I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.
— Bob Dylan
IN THE LATE FALL of 1961, having seemingly survived the Guevara mini-uproar, I was again seated in my White House office relaying commands over the telephone, holding meetings, conferring with the president on an almost daily basis.
There were continued rumblings of criticism about my anomalous role as the president’s agent for Latin America. I had no position in the established agencies of foreign policy — the State Department or Bundy’s National Security staff. My only source of authority consisted of the telephone that linked me to the Oval Office. And I used it freely. The affronted bureaucracy stuck back. There were newspaper articles referring to the “anarchy” in the conduct of Latin policy. One foreign-service officer, a Mr. Smith Simpson (whose name alone qualified him for the diplomatic corps), told reporters that “since President Kennedy saw in the Alliance … one of the more promising advances in foreign affairs … he had his staff push on it. Unfortunately the willingness of his staffers” (me) “exceeded their experience and maturity.” (True enough: I was young, inexperienced and very “willing” to “push.”) “Lines of authority became … fuzzed up … confusion was generated … office directors in State did not know which way to look for orders.…”
Although annoyed by such criticism, I did not feel endangered. I was, after all, just doing what the president wanted; an assumption of safety that rested on an incredible naïveté, itself the product of ignorance about the nature of institutions and the men who led them. Presidents wanted many things — among them contented lieutenants and a smoothly functioning bureaucratic apparatus.
In late October, at a press conference, Kennedy was asked about the “criticism of our handling of inter-American affairs” caused by “advisers in the White House duplicating and sometimes overriding people in the State Department.”
“My experience in government,” Kennedy said, in the midst of a long and semiapologetic reply, “is that when things are noncontroversial, beautifully coordinated, and all the rest, it may be that there is not much going on.… So if you really want complete harmony and goodwill, then the best way to do it is not to do anything.… So we are attempting to do something about Latin America, and there is bound to be a ferment. If the ferment produces a useful result, it will be worthwhile.…”
Right on, I thought. But my enthusiasm was premature.
The following afternoon I stood in the Oval Office, waiting for McGeorge Bundy to complete a conversation with the president, so that I could inform him of my recent discovery that the CIA had been engaged in covert operations in the Dominican Republic, had actually transferred some small weapons to a group that wished to overthrow Trujillo by assassination. Looking toward me, Kennedy said, “You know, Dick, maybe we’d be better off if you were in the State Department, closer to the action.” He paused for a moment, then waved his hand as if brushing the idea aside. “Hell,” he said, speaking to some undefined space between me and the attentive Bundy, “if Dick goes over there, we’ll never hear anything about Latin America.”
After Bundy left, I told Kennedy what I had learned. He reacted angrily. “Tell them no more weapons. The United States is not to get involved in any assassinations. I’d like to get rid of Trujillo, but not that way.”
Although he had dismissed the idea of my departure, I was now aware that it was on his mind. So I was not wholly unprepared that November day in 1961 when I stood on the porch outside the Oval Office of the White House watching Kennedy walk across the South Lawn toward the helicopter that awaited his departure for a weekend at his Virginia estate. Glimpsing me as he neared the steps of the helicopter, Kennedy beckoned toward me. As I approached him, he smiled, leaned over, spoke loudly into my ear over the noise of the spinning rotors. “You know, Dick, I think you’ll be more effective in the State Department.” I did not reply. “I’m going to announce it next week.” Then, mounting the steps, he shouted, “We’ll talk about it when I get back.”
But there was nothing to talk about. The decision had been made. My White House days were over. For now. And although I would have many conversations with Kennedy in the future, the promised discussion never took place.
… they talk for a while about whether [Big Nurse is] the root of all the trouble here or not, and Harding says she’s the root of most of it. Most of the other guys think so too, but McMurphy isn’t so sure any more. He says he thought so at one time but now he don’t know. He says he don’t think getting her out of the way would really make much difference; he says that there’s something bigger making all this mess and goes on to try to say what he thinks it is. He finally gives up when he can’t explain it.
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Trying to recall the emotions of my brief, decisive encounter with Kennedy is like taking an archaeologist’s pick to the surface artifacts of an ancient community, hoping to penetrate through the time-mantled layers — city heaped upon city, each carefully, hopefully, constructed on the ruins of its predecessors — to reach the primeval settlement that was the predecessor of all to come. I am a different person from the young man who, on that uncommonly mild and brilliant November afternoon, was told of his exile from a man he admired, and more than admired. Were the same situation to recur, I would feel differently, respond differently, behave differently. At least I think so. The perverse elusiveness of emotional recollection, further distorted by the irrepressible desire for self-deception, makes all memoirs, including this one, a partial misrepresentation; and, incidentally, makes great poetry possible. “Memoirs,” Justice Frankfurter once told me, “are the most unreliable source of historical evidence. Events are always distorted by refraction through the writer’s ego.” (I.e., the spectrum is not the light.)
