The Kennedy Half-Century (124 page)

64
. Colson denied it, saying he had been “misunderstood” by Hunt. See Martin Arnold, “Hunt Says Colson Ordered Forged Data in Diem Death” and “Colson Issues Denial,”
New York Times
, May 8, 1973. Given Colson’s role in many Nixon White House dirty tricks, it might be best not to take this denial at face value.

65
. Interview with John Dean, June 2, 2013; Bernard Gwertzman, “Hunt Was Given Access to 240 Vietnam Cables,”
New York Times
, May 9, 1973.

66
. Richard Nixon, “Farewell Address, August 8, 1974,” PBS
American Experience
,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/nixon-farewell/
 [accessed December 15, 2011].

67
. Stephen Ambrose,
Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973–90
(New York: Touchstone, 1991), 196.

68
. Richard Nixon to John Ehrlichman, March 4, 1973, President’s Personal Files, Box 4, Folder, “Memos—March 1973,” Richard Nixon Library, Yorba Linda, California. Recently released documents show that the Kennedys did in fact authorize the use of unlawful wiretaps from time to time to spy on journalists in order to uncover their sources. For example, in the summer of 1963 Bobby Kennedy pressured CIA director John McCone into bugging the home and office telephones of Paul Scott, a syndicated columnist who had raised uncomfortable questions about Cuba during a press conference with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Scott’s son has attempted for years to force the CIA to reveal all that it knows about the operation codenamed Mockingbird. The agency has only partially complied with the younger Scott’s requests. See Ian Shapira, “Long-ago Wiretap Inspires a Battle with the CIA for More Information,”
Washington Post
, March 2, 2013,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/long-ago-wiretap-inspires-a-battle-with-the-cia-for-more-information/2013/03/02/8ebaa924-77bo-ne2-aa12-e6cf1d31106b_story.html?hpid=z3
 [accessed March 4, 2013].

69
. Richard Nixon to Alexander Haig, July 7, 1973, President’s Personal Files, Box 4, Folder, “Memos—July 1973,” Richard Nixon Library, Yorba Linda, California.

70
. Nixon had claimed separately that he was bugged while running for California governor in 1962, presumably by the Kennedys. See the Nixon Tapes Transcripts, Watergate Collection, Friday, September 15, 1972, 5:24 P.M.–6:17 P.M., Oval Office, Miller Center website, University of Virginia,
http://whitehousetapes.net/transcript/nixon/everybody-bugs-everybody-else
 [accessed October 25, 2011].

71
. Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 628–29 and 872.

72
. Bruce Kehrli to Ron Ziegler, February 27, 1973, President’s Office Files, Box 20, Folder “President’s Handwriting, January 1973,” Richard Nixon Library, Yorba Linda, California; Nixon,
RN
, 910.

73
. Interview with John Dean, June 2, 2013; Ambrose,
Ruin and Recovery
, 417.

74
. Ford actually entitled his memoirs
A Time to Heal
(New York: Harper and Row, 1979).

75
. Ford,
Time to Heal
, 180.

76
. Ibid., 76.

77
. Ibid., 229–30.

78
. Rockefeller Commission Report, chapter 19, page 269, “Allegations Concerning the Assassination of President Kennedy,” History Matters website,
http://history-matters.com/archive/church/rockcomm/html/Rockefeller_0141a.htm
 [accessed November 4, 2011].

79
. David R. Wrone,
The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 9–69.

80
. Rockefeller Commission Report, chapter 19, p. 262, “Allegations Concerning the Assassination of President Kennedy,” History Matters website,
http://history-matters.com/archive/church/rockcomm/html/Rockefeller_0132a.htm
 [accessed November 4, 2011].

81
. Republican senator John Tower of Texas was the vice chair.

82
. “Historical Minute Essays, 1964–Present,” United States Senate website,
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Church_Committee_Created.htm
 [accessed November 4, 2011]; Ford,
Time to Heal
, 265.

83
. The general public first became aware of the plots to kill Castro when the Church Committee released
Book V: The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies
(also known as the Schweiker-Hart Report). “With the public disclosure of these plots, the idea that Castro ‘struck back’ gained prominence with many at the time.” See Book V,
The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies
, Assassination Archives and Research Center website,
http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports_book5.htm
 [accessed January 11, 2012].

84
. See “More Disclosures by Kennedy Friend Promised,”
New York Times
, December 20, 1975; William Chapman, “Sinatra Seen Link Between Woman, Kennedy,”
Washington Post
, December 19, 1975; and Bill Hazlett, “John Kennedy’s Mystery Woman Tells Her Story,”
Los Angeles Times
, December 18, 1975. Two years later, Campbell published a tell-all account of her affair with JFK entitled
My Story
(New York: Grove Press, 1977).

85
. Ben Bradlee of
Newsweek
magazine, for example, never disclosed what he knew about JFK’s extramarital affairs. See my book
Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics
(New York: Free Press, 1991), 42. In 1975, Bradlee published
Conversations with Kennedy
, which hinted at a darker side of Camelot without offering any specifics. The
Newsweek
review of Bradlee’s book included this memorable line: “[JFK] swore like a bosun, and—at least from a wishful distance—admired a well-turned ankle.” Bradlee knew full well that JFK did not just admire women’s ankles from a distance. See Peter Goldman, “A Fond Memoir of JFK,”
Newsweek
, March 17, 1975, p. 24.

86
. In 1976, Joan and Clay Blair, Jr., published
The Search for J.F.K
., which included, among other things, information on the Kennedys’ cover-up of JFK’s health problems and the president’s vigorous womanizing. Thomas C. Reeves,
A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Free Press, 1991), 7–8.

