An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek
The rest of his speech was chiefly an explanation of U.S. technical gains from the explosions and the impact they might have on relations with Moscow, and an expression of his continuing hopes for an end to tests and the arms race. Most important, Kennedy believed that a resumption of U.S. nuclear tests would be not only a deterrent to war but also a demonstration that Moscow could not achieve nuclear superiority and would do better to negotiate a test ban than to continue tests that would injure its international prestige, pollute the world’s atmosphere, and increase tensions with the West. “It is our hope and prayer,” Kennedy concluded, “that these . . . deadly weapons will never have to be fired—and that our preparations for war will bring about the preservation of peace.”
THE BERLIN CRISIS in the summer and fall of 1961 had made civil defense a more compelling security and political priority, and between the spring of 1961 and the summer of 1962, civil defense preparations became another administration headache. In his July address on Berlin, Kennedy had announced that the secretary of defense would now take responsibility for a fallout shelter program and that he would ask Congress to triple the appropriation for civil defense from $104 to $311 million. In August, he had instructed McNamara to move “as quickly as possible on Civil Defense.” He wanted weekly reports on the progress of the program and wondered whether “it would be useful for me to write a letter to every homeowner in the United States giving them instructions as to what can be done on their own to provide greater security for their family.” In September, Kennedy provided a letter to Life magazine urging readers to consider seriously the contents of an article entitled “You Could Be Among the 97% to Survive If You Follow Advice in These Pages.” Realistically, Kennedy did not share this illusion; his science adviser Jerome Wiesner characterized the article as “grossly misleading.” Nevertheless, Kennedy still believed—or said he believed—in civil defense as “an insurance policy” that could save some lives. The political dangers to a president choosing to ignore the issue or honestly debunk shelters as a false defense against civilian casualties were enough to force Kennedy into outspoken support.
In October, Kennedy commended the nation’s governors for their attentiveness to civil defense and told a press conference that it was wise to do everything possible to increase the chances of protecting families from the dangers of a nuclear war. At the same time, the Pentagon completed a draft of a survival pamphlet slated for distribution to every household in America. Marc Raskin and other skeptics at the NSC and the White House made fun of it as potentially “the most widely distributed piece of literature in man’s history outside of the Bible.” (They also ridiculed the booklet’s simplistic recommendations on how to protect yourself from a nuclear attack by referring to it as “Fallout Is Good for You.”) A chain reaction of additional concerns soon ensued. Stories about suburbanites in New Jersey and California arming themselves with weapons to fend off migrants from New York and Los Angeles seeking refuge in their shelters created additional antipathy for the program. A church official’s assurance to parishioners that it was permissible to shoot neighbors trying to break into their shelters moved Newsweek to compare such citizens to prehistoric cavemen. In November, Galbraith, Schlesinger, and Sorensen weighed in with letters to the president complaining of a program that seemed calculated “to save the better elements of the population” and write off the less affluent, who lacked the means to build fallout shelters. Schlesinger saw the program as generating “an alarming amount of bewilderment, confusion and, in some cases, (both pro and con) of near hysteria.” People were beginning to have “a false sense of security—a belief that . . . a nuclear war will be no worse than a bad cold.” This would encourage pressure for militancy over negotiation. By contrast, he said, pacifists panicked by thoughts of war would demand unilateral disarmament and would ask Americans, Wouldn’t you be “better red than dead”? Sorensen told Kennedy, “Civil defense is rapidly blossoming into our number one political headache, alienating those who believe we’re doing too much or too little.” Sorensen also doubted that the fallout program would significantly reduce casualties in a nuclear war. It would do nothing to discourage an attack and might “only spur the enemy into developing even more destructive weapons.”
Nothing may have done more to rein in Kennedy’s enthusiasm for the shelter program than a discussion with nuclear scientist Edward Teller, a leading exponent of nuclear weapons and a warm advocate of civil defense. During discussions with the president, Wiesner, and Mac Bundy at the White House, Teller shocked them with appeals for a three-pronged program of fallout, blast, and fire shelters, and plans to dig deeper shelters if the Russians built bigger bombs. Afterward, Bundy told the president, “I am horrified by the thought of digging deeper as the megatonnage gets bigger, which is the notion of civil defense that Dr. Teller spelled out to me after your meeting with him. . . . This is a position from which you will wish to be disassociated.”
Kennedy, regretting that he had ever fixed so much attention on civil defense and encouraged such false hopes, now pushed the program to the side with benign neglect. He insisted on a revised booklet making more modest claims, dropped plans to give a televised address when it appeared, and decided on much more restricted distribution for it. In July 1962, after Congress had reduced a December 1961 request for civil defense from $695 million to $80 million, a reporter asked Kennedy whether he intended to prod the Congress into holding hearings on fallout shelters and to renew his appeal for the program. Kennedy said no, and justified his restraint by saying that he was following the advice of responsible administration officials.
