“America’s politics will now also be America’s favorite movie.”
—Norman Mailer, commenting on the election
of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1960
On July 6, 1963, James Stewart received a phone call in his Miami office from Santo Trafficante, Jr. in Tampa. As 'Jimmy' happened to be alone at the time, he shifted to the name Santo had previously addressed him by: Johnny Rosselli.
Ordinarily, they’d make a date to meet somewhere between their two Florida cities to talk business in the privacy of some mob-owned club. This time, Santo mentioned that he had preview tickets for a movie to be screened in Tampa the following week. He wanted Johnny to drive up and join him for the event.
Nobody’s fool, Rosselli sensed this had to be something big. From the neutral quality of Santo’s tone, Rosselli couldn’t guess if he’d landed in trouble or if his unique talents were about to be called into play once more for The Organization.
According to the rules of the game, Johnny Handsome knew he was not allowed to ask questions. Cordially, seemingly calm, he accepted. They met in a Tampa theatre lobby, Santo looking as always like a city-clerk in his thick glasses and rumpled suit.
They entered the auditorium and took seats midway down the main aisle. The house was packed. Theatre lights dimmed, a projector’s bulb blasted on behind them, and Rosselli watched as the title appeared: P.T. 109.
Johnny sighed with relief, knowing it was not he who had landed in hot water but the film’s subject. JFK was played, at the president’s request, by a handsome leading man, Cliff Robertson. He didn’t resemble JFK at all. This, rather, was how JFK saw himself and wanted the world to perceive him, now and forever.
Young JFK, or his fictionalized persona, turned disaster into the stuff of legend, leading his crew on a swim to safety. When one sailor couldn’t keep up, JFK, refusing to let a single man die, grabbed the fellow by the collar and dragged him along.
How exciting for an audience to see their current president depicted as a man of action worthy of their current fictional favorite, James Bond. No matter that JFK might well have been court marshaled for allowing his P.T. boat to be rammed by an enemy sub, something no officer had ever before let happen.
Santo and Johnny exchanged glances, each aware that it had been incompetence on JFK's part that caused the P.T. 109 to unnecessarily sink; those reports of courage under fire were drastically overstated.
At one point JFK swam away from his men, marooned on an island; Robertson made this seem a courageous gesture in the Hollywood version. Anyone with knowledge of military process understood that this was dereliction of an officer’s duty.
“He fucked up, Johnny. And they’re cheering him for it.”
“He’s the hero of a Hollywood movie now. People always cheer for whatever that kind of guy does, right or wrong.”
From now on, no one in the world would believe that JFK had screwed up royally. For they’d seen the truth, if only in the sense that seeing is believing. Powerfully depicted in a film that put an official seal on the past. Whether what they witnessed had any bearing on reality no longer mattered.
This version of events was the one that had now been immortalized on celluloid. It would be seen everywhere and for years, decades even, be repeated on TV.
An hour later, the Mafiosos sat opposite one another in a quiet corner of a spaghetti house owned by Trafficante. Clams and linguini, the rich smell of choice garlic rising from two steaming plates, lay untouched. After what they’d experienced, neither man had an appetite. Thanks to them and their contacts, JFK had been elected to the presidency of the United States. As an Irish Catholic, he could not have reached that top plateau without such help. A deal had been cut. Now? With Jack’s go-ahead, Attorney General Bobby had declared war on The Mob.
“When ‘the brothers’ wanted to fuck Marilyn Monroe, we went an’ arranged that for ‘em,” Santo muttered bitterly.
“Then they wanted her shut up. We fixed that, too.”
“It’s time to start seriously talking about fixing them.”
They tried to relax. As always, this meant Sinatra on the juke-box, one classic cut after another.
*
Following his big comeback in the mid-1950s, Sinatra soared up the entertainment-biz ladder from star to superstar. If at that point there seemed nowhere higher to go, an even greater status awaited. Until Humphrey Bogart’s death in 1957, that actor reigned as uncrowned king of what was known as The Rat Pack, insiders even among Hollywood A listers. Following Bogie's passing, the clique might have floundered had not Sinatra stepped up to accept the mantle.