87
. “John F. Kennedy’s Secret Sex Life While President,” Library of Congress website,
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010646178/
 [accessed November 11, 2011].

88
. Pierre Salinger and Sander Vanocur published
A Tribute to John F. Kennedy
in 1964; Evelyn Lincoln published
My Twelve Years with John F. Kennedy
in 1965; that same year, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., published the first edition of
A Thousand Days
and Ted Sorensen came out with
Kennedy;
Paul “Red” Fay, Jr., published
The Pleasure of His Company
in 1966; Kenny O’Donnell, Dave Powers, and Joe McCarthy published
“Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”
in 1972; Walt Rostow published
The Diffusion of Power
in 1972; and Rose Kennedy published
Times to Remember
in 1974.

89
. Mark H. Lynch and John H. F. Shattuck to Admiral Stansfield Turner, March 17, 1977, Record Group 233, JFK Task Force, Box 85, Folder, “Downing-House Select Committee on Assassinations,” Archives II, College Park, Maryland.

90
. The committee also reviewed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., concluding “that there is a likelihood that James Earl Ray assassinated … King as a result of a conspiracy.” See “HSCA Final Assassinations Report,” p. 5,
History Matters
website,
http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0006a.htm
 [accessed December 20, 2011].

91
. Rudy Abramson and Robert Kistler, “Follower of Manson Held After Trying to Kill Ford,”
Los Angeles Times
, September 6, 1975.

92
. Richard West, “President Escapes Assassin’s Bullet,”
Los Angeles Times
, September 23, 1975.

93
. Jess Bravin,
Squeaky: The Life and Times of Lynette Alice Fromme
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 221.

94
. President Ford Committee Campaign Commercial XXPFC756, “Feeling Good”—foreign trips footage 5:00, Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Library.

95
. Spencer Rich and Mary Russell, “Congress Reacts Angrily: Very Few Back Granting of More Pardons,”
Washington Post
, September 11, 1974.

96
. “Gerald Ford Receiving the Profiles in Courage Award, May 21, 2001,” in
USA Today
, Special Edition, “JFK’s America,” Fall 2010, p. 12.

97
. See Jefferson Morley, “The Holy Grail of the JFK Story,”
Salon
, November 22, 2011,
http://www.salon.com/2011/11/22/the_holy_grail_of_the_jfk_story/
 [accessed January 11, 2012], and the
Legacy of Secrecy
official website,
http://www.legacyofsecrecy.com/tell.html
 [accessed August 16, 2011].

98
. Thomas M. DeFrank,
Write It When I’m Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations With Gerald R. Ford
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2007), 176.

16. THE CARTERS AND THE KENNEDYS: DEMOCRATIC HATFIELDS AND MCCOYS

1
. Interview with former president Jimmy Carter, June 18, 2013. For more information on the media’s Carter-Kennedy comparisons, see “New Day A’Coming in the South,”
Time
, May 31, 1971: 15–20; Robert Shogan, “Georgia’s Carter Brings Religion, Idealism to New Hampshire Presidential Primary,”
Los Angeles Times
, May 25, 1975; Laurence H. Shoup,
The Carter Presidency and Beyond: Power and Politics in the 1980s
(Palo Alto, CA: Ramparts Press, 1980), 88; and Victor Lasky,
Jimmy Carter: The Man and the Myth
(New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1979), 45–46.

2
. “Lady Bird Johnson Gets Jimmy Carter Apology,”
Associated Press
, reprinted in
Nashua
[N.H.]
Telegraph
, September 24, 1976.

3
. “Catholics/Image,” President Ford Committee Records, 1975–76, Research Office: Carter Quotes—Carter Family, Box H23, Folder “Catholics,” Gerald R. Ford Library.

4
. Jimmy Carter, “ ‘Our Nation’s Past and Future’: Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in New York City,” July 15, 1976, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25953#axzzifJ16eBn6
 [accessed December 1, 2011]; Jimmy Carter,
A Government as Good as Its People
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), 138–39 and 163.

5
. Maddox attracted national attention in 1964 by refusing to serve three African American Georgia Tech students at his Pickrick Restaurant (a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act). “When the three black men tried to buy some of his chicken in July 1964, Mr. Maddox waved a pistol at them and said: ‘You no good dirty devils! You dirty Communists!’ Some of his customers were sympathetic to his cause and interrupted their meal to take pick handles that Mr. Maddox had put by the door (and sold for $2 apiece) to make it clear that the blacks would not be served. The pick handles, which Mr. Maddox also sold in his souvenir shop, were called ‘Pickrick drumsticks’ and came to symbolize his resistance to the civil rights movement. On occasion, Mr. Maddox would autograph the handles.” Richard Severo, “Lester Maddox, Whites-Only Restaurateur and Georgia Governor, Dies at 87,”
New York Times
, June 26, 2003.

6
. Jules Witcover,
Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972–76
(New York: Signet, 1977), 161.

7
. Shriver received a mere 304,399 votes in all the 1976 primary contests, or 1.9% of the total vote cast. By contrast, Carter won 6,235,609 votes, 39.3% of those cast.

8
. Richard Reeves,
Convention
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), 127–28. I attended the 1976 convention as a graduate student researcher, and I vividly recall this electric moment. Like most people there, I had never personally glimpsed Jackie Kennedy. It is no exaggeration to say that we could not take our eyes off her; the convention itself appeared to grind to a halt while thousands of prying eyes kept watch.

9
. “Kennedy: Carter Is ‘Imprecise,’ ”
United Press International
, reprinted in
St. Petersburg Times
, May 26, 1976.

10
. “Kennedy,” President Ford Committee Records, 1975–76, Research Office: Carter Quotes—Carter Family, Box H23, Folder “Carter vs. (1),” Gerald R. Ford Library.