Killing Kennedy

PART II The Curtain Descends

8

JANUARY 8, 1963

WASHINGTON, D.C.

9:30 P.M.

Jackie Kennedy’s bare, tanned shoulders accentuate the pink color of her strapless Oleg Cassini gown. She wears dangling diamond earrings designed by legendary jeweler Harry Winston. Long white gloves come up past her elbows. She makes small talk with a man she adores, Andre Malraux, the sixty-one-year-old writer who serves as the French minister of culture. The First Lady’s eyes sparkle after a restful family Christmas vacation in Palm Beach, Florida.

On this night, the First Lady is truly a vision.

And, unbeknownst to all but one of the thousand people filling the West Sculpture Hall of the National Gallery of Art, she is also pregnant.

The president stands less than three feet away, paying no attention whatsoever to his wife. He gazes at a dark-haired beauty half his age named Lisa Gherardini. She is blessed with lips that are full and red, contrasting seductively with her smooth olive skin. Her smile is coy. The plunging neckline of her dress hints at an ample bosom. She bears the faintest of resemblances to the First Lady.

There are television cameras, newspaper reporters, and those thousand guests. The president’s every move is being scrutinized, but he is unafraid as his gaze lingers on this tantalizing young woman. He is the president of the United States, a man who has just rescued the world from global thermonuclear war. Everything is going his way. Surely John Kennedy can be allowed the minor indiscretion of appreciating this lovely twentysomething.

Playing to those who might be watching closely, JFK smiles at young Lisa. But he is a changed man since the Cuban missile crisis, and far more enchanted by Jackie than by other women—at least for the time being. That near-catastrophic experience reminded him how deeply he loves his wife and children.

The new Congress begins tomorrow, and the president’s State of the Union address is less than a week away. Kennedy will push for “a substantial reduction and revision in federal income taxes” as the “one step, above all, essential” to make America more competitive in the world economy. But that tax cut will be controversial, a hard sell with the new Democratic Congress. Tonight the burdens of being president of the United States are far more pressing than spending time with Lisa Gherardini.

The president moves on.

* * *

But Jackie stays, turning away from Malraux to gaze at the same bewitching young woman. Lisa Gherardini is not actually here in person, but in a painting hanging on the gallery wall. She is also known as La Gioconda, or the Mona Lisa, a wife and mother of five children who sat for this portrait in the early sixteenth century.

Jackie revels in the Mona Lisa’s presence with a feeling of profound success, for it was her persistent dream to bring the world’s most famous painting to the National Gallery of Art, in Washington. About a year ago she made a discreet request to Malraux, who then arranged the loan—much to the outrage of Parisians, many of whom consider America a cultural wasteland.

But this is hardly the first time the Mona Lisa has traveled. Napoleon once hung her on his bedroom wall, gazing upon her each morning. In 1911 the painting was stolen from the Louvre and not returned to the Paris museum for two years. She was moved several times during World War II, to prevent her from falling into Nazi hands. And now Jackie has brought Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece to America, where “Mona Mania” is about to break out. Millions of Americans are lining up to view the painting before its return to France in March—and all because of Jackie Kennedy.

John Walker, director of the National Gallery, was against the loan, fearful that his career would be ruined if he failed to protect the Mona Lisa from theft or the damage that might accompany moving a fragile 460-year-old painting across an ocean in the dead of winter. In fact, on October 17, just as JFK and his staff were first grappling with the realities of Soviet missiles in Cuba, Walker called the First Lady and gently told her that bringing the painting to America was a horrible idea. The mere thought of it filled him with dread.

Then, like the rest of America, Walker was soon distracted by the barrage of radio and television reports documenting the Cuban missile crisis. He was deeply touched by Jackie’s maternal nature and the fact that she had insisted on remaining at the White House to be with her husband. Walker realized that the First Lady was a woman of substance, not just a wealthy young lady with a passion for French culture.

So he changed his mind. Long before the Cuban missile crisis was over, he began arranging the Mona Lisa’s trip to America.

Walker’s task was made much easier when JFK ordered the world’s most elite bodyguards to watch over the precious work of art—none other than the men who would willingly take a bullet to protect the president himself: the Secret Service.

* * *

The president’s Secret Service code name is Lancer. The First Lady’s is Lace. Caroline and John are Lyric and Lark, respectively. Almost everything and everyone in the First Family’s lives has a code name: LBJ is Volunteer, the presidential Lincoln is SS-100-X, Dean Rusk is Freedom, and the White House itself is Castle. Things that exist temporarily have code names, such as Charcoal, the name given to the president’s residence when he is not in the White House. Most subsets of names and places begin with the same first letter: L for the first family, W for the White House staff, D for Secret Service agents, and so on.

The Secret Service protection given President Kennedy is constant, and contrasts sharply with the protection given Abraham Lincoln a hundred years ago. Back then, the Secret Service did not exist. The agency was not founded until three months after Lincoln’s assassination. Even then, its primary role was to prevent currency fraud, not to protect the president.

In Lincoln’s day, private citizens could walk into the White House whenever they wished. Vandalism was rampant as overenthusiastic visitors stole pieces of the president’s home to keep as souvenirs. The Department of the Interior responded by hiring a select group of officers from Washington’s Metropolitan Police to protect the great building. But as death threats against Abraham Lincoln mounted in the waning days of the Civil War, these police officers shifted their protective focus to the president. Two officers remained at his side from 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Another stayed with Lincoln until midnight, and a fourth man covered the graveyard shift. Each officer carried a .38 -caliber pistol.

President Lincoln was never completely safe, though, as his assassination proved. On the night Lincoln was shot in the head, John Parker, the officer who was supposed to be protecting him, was instead drinking beer in a nearby tavern. And even though the president of the United States was shot to death after Parker left his post, the officer was never convicted of dereliction of duty—and, incredibly, was even allowed to remain on the police force.

Before Lincoln’s assassination, there were many (including Lincoln himself) who believed that Americans were not the kind of people who killed their political leaders. One pistol shot by John Wilkes Booth blatantly disproved that theory. Still, some people continued to believe the myth of presidential safety. Lincoln’s death was thought to be an anomaly—even when a second president, James Garfield, was assassinated sixteen years later. Compulsory protection of the vice president didn’t begin until 1962, reinforcing the notion that the vice presidency is a thankless job.

* * *