Her newest project, conducted in even greater secrecy than her work on the Executive Mansion, was a country house in Virginia. Using Paul Fout as a front man, she and Jack had paid a bargain price of $26,000 for thirty-nine acres of prime land on Rattlesnake Mountain between Middleburg and Upperville, near a tiny crossroads called Atoka. For Jack, it was a grudging commitment—even when Jackie christened the property “Wexford” after the Kennedys’ county of origin in Ireland. After nearly two years, he had grown no fonder of life in the hunt country. Back in July, Stas Radziwill had reported to Cy Sulzberger that Kennedy “hates Virginia and Glen Ora, detests horses.”
During the summer, JFK had spent his first weekend at Camp David and “rather liked it, primarily because it’s in Maryland and not Virginia.” Situated on 125 wooded acres, the official presidential hideaway (originally named Shangri-La by FDR) atop the Catoctin Mountains was a compound of cabins with names like “Aspen” and “Hickory.” The camp had a pool, skeet-shooting range, stables, a playground, and miles of hiking trails. Yet Jackie was dismissive of the retreat’s “motel shacks with their bomb shelters churning underneath.”
Although Kennedy routinely brought pals to Virginia, he found weekends there tiresome. “I always knew he would call me Sunday at Glen Ora, at noon promptly. He was bored,” Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg told Katie Louchheim. Kennedy’s aversion was so widely known that when he and Jackie attended the French play A Shot in the Dark that autumn, the audience roared when one of the characters said, “I myself do not like the country. It is my wife who likes horses and the hunt.”
But Jackie was determined to build a house on a piece of land where both her own Orange County Hunt and Paul Mellon’s Piedmont Hunt could gallop across the rolling countryside. She chose the property for its seclusion: its former owner, local newspaper publisher Hubert Phipps, controlled a thousand surrounding acres, and the Mellons owned the four hundred acres of adjacent land. The nearest road was two miles down a winding driveway.
Jackie sketched out on graph paper a 3,500-square-foot ranch-style dwelling with three sides around an enclosed courtyard—seven bedrooms, five and a half baths, spacious living room and dining room, library, small den, and breakfast room. The exterior would be pale yellow stucco and fieldstone, the backdrop volcanic rocks and thick woods, with a panoramic view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There would be a swimming pool, commodious terrace, stables, and a pond where the children could fish.
To keep the project quiet, Jackie chose as her architect Keith Williams of nearby Winchester, Virginia, and instructed Paul Fout to conceal her name from him. “She wanted a practical house,” said Fout. “Jack had a huge bathtub in his bathroom for his back.” The interior would be simple, even stark, but with the highest quality materials. Bunny Mellon, who had an expert architectural eye, was an invaluable consultant.
Construction began in October, causing the White House to announce the project officially. The estimated cost was $45,000, but everyone assumed it would be closer to $100,000 ($600,000 today). Fout became Jackie’s general contractor, paid by a Kennedy family company managed by Steve Smith in New York. “Jackie was immersed in the details, and I was delighted because she was good,” said Fout. On weekends she would sit in Fout’s office and “draw stuff on the floor. The plan got changed so many times. She was smart. She would think of things you wouldn’t think she could think of.”
Monday, October 15, 1962, was a day of pageantry, mischief, and sentiment in the Kennedy White House. The President had just finished a weekend of successful campaigning in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, having arrived home shortly before 2 a.m. He had also been buoyed by two important legislative victories. Several days earlier, he had signed the trade expansion act, which enabled him to dramatically cut tariffs, and the Senate had sent him a revised investment tax credit bill—two key building blocks in his economic program.
That morning Kennedy greeted Algerian premier Ahmed Ben Bella in a South Lawn ceremony featuring a twenty-one-gun salute. As the military men barked their commands, the assembled dignitaries heard youthful echoes from the third-floor balcony outside the White House schoolroom: “Attention!” the children shrieked. “Forward march!” “Boom!” Kennedy glanced upwards, but couldn’t spot the culprits. A mortified Alice Grimes instantly sent a letter of apology. Telling her not to worry, Jackie replied, “It was really charming and not embarrassing at all.” The President “was probably the most amused of all.”
