Killing Kennedy

7:00 P.M.

John F. Kennedy is tired but alert. He is in the resort city of Palm Springs, standing on the patio of the Spanish-style home of show business legend Bing Crosby. But Crosby is not present this evening, having turned his comfortable house over to JFK and his entourage for the weekend. Kennedy watches as the party unfolds around the crowded pool on this warm spring evening. Sounds of laughter and splashing fill the night air. Beyond the pool, the president sees boulder-strewn mountains rising above the one-acre property, forming a stunning desert backdrop.

Yesterday, Kennedy gave a rousing speech to eighty-five thousand people at the University of California, Berkeley. He spoke of democracy and freedom, key themes throughout the cold war. He then flew south on Air Force One to Vandenberg Air Force Base, where he watched his first-ever missile launch. The slim white Atlas rocket blasted off without incident, proving that the United States was catching up in the space race, which was going strong, with the Soviet Union having just this week reached an agreement to share outer space research with America’s cold war adversaries.

Palm Springs, and Crosby’s secluded home, is the perfect weekend hideaway after the hectic West Coast trip. There was a brief bit of official business earlier in the day, when the president met with Dwight Eisenhower to discuss foreign policy. But now JFK can finally unwind with a cigar and a daiquiri or two.

But the president is not completely relaxed. He knows he has offended good friend and longtime supporter Frank Sinatra by canceling his plans to spend the weekend at Sinatra’s house and staying at the home of Crosby, a Republican, of all things—but the president will deal with that symbolism later. Tonight he just wants to have fun.

A lot of fun.

It’s Saturday, which normally means that Jackie and the children are spending the weekend at the Glen Ora estate. But the First Lady, as the whole world knows from the many media accounts, is halfway around the globe on an official visit to India and Pakistan. The success of her television special confirmed what her husband has known for years: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy is John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s number one political asset. He’s already making plans to leverage her popularity for his 1964 reelection campaign.

And while the president would be a fool to damage their marriage (and his career) by a brazen act of public infidelity, there are moments when this normally pragmatic man is helplessly self-destructive.

Such as now.

Among the guests at Bing Crosby’s estate is the most glamorous and perhaps the most troubled woman in Hollywood. JFK has cultivated a relationship with her for almost two years and is quite certain that tonight Marilyn Monroe is finally his for the taking.

^{The First Lady on a boat cruise on Lake Pichola in Rajasthan during her official visit to India and Pakistan in 1962. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)}

The president of the United States takes another pull on his cigar and steps into the bedroom. His wife is eight thousand miles away. He can do anything he wants tonight. Anything. And there’s absolutely no chance his wife will walk in on him.

* * *

“My wife had her first and last ride on an elephant!” JFK spontaneously informed the packed stadium at the University of California the day before. The crowd roared and laughed in approval.

That’s how JFK talks to America about his Jackie: as if they’re eavesdropping on a private conversation. People crave even the smallest intimate nugget of information about their marriage. The president’s keen political instincts tell him, though he never admits it aloud, that the Kennedys aren’t just the most glamorous couple in America—they’re the most glamorous couple in the entire world. The cool heat of their relationship is an inspiration to lovers everywhere.

^{The Kennedy children would often play in the Oval Office while the president attended to his official duties. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)}

And it’s true: the Kennedys do love each other. JFK is a doting father and husband who cherishes his family. He lets Caroline and John play in the Oval Office as he works, and the presidential bathtub is often filled with floating rubber ducks and pink pigs, because he knows they amuse baby John. He spends a few minutes in Jackie’s bedroom each morning before walking down to the office and likes it when his wife does the same for him each afternoon—waking him up from his nap, the two of them catching up on the news of the day as he gets dressed.

The president’s only complaint about his wife is that Jackie has a profound indifference to fiscal discipline. She spends more money on clothes than the U.S.government pays him to be president. (JFK’s net worth is more than $10 million. He dedicates his $100,000 presidential salary to charities such as the Boy Scouts and the United Negro College Fund.)

Yet there is an enormous contradiction in the Kennedys’ otherwise charmed marriage. The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist.

There’s no way the First Lady can keep up. She’s raising a family, restoring the White House, and juggling a busy social calendar. Jackie would have to be superhuman to meet the president’s physical needs. Plus, he wouldn’t be satisfied with just one woman. The sheer volume of call girls, socialites, starlets, and stewardesses escorted into the White House whenever Jackie and the kids are away is beyond the realm of most men’s moral or physical capacities. It’s gotten to the point where the Secret Service no longer even checks the names and nationalities of all the women Dave Powers procures for the president.

More than one federal agent believes the situation is dangerous. The number of women who have access to the president is, of course, a security breach that could bring down the presidency, whether through blackmail or even, say, covert assassination via hypodermic injection. It is a topic of discussion among the Secret Service. But its job is to protect the president, not lecture him. The agents turn a blind eye to his behavior, and some even provide cover for him. Being a member of the White House detail means being married to the job, and the fifty to eighty hours of overtime every month can increase a Secret Service agent’s paycheck by more than $1,000 a year. An agent would be a fool to give that up for the sake of a morality lesson.

The White House press corps also looks the other way. The president’s private life is none of their business, or that of the public’s. White House reporters know that the president cherishes loyalty and will cut them off from full access if he doesn’t get it. Not a word about suspected infidelities is printed or broadcast. In fact, the Washington bureau chief for Newsweek, Ben Bradlee, a very close friend of the president’s, will forever claim to know nothing about JFK’s philandering.

Meanwhile, the president is having sex with Bradlee’s sister-in-law.

Sometimes the objects of Kennedy’s flirtations actually work in the White House, as in the case of Jackie’s secretary, Pamela Turnure, and Evelyn Lincoln’s assistant, Priscilla Wear. This makes the president’s courting easier from a logistical and security standpoint, but brings about its own unique dangers.

For instance, the president is quite fond of the occasional afternoon swim with the two twentysomething secretaries Priscilla Wear and Jill Cowen—nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle by the Secret Service. A Secret Service agent is always positioned outside the door to make sure no one enters.

But one day the First Lady appeared at the pool door, eager to go for a swim. This had never before happened. The panic-stricken agent barred the door and tried to explain to Jackie that she was not allowed to use the pool of the very White House she was so lovingly restoring.

Inside, JFK heard the commotion, quickly pulled on his robe, and fled the pool just before he could be caught. Agents would later recall that his large wet footprints and the smaller prints of his female swim partners left a very clear trail, which Jackie did not see, having left in a huff.

* * *

Even as one part of the president’s brain strategizes clever ways to deal with Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, and Charles de Gaulle, another part strategizes ways to have as much sex as he wants without Jackie