Having unburdened myself of this admission, let me tell you exactly how I felt. I was saddened; not stunned, but suffused with a milder melancholy more like that of a rejected lover. It was not a defeat. At least it didn’t appear to be. As a deputy assistant secretary of state I would have direct, daily authority over the implementation of Latin American policy; my ties to the president would remain intact; I would possess direct, commanding influence over the ponderous instrumentalities of foreign policy. My regret had its source not in reason, but in the pain of severance — from that small band of colleagues with whom I had made the intense, uncertain journey to the White House; from the leader whom I admired almost to the point of hero worship.
Yet the moment of melancholy evoked a revelation. Walking back to my office, self-pity gave way to resentment — not toward Kennedy, but toward myself. Why did I feel sad, rejected? Then, in a moment of memorable illumination, I understood. Not the answer, but the absurdity of the question. Politics was not love. The ties that bound men of power were not compounded of affection, or even compassion. In Norman Mailer’s phrase, politics was property; an exchange, value given for services rendered. I was not in the White House because John Kennedy liked me (although he may have) but for my contribution to his ambitions and objectives. In return I received a title, a significant office, and the opportunity to help shape the course of public power. If my presence caused difficulties, if my value declined, then I must go. It is a simple matter of transaction; not ruthless at all, but rational, the inevitable deduction from the syllogism of power. Should one desire more forgiving bonds, there is always marriage and lots of children.
Fueled by this new awareness, renewed vitality reawoke habitual passions. I had not been fired, I told myself. I would not take it as a defeat. My responsibilities for Latin America had not been ended. I knew what Kennedy wanted, what I wanted. Our policies were not just official doctrine. They were right. They were profoundly, passionately devised to advance the interests of the United States and to alleviate the violent injustices that imprisoned millions in poverty and fear. The course had been set, but the sailors were still holding meetings on the beach. It was my job to get them on board, order them into the riggings, leave the tranquil harbor of indecision behind. I would go to the State Department, not to find a warm spot in the belly of the beast, but to kick the huge, somnolent, indifferent monster in the ass. And so I did. For a while. Until its lethargic, but unexpectedly potent immune system — unable to incorporate my alien intrusion — expelled me.
On November 17, Kennedy announced a major shakeup in the State Department, including my appointment in a list of high-level changes. I treated it as a promotion; the president called it “putting the right man in the right job”; and the press, for the most part, went along. Time magazine reported that it “was hardly a shift at all.… President Kennedy’s No. 1 man on Latin America in the White House became Kennedy’s No. 1 man on Latin America at the State Department … his unmistakable authority was succinctly put by a White House staffer: “The President likes him.” In the Washington Post the headline announced: “JFK Ignores Complaints: Goodwin’s Power Continues to Rise.” Unfortunately, for me, the Washington Daily News got closer to the truth when it reported that my transfer should remove “a major irritant” in Latin American policy since I had been “a sort of free-wheeling operator in the White House,” much to the annoyance of that section of the State Department responsible for Latin America. Now, presumably, I would be under control.
As I prepared to enter the State Department, Chester Bowles was on his way out: the first major casualty in the top ranks of the New Frontier. Frustrated by the department’s failure to transform itself into an intelligently active instrument of his foreign policy, the president had centered his discontent on the somewhat tendentious and pedantic undersecretary. There may well have been reason to regard Bowles as ineffective, but, as Arthur Schlesinger confided in a memorandum to the president, he was also “the one champion of fresh ideas and the New Frontier in the top command of State. His removal … will be regarded by the most stuffy and hopeless elements as a vindication of their own stuffiness and hopelessness.… It is ironic that Bowles is being removed for his failure to overcome the entrenched complacency of the foreign service pros — and that these very pros, who are the basic source of State Department inertia, will regard his removal as their victory.”
Ironic indeed, I thought on reading Arthur’s memo; little suspecting that I would soon be on the losing side of a similar irony. Moreover the underlying assumption — the hopeless inertia of the State Department — was Kennedy’s opinion exactly. “I’m only the president,” he said sardonically, “why should they pay any attention to me.” My own transfer, although in part a response to public criticism of my anomalous authority, was also another in an intermittent series of efforts to make the department his.
They didn’t work. Kennedy was never able to get the State Department to behave as he wished. But he kept trying right up until his death.
