F. Buckley, Jr., Boston Sunday Globe, September 30, 1962.
142 “Dear Dick: I was tremendously”: Letter courtesy of Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace.
142 “was the man”: Parmet, p. 250.
142 “a Joseph McCarthy or an Alger Hiss”: Ibid., p. 245.
143 “You and your . . . sheeny friends”: Ibid., p. 251. Transcript, Mutual Broadcasting Network, February 6, 1951, Pre-Presidential Papers, Box 95, John F. Kennedy Library.
143 “He didn’t have to”: O’Neill, p. 119.
144 “the Rabbi”: Parmet, p. 248.
144 “You can’t stop a whispering”: KOD.
144 “They have problems”: Ibid.
144 In October he made: Ibid.
144 “He was in intense pain”: John Galvin, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program.
144 “handsomest”: United Press International report in Boston Globe, July 2, 1952.
145 “ ‘It looks like Eisenhower’s’ “: Macdonald OH.
145 “John Barry, a well-known writer”: KOD.
145 “Well, all hell broke loose”: Ibid.
145 “Finally, he got so frustrated”: Ibid.
148 “That guy must never sleep”: Robert Caro, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program.
148 “The senator-elect got up”: KOD.
CHAPTER SEVEN: MAGIC
151 “Mary, now don’t be silly”: O’Neill, pp. 117–18.
152 “They were all experienced”: Davis OH.
154 “If you work for a politician”: O’Brien, No Final Victories, p. 40.
155 “I’d go down to his office”: Smathers OH.
156 “His mind was on bigger things”: Ibid.
157 “ability to write in clear”: Sorensen, Counselor, p. 96.
157 “Jack had the ability”: Reardon int. 158 “he was soft on Senator Joe McCarthy”: Sorensen, Counselor, pp. 98–99.
159 “He was much the same”: Ibid., pp. 102–3.
159 “Few could realize”: Ibid., p. 109.
159 “During my first year”: Ibid., pp. 103–4.
159 “I do not remember”: Ibid., p. 102.
160 “The thing to remember”: Author interv
iew with Charles Bartlett.
Jack Kennedy Page 41
