JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President (17 page)

He reaped the whirlwind. Southern Democrats voted against other administration legislation, including a bill to establish VISTA, a domestic version of the Peace Corps that had been expected to pass easily but barely survived. Senator James Eastland of Mississippi condemned the civil rights bill as “
a complete blueprint for a totalitarian state
.” The retiring president of the American Bar Association, the Mississippian James Satterfield, said its passage would mean “
the destruction of the United States
of America as we have known it,” which was of course the point. Kennedy’s approval rating fell, and a Gallup poll taken in late June found that 36 percent of Americans thought he was pushing integration “too fast,” a number climbing to 50 percent by late August. After reviewing the polls with Bobby, he looked up and said, “
Well, if we’re going down
, let’s go down on a matter of principle.”

Although liberals in the North wanted a civil rights bill passed, many did not want blacks moving into their neighborhoods. When the speechwriter John Bartlow Martin visited his former hometown of Oak Park, Illinois, he reported finding “
considerable anxiety over the President’s civil rights speech
” in the predominantly Jewish and liberal suburb, and people “alarmed over the pace of the integration movement.” James Lanigan, a New York reform politician, spoke to Schlesinger about “
widespread and intense panic in the suburbs
,” and said that “even good Democrats were appalled by the nightmare of an inundation of their neighborhoods and their schools by Negroes.”
A survey of non-Southern whites
by the pollster Oliver Quayle and the journalist Stewart Alsop, taken over the summer and reported in the
Saturday Evening Post
(which undoubtedly ended up on Kennedy’s desk), supported the anecdotal evidence that even Northern liberals who supported Kennedy’s civil rights bill had reservations about sharing their schools and neighborhoods with black Americans. A startling 42 percent said they would prefer that their children attend all-white schools, and 77 percent believed that whites should have the right to refuse to sell a house to a black on the basis of race. Quayle and Alsop concluded, “It is remarkable that any politician who has favored anti-discrimination statutes in housing survives in office.”

•   •   •

A
S
SOON
AS
K
ENNEDY
LEARNED
that the leaders of the march had not eaten since breakfast, he ordered sandwiches and beverages from the White House canteen. The food arrived, an official photograph was taken, and pleasantries exchanged. Minutes later, he and the leaders were at odds. Both sides wanted a civil rights bill passed, but he remained convinced that expanding its scope would doom it. He had submitted the most radical civil rights legislation since the Civil War, risking his reputation, presidency, and reelection. He had met with more than sixteen hundred governors, religious leaders, executives, attorneys, labor officials, and editors, urging them to lobby congressmen, energize their constituencies, write letters, and sign petitions, and having done all this, he was determined to win. The last two years had educated him about civil rights, and Birmingham and the Evers assassination had sickened him, but he still prized success and was unwilling to back a bill that stood little chance of being passed. But this appeared to be what the leaders wanted him to do. They had called their demonstration “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” His civil rights bill had addressed the freedom issue by prohibiting discrimination in places of public accommodation, but did nothing about jobs. Emboldened by their successful march, they pressed him to expand his bill to include a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), which would prohibit racial discrimination in hiring.

Speaking first, Wilkins said
, “You made the difference. You gave us your blessings. It was one of the prime factors in turning it [the march] into an orderly protest to help our government rather than a protest against our government.” The compliments finished, Wilkins made his pitch: “It fell to my lot, sir, in this afternoon of superlative oratory to be the one to deal rather pedantically and pedestrianly with the hard business of legislation. . . . We would like to see included in your package . . . an FEPC bill for the reasons all of us outlined in our speeches.” Such a provision would not imperil the bill, he said, “if the right words could go to the right people.”

Randolph said, “We feel it needs to have presidential backing, the presidential imprimatur for it to receive the recognition it deserves,” and he launched into a monologue about unemployment among young black men who were “running out of hope.”