Things seemed to go smoothly at the State Department at first: I got along surprisingly well with my formal superior, Assistant Secretary Robert Woodward. And my lines were still open to the White House.
That December Kennedy was scheduled to make a trip to Venezuela and Colombia. Ignoring, as was his presidential prerogative, the new lines of authority, he called me to ask my opinion. “Most of the people over here don’t think I should go. The Secret Service says it’s too dangerous.” (There had been a great deal of terrorist activity by communist groups in Venezuela.)
“The risk is up to you,” I replied, “but I think the trip will be a triumph; it’ll prove just how much the Alianza has changed things, and it’ll help show them that you really care.”
“So you think I should go,” he commented.
“Yes,” I answered.
Of course Kennedy wanted to go, was looking for an affirmative response, thought the security danger exaggerated.
“What about security?” he asked again.
“Betancourt will have the whole army out,” I replied. “Nothing’s certain, but I think you’ll be as safe in Caracas as you are in the United States.”
That December I accompanied Kennedy on the flight to Venezuela and drafted all his speeches. (I was to do the same on each of Kennedy’s three trips to Latin America — to Mexico City in 1962, and Costa Rica in 1963 — despite my growing distance from any formal involvement with Latin America.) As the plane taxied to a stop at the Venezuelan airport, Kennedy — always the first to exit — walked up the aisle toward the door, touched me briefly on the shoulder, and, smiling, said: “Listen, Dick, if this doesn’t work out, you’d better keep on going south.”
The visit was a triumph. Mammoth, unprecedented crowds cheered the young, Catholic American president with his beautiful wife who had come to represent such bright new hopes. On our next stop, in Bogotá, Colombia, at least five hundred thousand people — more than half the population of the city — greeted Kennedy’s arrival.
It soon became obvious that my move to the State Department had not accomplished its intended purpose — to end my authority in Latin American affairs. It wasn’t my fault. Not completely. But Kennedy, it seemed, was incorrigible. Two or three times a week, ignoring my superiors, he would call me with instructions or questions which I dutifully relayed to the assistant secretary but which, because of their origin, could not be denied.
In March of 1962 I accompanied Teodoro Moscoso — director of the economic component of the Alliance for Progress — on a special mission to Chile. The right-wing Alessandri government was in desperate needs of funds to meet a growing economic crisis. We wanted to help, but were seriously concerned by the failure of Chile to embark on the badly needed social reforms — including redistribution of land — which they had pledged at Punta del Este. We would commit 140 million dollars, Moscoso and I told the government, only if they promised to begin the reforms. The debate was fierce. At one meeting I said that “if you don’t do something about these changes soon, Allende [leader of the Communist party] will win the next election.” Looking at me across the table the young minister of finance said reproachfully: “The problem is that you just don’t understand Chile.”
Undersecretary of State George Ball took the moment of my absence from the country to strike. He fired Assistant Secretary of State Bob Woodward (making him ambassador to Spain) and replaced him with the tough, hard-bitten Ed Martin — a veteran of many bureaucratic wars, and personally loyal to Ball. According to newspaper accounts, whose accuracy I later confirmed, Ball told Woodward he was being moved “because you haven’t been able to control that boy.” Woodward replied, “How can I control him? He’s a White House man.”
Ed Martin knew how. And he did.
I could not, of course, be fired or demoted. The president himself had bestowed the title. But bureaucracy has far subtler means of eroding unwelcome interference. And Ed Martin knew them all. I was, for example, simply not invited to meetings where important matters of policy were being discussed. My secretary was approached and asked to keep a record of my phone calls, even to monitor my conversations with the president, and report my activities to Martin. (Without telling me, of course.) Loyally, she refused, but when she told me of the request I realized how determined Martin was to avert the fate of his predecessor. Decisions were made and communicated without my knowledge. There was no formal change in my status. I was simply bypassed. I had my office, a resounding title, a continual flow of routine busywork, but responsibility for significant policies was simply drained away. The situation was intolerable. I had not come to work in Washington in order to occupy a spacious office, my name and title inscribed on the door, while puttering around the fringes of high events. Nor did I have any stomach for the bureaucratic battles (or the skills to fight them). So I left. Not formally, of course, but without resigning or even asking permission.
In the summer of 1962 I walked the few blocks that separated the State Department from Peace Corps headquarters, where Sarge Shriver was constructing one of the most successful operations of the New Frontier, and offered my services. Sarge welcomed my offer of assistance, gave me an office, and treated me as a personal assistant and adviser across the entire spectrum of Peace Corps activities — projects, recruitment, negotiations with other governments. I discussed my new undertaking with no one — not the State Department, and not the White House. Fuck them all, I thought; they could fire me if they wanted, but I wasn’t going to let them cut off my balls.
