Most, like this one, preferred to sit when speaking. Only Eisenhower was known to stand and pace on a regular basis. Ford used to play with rubber bands. Truman would grind his teeth. Nixon scratched his ass so often there was more than one foreign intelligence report speculating on various body rashes. Carter had an annoying little wheeze that frequently popped up and Johnson farted, with impunity. Really, he did, remembered Louis. Johnson didn’t give a fuck about anybody. Reagan was rumored to have fallen asleep-more than once-while being briefed. Louis Devereaux knew the rumor to be true. But, foibles aside, they all sat, except Ike.
This President was, by Devereaux’s analysis, an intelligent man, but not too smart. Kennedy and Bush 41 were the most intelligent and each was smart too. Devereaux always felt Clinton’s intellect was overrated, most often by himself. Louis had spent a lot of time with Bush, the father, and held him in high regard. From what he read and learned talking with old-timers in the agency, Lyndon Johnson was widely thought of as the most arrogant President, and to make matters worse, he was not all that bright. He was decisive and he was damn quick with a decision, qualities that could often compensate for a lack of critical analysis. Unless, of course, the decision was wrong and the thing turned out poorly. The scarlet V burned on Johnson’s chest. The best Devereaux learned about Nixon was that he was determined, a real pit-bull, but too often verged on instability and, of course, he lied so no one trusted him. He lied to everybody, silly and unnecessary lies resulting in a lot of enemies and very few friends. Clinton was also a liar, practically pathological, but unlike the doomed Richard Nixon, he was good at it. Truman read the most and needed the most help. Nevertheless, he started the CIA and was therefore, in the eyes of Louis Devereaux, forever a Hero of the Republic. Carter was just a blip on the Presidential screen-here today, gone tomorrow. He was very intelligent, but had not the slightest idea what it meant to be the President of the United States, the most powerful man on the face of the planet.
Reagan was the most misunderstood. The public, particularly those who disliked him, thought he was out of the loop, perhaps even a little dense. Quite the contrary. Despite the fact he dozed off now and then, Louis knew from primary sources that Reagan approved everything. Whatever the Agency did while he was President, you knew Reagan wanted it done. He played the fool, yet pulled the strings. Reagan’s biggest failing was his sincere belief the CIA worked for him. It never dawned on him that when they did what he wanted, they did so only because it fit their agenda.
The dumbest President by far, according to Devereaux, was Ford, dumber even than Bush 43. Ford’s agency code name: TAP-The Accidental President. Everyone knew Nelson Rockefeller called the shots in that short Presidency. All the Presidents used the CIA-except for Ford, who rarely even attended briefings-but only two ever issued personal orders to have men killed-Truman and Kennedy. The others were too scared or too slick. Louis wondered how this guy would react if and when the time came.
Devereaux could tell a lot about the President from the way he sat, especially while he talked. The current occupant leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head, elbows extended out and backwards, his legs straightened stiffly, a little bit of pressure pushing down from the knees, ankles often touching together and toes pointed. This was his position when he felt confident about something, when he had a plan and was about to make it known.
Now was not a time for questions, not from Louis. Now was a time to hear the man out. When the President finished, he got up, walked over to where the food was, grabbed a chocolate-covered doughnut and took a big bite. Devereaux had yet to say a word. “Louis,” he said with his mouth full, small pieces of cake spitting from his lips, “this is pretty amazing stuff-no doubt about that-but is there a role we need to play? I’ve got no ‘Kennedy agenda.’ You follow me? Is there some overriding national interest in protecting the image of the Kennedy family? Do you see one? Have I missed something? Why not release whatever it is Levine has? Let History have its way.”
This time Devereaux spoke-calmly, deliberately, with purpose, yet totally under control, any previous anxiety already quelled.