AND STILL there was Latin America. On December 1, 1961, when Castro told the Cuban people that he was a dedicated Marxist-Leninist and would be for the rest of his life, the Kennedy administration urged the OAS to defend the hemisphere from “any extension of the treachery of Fidelismo.” Castro’s statement also spurred Kennedy’s Special Group on Cuba to intensify their planning “to help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime.” The scheme was to build “a nucleus of anti-Castro Cubans” in Cuba and follow it with “a number of collateral supporting actions.” Lansdale characterized the project as “long-term” and “difficult” and as more political than economic or paramilitary.
During the first half of 1962, the Special Group laid plans to oust Castro by the fall of that year, but CIA director John McCone believed it would “be extremely difficult to accomplish,” because they lacked the backing in Cuba for such a result. Kennedy agreed, but ending Castro’s rule remained “the top priority in the United States Government—all else is secondary,” Bobby told national security officials. Bobby reported the president as saying, “The final chapter on Cuba has not been written,” and, Bobby added, “It’s got to be done and will be done.”
Because the likelihood of an internal revolt seemed so small, the planners began discussing a pretext for a direct U.S. invasion. But Kennedy remained skeptical that circumstances favoring U.S. military intervention would arise. Although contingency planning would proceed, “it was clearly understood [that] no decision was expressed or implied approving the use of such forces.” By the spring, however, there was growing optimism that as soon as August the planners could begin preparations for “an organized revolt of substantial proportions” in Cuba. As with the Bay of Pigs, there was more wishful thinking here than reliable evidence or good sense. Mary Hemingway, Ernest’s widow, may have “irked” Kennedy during an April 1962 White House dinner when she told him that his Cuban policy was “stupid, unrealistic and, worse, ineffective,” but her point was not entirely lost on him.
Because Kennedy saw Castro’s assassination or an invasion of the island as counterproductive in aligning the hemisphere with the United States in the anticommunist struggle, he hoped that clandestine actions might shield him from additional embarrassments over Cuba. At the same time, he remained eager to advance the Alliance for Progress as serving U.S. national security interests in the hemisphere. But ensuring stab
The Dominican Republic was another source of frustration. Instability in Santo Domingo had followed Trujillo’s assassination in 1961, and although preferring a government broadly acceptable to the Dominican people, Washington was ready to support a friendly military dictatorship rather than have a pro-Castro administration. Consequently, it made undisguised efforts to support the elected president, Joaquin Balaguer, against Trujillo’s brothers, who seemed ready to seize power in November. The appearance of U.S. naval forces off Santo Domingo and a message from Kennedy to the Trujillos to leave the island or risk U.S. intervention forced the brothers to flee and gave Balaguer control. U.S.-brokered negotiations between the Dominican government and opposition parties led to the creation of a council of state that lasted only until mid-January, when a military-civilian junta seized power. The “successful” management of the Dominican problem—preserving the country from a civil war—gave the administration some hope of making other gains in Latin America.
In July, after Kennedy had decided not to attend a Montevideo conference because of the Berlin crisis, Latin American ambassadors had been openly critical. A December trip to Venezuela and Colombia was partly an attempt to repair the damage. In speeches in Caracas and Bogotá, and in discussions with Venezuelan president Romulo Betancourt and Colombian president Alberto Lleras Camargo, Kennedy identified himself with FDR’s Good Neighbor policy and described the Alliance for Progress as a substantive commitment to raise living standards across the hemisphere. “We in the United States have made many mistakes in our relations with Latin America,” Kennedy said in an after-dinner talk at the Bogotá embassy. “We have not always understood the magnitude of your problems, or accepted our share of responsibility for the welfare of the hemisphere. But we are committed in the United States—our will and our energy—to an untiring pursuit of that welfare and I have come to this country to reaffirm that dedication.” He called on Latin America’s industrialists and landowners “to admit past mistakes and accept new responsibilities.” Without a willingness on their part to accept basic land and tax reforms, he predicted that hopes for progress would “be consumed in a few months of violence.”
Remembering the hostility to Nixon during a 1958 trip, U.S. State Department and security officials had doubted the wisdom of Kennedy’s journey. Although Kennedy had shrugged off their warnings, he also had doubts. But indisputable enthusiasm for the U.S. president and his message from cheering crowds in Venezuela and Colombia heartened Kennedy. “I too found the warmth with which we were received extremely gratifying,” Kennedy wrote FDR’s postmaster general, Jim Farley. “I think we are beginning to make real strides in Latin America.” Kennedy’s youth, his Catholicism, his stylish wife (who accompanied him), and, most of all, his transparent wish to improve people’s lives made for a genuine outpouring of approval and even affection. “Do you know why those workers and campesinos are cheering you like that?” Lleras Camargo asked him. “It’s because they believe you are on their side.” But although the uncommon expression of genuine affection for an American president by Latin Americans would endure, Kennedy’s problems with hemisphere neighbors were far from over.