Naturally Kennedy soon learned of my work at the Peace Corps. Shriver, after all, was a member of the family. And I hadn’t asked him to keep my activities secret. I assume that when Kennedy learned, he knew that my departure was not a temporary indulgence, the result of some transient fit of anger. I had changed jobs, a fact that would not be formally recognized until January of 1963. Until then my State Department office would remain unoccupied, my absence unexplained. Nor did Martin or Ball ask where I had gone. Inquiries might arouse press interest, and queries from reporters were not to be encouraged. Anyway, I am sure they didn’t miss me.
On July 3, 1962, Kennedy called me; “Bobby told me yesterday about your work in the Peace Corps. Whatever you feel like doing is okay with me” (not quite) “but I want you to wait until after the Brazil trip” (later postponed). “I want you to go down in the advance party, and also there is the problem of speeches.” There was a pause. I made no reply. I would, of course, do as he asked, but I was not in a genial mood. “Anyway,” he continued after a momentary silence, “if we ever do put out any announcement on your Peace Corps assignment I think we ought to emphasize the Latin American part of the work.”
Arthur Schlesinger explained Kennedy’s acquiescence to the State Department with his usual generosity of spirit, both toward Kennedy and toward me. “The incident [my movement to the Peace Corps] reminded one of the limits of Presidential power because, though Kennedy retained his special fondness for Goodwin and often called upon him for special jobs, he could not, without cost to other objectives, preserve Goodwin’s usefulness in a department that did not want to use him. The government lost, however, the imagination, drive and purpose Goodwin had given so abundantly to the Alliance.”
Perhaps. Perhaps Kennedy could not have intervened without “cost to other objectives,” or perhaps he didn’t want to. As for my contributions, the loss, if any, would prove to be minimal, since, at the end of 1963, the Alliance for Progress would come to an end.
In mid-October of 1962 I received a request from the White House to work with Arthur Schlesinger on the draft of a speech to be delivered by Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. Meeting with Arthur, I discovered that the subject of the address was to be our discovery that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Thus, although I did not participate in the secret White House deliberations, I was aware of the approaching confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union now known as the Cuban missile crisis. Once the speech was completed, I was scheduled to accompany Douglas Dillon to Mexico City, where a meeting of Latin American foreign ministers was in progress. We were to arrive at the meeting before Kennedy announced his naval quarantine of Cuba, so we might explain the president’s action to the other countries of the hemisphere. In Washington the sense of impending disaster — the possibility of a nuclear exchange — was palpable.
In retrospect, it seems highly unlikely that the Soviet Union would have gone to war to assert its right to place missiles in Cuba. But at the time the danger seemed real. And it was not impossible. Backed into a corner, seeing that our own nuclear force was on full alert, the Soviets might well misjudge our intentions, suspect that our actions were a prelude to a full-scale attack, and decide that their best hope of survival was to strike first. It would have been insanity, but history contains many illustrations of wars initiated as a result of such grotesque misjudgments. A few days before going to Mexico City I called my wife, who was vacationing in Puerto Rico, and told her to meet me in Mexico City. “Why don’t you just come over here, after the conference, and we can have a short vacation,” she responded. “No, you’ve got to go to Mexico City,” I said, “I can’t explain over the phone but you have to go there.” I couldn’t tell her my real reason: If war came, Puerto Rico was doomed, but Mexico City might survive.
As everybody knows, there was no war. The story of the missile crisis has been amply documented in dozens of histories and memoirs. The confrontation — the most dangerous of the postwar period — was to have transforming consequences — for Castro, for Khrushchev, and for Kennedy.
Fidel Castro’s influence in Latin America was severely diminished. He had become a hero, a role model, to leftist forces whose ideology, though Marxist and anti-United States, was intensely nationalistic. During the crisis it became clear that the fate of Cuba was being decided not by the Cubans, but between Kennedy and Khrushchev. To Latins it appeared that Castro had exchanged one master — the United States — for another. As a Peruvian youth leader later told me, “We were for Fidel until we heard the balalaika.”
For Khrushchev, the missile crisis marked the beginning of the end. Like Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs, he had believed the intelligence experts who told him that the missiles could be emplaced in total secrecy (although our reconnaissance capabilities should have been well known), listened to the advisers who assured him that the Americans might protest but wouldn’t act, and yielded to the military chieftains who urged the necessity of restoring the nuclear balance, which, they argued, had shifted to the United States. He would pay for his misjudgment, the product of a Soviet version of secret government, with his job.