Later in the day Joe Kennedy came to the White House for a week-long visit—the first since his stroke nearly a year earlier. In her customary meticulous fashion Jackie had prepared for every eventuality, issuing instructions to J. B. West about obtaining a hospital bed, a lift for the bathroom, and other medical equipment. Jackie even detailed the contents of a drink tray at Joe’s bedside and on a suitcase stand in the dining room: gin, tonic, Coke, ginger ale, rum, scotch, ice, cocktail shaker, lemon juice, and sugar syrup in a jar, although she noted that the Ambassador had only “make-believe cocktails.” Joe would stay in the Lincoln Bedroom, his niece and full-time companion Ann Gargan in the Queen’s Room, and three nurses in the third-floor guest rooms.
While Joe was visiting with the President and his family on Monday evening, Mac Bundy was hosting a party at his Partridge Lane home in honor of Charles “Chip” Bohlen, who was about to leave for Paris to be the new U.S. ambassador. Across town in Kalorama, Robert McNamara was presiding over a Hickory Hill seminar on cybernetics with a professor of neurology and psychology from the University of California. All afternoon, analysts at the CIA had been scrutinizing a batch of photos shot over Cuba the previous day by a U-2 spy plane. Shortly before 6 p.m. they discovered images of medium-range missiles capable of hitting the nation’s capital—clear proof of the dangerous offensive weapons McCone had been warning about.
Both McNamara and Bundy learned about the evidence that evening. Elspeth Rostow, whose husband was in Berlin, later said that McNamara betrayed nothing and politely offered to drive her home. “There we all were, listening to cybernetics, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was about to start,” she recalled. As national security chief, Bundy had the responsibility to inform the President. Mindful of Kennedy’s fatigue after “a strenuous campaign weekend,” Bundy declined to call JFK. “It was a hell of a secret,” the national security aide explained later to Kennedy. Bundy decided to wait until morning, figuring that for the President, “a quiet evening and a night of sleep were the best preparation” for the days ahead.
TWENTY-THREE
The thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 brought out the best in Jack Kennedy, but some less attractive traits emerged as well. Making policy on the fly, Kennedy calmly juggled conflicting viewpoints, anticipated problems, moved cautiously, and kept his focus. He settled on a graduated course of action that offered him the greatest flexibility and gave Khrushchev plenty of leeway to back down, then held his ground against stiff challenges from his advisers, often amid contentious and confusing debate. He tightly controlled the operation, using Bobby as his proxy—not only in meetings that he didn’t attend, but also in back-channel overtures to the Soviet government. The successful outcome hinged on a grand deception that eight of Kennedy’s men kept secret for several decades. To help maintain that fiction, Kennedy deliberately undermined an old rival and exploited the loyalty of an unwitting old friend.
Throughout the crisis Kennedy repeatedly relied on his uncanny ability to compartmentalize his life. For the first seven days, JFK and his top aides deliberated in extraordinary secrecy, excluding foreign allies as well as congressional leaders. At the same time, Kennedy carried out his public duties as if nothing were amiss, greeting dignitaries and stumping for congressional and Senate candidates in the East and Midwest. From beginning to end, he moved smoothly from the high tension of West Wing meetings to the light banter of dinner parties. (He was helped, according to historian Robert Dallek, by “increased amounts of hydrocortisone
and testosterone . . . to control his Addison’s disease and increase his energy.”) Instead of shutting down their social life, Jack and Jackie intensified it, drawing in both close friends and diverting acquaintances.
At 8 a.m. on Tuesday, October 16, Bundy showed JFK the photographs of missiles and sites still under construction in Cuba. Kennedy quickly convened his top foreign policy advisers—a handpicked group that would be known as the “Ex Comm”—the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. Besides JFK, the dozen core members were Lyndon Johnson, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, Douglas Dillon, Bobby Kennedy, John McCone, George Ball, Roswell Gilpatric, Maxwell Taylor, Llewellyn Thompson, Ted Sorensen, and McGeorge Bundy. Others inside the administration, along with outside experts such as Dean Acheson, Robert Lovett, and arms negotiator John McCloy, would join the discussions when needed. Jack Kennedy chose to secretly tape-record most of the deliberations.
His initial instinct was for a quick surprise attack before the missiles could be operational. “We’re going to take out these missiles,” he said—either with an air strike or an invasion. But he invited arguments from his advisers and expressed his own concerns and doubts. From the start he worried that Khrushchev would counter a U.S. strike on Cuba by moving on Berlin—although JFK suspected that “he’s probably going to grab Berlin anyway.” Kennedy was also constantly aware of Khrushchev’s anxiety over the recently installed Jupiter missiles in Turkey. “The only offer we would make, it seems to me, that would have any sense, according to him, would be our Turkey missiles,” said JFK on the third day of debate.