CHAPTER 14
The Limits of Power
All the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.
— Harry S Truman, November 14, 1947
AFTER A YEAR in the presidency, it was easy for Kennedy to think of himself as a crisis manager—a Chief Executive trying to keep problems with the Soviets, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam from turning into catastrophes, and difficulties with the economy and civil rights from destabilizing the country and embarrassing it overseas. But in the midst of all his difficulties—“the fix that he was in as President of the United States,” as Sorensen described it—Kennedy maintained his objectivity and sense of humor. His ability to detach himself and avoid turning a dilemma into a strictly personal challenge was a singularly useful attribute in dealing with awesome burdens. He also took comfort in his faith. During the flight home from Europe in June 1961, where discussions with Khrushchev made a nuclear war seem all too possible, Evelyn Lincoln, while clearing the president’s desk of papers, found a note written in Kennedy’s hand. It recalled Abraham Lincoln’s reassurance to himself on the eve of the Civil War: ”I know that there is a God and I see a storm coming. If he has a place for me I am ready.”
No rational person faced with possible responsibility for a nuclear war, in which tens of millions of people would die, could live without substantial tension. Yet that tension was never evident from what Kennedy said to friends, all of whom, with the exception of Bobby, he kept at arms’ length. There was no one who could readily describe himself as a close Kennedy friend—not any of the White House insiders, not Sorensen or Schlesinger, nor any of the three members of the Irish mafia, O’Brien, O’Donnell, and Powers. “He and I continued to be close in a peculiarly impersonal way,” Sorensen said later. And pre-presidential friends like Billings, Paul Fay, Torby Macdonald, Smathers, and Walton were less close than before.
Although he kept his counsel about his innermost feelings, people around the president detected signs of stress. “He was tired and a little cranky,” Evelyn Lincoln recorded in a diary entry describing one instance of the president’s response to his burdens. “So much depends on my actions, so I am seeing fewer people, simplifying my life, organizing it so that I am not always on the edge of irritability,” he told Dave Powers. In the summer of 1961, after a meeting with the president, Averell Harriman thought Kennedy was “less tense than when I saw him last, but his hands are still constantly in motion.” In October 1961, when reporters asked Bobby, “Do you think your brother can handle the Presidency without harming his health?” he replied that the demands on him were no greater than what he had faced during the presidential campaign. But he acknowledged that “the responsibilities are so great and weigh so heavily that it is bound” to have an impact.
Personal problems added to the strains of office, testing Kennedy’s physical and emotional endurance. His health troubles were a constant strain on his ability to meet presidential responsibilities. The records of his maladies for August 1961 provide a window into his struggle to remain effectively attentive to the public’s business. His stomach and urinary ailments were a daily distraction. On August 9, for example, he complained of “gut” problems, “loose stool,” and “cramps.” On the morning of the eleventh, he woke up at 5:00 A.M. with abdominal discomfort. On August 23, tests showed an “E. coli” urinary tract infection at the same time he was suffering “acute diarrhea” and the usual back miseries. Codeine sulfate and procaine injections for his pain, penicillin for his infection, cortisone for his Addison’s, Bentyl, Lomotil, Transentine, and paregoric for his colitis, testosterone to counter weight loss, and Ritalin for night rest gave him some relief, but they caused him to complain of feeling “tired,” “groggy,” and “sleepy.” “He was being treated with narcotics all the time,” Dr. Jeffrey Kelman, a physician who reviewed JFK’s medical records said. “He was tired because he was being doped up.”
Kennedy’s back pain was his greatest physical distraction, not simply because it made it harder to focus his attention but because it was more difficult to hide from a public that thought of him as athletic and robust. Something as simple as bending over a lectern to read a speech caused him terrible pain. Out of sight of the press, he went up and down helicopter stairs one step at a time. Janet Travell worked with engineers to design a reading stand that would reduce the strain, but solving the lectern problem was no cure-all. (His friend Charlie Bartlett thought that diet was at the root of JFK’s difficulties. Bartlett saw the richness of the White House food and all that wine a
White House physician Admiral George Burkley believed that the injections as well as the back braces and positioning devices that immobilized Kennedy were doing more harm than good. Burkley and some Secret Service men who observed the president’s difficulties getting up from a chair and his reliance on crutches feared that he would soon be unable to walk and might end up in a wheelchair. During Kennedy’s meeting with Harold Macmillan in Bermuda in December, the prime minister recorded that, “in health, I thought the President not in good shape. His back is hurting. He cannot sit long without pain.” Burkley now insisted that Dr. Hans Kraus, a New York orthopedic surgeon, be consulted. Eugene Cohen, an endocrinologist who had been treating Kennedy’s Addison’s disease, directly urged him not to rely on Travell for the treatment of his back problems but instead to follow Burkley’s recommendations. When Travell resisted Burkley’s suggestion that they consult Kraus, Burkley threatened to go to the president.