Immediately, his best buddies became the new power elite: fellow saloon singer/actor Dean Martin, British-born leading man Peter Lawford, the multi-talented African-American singer/dancer/actor Sammy Davis Jr., and the wry/dry Jewish comic Joey Bishop. By the early 1960s they were co-starring by day in the Vegas-shot movie Ocean’s 11, headlining together at a casino by night.
“Ring-a-ding-ding,” they chimed. The crowds went wild.
Sinatra garnered a reputation as a man with two distinct personalities. He could be mean-spirited beyond all conception if the liquor rushed too swiftly through his system. Feeling guilty the morning after he’d become a sentimentalist, over-tipping valets who happened to smile brightly at him.
Vegas became a new wild west, they a gang terrorizing the town, no one willing to try and stop them. Women were broads to be bedded. The more out of control they became, the more extreme the public’s fascination with it all. Yet, despite shallowness and insensitivity, there was another side to Frank, who fiercely dedicated himself to the then-burgeoning Civil Rights movement.
“It’s time to turn this thing around. Let’s do it!”
Among the Rat Packers, Davis had grown closest with Peter Lawford, a mediocre contract-player at MGM who owed his sudden stardom to Sinatra’s friendship. As it happened, Lawford was married to Patricia Kennedy, JFK’s sister. During a fund-raiser for the senator, Lawford introduced Sammy to JFK.
When these two enthusiastically explained JFK’s position on civil rights to Frank, the leader of the pack expressed interest in meeting the man and possibly campaigning for him.
This, despite enmities between the Italian-Sicilian crime organization and the Irish, so often in the past cast in the life-theatre of crime as their police antagonists.
“You gotta meet Jack, Frank. You just gotta!”
“Alright, Sammy. If you’re so enthused, I will be too.”
The young politician and the suave singer were already emerging as key icons for the upcoming decade. Why shouldn’t they team up? Sinatra had “High Hopes” rewritten as the JFK theme song during his 1960 presidential face-off with Richard Nixon. JFK introduced Frankie to the fashionable set, people with power and prestige in the political arena. Sinatra helped Kennedy slip off for his secret walks on the wild side.
“You actually know Marilyn Monroe, Frankie?”
“Do I know her? That’s putting it mildly, kid.”
“Well ... I’d love to ‘know’ her, too.”
There were those in the Rat Pack, particularly Dean Martin, who didn’t approve. To Dino’s way of thinking JFK seduced Sinatra into becoming the Bostonian’s pimp. When he attempted, treading with caution, to broach the subject, Frank waved Dean away.
“I trust him like a brother. Once he’s in the White House, we’ll all be invited. Now, ain’t that a kick in the head?”
*
Meanwhile, things were changing in the Mob. Charles Luciano had long since been deported from Cuba to Italy. Certain that drugs would be the next big thing, he set up a Sicilian-U.S. connection, hoping to flood America with heroin, providing a similar source of illegal funds as whiskey and beer had during Prohibition. Charley would follow this up with cocaine.
This ‘connection’ would be headquartered in Palermo, where Luciano, his health rapidly fading, lived out his final years. Meyer Lansky, who had retired to Miami Beach to play the role of a kindly grandfather, had to hurry off to Israel when the T-Men came after him once again. This left a new set of young turks fighting for Mob dominance. Vito Genovese and his crime family made a major power grab one month later. Several of his boys whacked Frank Costello, Lucky’s last significant representative. This eliminated the final stateside representative of the old days.
At Vito’s invitation, sixty-six mobsters descended on the small-town of Apalachin, New York for a summit meeting in which Genovese planned to stake out his dominance over all organized crime. Things went south when the isolated farmhouse was raided by police, sending mobsters running off in all directions. This November disaster allowed Sam Giancana to make his own influence felt. Having reached the top of the ladder in Chicago, he made the point that if that big meeting had taken place in the Windy City, no such travesty would have occurred.