In the first week, Robert McNamara had the greatest impact, pushing the group toward a blockade. A cordon of navy vessels would show American resolve while buying time and preventing additional offensive weapons from reaching Cuba. Bundy’s voice was surprisingly muted, posing questions rather than framing arguments or setting the agenda. The NSC adviser initially favored doing nothing, fearful that any action would result in a Soviet takeover of Berlin, which could trigger a nuclear war. Rusk also urged caution. He seemed able to step back and take the long view, occasionally relying on historical references, including Kennedy’s touchstone book, The Guns of August.
Sorensen (who continued to be plagued by his ulcer) said little, occasionally asking for detail or clarification, preferring to confer with Kennedy one-on-one. JFK frequently turned to former ambassador to Moscow Llewellyn Thompson to interpret Khrushchev’s thinking. Thompson was the first to piece together the Soviet leader’s scheme to reveal the fully installed missiles after the November elections, using Russia’s new leverage to gain control of Berlin.
Several participants likened a surprise attack to Pearl Harbor. “Just frightens the hell out of me,” said Marshall Carter, deputy director of Central Intelligence, on the first day. Two days later George Ball declared that a strike without warning was “the kind of conduct that one might expect of the Soviet Union,” and Rusk predicted the United States would carry “the mark of Cain” as a result.
“I am depending on you to pull this group together,” Jack told Bobby. RFK “kept the discussion moving,” said one colleague. “He kept it from going back over the same ground 50 times.” As he shifted between goad and conciliator, Bobby took intermittent notes, keeping tabs on everyone’s position with what Ros Gilpatric described as a “score sheet” or “rating card.” Bobby started out hawkish. At one point he proposed a Mongoose-style clandestine maneuver to provoke the Cubans, much as the explosion on the battleship Maine had ignited the Spanish-American War. After four days of debate, Bobby agreed that a surprise attack was “not in our traditions.”
By Thursday evening, Kennedy and most of his advisers had settled on a blockade, which the President defended Friday morning to his deeply skeptical Joint Chiefs. Kennedy didn’t flinch as air force chief Curtis LeMay compared the blockade plan to “appeasement at Munich.” But when LeMay observed, “You’re in a pretty bad fix,” JFK shot back. “You’re in there with me. Personally.”
The hawkish views of the military men gave JFK second thoughts, which were reinforced when Bundy switched overnight to favoring an air strike. Before leaving on a campaign trip to the Midwest, Kennedy asked Bundy to elaborate on his proposal. When Kennedy rejoined the Ex Comm on Saturday afternoon, the “Bundy plan” had the full backing of the military men. But once again the consensus spurned a “Pearl Harbor” attack. Contrary to subsequent mythology, McNamara—not Adlai Stevenson—was the most ardent dove, lobbying for a blockade linked to negotiations.
To get the missiles out of Cuba, McNamara said the “minimum price” would be removal of nuclear missiles from Italy as well as Turkey. Sorensen favored McNamara’s approach, as did Adlai Stevenson. But the UN ambassador also suggested that the United States consider proposing the “evacuation of Guantánamo,” the U.S. naval base in Cuba. Kennedy “sharply rejected” Stevenson’s additional concession as a sign of American weakness. “You have to admire Adlai,” Kennedy mused afterwards as he, Bobby, and Sorensen stood on the Truman Balcony. “He sticks to his position even when everyone is jumping on him.”
JFK ultimately ruled out making any opening offers to the Soviets. Instead, he approved a more muscular blockade—labeled a quarantine at Rusk’s suggestion—backed by a threat of military attack if the missiles were not removed. Kennedy would announce the blockade and ultimatum in a televised address on Monday night. The advocates of this two-step approach were Bobby and Thompson, as well as Dillon and McCone, both of whom had originally favored a swift air strike. Throughout the discussions, Kennedy pointedly and repeatedly conceded the possibility of removing missiles in Turkey and Italy “at an appropriate time” in the future. He understood that the Jupiter land-based missiles had become militarily obsolete and could be replaced by new Polaris nuclear-armed submarines in the Mediterranean.
