Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot Part 6

Meanwhile, the president pa.s.ses the rest of the day wallowing in grief, making no attempt to hide his depression from the White House staff. "How could I have been so stupid?" he mutters to himself, often interrupting a completely different conversation to repeat those words. "How could I have been so stupid?"

By 5:30 P.M. on the night of April 19, Cuban forces have taken complete control of the Bay of Pigs. The invasion is over.

In addition to the dead and captured on the ground, Castro's forces have sunk almost a dozen invasion vessels, including those carrying food and ammunition, and shot down nine B-26 bombers.

The defeat is a major humiliation for the United States. Kennedy is forced to give a press conference and take full blame. "There's an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. What matters," he says, is that "I am the responsible officer of the government."

One day JFK will look back and speculate that the Bay of Pigs blunder could have given the U.S. military reason to interfere with the civilian American government on the grounds that the president was unsuited for office.

Six months later, however, it is CIA director Allen Dulles who is fired. The CIA chief is extremely bitter. The slight is one that the old spymaster and his agency will not soon forget.

A week after the Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy calls his advisers, including Bobby, into the Cabinet Room. Bobby's attendance at a foreign policy meeting is unusual, and at first the president's brother holds his tongue.

The president leans back in his chair and softly taps a pencil against his teeth as Undersecretary of State Chester Bowles reads a lengthy statement that absolves the State Department from any blame concerning the Bay of Pigs.

JFK can see that Bobby is seething. The two brothers find Bowles whiny and self-righteous.

The president knows from a lifetime of observing his little brother in action that an explosion is coming soon. He has also authorized Bobby to speak for him. JFK waits, keeping his expression blank, listening, tapping that pencil against his teeth.

Finally Bobby Kennedy takes the floor. He brutally tears into Chester Bowles with words designed to humiliate.

"That's the most meaningless, worthless thing I've ever heard. You people are so anxious to protect your own a.s.ses that you're afraid to do anything. All you want to do is dump the whole thing on the president. We'd be better off if you just quit and left the foreign policy to someone else," Bobby growls, his voice growing louder. The president watches, his face impa.s.sive, that pencil making just the slightest clicking noise on his perfect white teeth.

"I became suddenly aware," Kennedy adviser Richard Goodwin will later write, "that Bobby's harsh polemic reflected the president's concealed emotions, privately communicated in some earlier, intimate conversation. I knew, even then, that there was an inner hardness, often volatile anger beneath the outwardly amiable, thoughtful, carefully controlled demeanor of John Kennedy."

If Lyndon Johnson is the vice president, it will one day be written, then Bobby Kennedy is soon to become the a.s.sistant president-but only after the Bay of Pigs bonds the brothers and transforms the way JFK does business in the White House. From now on, when President Kennedy wants a contentious point made to his cabinet or advisers, he will rely on Bobby, who will then speak for the president and endure any subsequent criticism or argument so as not to weaken his big brother.

Amazingly, Kennedy's approval ratings rise to 83 percent after the invasion, proving to the president that the American people firmly stand behind his actions against Castro. Behind the scenes, U.S. plots to overthrow the Cuban leader continue to be hatched, and Castro becomes openly defiant of Kennedy, further cementing the widespread belief that each man wants the other dead.

Meanwhile, even as Kennedy's approval ratings temporarily make him one of the most popular presidents of the twentieth century, he knows that something must be done to restore America's prestige among the international community. In an interview with James Reston of the New York Times, Kennedy sets aside the Cuban situation. Instead, he candidly admits that "we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place."

Vietnam.

Small, and until now almost completely overlooked by America, the Asian nation is in the throes of its own Communist uprising. Now President Kennedy deems it vital to American security. In May 1961, JFK tasks Vice President Lyndon Johnson with a fact-finding trip to Vietnam, sending him farther away from the Oval Office than ever before.

The reasons have as much to do with national security as the president's awareness of the toll that being powerless is taking on the vice president. "I cannot stand Johnson's d.a.m.n long face," JFK confides to one senator. "He just comes in, sits at cabinet meetings with his face all screwed up. Never says anything. He looks so sad."

When Kennedy's good friend Senator George Smathers of Florida suggests Johnson go on an around-the-world trip, JFK is delighted, calling it "a d.a.m.n good idea."

Just to reinforce the journey's importance, the vice president is allowed the use of a presidential airplane.

More than 110 men would not have died if JFK had canceled the Bay of Pigs invasion. And more than 1,200 freedom fighters would not have been captured and sentenced to Castro's brutal prisons. The Bay of Pigs not only exposed flaws in Kennedy's international policy, but it also eroded the power the voters had given him-even if this was unbeknownst to them at the time. Kennedy was indecisive at a time when he should have been resolute. He allowed himself to be misled. It is impossible to ascertain why. But there is no question that in the first major test of his administration, Kennedy's leaders.h.i.+p failed.

The harrowing days of April 1961 taught the Kennedy brothers an indelible lesson: they are on their own. Their advisers are not worth shoe polish. In order to restore America's power position, the Kennedy brothers will have to find a way to defeat their enemies, both abroad and, especially, in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, the U.S. State Department has decided to return Lee Harvey Oswald's American pa.s.sport and allow him to return home. But while Oswald is quite anxious to leave the Soviet Union, he is no longer the unattached nomad who defected nearly two years earlier. He delays his departure until a time when Marina and their unborn child can travel with him.

He also delays telling Marina that they are going anywhere.

Finally, Oswald breaks the news. "My wife is slightly startled"-he writes in his journal on June 1, after finally telling Marina that they are leaving the Soviet Union, most likely forever-"but then encourages me to do what I wish to do."