As Mob members were dragged before grand juries, Gold’s words echoed in their ears. By 1959, he had become The Man. Gold was God, to Mafiosos and their small circle of friends.
Among those accepted into his sphere of influence was Frank Sinatra. However warmly Frank felt about Charley, who would pass away at age sixty-two in 1962, no question Frankie’s immediate loyalty shifted during this period. Before long, Frank would broach a subject of great seriousness and much controversy.
“Sam, can we set up a conference? This could be a biggie!”
Word had reached Sinatra, indirectly through JFK’s aged father Joseph, that his son needed a favor. Frankie’s support had been appreciated. That might not be enough to put Jack over the top. The final decision would come down to two states and, more specifically, two areas within those states. In Illinois, key districts of Chicago. Likewise, West Virginia territories.
Was it possible that Mr. Sinatra might speak of this with Mr. Giancana? The Syndicate had always operated out of Chicago; West Virginia served as yet another Mob headquarters. The situation certainly seemed serendipitous.
“Wow, that’s a biggie. But, yeah, I can try.”
Still a naïve kid at heart despite that cruel façade, Sinatra all but danced with delight. To be the go-between, the key link connecting the next president and The Mob.
Ring-a-ding-ding! The thrill of it all ...
*
Tenuously, Old Sam listened. “But can we trust them?”
“I’d stake my life on it.”
“That may be the case!” Giancana’s dark eyes darted about mirthlessly as he spoke in cautious terms.
“This guy’s become like a brother to me.”
“I don‘t know, Frankie. I mean, he’s Irish. Not that I give a fuck about race. Like, what would we do without the Jews? Charlie always had Meyer. Today, Willie Moretti’s in bed with Longy Zwillman. But The Micks? Jesus! I just don’t know.”
“Maybe that was then; this, now. Things change.”
“Do they? Maybe. But you know what some people say? The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
“So you won’t—”
Behind a sprawling mahogany desk, Sam shifted in his seat. “Yeah, I will. We’ll bring in both districts in Chicago. Down south, too. Put your guy in the White House. When Frankie asks for a favor, he gets it. With me, as with Charley.”
Sinatra moved forward, warmly grasped Sam Giancana’s hand, and kissed his ring finger in deference. “Thank you.”
“I want you to listen, now. If this works out like you say, we’ll be thanking you. Because once he’s in the cat seat, he’ll have to remember every single day who put him in that position.”
“Capiche!” Sinatra firmly shook Giancana’s aging hand. He perceived no problem. JFK was hardly a fool.
Surely, he’d get the big picture ...
One week later, Sam Giancana met with Joseph Kennedy, Sr. Apart from their ethnicities the two had a great deal in common. Both were known to be shrewd, unsparing, and hard as nails when it came to business. Just as the Mob had always relied on movies and alcohol as fundamentals in building wealth, so had Kennedy. In a shadowy room, during one of the most secretive meetings ever held in the history of America, the two came together.
“So: You really think your kid’s tough enough for this?”
“Sure. He hates the same as I do.”
“Well,” Giancana sighed, grinning. “This whole thing can be arranged. But it’s gonna cost.”
Relaxing somewhat, the elder Kennedy smiled back. “Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary. I mean, I’ll be damned if I’m gonna pay for a landslide.”
*
Shortly thereafter, JFK won the election by one of the tightest margins in presidential politics. No sooner had the Kennedy era begun than Frankie was wined and dined in the White House. JFK’s wife didn’t care much for him so Sinatra came to think of Jacqueline as a snob, turned off by him being Italian.
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy cared not a whit as for anyone’s ethnicity. Her problem was not prejudice but personality; from day one, Jackie pegged Sinatra as a pimp at heart.
The snapping point came when he let slip a statement that revealed he was the one who orchestrated her husband’s wild carousing with Hollywood’s glamour girls.
