The Man Who Killed Kennedy Read online

  When Sinatra had earlier brought up to Jack the damage the attorney general was causing, the president was dismissive, suggesting that Frank “go see dad,” who he felt was “the only one who could talk to Bobby.”43

  “Why, oh why,” Sinatra asked. “Did Joe get that fucking stroke?”

  When it came to Sinatra choosing sides, especially following the 1962 perceived slight to Sinatra when President Kennedy chose Republican crooner Bing Crosby’s estate for accommodations on a West Coast trip instead of his, the choice was effortless, necessary and possibly mandatory.

  “This wasn’t a choice for Frank,” said Nick Sevano, Sinatra’s manager. “He had been raised on the streets with the Mob. They were his childhood friends. We understood about politics. We could see that Jack couldn’t be seen with Sinatra if Frank was going to the Mob, but Jack wasn’t important. Frank was loyal to people, and his friends in the Mob had been helping him his whole career.”44

  Indeed, liberal Democrat Sinatra would turn on the Kennedys, ultimately endorsing Republican Ronald Reagan for re-election as governor of California in 1970 and going so far as to back Richard Nixon’s presidential election in 1972 after befriending Vice President Spiro T. Agnew.

  Dealing with the Kennedys was not a choice for the Mob; what was needed was a clear-cut way to do so. They would soon find common associates in the high reaches of government.

  “You won’t have any trouble finding my enemies,” Bobby told a Life reporter in 1962. “They’re all over town.”45

  NOTES

  1. Goldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pg. 167.

  2. Schwarz, Joseph P. Kennedy, pg. 27.

  3. Ibid, pg. 38.

  4. O’Neill, Gerard, Rouges and Redeemers, pg. 17.

  5. Ibid, pg. 32.

  6. Ibid, pg. 38.

  7. Collier, Horowitz, Kennedys: An American Drama, pg. 27.

  8. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 322.

  9. Schwarz, Joseph P. Kennedy, pg. 97.

  10. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 24.

  11. Kessler, The Sins of the Father, pg. 34.

  12. Becker, All American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story, pgs. 71-72.

  13. Ibid, pg. 29.

  14. Schwarz, Joseph P. Kennedy, pg. 6.

  15. Ibid, pg. 238.

  16. Ibid, pg. 286.

  17. Ibid, pg. 76.

  18. Kessler, The Sins of the Father, pg. 227.

  19. Leamer, The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family, pg. 413.

  20. Dallek, Atlantic Magazine, December, 2002.

  21. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 234.

  22. Martin, Ralph, Seeds of Destruction, pgs. 196-197.

  23. Ibid, pg. 349.

  24. Ibid, pg. 256.

  25. Schwarz, Joseph P. Kennedy, pg. 317.

  26. Davis, The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster, pgs. 126–127.

  27. The Seattle Times, April 22, 1996.

  28. Martin, Seeds of Destruction, pg. 166.

  29. Ibid, pg. 132.

  30. Shesol, Mutual Contempt, pg. 5.

  31. Martin, Seeds of Destruction, pg. 250.

  32. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 283.

  33. Martin, Seeds of Destruction, pg. 295.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 135.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 177.

  38. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 138.

  39. Ibid, pg. 139.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Becker, All American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story, pg. 202.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 291.

  44. Schwarz, Joseph P. Kennedy, pg. 414.

  45. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 91.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NEMESIS

  It took little effort for Lyndon Johnson to loathe Bobby Kennedy, whose pugnacious behavior created many enemies, including high-ranking members of organized crime and the CIA, as well as director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.

  “Bob was the family son of a bitch,” said reporter Dave Richardson. “Any time there was anything tough or unpleasant, Bob had to do it.”1

  Agitation in the relationship between Johnson and Bobby Kennedy took root in 1955. Joe Sr., pulling the strings of John’s political future, wanted Johnson to grab the Democratic nomination in 1956.

  The plan was to have Johnson—a man Joe Sr. knew could be retained for a price—choose John Kennedy, then a senator, as his running mate. The beloved Dwight Eisenhower would surely win, but it would also be a victory for the Kennedys. John would be on the big stage, appreciating his worth and audience, giving him an advantage when entering the 1960 presidential race. The only problem was Johnson. The Texan, tending to his own political futures, declined the offer.