“What would you do, Mr. President, if you came into possession of irrefutable evidence that George Washington molested little boys? Don’t laugh. I’m serious. Little boys, and white ones at that. On a regular basis. Maybe he strangled some of them when he was finished with his business. Buried their bodies somewhere, passed them off as missing. What if a document, written in his own hand, irrefutably Washington’s, proved this and was given to you? What would you do? Would you allow that revelation to alter our vision of American History? George Washington. He’s on the dollar. Banks and insurance companies have taken his name. High schools, colleges, city streets, bridges and tunnels. Whole entire cities, like the one we’re in right now. ‘The Father of his country’-isn’t that what you all say, Republicans and Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, Right to Life, Right to Die? All of them. Isn’t that what they say every time more than six of them gather together in public? You know what they teach about Washington in elementary schools, as early as kindergarten. Couldn’t tell a lie. The man couldn’t tell a lie. Chopped down the cherry tree and turned himself in. George Washington is woven into the national fabric in a way that makes him inseparable from the cloth itself. Am I right?”
“Yes,” said the President. The answer was obvious, but he said it anyway.
“How,” Devereaux asked, “would you assess the importance of the Kennedy myth to the twentieth century?” The President said nothing. He just sat there. Protocol called for Devereaux to remain silent and wait for his reply. But he knew when to ignore the rules. “Should we destroy that image? Joe Jr., the war hero? The martyred JFK, with his beautiful, vulnerable Jackie? His son, the small boy saluting the casket-a son sadly destined to meet a deadly fate himself, a few decades later? Do you tear that down, burn it to the ground? And there’s Bobby. Poor Bobby. Robert Kennedy the reformed sinner, gone from Joe McCarthy to Martin Luther King Jr. Can you see him lying on the kitchen floor in the Ambassador Hotel? The future President, taken from us, loved to this day by many- perhaps even more than his brother.” The serving President was silent. “Do you want to be the President who destroys all that? The one who takes the greatest American family of the twentieth century and trashes it? You want to do that? You?”
The President had years of rehearsing the most complicated answers to a wide range of questions-military and foreign policy, jobs, Social Security, a balanced budget versus deficit spending, education and health care. Push a button and out sprung an answer capable of giving cover to whatever his real belief might be-if he had one-and, at the same time, leaving the solid impression he had a firm grasp of the subject. He was, by all accounts, a superb politician. But now he faced a question he had no idea how to answer. Louis Devereaux had set him upon the very point of the needle and the President desperately needed a plan to balance himself on something and then jump safely off.
“But,” he said to Devereaux, “everything we now know, everything we’re learning about Kennedy-don’t you think that has already taken the myth down a notch? Is that vision of a Camelot still shining, just as strong?”
“It’s not the women or that he was a very sick man and they kept it quiet. It’s all in the assassination,” said Devereaux. There, he thought, it’s out of the box. It’s not easy to speak of the assassination of a President, to a President. But he had said it, out loud. “Destroy the conjured image, a mass illusion owned in equal parts by millions, and you destroy the legend of John F. Kennedy. If that’s what you want, go ahead. It’s your decision.” At that point Devereaux shut his mouth and meant to keep it shut.
The President took a long time before saying, “You have a way.. . about you, Louis. Look, we have to do something-even if it’s not just for the Kennedys-because Levine is our man and he’s in way over his head. There’s murder involved here. I suppose he can’t just show up at the Embassy and say, ‘Here I am. Here’s Lacey’s diary. I didn’t kill anyone.’ He can’t say that, can he?” Now, Devereaux knew better than to say anything. The President was on a roll. He stopped and looked directly at Devereaux. “Why can’t Levine do that?”
“He could,” said Devereaux. “He could do exactly that. Turn himself in and turn over the document at the same time. History-as you say-could be left to deal with the Kennedys. Eventually the questions about your role in it would subside. But what about the other things that are in the Lacey Confession? The other things we don’t know about?”
“Like what?”
“Who knows? At this point, who knows? Frederick Lacey was there for all of it-from the Bolsheviks to Nixon. He knew them all. Worked for all of them, sometimes at the same time. Not only the West. Asia, the Middle East too. He was a man in the midst of everything important in the twentieth century. Richest man in the world, they said. Nobody wants to see the sausage made. Lacey did. He made it. How much has he written down? Names, places, people-things no one wants made public. Do you-don’t we all-have an agenda for the Lacey Confession? Do we want to neglect that, to go ahead and open this Pandora’s Box because you have no Kennedy agenda? And what about Harry Levine? Maybe the English burn him at the stake.”
“Well, that’s crazy…”