“Well, as Jack told Marilyn ... Ooops! I mean, Jack said about Marilyn, to me ... in confidence, of course ...”
What kind of a man is this? And, according to the birds of a feather adage, what kind of a man does that make my husband?
Once the election was a done deal, Giancana planned to make use of Frank’s position in JFK’s unofficial cabinet.
Frank’s happy. Jack’s happy. Joe’s happy. But most of all, I’m happy. And it better damn well friggin’ stay that way ...
First, they’d hooked JFK up with Marilyn. She, like Sinatra, dreamed of class and thought that banging a president, instead of movie executives, would provide her with that. As to JFK, he wanted to fuck a fantasy. Neither was fully satisfied, but then again, who is when a dream becomes reality? The actuality, however good, can’t possibly live up to the perfection that exists only in one's imagination.
At any rate, Marilyn got JFK talking before and after and sometimes even during. She dutifully passed all he said along to Frankie, who in turn delivered the messages to Sam. A romantic at heart, Marilyn made the mistake of falling in love with JFK.
“Jack. Do you, in your fantasies, ever wonder what it might be like if the two of us were ... married?”
Immediately, he recoiled, as if in abject horror, made some silly excuse to get out of bed as swiftly as he could, then refused to take her ever more frenzied calls to the White House.
When Bobby mentioned he’d always been jealous of his big brother’s conquest, JFK gave him the go-ahead to make a move. Shortly, he and Marilyn were involved. Marilyn, being Marilyn, quickly decided Bobby was the great love of her life.
Bobby? He’d fucked her. Now he would like to forget her.
The shit finally hit the fan on the night of May 19, 1962. A gala had been planned at Madison Square Garden in New York to honor JFK’s 45th birthday, officially still ten days off. Marilyn talked her way into a seemingly innocuous star-turn, singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” before the audience of 15,000 high level celebrities, from politicians to the literati.
“Happy birthday to you; happy ...”
Even as she stepped up to the microphone, JFK sensed an absolute disaster in the making. Still, though, he managed to smile from ear to ear throughout the proceedings, Marilyn for that brief, intense moment completely in charge of everything; she, shimmering in the lights, queen of the whole wide world.
The proverbial woman scorned, Marilyn now appeared like a light bulb someone has snapped on. She was out for blood-vengeance as only a beautiful woman can administer such punishment.
Marilyn had been sewn—literally!—into a form-fitting Jean Louis gown. Fashioned from flesh-colored marquisette material, her costume studded with 2,5000 sparkling rhinestones.
“... happy birthday to you!”
As the lights dimmed low and she delivered her sultry, vulgar, finally lewd variation, the crowd sighed, gasped, then groaned. An illusion was created in which M.M. appeared nude other than the faux diamond sparkles adorning her lush figure.
Leering at JFK, she concluded the number and marched off.
“The bitch has gone too far,” JFK told Frankie. He nodded glumly. Marilyn Monroe rated as a clear and present danger. No big problem when you had friends to take care of such things.
On August 5, the body of 36-year-old Marilyn Monroe was discovered on the floor of her Brentwood apartment. The first L.A. police officer on the scene, Sgt. Jack Clemmons, claimed the arrangement of her arms and legs, as well as the suspicious manner in which bottles of pills were aligned near the corpse, caused him to consider this “the most obviously staged death-scene” he’d ever encountered.
His insistence that Marilyn was murdered fell on deaf ears. Dr. Thomas Noguchi, of the L.A. County Coroner’s Office, ruled that “acute Barbiturate poisoning” led to the star’s passing, a “probable suicide” though possibly an accident.
According to gangland legend, a coalition of mobsters and CIA agents took care of that nasty business, believing that in so doing they cemented relations with the White House. Not taken into account was JFK’s Machiavellian inclinations. The idea that such help would earn future loyalty never occurs to someone who believes primarily in his own self, everyone else a potential sacrificial lamb, no matter how loyal in any previous crisis.