  “I did not wish to be candidate,” Johnson recalled telling Joe Sr. in a telephone conversation.

  It was politics as usual, but Bobby Kennedy reacted harshly to LBJ’s rebuff, taking it as a personal slight.

  “Young Bobby was infuriated,” said former Franklin Roosevelt aide Thomas Corcoran. “He believed it was unforgivably discourteous to turn down his father’s generous offer.”2

  Johnson, as a politician, was full of bluster; Bobby saw the Texan’s bluster as bullshit. Johnson, Bobby said, “lies all the time. I’m telling you, he just lies continually about everything … He lies even when he doesn’t have to lie.”3 The relationship between the two men worsened in late fall of 1959. Bobby was dispatched by John to the LBJ Ranch to get a bead on Johnson’s intentions for the upcoming presidential election. After a long conversation, Johnson assured Bobby he would not be in the running, clearing the path for John. True to Johnson form, this was a lie. Johnson not only planned to run but also thought that the Kennedys were too raw politically and moving forward too quickly. During the trip, Johnson took the opportunity to make a point. Taking Bobby out deer hunting, Johnson neglected to tell him about the powerful kick of the rifle. Upon firing, Bobby was flung backwards to the ground, cutting his forehead on the way down.4

  “Son,” Johnson exclaimed to Bobby, his 6’4” frame casting a shadow over the fallen Kennedy, “You’ve got to learn to handle a gun like a man.”5

  For Bobby, who at times took politicking personally, trouble with Johnson continued while John and Lyndon were competing with each other for the Democratic Party nomination. “Raider Johnson,” who would certainly not stop at the edge of the truth to win, was on the attack. And while there were some valid points in his offensive front, such as Kennedy hiding secret illnesses or buying votes, other claims hinged on the absurd.

  “I think you should know that John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy are fags,” said one of Johnson’s aides to journalist Theodore White during a phone call. The aide went on to fabricate the existence of photographs showing the brothers dressed in drag at a racy Las Vegas party. The caller promised to deliver the pictures, apparently hoping the tidbit was too tantalizing to wait on hard evidence for publication. Johnson also played up Joe Sr.’s failings as ambassador, pointing to Joe Sr.’s sympathy for British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasing Hitler. “I was never any Chamberlain umbrella policy man,” Johnson boasted. “I never thought Hitler was right.”6

  The charges had the mercurial Bobby foaming at the mouth. “You’ve got your nerve,” Bobby said to Johnson protégé Bobby Baker. “Lyndon Johnson has compared my father to the Nazis, and John Connally and India Edwards (co-chair of the Citizens for Johnson Committee) lied in saying my brother is dying of Addison’s disease. You Johnson people are running a stinking damned campaign, and you’re gonna get yours when the time comes!”7

  Bobby was very good at holding a chip on his shoulder, and the relations between him and Lyndon were irreparable from that point on.

  “Anybody who’d ever been against his brother, or who wasn’t 100 percent for his brother, was on Bobby’s Absolute Shit List, the ‘kill list,’” said Newsweek Washington editor Ken Crawford.8
>
  In the ensuing years, Johnson’s character, in Bobby’s eyes, would only decay.

  “He [Bobby] is, in a strange sort of way, less detached from human actions, more apt to respond directly and vigorously to what he thinks of as bad individual conduct than his brother would,” said journalist Murray Kempton. “On the other hand, he lacks his brother’s real appreciation for people who were a little older than he was and a little more serious.”9 As it became clear at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles that John Kennedy would win the presidential nomination, Johnson was not anywhere on Bobby’s list for vice president and was not at the top of John’s either. But once the Kennedy people realized Johnson would help carry the South, both Bobby and John changed their minds, though neither thought Johnson would accept. It seemed logical to the Kennedy camp that, as the most powerful man on Capitol Hill, Johnson would run for re-election as the Senate majority leader. Johnson had power carte blanche when Eisenhower was in office.

  Two Texans, Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, “literally ran the country,” said journalist Hugh Sidey. “They were the president and the vice president … Christ, [Ike] didn’t run the country.”10

  When Kennedy offered the vice presidential nod on the ticket to Johnson, the answer was surprising.