Kennedy’s reaction would change the course of his administration. He had seen over the edge of the pit, glimpsed the indifferently consuming flames, which were obscured by the rhetoric of the Cold War. “Contest,” “confrontation,” “deterrence” were — or could be — euphemisms for death. “It is insane,” I heard him say at a small White House meeting, “that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.” Accompanying the shock of recognition was a sense of triumph. Whatever John Kennedy felt he had to prove — determination, courage, will, the skillful use of power — he had proved it: to the world, the country, and to himself. Like some fever that reaches its life-threatening height as the night moves toward dawn, and then begins to break, the Cold War had mounted toward its moment of final agony, hovered for a fear-filled moment, and then had begun to recede. Never again would John Kennedy use the fierce rhetoric of the dedicated Cold Warrior. The next year would bring the test-ban treaty and the American University speech — an invitation to peaceful coexistence based on mutual understanding. And by the end of 1963, Kennedy would begin secret discussions with officials of the Cuban government, hoping to lay the foundation for a meeting with Castro and a peaceful solution to the “Cuban problem.”
Following the missile crisis, I formally resigned from the State Department for a post with the Peace Corps. Although the announcement stated the assignment was “temporary,” Radio Havana knew better, announcing that “actually Goodwin has been eliminated from the ‘brain trust’ which supposedly advises Kennedy on the policy that should be pursued in each of the Latin American countries.”
Moving from the State Department to the Peace Corps was like emerging from the Cretan labyrinth. The minotaur had managed a bite or two. But now I could again breathe the fresh air of open country. Although my work with the Peace Corps would take me to every continent of the world, I had returned to America. The America of the sixties.
Away from the center of power I became aware of, felt part of, the liberating forces outside government that were working to change America. Thousands of men and women — white and black — went south to enlist in the civil rights revolution. Young Americans were seeking a new politics, not only in academic discussions, but through the formation of organizations complete with platforms and manifestos. In Michigan the Port Huron Manifesto became the founding document of the Students for a Democratic Society, whose goal was nothing less than the spiritual enrichment of American society — not through prayer or love-ins, but by diminishing the power of dominant economic institutions and the materialistic obsessions that obstructed individual fulfillment. On the other side of the political spectrum appeared the Young Americans for Freedom, whose libertarian goals were often amazingly convergent with those of their counterparts on what was called the “left,” but which lay outside the framework of traditional labels.
These movements were not then identified with bitter division, or hostility — sometimes violence — toward the established sanctuaries of democratic rule. On the contrary, they reflected, and openly proclaimed, their dedication to the traditional ideals of American freedom, asserted their intention to return the nation to those principles which it had distorted or abandoned. It was, wrote Nan Robertson, in the New York Times, “[t]he bright promise of 1962, that peaceful, simple protest — a sit-in, a boycott, a picket line — could change, indeed had already changed, deeply rooted institutions and prejudices.…” The government of John Kennedy was not at war with these movements; indeed, Kennedy’s own questing vitality, his obvious openness to divergent views — listening even if he rejected — had helped to stimulate the quest for change, the sense of large possibilities. “In 1962,” Harvard professor Stanley Hoffman observed, “some students were disaffected with their government, but it was still their government. They had the basic trust of people brought up to believe it was really theirs.” And not only students, but black men in Alabama, coal miners in Appalachia, peace activists gathered in middle-class suburbs.
“Ask … what you can do for your country,” Kennedy had exhorted, and many took up the challenge; often finding answers he did not agree with, could not accept, but which he had helped to provoke. He had asked people to work to change America, and if their labors took unforeseen, even objectionable forms, it should not have been surprising. If you “let a thousand flowers bloom,” you’re not going to end up with a neatly cultivated rose garden.
The Peace Corps volunteers and the men who organized them — Bill Moyers, Bill Josephson, the formidable idealist/supersalesman Sarge Shriver, and dozens of others — were more closely attuned to this indefinable and still undefined spirit of the sixties than were the vast bureaucracies that surrounded them — from which they had been liberated only because the State Department wanted nothing to do with a harebrained, doomed scheme that had emerged from the irresponsible rhetoric of politics.
At the Peace Corps I assumed the position of secretary-general of the International Peace Corps Secretariat. The purpose of the secretariat was to encourage and assist other industrialized countries to establish Peace Corps of their own. The idea — wholeheartedly approved by Shriver — was mine; the organization was my invention, and both the job and its grandiose title — secretary-general — were creatures of my restless imagination. (I was one of only three secretaries-general in the world, the other two being the chiefs of the United Nations and the Organization of American States.)