Giancana was a Machiavellian, too. With his plant in the president’s bed gone, he required another. One choice seemed made to order, a dazzling brunette named Judith Inmoor. Movie-star gorgeous, she had never stepped in front of a Hollywood camera though her sister, ‘Susan Morrow,’ performed in several films, most memorably Cat Women of the Moon, 1953.
Judith had married a supposed rising star, William Campbell, in 1952. His alcoholism and arrogance caused him to be dumped by the major studios. By 1958 Campbell could win roles only in B junk movies. Judith divorced him. Soon she was hanging-loose with Sinatra in Vegas. Frankie introduced the beauty to his pal JFK, soon to be president. They slept together that night.
“Thanks, Jack. When you’re president, I’ll remember.”
“This is our first night together, Judith. Not the last.”
Sinatra had also introduced Judy to Johnny Roselli, who brought the girl around to Giancana. On the outs at that moment with Phyllis McGuire, Old Sam took up with Judy. When Phyllis returned, Gold needed to farm Judy out. With Monroe eliminated, Judy Inmoor filled the bill. Shortly, she was a regular guest in JFK’s bed, as he had promised some time ago.
“Me, the president’s mistress! Amazing. Just amazing.”
Judy thrilled at the danger. She carried missives back and forth between JFK and Giancana, detailing the plots to kill Castro. Judy would hand them to Frank, who would pass them over to Johnny Handsome, he in turn delivering them to Sam Gold.
“Did you ever notice, Jack, that your wife ... Jacqueline ... and I ... look a lot like each other?”
“The resemblance is striking. You could be twins.”
“How do you tell us apart?”
“Simple. You’re great in bed.”
*
Things became hairy when Jacqueline found a pair of pink panties in her pillow case. That night, as she and JFK slipped under the sheets, Jackie smiled sweetly, then slapped him across the face with the lingerie, hissing: “Would you please find out who these belong to, darling? Because they aren’t my size.”
JFK raged at Judy when next together, claiming that she’d left the panties around on purpose, to break up JFK’s marriage. She was out: just like that. Bye, bye, bitch!
Hell hath no fury like ... Judy Inmoor Campbell snapped. “Yeah? Well, maybe Sam will have something to say about that!”
JFK was not known for going pale in the face but at that moment he did. A light went off in his head: Judy was a plant. Anything and everything he said during pillow talk made its way to Giancana, through Sinatra.
“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you were here for?”
“At first, perhaps. But Jack, I really did fall in love—”
When Sinatra paid a surprise visit one week later, JFK accepted him into his private lounge but remained cool, remote, distanced throughout the visit. Frank left after an hour feeling dejected. It didn’t take him long to put two and two together. When he confronted Judy she admitted JFK now knew that their arrangement had been uncovered.
Sinatra grasped that his own golden age in Camelot was over. Sir Lancelot was banished from the castle, doomed to wander the wastelands so long as JFK remained king.
That bastard. After all I did for him ...
That was his problem. If JFK merely forced Frank out of his D.C. inner circle, nothing would have been hurt other than Sinatra’s feelings. Only that was not JFK’s way.
That little shit. After all I did for him ...
JFK was mad, damn mad, and he wanted revenge. On Frank Sinatra, but also Giancana. On the whole rotten bunch of them.
Shortly, he came up with a strategy.
As Attorney General, Robert Kennedy had launched a full throttle attack on the Ku Klux Klan. JFK suggested that Bobby now employ the Justice Department to launch war on organized crime.
Meanwhile, JFK announced he would shortly take a vacation (sans wife and family) in California. Guessing his former buddy meant this as a sign that he was about to be let back ’in,’ Sinatra assumed JFK would be staying with him and spent a fortune on having his home refurnished for this great occasion. Then word reached him that JFK had accepted an invite from Bing Crosby.
Here was a double-edged sword of an insult if ever one did exist. First, Crosby had been Sinatra’s only competition as the greatest pop-jazz singer of the century.
Second, he was ... a Republican! And, by the way, Irish.
Old Sam was right, after all, about them.