Kennedy cut in to say, “I thought we might go into a little discussion of the legislation, of how we stand—”

Walter Reuther interrupted to praise him for submitting the bill, but to add that he considered an FEPC provision “a very critical element.” He rambled on for several minutes, promising that everyone would mobilize their constituencies to persuade Congress to pass such legislation. As he and the others droned on, Kennedy appeared to be taking notes, but
his doodles showed
that his mind was wandering. He wrote “Afghanistan” at the top of one page, and according to Evelyn Lincoln, who later deciphered his writing, he was thinking about his September 6 state dinner to honor King Zaher. He scribbled “Hanoi,” scratched a line through it and added, “Education,” “voting,” “progress,” and “Birmingham,” subjects he wanted to raise when the civil rights leaders yielded the floor.

When Reuther paused, he interjected, “Very fine, but let me just say a word about the legislation.” But before doing that, he delivered a lecture about how black families should emulate the Jews by concentrating on education. “Isn’t it possible for the Negro community to take the lead in committing major emphasis on the responsibility of these families, even if they’re split and all the other problems they have, on the education of their children?” he asked. The Jewish community had suffered discrimination, but had found its salvation through education. Midway through this spiel he stopped and said, “This has nothing to do with what you’ve been talking about,” but resumed it anyway. But why was he asking these men, just hours after their historic march, why they could not be more like Jews? For someone who was usually so sensitive, it was a remarkably insensitive performance, an indication that his civil rights education remained incomplete.

As he was saying “If we can get the Negro community to regard the education of their children as really the best way out . . . making education the same way that it’s in the Jewish community and to a degree in—” one of the leaders, whose identity is not apparent on the tape, interrupted to say that black college graduates were driving garbage trucks in California. Floyd McKissick of CORE chimed in that his organization had trained two hundred young people in North Carolina only to have them rejected for jobs for which they were clearly qualified.

Kennedy responded with a lengthy tutorial on the political hurdles facing the bill, enumerating state by state how many Democratic members of the House were what he called “right,” “doubtful,” and “wrong” on the bill. Because there were roughly 160 Democrats “right” and 100 “wrong,” he needed 60 Republicans to pass the bill. Their votes would be hard enough to get for the bill as written, he said, but with an FEPC provision the bill would never attract enough Republicans. He ran through the Senate state by state. He could have summarized the results, but must have thought that a detailed recitation would be more sobering. There were 48 senators “right,” 44 “wrong,” and 6 to 8 “possible,” he said, and even if all the possibles supported the bill, there would still not be enough votes to stop a filibuster. Again, the key was attracting moderate Republicans. His point was obvious: instead of lobbying him to expand the bill, they should be lobbying the Republicans to pass it.

A. Philip Randolph, the eldest and most experienced member of the delegation, resorted to flattery. “Mr. President, from the description you have made of the state of affairs in the House and Senate, it’s obvious that it’s going to take nothing less than a crusade to win approval for these civil rights measures,” he said. “And if it’s going to be a crusade, I think that nobody can lead this crusade but you.” He suggested appealing to the American people “over the heads of the congressmen and senators.”

It would be “helpful,” Kennedy said delicately, if Randolph and the other leaders told the wavering Republicans that they “anticipated their support.” Knowing that reporters were waiting to interview them, he suggested they say it was their “strong judgment” that both parties should support the bill, and concluded, “Keep in touch, particularly in this question of a head count.”

WASHINGTON AND CAPE COD

K
ennedy spent the last week in August attempting to regain control of his administration’s Vietnam policy and to distance his administration from a coup that was sounding more and more like a potential second Bay of Pigs.

On Monday, he worried that David Halberstam’s negative articles about Diem were having an undue influence on administration policy. “
When we move to eliminate a government
,” he told his advisers, “we want to be sure we’re not doing it because the
New York Times
is excited about it.” He scolded Forrestal for the slipshod way he had cleared Cable 243. When Forrestal offered to resign, he turned on him and said, “
You’re not worth firing
. You owe me something, so you stick around.”

On Tuesday, he suggested asking Lodge and General Harkins, the commander of the U.S. military assistance program in Vietnam, “
what they feel their prospects are for success
and do they recommend continuing it [support for the coup] or do they recommend now waiting.” Minutes later, he worried about the consequences of rescinding his approval for the coup, asking, “
Ah, do we cut our losses in such a way
where we don’t endanger those who we’ve been in contact [with]?” He added bleakly, “The response that we’ve gotten on the coup at this point does not give us assurances that it’s going to be successful.”