During my stay with the Peace Corps I traveled frequently — usually in Shriver’s company — to every part of the world, looked for crocodiles in East Africa, narrowly missed an airplane crash in the desert of southern Iran, and drove the length of Afghanistan from Kabul to the Khyber Pass. Nor was my severance from the center of power complete. I maintained my social contacts with the Kennedy family, continued to accompany Kennedy on his trips to Latin America, and was called upon to draft all his speeches on the Alliance for Progress.
In March of 1963, for example, I went with Kennedy to Costa Rica for a “summit” meeting with the leaders of all the Central American countries. The reception, as usual, was large and enthusiastic. The night of arrival, I sat in Kennedy’s hotel room with Kenny O’Donnell and Dave Powers talking idly with the president, who, his jacket off, his shirt open at the neck, would occasionally walk to the window and wave at the crowd that had gathered in the streets below, and would remain through the night. Each appearance was greeted with cheers and shouts of Viva Kennedy. Returning from one of his cameo appearances, Kennedy said, “If we could only move them all to Ohio, just for the election. I might carry the damn state.” Pointing to some cables that had arrived from our beleaguered missions in Southeast Asia, Kennedy remarked, “Think of all the energy and time we’re putting in over there. This is where we should be putting our attention. It’s all going to be decided down here.” Then: “It’s going to be the biggest foreign-policy issue in the election, Latin America.” A little later, having returned to the window, Kennedy waved me over. “Look down there, Dick … no, near those cars. Now that’s one hell of a woman.… Why don’t you …” His voice trailed off. I was never able to figure out what he was about to ask me. Perhaps he wanted some changes in the next day’s speech.
Yet the enlightening satisfactions of my work with the Peace Corps and my intermittent assignments for the president could not mask the fact that I had descended rather precipitously from Latin American chief in the White House to a relatively minor post. I began to wonder if I might not accomplish more on the outside — working with civil rights, perhaps. There was a lot going on out there.
Indeed, only obstinate pride had kept me in the government; I was damned if I would leave when I was down, give my adversaries the satisfaction of mumbling, “Goodwin’s gone” over Georgetown dinner tables. It wasn’t much of a reason. But it wasn’t self-deception. Then, unexpectedly, in the fall of 1963, at Schlesinger’s suggestion, Kennedy asked me to become his special consultant on the arts, a position that would return me to the White House. I accepted, not because it represented a significant upward move (“Why the hell does Dick want that job anyway?” Kennedy asked Schlesinger) but out of a personal fascination with the artistic world that dated from my pre-political youth, and because it would bring me back to the White House where, with a presidential campaign less than a year away, other things were possible. Unlikely, perhaps, but possible — which, for a habitual risk-taker, was good enough.
It was agreed that before the White House announced my appointment I should assemble a special Council of the Arts to be composed of persons prominent in theater, music, dance, motion pictures, art, and architecture, whose names could be announced simultaneously with mine.
Organizing the council was not my first involvement with government and the arts. That had come early in the administration when Jacqueline Kennedy sent a memorandum to her husband asking if something could be done to help save the monuments of ancient Egypt threatened by the construction of the Aswan Dam.
In the late fifties, engineers foresaw that floodwaters from the dam would drown many of Egypt’s most precious antiquities, including the mammoth Abu Simbel. (If he had to choose between the pyramids and Abu Simbel, André Malraux had written, he’d save Abu Simbel.) The United Nations set out to raise the funds necessary for preservation, but the Eisenhower administration refused to contribute. (Dulles was enraged at Egypt’s acceptance of Soviet aid for the dam project.) In return for contributions, Egypt had offered to give some of the monuments to the donating countries, including, if the donation was large enough, a small temple. Approached by European friends in an effort to reverse America’s position, Mrs. Kennedy had written the memo, which the president then sent on to me “for possible action.” After a brief investigation it became clear that without American help the monuments would perish — not only Abu Simbel, but a large number of statues, temples, and artifacts centered around the island of Philae. I had no doubt about the merits of the project. I was less certain that Kennedy could be persuaded to ask Congress for an appropriation of thirty or forty million dollars to save Egyptian antiquities. With the help of Jerome Wiesner, I carefully prepared my presentation to the president — a large book with pictures of the monuments, summaries of artistic opinion, even a film of Abu Simbel. Finally I entered the Oval Office to make my pitch. Kennedy examined the book, while I explained that the treasures were unique, priceless, part of humanity’s most noble heritage, etc. “That’s all fine,” Kennedy said, “but what do you think Rooney’s going to say when I ask him for forty million dollars to save a bunch of rocks in the middle of the Egyptian desert?” (Congressman Rooney from Brooklyn was chairman of the committee that would decide on this project.) “I know what he’ll say,” Kennedy continued. “He’ll say, ‘Jack, you must be out of your mind. There’s not one Egyptian voter in the whole country.’” I wasn’t going to argue politics with the master. Naturally, Rooney wouldn’t think much of the idea, but he was a Kennedy loyalist. Instead I told Kennedy of the Egyptian promise to give some of the antiquities to contributing countries. “Imagine, Mr. President,” I concluded, “Napoleon only brought an obelisk back to Paris. You can bring an entire temple to Washington.” He looked at me for a moment, those steel blue eyes unwavering, enigmatic. I’ve gone too far, I thought. Then Kennedy leaned back in his chair as if pondering a difficult decision, and smiled broadly — “Let’s give it a try.”