In a snit, Sinatra tossed Lawford out of the rat pack. Bobby meanwhile approached J. Edgar Hoover, requesting that the FBI join his new crusade. The old bulldog would have none of it, knowing that ancient, embarrassing photograph still sat in a Chicago Mob office file. Furious, Bobby considered the Bureau’s head hancho, and his entire organization, to be irrelevant.
We’ll do it without you, J. Edgar. The less involved in bringing the Mob down, the greater glory for those who served.
Terrified of the Kennedys, Hoover had agents tail both brothers. Once aware of JFK’s affair with Judith, the FBI head put pressure on the president, applying political blackmail. The Bureau demanded JFK’s assurance that the FBI would not be phased out, and that Hoover would remain its head.
Shortly, JFK backed away from the FBI’s competition, the CIA, to the chagrin of The Company’s men. Not that this in any way satisfied Hoover. If JFK could so quickly turn on his pals, what would he do about an old enemy like himself?
All this while, Bobby had been working on his own plan to ‘get’ the mobsters. He increased the number of legal indictments against crime figures by 800 %. To the Kennedys, this seemed a fitting retribution for Giancana’s putting plants in JFK’s bed.
That, however, was not how Giancana saw it. He was the one who had been betrayed. And now? Look at this mess!
“You swore he could be trusted.”
“I’m so ashamed!” Frankie wept like a child. Sam calmed him down, patting Sinatra on the hand, like a father with his son.
“Relax, Frank. Everything will be alright.”
“Whatever you do to me, I accept, understand—”
“Not you, Frankie. You were taken in, even as I was.”
“You’re going to whack Bobby? The Attorney General?”
“Who said a frickin’ word about him?”
Sinatra gasped. “The President of the United States?”
“His little rat of a brother wouldn’t be doing this if he didn’t have the top man’s full backing.”
“But ... kill the President ... couldn’t we just—”
“Have you forgotten the old Sicilian saying? ‘When you set out to finish a snake, you cut off not the tail but its head.’”
Never had the Mob whacked an honest opponent. Like Sam Giancana, Sinatra well knew that the popular TV series The Untouchables was but a piece of violent fiction, despite real names employed for characters. On the show, mobsters constantly tried to rub out Eliot Ness, non-corruptible Fed.
In actuality, nothing like that ever occurred. However crude and brutal the game might be, there were rules. Numero uno: You didn’t shoot an honest cop. You battled in court. If you lost, you went to prison, as Chicago’s Al Capone had.
In the 1940s, that scenario had been replayed in New York. The Syndicate was scared shitless that Thomas Dewey might shut them down. But when Louis Lepke, one of their own, became frustrated with the pressure and confided to some colleagues that he was considering a hit on Dewey, word swiftly reached the top. The big bosses then, Luciano and Lansky, at once agreed that Lepke had to go. Not Dewey; Lepke. Not your enemy, not if honest.
But when one of their ilk came to you with a deal? Then, the ultimate rule applied: Nobody betrayed the Mob and lived. It didn’t matter how high up the guy may be. No exceptions.
“Still, Sam. He’s the number one man in the country.”
“The world, actually! Any objections, Frank?”
“It‘s not for me to say, Sam. Which of the boys will—”
“You gotta be kidding. The trail would lead back to my own doorstep. That ain‘t gonna happen.”
“Who, then?”
“We’ve got a new partner, the CIA. Plus the Cubans in Florida will help out. Kennedy betrayed both those organizations. And Castro hates him for all the assassination attempts. Actually, a whole lot of people want JFK dead.”
“How could he possibly believe he’d get away with it?”
“Ah, what’s the Greek word, Frankie? Hubris! Yeah, that’s it. A guy gets powerful, real powerful, sooner or later he comes to think he’s all powerful. Forgets that there’s always someone, or something, way more powerful than him.”
“It’s like he loses sight of his place in the universe. And ... Bobby?”
“Once Jack is gone, he means nothing to us. Unless he ever decides to run for president. Then, of course, we’ll ...”
