Kennedy: The Classic Biography (57 page)

When failure struck, it struck hard. Tuesday’s postmidnight meeting in the Cabinet Room was a scene of somber stocktaking. The President, still in his white tie and tails after the annual Congressional reception, was stunned by each new revelation of how wrong he had been in his expectations and assumptions. He would not agree to the military-CIA request for the kind of open commitment of American military power that would necessitate, in his view, a full-scale attack by U.S. forces—that, he said, would only weaken our hand in the global fight against Communism over the long run. He dispatched Schlesinger and Berle as personal emissaries to the angry exile political leaders who had been held incommunicado by the CIA in Florida. Finally, around 4
A.M.
, after ordering the ill-fated “air cover for the air cover,” and talking halfheartedly with those aides who remained after all officials departed, he walked out onto the South Lawn and meditated briefly alone.

On Wednesday, in a solid day of agonizing meetings and reports as the brigade was being rounded up at Zapata, he gave orders for American Navy and Air Force to rescue as many as possible; and he talked, at Schlesinger’s suggestion, with the exile political leaders flown in from Florida. He found them remarkably understanding of his resolve to keep the fight between Cubans, and they found him, they remarked later, deeply concerned and understanding, particularly for those with sons in the brigade. “I lost a brother and a brother-in-law in the war,” the President told them. “I know something of how you feel.” In truth, words alone could not express how he felt, for I observed in the days and months that followed that he felt personally responsible for those who had lost their lives—miraculously few compared with Castro’s heavy losses—and that he was determined above all else to prevent the execution and to seek the liberation of the 1,113 men his government had helped send to their imprisonment.
⁴

In public and with most of his new associates, the President remained hopeful and calm, rallying morale, looking ahead and avoiding the temptation to lash out in reproach or recrimination. He asked General Maxwell Taylor to chair an investigation of the truth, to determine not
who
was wrong and deserved to be punished but
what
was wrong and had to be righted. As both mobs and diplomats the world round decried American imperialism, deception and aggression, he remarked privately that many of those leaders most anxious to see Castro removed had been among the first to assail the U.S. in speeches for regarding tiny Cuba as a threat. Nevertheless, he held his tongue in public.

Despite this outward composure, however, so necessary to the country at that hour, he was beneath it all angry and sick at heart. In later months he would be grateful that he had learned so many major lessons—resulting in basic changes in personnel, policy and procedures—at so relatively small and temporary a cost. But as we walked on the South Lawn Thursday morning, he seemed to me a depressed and lonely man. To guard national unity and spirit, he was planning a determined speech to the nation’s editors that afternoon and a series of talks with every Republican leader. The Bay of Pigs had been—and would be—the worst defeat of his career, the kind of outright failure to which he was not accustomed. He knew that he had handed his critics a stick with which they would forever beat him; that his quick strides toward gaining the confidence of other nations had been set back; that Castro’s shouting boasts would dangerously increase the cold war frustrations of the American people; and that he had unnecessarily worsened East-West relations just as the test-ban talks were being resumed.

“There’s an old saying,” he later told his press conference, “that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan…. I am the responsible officer of the government and that is quite obvious.” But as we walked that Thursday morning, he told me, at times in caustic tones, of some of the other fathers of this defeat who had let him down. By taking full blame upon himself, he was winning the admiration of both career servants and the public, avoiding partisan investigations and attacks, and discouraging further attempts by those involved to leak their versions and accusations. But his assumption of responsibility was not merely a political device or a constitutional obligation. He felt it strongly, sincerely, and repeated it as we walked. “How could I have been so far off base?” he asked himself out loud. “All my life I’ve known better than to depend on the experts. How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?”

His anguish was doubly deepened by the knowledge that the rest of the world was asking the same question.

1
The operation of June, 1954, that restored a non-Communist government to Guatemala. Apparently this should not be confused with a later conversation with Eisenhower, reported in
Mandate for Change
, in which Dulles estimated the prospects of the Guatemalan operation, by then already under way, as “about 20 percent” if aircraft could be supplied.

2
Whose very presence was contrary to the President’s instructions that all pro-Batista suspects be purged from the operation.

3
Schlesinger did draft an excellent White Paper on Castro’s betrayal of the revolution, but there was too wide a gap between the understanding implicit in that paper and the premises implicit in the landing plan.

4
Some twenty months later, on Christmas Eve, 1962, the prisoners, kept alive by Kennedy’s stern warnings to Castro, were freed in exchange for $53 million in drugs, baby food, medical equipment and similar non-embargoed supplies donated without any use of Treasury or CIA funds under an impressive operation directed by the Attorney General and negotiated with Castro by lawyer James Donovan representing the Cuban Families Committee. Since mid-1961 various negotiation attempts had waxed and waned; and while the basic responsibility and financing were kept private, the President was proud of the assistance his administration provided by way of tax exemptions, coordination, surplus food and encouragement. Receiving the brigade leaders at his Palm Beach home after their release, the President and First Lady were deeply impressed by their bearing and spirit, and the President predicted, in an Orange Bowl address two days later to the brigade members and friends, that its flag would someday fly “in a free Havana.”

CHAPTER XII
THE PRESS

T
HE GAP BETWEEN
public opinion and the public interest, which had been the theme of
Why England Slept
and
Profiles in Courage
, became a theme of John Kennedy’s campaign, Inaugural and first State of the Union Message in what he regarded as an age of dangerous complacency. He recognized his obligation to “lead, inform, correct and sometimes even ignore constituent opinion, if we are to exercise fully that judgment for which we were elected.” And no problem of the Presidency concerned him more than that of public communication—educating, persuading and mobilizing that opinion through continued use of the political machinery, continued traveling and speaking and, above all, continued attention to the mass media: radio, television and the press.

