Around the time the Bay of Pigs disaster was unfolding, Mrs. Kennedy informed me that she was going to be joining President Kennedy on his first presidential trip to Europe, with stops in Paris, Vienna, and London. Additionally, Mrs. Kennedy had decided to tack on a personal vacation to Greece at the end of the official trip. This news came as somewhat of a surprise because Mrs. Eisenhower had rarely traveled internationally with Ike, and I assumed Mrs. Kennedy—especially with two young children—would not be traveling much either. I was extremely pleased when I was assigned to handle the advance—first in Paris and then, while she and the president went to Vienna, I would fly ahead to Athens to conduct the advance for her trip there.
Shortly before I departed for Paris, I got word that President Kennedy wanted to see me in the Oval Office. I had never been summoned to the Oval Office before; this was highly unusual. When I walked in, I was surprised to see not only the president but the attorney general—his brother Bobby—standing with him.
“Clint,” President Kennedy said, “I understand you will be doing the advance for Mrs. Kennedy in Greece.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” I answered. “That’s what I have been advised.”
President Kennedy glanced at the attorney general and then looked back at me.
“The attorney general and I want to make one thing clear . . . and that is, whatever you do in Greece, do not let Mrs. Kennedy cross paths with Aristotle Onassis.”
At the time, I had no idea why he would make such a request, but I simply answered, “Yes, sir, Mr. President.”
A TEAM INCLUDING White House press secretary Pierre Salinger, presidential aide Ken O’Donnell, and Secret Service director Jim Rowley had flown to Paris for a two-day pre-survey trip, during which they decided the agenda, the accommodations, protocol, and general security. They made connections with our French counterparts, returned to Washington, laid out the framework, and then it was up to the advance teams to do all the work.
President Kennedy’s main purposes for the visit were to get acquainted with President Charles de Gaulle; to promote greater unity within the Atlantic Alliance, the military partnership between the United States and Europe; and to seek common policies on disputes between the Soviet Union and the West. Meanwhile, Mrs. Kennedy and her social secretary, Tish Baldrige, had planned an elaborate schedule for her that overlapped with the president’s only for official functions. My biggest concern was that I didn’t speak a word of French, so I was fortunate that Tish, who spoke fluent French, would be with me on the advance. When we arrived in Paris along with the president’s advance team, we had only about a week to coordinate the thousands of details that go into a state visit. Everyone had their roles—security, press, communications, transportation—and we all worked long days to make sure this important visit went off without a hitch. I don’t think the general public has any idea what goes into planning a presidential visit, and it was on this trip—my first overseas advance—that I gained a tremendous amount of respect for the guys in the White House Army Signal Agency.
The WHASA team had gone over with the pre-survey group, and over the span of a few weeks they were tasked with preparing a complex telephone system that would serve the president, his staff, and the Secret Service while we were in Paris. Each of us would have a special telephone that was connected to all other extensions of the visiting party in Paris, but also connected directly to the White House switchboard in Washington. I had a room in the Quai d’Orsay, the headquarters of the Foreign Ministry, where President and Mrs. Kennedy would be staying, while the majority of the entourage—including more than one hundred White House correspondents and photographers and the majority of the Secret Service agents—would stay in nearby hotels. At each of these hotels and at the Quai d’Orsay, WHASA set up switchboards operated by their personnel, and when someone called, the switchboard operator would answer, “Paris White House.” Thinking back now, with the kinds of technology—or lack thereof—that we had back then, the work they accomplished was nothing less than brilliant.
As we conducted the advance, it became clear that the government of France wanted not only President Kennedy to be seen by as many people as possible but Mrs. Kennedy as well. Due in part to the pre-visit media campaign organized by Pierre Salinger, much was being made of Mrs. Kennedy’s affection for the country and the fact that her father’s ancestors—the Bouviers—hailed from France.
A grand motorcade procession was planned for President and Mrs. Kennedy’s arrival, in which President Kennedy and President de Gaulle would ride together in an open-top limousine. The wives would follow in a car with a hardtop, under the assumption that the ladies wouldn’t want to risk rain or wind messing up their hair.
Tish Baldrige and I were in a meeting when one of the French officials seemed to be distressed about something. I looked at Tish, questioning what was being said, and she interpreted for me.
“He says the people of France are just as eager to see Madame Kennedy as well as her husband. Hundreds of thousands of people will be lining the streets of Paris, and they will surely be disappointed if Mrs. Kennedy is not visible.”