Frank laughed sardonically. Giancana wanted to know what he found so funny. “I’ll tell you, Sam. Kennedy’s bitch of a wife? She’ll make one gorgeous widow.”
“Yes. Jacqueline Kennedy will look beautiful in black.”
*
On November 22, 1963, at 4:20 in the afternoon (Central Time), a young female FBI agent placed a call to headquarters in D.C. When a secretary answered, she asked to speak with the director. Told that he could only be reached in an emergency, she then explained she held in her hand an information packet that had been dropped off several days earlier by Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who only a few hours before presumably shot the president. The envelope was marked “private and confidential” and “to be opened immediately in the event of my death.”
The secretary told the young woman to hold on momentarily. Less than a minute later the director’s immediately recognizable voice boomed on the other end. He wanted to know if agent James Hosty happened to be in the building and was informed that Hosty had hurried to police headquarters to oversee questioning of the key suspect. The director told the young woman to get Hosty back at once. When she asked if she ought to open the envelope the director gasped and told her no. Upon return, Hosty’s orders were to shred the unopened document and destroy the remains.
Hosty hurried back and was met by Shanklin, his superior, who relayed to Hosty what the secretary had told him. Shanklin wanted to know if there might be anything else that connected the FBI office to this doomed missive. In reply Hosty said that he had written a memorandum about the reception of Oswald’s manuscript. Shanklin ordered Hosty to destroy that, along with any other evidence linking Oswald with this office. Hosty did as told, flushing the remants down a toilet.
*
On November 23, 1963, Lyndon Johnson arrived at the White House for his first full day in office as president. Before he could settle down to business Johnson found McGeorge Bundy, JFK’s Assistant to the President for all National Security Affairs, awaiting him. Johnson sensed that Bundy appeared more fidgety than usual. Without a word, Bundy nodded, indicating that the president should follow him down a corridor.
Minutes later, the pair passed by two armed guards, through a steel doorway with 54/12 emblazoned on it. The situation room, as it was called, had been created in a cellar-like compound far beneath the White House basement, existing as an unknown cellar beneath the known one. Johnson gasped at the sight: immense wall maps, ticker tape machines, state of the art radar equipment, TV monitors, all these interconnected with brightly colored wires, abetted by a complex telephone system beyond that in his White House suite. This would be the only occasion on which he’d be invited—it felt like an order—to enter this sacrosanct place.
For the remainder of his current term and after winning re-election, LBJ’s contact with 54/12 would be Bundy, abetted only by occasions on which LBJ was visited by John Alex McCone, then-director of the CIA, the person for whom this secret enclave had been built. For a wide-eyed, slack-jawed LBJ, the vast bunker recalled the Bat-cave in D.C. comics he'd read as a kid, combined with elements from the title villain's deep-in-the-earth hideaway in Dr. No, the first James Bond film. He and Ladybird had seen that following a high recommendation by JFK.
“We’ll make this brief, Lyndon,” McCone stated in a flat, business-like tone. “I take it that you look forward to a long and happy run in the White House?”
“That’s what I’m hopin’ for.”
“I have no doubt that can be arranged, so long as you understand the one absolute rule now in existence.”
“I’m listening.”
“From this room, I make all decisions concerning America’s involvement in international affairs. I will convey necessary information to you through McGeorge. He’ll report to you daily so it won’t be necessary for you to meet with us often.”
“Us?”
McCone indicated the numbers on the wall. “54/12. Lyndon, understand: the CIA and aligned organizations will operate covertly throughout the world, in the best interests of the United States. You will be informed of our activities.”
“But ... I’m the president!”
“Yes, that’s true. And, Mr. President, do you know what George Clemenceau said way back in 1919?”
“’War is now too important to be left to the generals.’”
“Precisely. Today? Politics is too important to be left to the presidents. We—the 54/12 Group—learned that the hard way.”
“But what will I do ... say ...”