PRESS RELATIONS

John Kennedy knew the newspaper profession as few politicians knew it. He had served two brief stints as a working reporter.
¹
He often considered purchasing a newspaper once he left public life. He discussed with a reporter how the low quality of most typography could be improved. He numbered several Washington newsmen among his closest friends. He mingled with them informally and formally, socially and professionally, and enjoyed both joking with them and talking seriously with them, just as he did with fellow politicians. His wife was a former newspaperwoman for the old Washington
Times Herald
, and his father had passed on to him a flair for public relations and some painful lessons of experience. Many of John Kennedy’s good friends in the journalism fraternity, in fact, had been his father’s harshest critics, and many of his father’s newspaper friends became the President’s harshest critics.

During his long quest for the Presidency, Kennedy had been helped by his unusual accessibility to reporters. He knowingly timed his major campaign releases to meet their
A.M.
and
P.M.
deadlines, sometimes evaluated a speech draft as if he were writing the headlines, and subjected himself to more interviews, press conferences, “backgrounders” and assorted other news gatherings than his opponents in both parties combined. Political reporters were impressed by his candid and never exaggerated review of the potential delegate and electoral count. In the White House Pierre Salinger was superb, but Kennedy was his own best Presidential press secretary. His activities, aims, announcements and family dominated the news, and exclusive interviews with the President, once a rare event in journalism, took place almost daily.

Yet there remained a curious dichotomy in his attitude toward the press. He regarded newsmen as his natural friends and newspapers as his natural enemies. He was more concerned about a news column read by thousands than a newscast viewed by millions. He both assisted and resented the press corps as they dogged his every footstep. He had an inexhaustible capacity to take displeasure from what he read, particularly in the first half of his term, and an equally inexhaustible capacity to keep on reading more than anyone else in Washington. He always expected certain writers and publications to be inconsistent and inaccurate, but was always indignant when they were. While he fortunately grew insensitive to old critics, he remained unfortunately too sensitive to new ones. He could find and fret over one paragraph of criticism deep in ten paragraphs of praise. He dispensed few favors to his journalistic friends, but ardently wooed his journalistic foes. He had an abhorrence of public relations gimmicks, but was always acutely aware of what impression he was making.

Few, if any, Presidents could have been more objective about their own faults or objected more to seeing them in print. Few, if any, Presidents could have been so utterly frank and realistic in their private conversations with reporters and so uncommonly candid in public—but few, on the other hand, could have been so skillful in evading or even misleading the press whenever secrecy was required. Finally, few, if any, Presidents could have been more accessible and less guarded with individual reporters and editors—or more outraged when anyone else “leaked” a story.

If there is a logical inconsistency in these attitudes, it stems from similar inconsistencies in political life. The President knew that the fairness, if not the favoritism, of the reporters covering his campaign had helped to elect him—but he also knew that the overwhelming proportion of editors and publishers had been out to defeat him. He valued the role of the press in calling his shortcomings to his attention—but that did not make him enjoy it any more than any proud man.

This was not simply a matter of “image.” The public and posterity would judge him and his program on the basis of the “news,” and, he felt, more on the basis of the written than the spoken word. He needed to know, therefore, what was being written and how he could make it, if not more favorable, at least more objective and accurate.

At the heart of it all was an attitude he had expressed to me as Senator when complimenting me on my friendships with Massachusetts reporters. “Always remember,” he had added, “that their interests and ours ultimately conflict.” From 1957 through 1960 through 1963, John Kennedy’s tide of favorable publicity, only some of which he stimulated, helped build his popularity. Certainly it irritated his opponents. But gradually the conflict to which he referred, which had nothing to do with partisan loyalties or charges of a “one-party press,” grew clearer to both of us, particularly in the White House:

• As President, in order to promote his program and his re-election, he was required to use the newspapers and other media, and the newsmen resisted and resented the feeling of being used. “He wants us as a cheering squad,” complained one reporter. Indeed he did.

• As President he sought to control the timing of his announcements with a view to obtaining maximum effectiveness. His best interests, even on many nonsecurity matters, often required at least temporary secrecy, either to protect proposals that were still in the discussion stage, and too weak to face public fire, or to give a helpful element of surprise and initiative to his actions. But the best interests of the news media, even on many security matters, required penetration of that secrecy. They had to publish something every day or week, regardless of whether it was speculative, premature or wholly invented.

• As President he preferred to correct his errors before they were exposed—the press preferred to expose them before they could be corrected. “We’re looking for flaws,” was the way one White House reporter summed up his role, “and we’ll find them. There are flaws in anybody.” When the newspapers erred, however, as they sometimes did, Presidential corrections or even press retractions rarely had the impact of the original story.

• As President he wanted as much privacy as possible for his personal family life, but these were subjects on which the press wanted as much publicity as possible, and his attractive, photogenic family and his own good looks had led to much of his favorable publicity in the pre-Presidential days.

• As President his progress in many areas was often characterized by small, dull or complex steps, but newspaper headlines in the same areas more often dwelt on the simple, the sensational and the controversial. Good news, when printed, would reflect more favorably on a President—but “bad news is news,” he said ruefully, “and good news is not news, so [the American people] get an impression always that the United States is not doing its part.” The press was far more interested in finding out, for example, who in the government or among our allies had disagreed with the President than who had agreed. Criticism and dissent invariably made bigger and better headlines and columns than praise; and two and one-half million honest civil servants were not nearly so newsworthy as one sinner.