  “You just won’t believe it. He wants it!” Jack told his brother.

  “Oh my God!” Bobby answered.

  The elder Kennedy brother was perplexed.

  “Now what do we do?”11 Jack asked.

  Southern votes aside, Bobby and Jack were suddenly faced with sharing the ticket with a man neither Kennedy particularly liked or trusted; both realized the choice of Johnson may have been terribly hasty. The Kennedys wavered many times before deciding what to do with Johnson and how to potentially talk him out of accepting his position on the ticket.

  “It was the most indecisive time we ever had,” Bobby said. “We changed our minds eight times. How could we get him out of it?”12

  At one point, the brothers decided that Johnson would be ousted and Bobby was sent to Lyndon’s suite to deliver the news.

  The task for Bobby would be to “get him to withdraw and still be happy.”13

  Bobby went to Johnson’s suite twice in futile attempts to get the Texan to withdraw his acceptance. Following the second endeavor, John Kennedy resigned himself to accept Johnson as his choice for vice president, and a phone call was placed.

  “Do you really want me?” Johnson asked.

  “Yes,” replied Kennedy.

  “Well, if you really want me, I’ll do it,”14 Johnson replied.

  Even after Johnson’s acceptance, in a moment of confusion or perhaps of stubborn refusal to accept Johnson as the vice presidential nominee, Bobby again returned to Johnson’s suite in an attempt to get Johnson to withdraw.

  Johnson “is one of the greatest sad-looking people in the world,” Bobby recalled of the moment. “You know, he can turn that on. I thought he’d burst into tears… . He just shook, and tears came into his eyes, and he said, ‘I want to be vice president, and if the president [JFK] will have me, I’ll join him in making a fight for it.’ It was that kind of conversation.

  “I said, ‘Well, then, that’s fine. He wants you as vice president if you want to be vice president, we want you to know.’”15

  There is a darker explanation for how Lyndon Johnson really got on the 1960 Democratic ticket: blackmail and intimidation tactics. Anthony Summers interviewed JFK’s longtime secretary Evelyn Lincoln:

  “During the 1960 campaign, according to Mrs. Lincoln, Kennedy discovered how vulnerable his womanizing had made him. Sexual blackmail, she said, had long been part of Lyndon Johnson’s modus operandi abetted by Edgar. “J. Edgar Hoover gave Johnson the information about various congressmen and senators so that Johnson could go to X senator and say, ‘How about this little deal you have with this woman?’ and so forth. That’s how he kept them in line. He used his IOUs with them as what he hoped was his road to the presidency. He had this trivia to use because he had Hoover in his corner. And he thought that the members of Congress would go out there and put him over at the Convention. But then Kennedy beat him at the Convention. And well, after that Hoover and Johnson and their group were able to push Johnson on Kennedy. “LBJ,” said Lincoln, “had been using all the information that Hoover could find on Kennedy during the campaign and even before the Convention. And Hoover was in on the pressure on Kennedy at the Convention.”17

  Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri was the man whom John Kennedy was courting heavily to be his vice president. Reporter Nancy Dickerson, who was very close to LBJ, interviewed Symington campaign advisor Clark Clifford about JFK’s courtship of Symington and the meetings involved. Dickerson:

  “The first was a luncheon at Kennedy’s Washington house, where, through Clifford, he offered the vice presidency to Symington, provided Symington’s Missouri delegation votes went to Kennedy. Symington turned down the deal. The second conversation, which took place in Los Angeles, was a repeat of the first, and again it was refused. The third conversation was in Kennedy’s hideaway in Los Angeles, during which he told Clifford that he was fairly certain of a first-ballot victory and asked if Symington would be his running mate. As Clifford later told me, ‘There were no strings attached. It was a straight offer.’ The Symington and Clifford families conferred, Symington agreed to run, and Clifford relayed the news to Kennedy.

  “Clifford was playing a unique role: He was not only Symington’s campaign advisor, but JFK’s personal lawyer as well. He is one of the world’s most sophisticated men, and he does not make mistakes about matters like this. As he told me, ‘We had a deal signed, sealed, and delivered.’”

  Seymour Hersh discovered the same thing when he interviewed Clark Clifford and JFK insider Hy Raskin for his book The Dark Side of Camelot.