Kennedy talked to Rooney. Rooney said, “Jack, you must be out of your mind, but if that’s what you want, I’ll try it.” The money was appropriated. And the preservation was successful.
Now all I had to do was pick the temple. I asked a group of Egyptologists to meet me in New York, where we examined pictures of the dozen or so temples from which we could choose. The experts quickly narrowed the selection to three or four. One of them, I noticed, had a long stone walkway leading up to the façade. “What is that?” I asked. “It led to the banks of the Nile,” one of the experts explained, “so the temple could be approached by boat.” It’ll be perfect for the Potomac, I thought to myself; we can reconstruct the walkway and do what has to be done to protect it from the climate. “Let’s take that one,” I said aloud. There was no objection. But by the time the temple of Dendur was ready for shipment, I had left the government; and the energetic Thomas Hoving had persuaded a then indifferent government to let it go to the Metropolitan Museum, where it can be seen today; an incongruity of place only partially redeemed by its nearness to the New York apartment of Jacqueline Kennedy, whose intervention brought it to America.
The weekend of November 16, I flew to Palm Beach to work on a speech on the Alliance for Progress that Kennedy was to give to a convention of publishers in Miami. Unfortunately, the audience was composed of fairly conservative publishers (i.e., businessmen), who were not very enthusiastic about our “leftist” Latin policies; and a tired Kennedy was not in his best form.
Tuesday, November 19, I was standing in Evelyn Lincoln’s office when the president walked in, saw me, said he thought the speech went well. He then picked up a copy of the Washington Daily News. The headline read, “Kennedy Gets Mild Response from Publishers.” Kennedy was infuriated. “Imagine a guy like Scripps, or was it Howard, was sitting right there and then lets a story like this appear. It serves me right to talk to publishers. I don’t want to talk to publishers again. It doesn’t do any good. What about that dinner in New York? Do I have to do that?” He started to reenter his office, then turned toward me, saying, “Come and see me tomorrow.”
Wednesday, November 20, the day before Kennedy was scheduled to leave for Texas, I accompanied a group of Latin American artists and intellectuals to the White House. They urged him to appoint his brother Robert Kennedy as head of all Latin American affairs — a kind of hemispheric superchief.
“It’s a good idea,” Kennedy responded. “I understand you’re going to see the attorney general later in the day. Why don’t you ask Bobby if he’ll take the job.” (Bobby was receptive, but noncommittal.)
That afternoon, Arthur Schlesinger and I went to the president’s office with the names of some people I wished to add to the Council of the Arts. Before we began our discussion of the arts, we suggested — again — that Kennedy create the special post of undersecretary of state for Latin America (thus elevating it above the other geographic regions) and, to ensure that a higher title would mean higher authority, appoint a relative to the job — if not Bobby, then Sarge Shriver.
“Dammit,” Kennedy replied, “I’ve told Rusk three times that I thought we should have an undersecretary for Latin affairs. All I get back is that it’s being studied. Arthur, you and Dick write a memo for me to sign. Say that I already know the reasons why I can’t do it. Now I want the reasons why I can do it.”
Kennedy then looked at my list of suggested names for the arts council, said, “Fine,” then asked if we could “put on James Fleming of Indiana. He’s been very helpful to us.” I agreed, of course. I said that the more I’d thought about the arts council, I realized it really could be something far more than a public relations thing — worrying about who came to dinner at the White House. That it should concern itself with the entire problem of the aesthetics of our society — the way our cities looked, the beauty of our environment as well as the general encouragement of the arts. I said that I thought this whole business of the aesthetics of our society could be to him what conservation was to Teddy Roosevelt.
“It’s a good idea,” he said, “let’s work on it,” and then, preoccupied, walked toward the door, saying, “I never want to talk to those damn publishers, never!”
I left, never to see Kennedy again.
