It has been my great honor to write about the Kennedys for the last twenty years. I completed the manuscript for my first book about them, Jackie, Ethel, Joan, in 1999. It was published a year later. I immediately began working on the next one, The Kennedys: After Camelot. Though I became sidetracked by a number of other biographies, The Kennedys: After Camelot was always a chief concern of mine; the research for it continued for ten years. It was finally published in 2012. Six years later, in 2018, I wrote Jackie, Janet & Lee, a history of the other side Jackie’s family, the Bouviers and the Auchinclosses, and, of course, their relationships to the Kennedys.
Jackie, Ethel, Joan and After Camelot were both produced as successful television miniseries, and Jackie, Janet & Lee is in production as I write this note.
You now hold in your hands my fourth Kennedy book, The Kennedy Heirs.
I’ve always been fascinated by the third generation of Kennedys, who are the primary subjects of this book, having met and interviewed many of them over the years. For instance, I have a memory of Michael Kennedy that stands out for me. In the spring of 1997, when I was researching Jackie, Ethel, Joan, I sought access to certain oral histories in the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library and Museum. (Today most of them are online, but back then one actually had to go to the library and get permission to view the transcripts or hear the tapes.) I had met Michael at a fund-raiser for his brother Joe in Boston and asked if he could help me access what I needed. He was hesitant. Still, we exchanged numbers. A week later, he called me at my home in Los Angeles and said he would accompany me to the library and help me pull the material I needed for my book.
As I noted in the text of this book, Michael sat behind me for six hours and watched me as I attempted to do my research. “Michael, I’m okay here, really,” I told him. “You can go.” He shook his head. “No. Not until you do.” He was protective of his family’s legacy, and I had to respect as much. He even asked to see my notes when I finished. He had taken his own and wanted to compare. With nothing to hide, I agreed. He sat and reviewed everything, nodding his head and smiling. He even crossed out a few lines.
Afterward, seeking to break the ice with him, I suggested a cup of coffee. He agreed, though, again, he seemed reluctant. We then spent about ninety minutes talking about our childhoods, mine lived anonymously in the suburbs in Philadelphia, his as a public person, a Kennedy, at Hickory Hill, his mother’s estate in Virginia, and also at the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod. “I was always on the outside looking in,” he said, “but it was okay. I didn’t mind it.” I asked him to elaborate, but he wouldn’t. When I asked what his mother was like, he smiled and said: “Depends on the day.” I didn’t ask about the recent scandal relating to Marisa Verrochi, but he brought it up if just by suggestion. “I’m rebuilding my life,” he told me. “When I finish the reconstruction I’ll give you a real interview.” I asked if he saw a future for himself in politics. He laughed and said, “Not now I don’t.” Then he added that it was okay; “Some people have a taste for blood. Some don’t.”
Months later, when I was writing the acknowledgments to Jackie, Ethel, Joan, I wanted to acknowledge Michael’s assistance. I sent him the brief mention I wanted to publish, a couple of sentences thanking him. He called me a few days later and asked me not to acknowledge him. He said he didn’t know what the tone of the book would be and didn’t want to be seen as condoning it. That was fair. Six months after that, he was gone.
I had met John Kennedy Jr. several times prior to meeting Michael, the first time many years earlier. I couldn’t help but be struck by the differences in their personalities: Michael so removed and cautious, John so available and easy to know.
The first time I met John and his sister, Caroline, was back in 1977 at the famous Studio 54 nightclub in New York. My friend Michael Jackson was filming The Wiz in New York at the time; I was there writing a story about the movie for a magazine. It was a private party in a back room at Studio 54 for some of the cast and crew. John and Caroline were surrounded by press, as was Michael. I was sitting at a back booth with his sister La Toya. Occasionally, Michael would come over and say a few words to us and then drift back into the crowd. At one point, La Toya got up to go to the restroom. Someone took her place, slipping into the booth. He leaned over to me, put out his hand, and introduced himself: “I’m John Kennedy.” Then he said, “Can I ask you a favor?” JFK Jr. wants a favor? From me? “My sister and I want to meet Michael Jackson,” he said with a bashful grin. “Can you make that happen?” It was the kind of surreal moment that, looking back on it all these years later, is hard to believe. “Sure thing,” I said. He called Caroline over, we went over to Michael, and I introduced them. Michael seemed a little weak in the knees, I remember; just being in the presence of Kennedy royalty seemed to throw him.
After a few moments of chitchat, I took a couple of pictures of Michael with John and Caroline using John’s camera. Afterward, I sat at the bar and talked to John for about an hour. He was seventeen, and I wasn’t much older. I don’t even remember what we talked about, I just remember his incredible smile and his open spirit. I also remember thinking to myself that this guy could be anyone’s best friend, he was just that nice. I guess I was a little swept away by him. His sister? Not so much. I’m pretty sure she didn’t say a word to me that night, or if she did I don’t recall it. I just remember her eyeing me with suspicion. “She doesn’t trust reporters,” John said with a laugh.
Years later, John’s mother would go on to edit Michael’s book Moonwalk. In the mid-1980s, I had the chance to know Jackie Onassis while she was at Doubleday, where I published my first two books. Years after that, a few of the pictures of Michael, John, and Caroline that I took somehow leaked out, and anyone can find them today on the internet.
Both Kennedys—Michael and John—were raised by traumatized mothers, but in different ways. It’s of course their differences that make them so compelling, their stories that make them so unique. Both are gone now, and missed by so many.
The vast majority of material in this book was culled from more than four hundred interviews conducted by myself and my researchers over the last twenty years. When an author specializes in a subject as I have the Kennedys, he collects a massive amount of firsthand interviews with principal players in American history. Many of those sources find their way into more than one book; some interviews conducted many years ago for one book find their way into other works as they become relevant to stories being told. I make sure that the vast majority of my interviews are on tape. Occasionally, though, a source is squeamish about being recorded, and in that case I or the researcher will take copious notes.
From traveling the world and talking about my work, I know that readers are always interested in the interview process. I can state that in almost all cases my interview subjects are pressed for answers not just in a single session but in many encounters over the course of years. I’ve spent as many as forty hours with a single source, going back to confirm information, to ask for details that would never be thought of as relevant but, for me, are important elements of storytelling. It’s not unusual for me to have a source scour an attic for months to find a picture of a Kennedy just so that I could state without question that he or she was at a certain event at a certain time. Many of my sources will tell you that I have driven them out of their minds, but I do it for the sake of accuracy.
I’ve been in the business of documenting Kennedy history for more than twenty years, long enough to have made significant contacts inside the family. Specifically for this book, I conducted a number of important interviews with not only members of the Kennedy family but with others involved in their history on a “deep background” basis, which means I’ve agreed to use all their information but to not identify them as sources. This method is crucial sometimes in achieving the kind of candor required by a book like this one. Nearly all these interviews were conducted on tape, allowing me to be precise in my reporting.
Note also that most of the secondary sources utilized in this book—texts of speeches, transcriptions of television shows, and other videos— have been cited in the text and, with some exceptions allowing for a little more detail, will not be repeated here. Obviously, I also referred to countless books and newspaper accounts; I’ve only listed here the ones I thought might inspire further interest. In the end, what follows is by no means intended to be comprehensive. Instead, it’s just meant to give you, my reader, a better idea of the kind of research that went into The Kennedy Heirs.