Marina is on the verge of leaving behind everything she knows for a life of uncertainty with a man she barely knows. But she accepts this hard reality because she has already learned one great truism about Lee Harvey Oswald: he always does what he wants to do, no matter how many obstacles are thrown in his path.

Always.

FEBRUARY 14, 1962.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C.

8:00 P.M.

The First Lady glides alone down a hallway, walking straight toward the six-foot-high television camera bearing the logo of the CBS eye. Her outfit and lipstick are a striking red, accenting her full lips and auburn bouffant hairdo. The camera will broadcast only in black and white, so this detail is lost on the forty-six million Americans tuning in to NBC and CBS to watch her televised tour of the White House. This is Jackie's moment in the national spotlight, a chance to show off the ongoing effort to restore her beloved "Maison Blanche."

Jackie pretends that the camera is not there. This is the way she goes through life as well, feigning ignorance and keeping a discreet distance from all but a few trusted confidants. Despite her practical detachment, Jackie is anything but unaware of her circ.u.mstance, having written and edited the show's script herself, filling the doc.u.ment's margins with small reminders about a piece of furniture's history and the names of wealthy donors. She knows not only the renovation status of each of the White House's fifty-four rooms and sixteen baths but also the complete history of the 170-year-old building itself.

And yet, as America will learn over the course of the broadcast, the First Lady does not come across as a pompous know-it-all. In fact, she doesn't even like to be called "the First Lady"; she thinks it sounds like the name of a racehorse. This ability to laugh at herself gives Jackie that precious gift of appearing vulnerable and shy, rather than aloof, even as she speaks with an upper-crust accent. Many men find her s.e.xy, and many women see her as an approachable icon. Throughout the first year of her husband's presidency, her perceived accessibility has endeared Jackie Kennedy to America and the world.

President Kennedy made light of this when they visited Paris in June 1961, on a state visit to meet French president Charles de Gaulle. The Bay of Pigs had taken place just six weeks earlier, and JFK's image had been vastly diminished in the estimation of many European leaders. But not so Jackie's image. When Air Force One touched down at Orly Airport, she was hailed as the very picture of glamour, poise, and beauty. The president couldn't help but notice the popping flashbulbs that followed in her wake. Speaking before a host of dignitaries at the Palais de Chaillot, JFK opened his remarks with somber tones as he delivered an apt description of his status in the eyes of Paris and the world. "I do not think it altogether inappropriate for me to introduce myself to this audience," he said with a straight face. "I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris-and I have enjoyed it."

After her walk past the CBS camera, the First Lady starts her television special by narrating a brief history of the White House. Viewers hear her demure voice as images of drawings and photographs fill the screen. There is drama in her words, underscoring her emotional attachment to the building. She speaks in approving tones about Theodore Roosevelt's addition of the West Wing, which moved the offices of the president and his staff from the cramped second-floor environs of the White House residence into a far more s.p.a.cious and businesslike environment.

There is an air of tragedy in her voice as she describes how the White House had to be gutted in 1948. President Truman's study floor had begun vibrating as if on the verge of collapse. An inspection revealed that the entire building was about to implode because it had not been renovated or reinforced for decades. "The whole inside was scooped out. Only the exterior walls remained," Jackie says breathily as photographs of giant bulldozers tearing out the historic original floors and ceilings flash on the screen. "It would have been easier and less expensive to demolish the whole building. But the White House is so great a symbol to Americans that the exterior walls were retained."

The First Lady finishes her monologue with a reminder that she has immersed herself in the details of all renovations, past and present: "Piece by piece, the interior of the president's house was put back together. The exterior views were exactly those which Americans had seen throughout the century, except for the balcony on the South Portico-which President Truman added."

The scripted words are a coy barb. Truman was roundly denounced in 1947 for adding the balcony, which was seen as a desecration of the White House's exterior architecture. President Kennedy was initially nervous about Jackie's restoration, fearing that she would come under the same sharp criticism as Truman. But rather than defer to her husband, as she does so often, the First Lady refused to back down. This "won't be like the Truman Balcony," she insisted, a.s.suring her husband that her efforts would be viewed positively. Her focus would be the interior, finally finis.h.i.+ng the work those bulldozers began in 1948. Her goal is nothing less than to transform the White House from the very large home of a bureaucrat into a presidential palace.

Mamie Eisenhower was once fond of referring to the White House and its objects as her personal property-"my house" and "my carpets." She also had a pa.s.sion for the color pink. Jackie, who doesn't get along with her predecessor, has gotten rid of all of Mamie's cheap furniture and carpeting and painted over the pink.

As Americans are about to see for themselves, the White House now belongs to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.

The First Lady once again steps before the camera to take viewers on a walk around her new home, now followed by the show's host, Charles Collingwood of CBS. Jackie's personal touches are everywhere, from the new draperies, whose designs she sketched herself; to the new guidebook she authorized to raise funds for the restoration (selling 350,000 copies in just six months). She has done away with oddities such as the water fountains that made the White House look more like an office building than a national treasure.

The First Lady has scoured storage rooms and the National Gallery, turning up a.s.sorted treasures such as paintings by Cezanne, Teddy Roosevelt's drinking mugs, and James Monroe's gold French flatware. President Kennedy's new desk was another of Jackie's finds. The Resolute desk, as it is known, was carved from the timbers of an ill-fated British vessel and was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. Jackie found it languis.h.i.+ng in the White House broadcast room, buried beneath a pile of electronics. She promptly had it relocated to the Oval Office.