The cables from Saigon were contradictory and confusing.
On Wednesday, the CIA station chief
reported that according to the chief plotter, a General Khiem, a committee of unnamed generals had decided to mount a coup within a week. The same day, Ambassador Lodge cabled, “
As of now there are no signs
, apart from Khiem’s receptiveness to initial approach, that these or any other generals are really prepared to act against the government.” Lodge continued to support a coup, cabling the next day that he believed its members were the “best group that could be assembled in terms of ability and orientation,” although “
our knowledge of composition of coup group
and their plans is derived from a single source.” He warned that “chances of success would be diminished by delay,” and said he was “concerned over possibility attempt by Nhu to preempt the coup by arresting its leaders.” The CIA station chief agreed, cabling, “
Situation here has reached point of no return
. . . . It is our considered estimate that General officers cannot retreat now.”

At the Wednesday meeting on Vietnam, Kennedy was even more pessimistic, musing aloud about calling off the generals. “
I don’t think we ought to take the view
that this has gone beyond our control,” he said, “’cause I think that would be the worst reason to do it.” When Bundy responded that both Lodge and Harkins favored the operation as currently planned, he said, “Well, I don’t see any reason to go ahead unless we think we have a good chance of success.”

The former ambassador to South Vietnam Richard Nolting was at the Wednesday meeting and argued that only Diem had “a reasonably good prospect of holding this fragmented, divided country together.” Harriman interjected, “Needless to say I don’t agree with this.” When Nolting attacked Cable 243 as improvident,
Harriman yelled, “Shut up
!”

At one point during the meeting Kennedy said, “
This shit has got to stop
!” and he told Bobby afterward, “
My God! My government’s coming apart
.”

Before attending Thursday’s Vietnam meeting, he received a cable from Lodge that began, “
We are launched on a course
from which there is no respectable turning back: The overthrow of the Diem government.” There was no turning back, he said, “because U.S. prestige is already publicly committed to this end . . . and will become more so as facts leak out,” and because “there is no possibility . . . that the war can be won under a Diem administration.” After reminding Kennedy that this was the policy Cable 243 had instructed him to carry out, he recommended making an “all-out effort to get Generals to move promptly.” He explained that he had decided to ignore the instructions in an earlier cable directing him to ask Diem to rid himself of the Nhus before giving the generals his final approval, because the generals were already concerned about American indecision and delay.

Lodge’s vaguely insubordinate cable prompted Kennedy to shoot back a top-secret cable. Soon after arriving at Squaw Island on Thursday evening, he called McGeorge Bundy and dictated a cable flagged “Personal for the Ambassador from the President” and “No Department or other distribution whatever.”
He told Lodge, “We will do
all that we can to help you conclude the operation successfully. Nevertheless, there is one point on my own constitutional responsibilities as President and Commander in Chief which I wish to state to you in this entirely private message, which is not being circulated here beyond the Secretary of State.” With the Bay of Pigs obviously in mind, he continued, “Until the very moment of the go signal for the operation by the Generals, I must reserve a contingent right to change course and reverse previous instructions. While fully aware of your assessment of the consequences of such a reversal, I know from experience that failure is more destructive than an appearance of indecision. I would, of course, accept full responsibility for any such change as I must bear also full responsibility for this operation and its consequences.” He added, “When we go, we must go to win, but it will be better to change our minds than fail. And if our national interest should require a change of mind, we must not be afraid of it.”

Had the nationally syndicated columnist George Dixon known about any of this he might not have written in his weekend column, one Kennedy must have read because it appeared in the
Washington Post,
“
I
wouldn’t be surprised
if John Fitzgerald Kennedy looks back upon the week of Aug 25 to 31, 1963 as the most gratifying week of his life.” During these seven days, Dixon said, “a nuclear test ban treaty grew almost certain of passage, not a single incident marred the civil rights march,” and the president was “more popular than the day he took office.” He concluded, “No matter what reversals may be in store for him in the years ahead, the President can assuage his woes by looking back upon last week.”