Maintaining normal routines during these deliberations was vital, Kennedy said, “so that we don’t take the cover off this.” Several times the group met in the elegant Yellow Oval Room, with participants whisked into the Executive Mansion by different routes. On the afternoon of Tuesday the sixteenth, Kennedy appeared at a State Department foreign policy conference where he spoke briefly, took questions, and departed in whirlwind fashion. “Not a happy man,” observed Katie Louchheim.
That evening Jack and Jackie attended a dinner party at Joe and Susan Mary Alsop’s for Chip and Avis Bohlen. Phil and Katharine Graham, Bobby and Ethel, Mac and Mary Bundy, Hervé and Nicole Alphand, and Isaiah and Aline Berlin also sat around the table. It was a warm Indian summer night, and during cocktails Kennedy walked deep into Joe’s leafy garden with Bohlen, where their intense conversation lasted so long Susan Mary feared her roast would be ruined. Kennedy was urging Bohlen to postpone his departure for France and join the Ex Comm talks, but the envoy argued that a delay might arouse suspicions.
Once at the table, JFK was “in a jolly mood,” Berlin recalled. “The sangfroid which he displayed . . . on a day on which he must have been extraordinarily preoccupied, was one of the most astonishing exhibitions of self-restraint and strength . . . as if there were not a cloud upon his brain.” Kennedy playfully said to Berlin, “You must go and sit next to Jackie. She wants to bring you out.” Feeling “greatly honored and rather excited,” the British professor found Jackie “infinitely easier to talk to” than her husband.
The men gathered after dinner for brandy and cigars in Joe’s “garden room,” where Kennedy pressed Berlin, an expert in Russian history and politics, with questions about how Russians reacted “when their backs were against the wall.” Berlin felt he answered inadequately, but he couldn’t help admiring Kennedy’s skill “as a cross examiner.” Ironically, Kennedy reminded Berlin of Lenin, “who used to exhaust people simply by listening to them.”
In the following days, Jack “sought [Jackie’s] company at meals normally devoted to business,” wrote Sorensen, “and on walks around the South Lawn.” She too kept her schedule by attending the press conf
erence unveiling the Lafayette Square plan, traveling to New York on Wednesday the seventeenth to receive a citation for her role in the arts, and taking the children to Glen Ora on Friday. Other spouses remained in the dark, although Adlai Stevenson confided in his close friend Marietta Tree.
Charley Bartlett’s keen eye saw through Kennedy’s facade on Wednesday during a campaign trip to Connecticut. When Bartlett asked him a question about Latin America, “his shoulders sort of caved,” Bartlett recalled. “His face took on lines and he said, ‘Boy, Charley, do I have problems down in that region.’” As the crisis developed, Jack unburdened himself to intimate friends such as Lem Billings and Chuck Spalding. “He’d find me, wherever I was, and call me up in the middle of the night,” said Spalding, “just to relieve his tension, I guess. He would talk about anything from Voltaire to girls, always warm and funny.” Between Ex Comm meetings, Jack and Jackie had a final dinner with Joe Kennedy on Thursday evening. The next day the Ambassador left the White House for Hyannis as Jack headed to Cleveland and Chicago for long-planned appearances at political rallies.
Finally, on Saturday morning, Bobby signaled to JFK that it was time to make a decision. “A slight upper respiratory infection,” Salinger explained to the press, prevented the President from making further speeches and required him to rest at home. Jackie returned from Glen Ora with the children, and Lyndon Johnson was also summoned back from a political trip to Hawaii. On a stopover in Los Angeles, LBJ briefed his friend Lloyd Hand about the situation, adding, “If you tell I’ll shoot you between the eyes.” By this time, the secret was beginning to seep out. Bobby Kennedy arrived three hours late for Red Fay’s Potomac cruise on the Sequoia and “couldn’t hide his anguish,” observed Hervé Alphand.
Reporters and columnists buzzed with rumors during a twenty-fifth anniversary dance on Saturday night given by James Rowe and his wife. The word from the Washington Post newsroom was “they think it’s Cuba.” Stevenson admitted to his friends Katie and Walter Louchheim that a “mean” crisis had been brewing since Tuesday. “The President did not have a cold,” Katie told a friend. Kenny O’Donnell called the White House from the party with the news that both the New York Times and Washington Post were preparing stories.
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