“As to the public, we don’t care, so long as you keep any mention of us out of it. Tell them the truth or tell them lies. As to social issues, you’re the boss. But when re-election time comes around again, if things in Southeast Asia are going well, tell the people you’ll wrap it up in Vietnam quick as possible. If things get sticky over there, tell them that if they vote you back into office, you’ll make certain American boys don’t die doing the job South Vietnamese boys should be doing. If we ascertain that the war can be scaled down, it will be. You can claim it was your doing. They’ll love you for it. If we see fit to escalate, you tell the public that you meant what you said when you said it, but that was then, this now. Circumstances altered. Things change. We will make such decisions.”
“In Vietnam.”
“Yes. Also, everywhere else in the world.”
“And I have no alternative but to follow your orders?”
“Sure,” McCone laughed. “You can end up like Kennedy.”
*
On November 24, at approximately ten a.m., Capt. John Will Fritz of the Dallas Police department’s homicide office gave up in his attempts over the past twelve hours to wring a confession out of Lee Harvey Oswald. During this procedure he’d been joined by Hosty and another FBI agent, James Bookhout. Despite their combined talents at drawing the truth out of a suspect, Oswald refused to say anything other than that when JFK was killed he’d been taking his lunch on the first floor of the Dallas Book Depository. Other employees who had been there at that time insisted that they couldn’t recall Oswald’s presence.
“If that were so, why did you slip away moments later?”
“I didn’t think there would be any work done that afternoon so I just left.”
“Where did you go?”
“Home. Having heard what happened to the president caused me to sweat like a pig. I showered, changed clothes, went out.”
“Where did you go?”
“To the movies.”
“Isn’t that odd?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t believe that’s what most people would have done.”
“Well, try and understand this: I’m not most people. I’m me. I do what I do, not what I think others would. How’s that?”
“Why would you carry a pistol into the theatre?”
“Self-defense. There was a killer running around loose!”
Oswald was asked if he’d like a lawyer and he mentioned a top New York attorney. Oswald appeared in a line-up. When the police found three cartridges from Oswald’s pistol near the body of a policeman named Tippit, who had been murdered shortly after the shooting of the president (it was this crime Oswald had been arrested for), as well as three bullets near the window that Oswald might have occupied, holding his rifle, as JFK drove by, he was now arraigned before Judge David Johnson for “the murder with malice of the president.” Hours earlier Lee had been accused of killing Tippet in a different area of Dallas.
Fritz, following direct orders, began to prepare Oswald for a transfer from police headquarters to county jail.
“My name is Thomas J. Keller,” a tall, rugged fellow said to Oswald just before Fritz’s men moved the suspect down to the basement for his car ride from one incarceration to what was supposed to be the next. “I’m with the Secret Service. You claim not to be guilty of killing the president.”
“That is absolutely correct.”
“I’d be very anxious to talk with you to make sure that the correct story, as you believe it to have gone down, developed.”
“I’ll be glad to. Just as soon as I meet with my lawyer.”
Nodding, Keller stood back and watched as the handcuffed Oswald was accompanied to the basement, where an unmarked car awaited him for the move. Once below, in the bowels of the building, Lee was stunned at what awaited him.
Flood-lights were turned on and bathed him to the point of blindness in an eerie white light of the order some movie star might experience while arriving for a premiere. Photographers snapped pictures while journalists called out for a statement.
This is it. The moment I’ve waited all in my life for!
“Here he comes,” someone shouted.
What was it Cagney said in some old gangster film, just before they blew him away? ‘Made it, Ma. Top of the world!’
“Mr. Oswald, did you kill President Kennedy?”
Marguerite? Are you watching TV? Just like in the movies. Top of the world ...
“Did you act alone or were you part of a conspiracy?”
What did Gloria Swanson say in Sunset Boulevard? ‘I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille ...’
“Mr. Oswald, please. Make a statement.”
What did a world-famous author claim to want most in a French film? To become immortal ... and then die.
“I’m a patsy,” Lee cried out into the camera. “A patsy!”