An idea suddenly struck me. “It would be ideal to have a bubbletop like our Secret Service car 4-B,” I said to Tish.
Tish translated, and the French officials loved the idea so much that they decided to take a new Citroën sedan, cut off the metal top, and insert a Plexiglas roof in its place, thus giving Mrs. Kennedy maximum exposure as she traveled to various venues in Paris. I was impressed by their desire to do everything possible to make this a memorable visit, and even more impressed that, within days, they had created the Citroën bubbletop.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, an army of specialists in the State Department was also working long hours to prepare extensive briefings for the president, his staff, and the traveling press. When the president arrived in Paris, he would know specifics about the current condition of France’s social, economic, political, and military situations, as well as the names and backgrounds of President de Gaulle’s top advisors.
President and Mrs. Kennedy arrived in Paris on the morning of May 31, and the French put on an incredible spectacle that rivaled any state visit I had ever seen for President Eisenhower. There was a full military ceremony at the airport, followed by a motorcade through the streets of Paris that included more than one hundred police motorcycle escorts and another hundred Republican Horse Guards in full military regalia.
It was estimated that two million Parisians lined the streets. There were people hanging out windows and packed on balconies, and the wide boulevards of the city were filled with people holding welcome signs and cheering “Vive le présidente Kennedy!” But even more frequently you would hear voices in the crowd yelling “Vive Jac-qui! Vive Jac-qui!”
In the past, first ladies were seen but seldom, if ever, heard. Here in Paris, Mrs. Kennedy accompanied the president to the Hôtel de Ville—Paris’s City Hall—helping to translate for her husband when he met with French officials, and at the spectacular white-tie dinner at Versailles, as she conversed in French with the notoriously surly President de Gaulle, there was no doubt she helped ease relations between the two men. At one point during the trip, President Kennedy appeared at a luncheon for four hundred journalists and said, “I do not think it altogether inappropriate to introduce myself. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris. And I have enjoyed it.”
The two-country summit in Paris was reported as an enormous success, and representatives from both France and the United States stated publicly that after six in-depth meetings between Kennedy and de Gaulle, the relationship between our two countries was stronger than ever.
From Paris I went directly to Athens, Greece, while President and Mrs. Kennedy flew on to Vienna for a summit with Premier Khrushchev. I was not in Vienna, but by all accounts afterward, the meetings between Kennedy and Khrushchev were a disaster for President Kennedy. Coming just six weeks after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba as they did, the president needed to show that he was up to the task of leading America on the world stage. Just the opposite happened. Instead, Khrushchev took the opportunity to lecture President Kennedy on U.S. foreign policy and warned him about surrounding the Soviet Union with military bases.
By treaty we had free access from West Germany to West Berlin, deep inside East German territory. The Communists wanted to stop the exodus of East German people and skilled manpower passing freely into West Berlin and beyond into West Germany by signing a peace treaty with East Germany that would impinge on Western access to Berlin. Khrushchev threatened that our resistance could lead to war.
Indeed, after the failed summit, both sides made sudden and dramatic moves that had perilous implications. The U.S. Congress approved an additional $3.25 billion in defense spending, a tripling of the draft, a call-up of the reserves, and a strengthened civil defense program. The Soviets resumed above-ground nuclear tests and began building the Berlin Wall. The following year, they would begin installing nuclear missiles in Cuba.
It was a sober lesson for President Kennedy—that in a dangerous world, the perception of weak American leadership can embolden our enemies to take aggressive action. Khrushchev came away with the opinion that the new American president was weak and inexperienced, while President Kennedy, in an interview with James Reston of the New York Times, said the summit meeting had been “the roughest thing in my life.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Kennedy had become a star on the world stage, which made protecting her all the more challenging. Her trip to Greece had been highly publicized, and as soon as she arrived people would swarm around us, trying to get close to her. After touring the historic sites in Athens with intrusive crowds following her every step, she decided to spend the rest of her holiday in the seaside town of Kavouri. She stayed in a private villa, where we also had use of the owner, Markos Nomikos’s, private yacht, the Northwind. It was on this trip that I began to realize being on the first lady’s detail wasn’t nearly as bad as I had envisioned it would be.
I never did figure out a good explanation for President Kennedy’s request to keep Mrs. Kennedy away from Aristotle Onassis other than the fact that Mr. Onassis had been in legal trouble with the United States, and perhaps the president was concerned about repercussions should the press have gotten photos of Onassis and Mrs. Kennedy together.
On that trip in 1961 however, Mrs. Kennedy did not cross paths with Aristotle Onassis.