  Hy Raskin told Hersh: “Johnson was not being given the slightest bit of consideration by any of the Kennedys,” Hy Raskin told Hersh. On the stuff I saw, it was always Symington who was going to be the vice president. The Kennedy family had approved Symington …”

  “It was obvious to them that something extraordinary had taken place, as it was to me,” Raskin wrote. “During my entire association with the Kennedys, I could not recall any situation where a decision of major significance had been reversed in such a short period of time… . Bob [Kennedy] had always been involved in every major decision; why not this one, I pondered … I slept little that night.”18

  John Kennedy told Clark Clifford on July 13, 1960: “We’ve talked it out—me, dad, Bobby—and we’ve selected Symington as the vice president.” Kennedy asked Clark Clifford to relay that message to Symington “and find out if he’d run… . I [Clark Clifford] and Stuart went to bed believing that we had a solid, unequivocal deal with Jack.”19

  John Kennedy, after what must have been a brutal night of dealing with Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn, told Clifford on the morning of July 14, 1960: “‘I must do something that I have never done before. I made a serious deal, and now I have to go back on it. I have no alternative.’ Symington was out and Johnson was in. Clifford recalled observing that Kennedy looked as if he’d been up all night.”20

  In sum, on July 13, 1960, John Kennedy had a deal “signed, sealed, and delivered” for Senator Stuart Symington to be his VP. Then—poof!—in a cloud of magician’s smoke, suddenly Lyndon Johnson miraculously and inexplicably appears as the VP selection for JFK by the morning of July 14, 1960, stunning media and inside political observers. This type of black magic sorcery was a staple of LBJ’s political career. Two other good examples of black magic would be the 1948 Box 13 ballot box stuffing, which made LBJ the Democratic Senate nominee, and the other one would be the 1952 murder conviction of LBJ’s personal hit man Malcolm Wallace, who was convicted of murder “with malice aforethought” and given a mind-blowingly lenient sentence of five years probation with no time in jail for Wallace’s conviction of the October, 1951 murde
r of Doug Kinser in Austin. We shall learn more about Mr. Wallace later.

  The JFK assassination itself became the most prime example of LBJ’s black magic. Johnson was within days of not just being dropped from the 1964 Democratic ticket, but of being politically executed, personally destroyed, and publicly humiliated by the Kennedys. A Life magazine exposé on LBJ’s corruption and vast wealth was due to be published within a week. A SWAT team of reporters was combing through LBJ’s financial transactions in central Texas. At the very moment when JFK’s Dallas motorcade was slowing on Elm Street, Don Reynolds was testifying to a closed session of the Senate Rules Committee about LBJ’s kickbacks and corruption.

  Then presto! Magically, mysteriously, and tragically, John Kennedy is dead. Lyndon Johnson becomes president, and the media exposés and Senate investigation into LBJ’s corruption are deep-sixed.

  This was not without the help of H. L. Hunt and the Texas oil industry helped navigate, fund, and advise Johnson’s career in exchange for prized government contracts and favorable legislation. The oil magnate would later be one of the top financiers of the assassination in Dallas. To Madeleine Brown, he was yet another wealthy Texas businessman in close orbit around her frequent lover, Lyndon Johnson.

  “We may have lost the battle, but we are going to win the war,” Hunt said to Madeleine Brown after Johnson’s loss to Kennedy in the primaries. He believed that Johnson, as vice president, could control the green Kennedy, eventually ascending to commander-in-chief, able to protect and promote Texas oil and other interests through legislation. Richard Nixon later specifically told Maurice Stans and his fundraisers in a memo: “Don’t take money under any circumstances from H. L. Hunt.”21

  Following Johnson’s acceptance of the vice presidential spot on the ticket, Bobby remarked to Charles Bartlett, a journalist and family friend: “Yesterday was the best day of my life, and today is the worst day of my life.”22

  Kenny O’Donnell, a close friend of both Kennedy brothers and the organizer and director of Kennedy’s presidential campaign schedule in 1960, was the most outspoken against the decision, believing that the choice of Johnson compromised the promises that the campaign had made to civil rights groups and labor unions, most of whom were against the Texan.