•   •   •

K
ENNEDY
RETURNED
FROM
a cruise on the
Honey Fitz
on Friday afternoon
to find that
Lincoln had left a message on his bed
reporting that a federal judge had just sentenced James Landis to thirty days in jail for tax fraud, a reminder that his own deal with Dirksen had spared Sherman Adams from a similar fate.

He was having second thoughts about Jackie’s cruise, perhaps because he had been aboard the
Christina
and could imagine how the press would play up the First Lady’s presence on a ship boasting a liveried crew, gold-plated faucets, El Greco paintings, and bar stools upholstered with the skin of whale testicles—the kind of vulgar wealth-flaunting he had been raised to disdain. On Labor Day she proposed bringing Undersecretary of Commerce Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., and his wife as chaperones.
He gave in, calling Roosevelt
at his farm in upstate New York and telling him, “Lee wants Jackie to be her beard [to disguise her affair with Onassis]. You are the only one she has agreed to have come along.” The Roosevelts understood their role. “I don’t think Jack wanted Jackie to go,” Susan Roosevelt said later. “I think he was appalled by it, so he arranged for us to make it look less like the jet set.”

He had reinjured his back by stepping into a hole on the Hyannis Golf Course at the beginning of August and aggravated it by playing more golf two weeks later. X-rays were taken, diagrams drawn, hot packs prescribed, bandages wound around his back and groin, and a misleading story concocted for the press to explain why he appeared to be limping. “
I don’t want to read anything in the papers
about my groin,” he told Salinger. “We can attribute it all to the back. . . . I don’t want the American public thinking that their president is falling apart: ‘Now he’s got a bad back, now his groin is going.’”

Dr. Kraus was on a climbing holiday in Italy so his associate, Dr. Willibrand Nagler, examined Kennedy on August 22 and 27.
He diagnosed a muscle sprain
, recommended continuing with the hot packs and bandages, and told him to avoid walking or climbing stairs. When the pain persisted, Kennedy insisted on seeing Kraus in person. Kraus and the famed mountaineer Gino Solda had just climbed Cima Kennedy, a mountain in the Dolomites that Solda had arranged to have named for Kennedy despite the custom of naming alpine peaks posthumously. Burkley called Kraus in the middle of the night and said that an Air Force jet was being sent to fly him to Cape Cod.

Kraus arrived on August 31
, examined Kennedy, and confirmed Nagler’s diagnosis, a strain of the hip flexor muscle, and not a very serious one. He advised him to continue the hot packs and bandages for two or three days, and then resume exercising. Kennedy pretended not to know that Kraus had cut his holiday short, although it is unlikely that Nagler and Burkley would not have told him that Kraus was abroad. The next day he telegrammed Kraus, “
I have just learned that you cut your vacation
to come up here. I am extremely sorry that this was permitted although I am grateful to you for your kindness in coming.” It was a gracious gesture, but it might have been more gracious to have borne the pain a few days longer.

Sometime that weekend, most likely on Saturday, Clifton handed Kennedy a sealed envelope from Bundy containing Lodge’s reply to his eyes-only cable as well as a copy of the initial cable. Bundy had instructed Clifton in an accompanying memorandum that “
the enclosed envelope should be opened
by the President only, and when he has read the messages it contains you should destroy them. The reason for this extraordinary procedure is that these messages are not in the normal series and their existence is not known except to the President and to the Secretary of State, so I do not want them in a message file that may be seen by others who believe themselves privy to most classified material.”

Lodge’s reply was curt
and to the point: “1. I fully understand that you have the right and responsibility to change course at any time. Of course I will always respect that right. 2. To be successful, this operation must essentially be a Vietnamese affair with a momentum of its own. Should this happen you may not be able to control it, i.e. the ‘go signal’ may be given by the Generals.” In other words, it was too late to for the president to countermand Cable 243. He could order Lodge around, but he could control neither the Vietnamese officers nor the timing or success of their coup. It was the reply he deserved. He had appointed Lodge for frivolous and political reasons, cavalierly told him that he would leave the planning of a coup in his hands, and approved Cable 243, ignoring the lessons of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis. The only good news was that leaks to the press and mixed signals from the embassy in Saigon had so unsettled the generals that they had suspended their plotting.