The morning of Thursday, November 21, I received a call from Milton Esterow of the New York Times. He told me he was writing a story for the next day’s paper, revealing Kennedy’s intention to appoint me presidential adviser on the arts. There would be a profile on me as that day’s “Man in the News.” (The forgotten morning edition of November 22 carried the feature. It was something more than ironic.) I told him nothing was definite, but he ignored this. He obviously had the story pretty cold. He asked me some personal questions for the profile and I answered them. If he was going to write it anyway, I wanted it to be as good as possible. I was convinced Esterow’s story would be fairly favorable since he would be dependent upon future contacts with me for stories and information in his assignment covering arts and Washington for the New York Times.
After speaking with Esterow, I called the president’s party in Texas, talked to the assistant press secretary, and told him about the Esterow story. In less than an hour he called me back and said the president wanted me to prepare a statement on my appointment and send it down for release on Friday afternoon, November 22. That night I went to a party for a group of Latin American intellectuals and artists, where I danced, ate, drank until 4 A.M. And I could easily write the announcement in a couple of morning hours.
The distance that the dead have gone
Does not at first appear;
Their coming back seems possible
For many an ardent year.
— Emily Dickinson.
I did not ordinarily keep a diary, being too weary for writing at the end of a twelve-hour workday. Yet there were occasions when I yielded to an inner compulsion to record — not for history, but to clarify my experience, or simply as catharsis. I made such notes more often than usual toward the end of November in 1963 — and use them here in an effort to convey the immediacy which time has blurred. They are repeated as written, slightly edited for clarification, with any present amplifications clearly identified.
Friday morning, November 22. I woke up late, head pounding from the revelries of the night before, went to my typewriter to prepare the statement of my appointment, sat there looking through the morning paper waiting for my head to clear. The story was very favorable, without the snide cracks that usually accompanied articles about me (brash, inexperienced, arrogant, etc.). The picture was nice and the whole thing had a good tone and ring. With a sense of excitement about my new job, I set to work on the statement.
It was midafternoon before I finished. After the statement was completed, I called Kenny O’Donnell’s White House office, telling the secretary that I had some more names for the arts council and would she make sure that they went to Kenny in Texas.
At this point, her voice broke: “Oh! Mr. Goodwin. Don’t you know? The president is dead! He was killed in Texas. Somebody shot him.”
“He’s dead,” I said.
“Yes, oh yes.”
I knew by the tone of her voice there was no doubt.
I ran into my bedroom where my wife Sandra was napping. “Sandra, the president’s dead. He was shot in Texas.” “You’re kidding,” she said sleepily. “No,” I said, “it’s true, he’s dead.” I sat on the floor, shaking, my body rocking involuntarily: “No, oh no.” “It can’t be true.” “It is true.” I was crying. It was unbelievable, stunning. An awful feeling of helplessness — nothing could be done, no recall. It — he — was over, done, finished. My only instinct was to dress and go to the White House. I knew I couldn’t stay home. I dressed quickly, unseeingly, dazedly. I drove to the White House in tears, sobbing in the car. I clung to the wheel and watched the road with a ferociously forced concentration of energies. I had to make it. The city was quiet. There was traffic. Nothing seemed very different. A maze of thoughts. Jackie, Bobby … Johnson was president … My future. But under it, over it, swarming anguish … loss. He was dead. My God, he couldn’t be dead. A line repeated insistently, an involuntary drumbeat in my mind: “Full fathom five my father lies, of his bones are corals made.”
There was no parking in the avenue beside the West Wing, so I parked illegally on the street. I was not to return until 6 A.M. the next morning. I went up to Ralph Dungan’s office. There was a meeting going on. Sarge Shriver was in charge. Mac Bundy, Sorensen, many others, were there. I felt I couldn’t go in — curious insider/outsider that I was. I felt that walking in might seem as if I was asserting my right to belong when no assertion was right, or could be made — at a time when ego or the signs of ego had to disappear forever, or at least for now. I slumped in the chair in the outer office, controlling myself, sitting quietly, looking down. Others came by — Bill Wirtz, Celebrezze sat in the next chair. We said nothing. Nothing could be said. Tears had to be stopped, controlled, passion hidden. Bundy went in and out.
We began to work on the arrangements for that evening. The body would arrive in the early evening, after dark. Johnson would be there. He had been sworn in on the plane. Kennedy’s body would lie in state. Would the casket be open or closed? It should be closed. Everyone agreed. But it would be up to the family. Arthur Schlesinger came in followed by Ken Galbraith and Kay Graham. Arthur was crying. Ken had tears and his face was streaked with feeling. Kay sat quietly on the couch, sorrowing. Arthur said — What kind of a country is this? Those who preached hate and violence, the far right. This was their doing. Our fault was that we had never taken them seriously. I couldn’t listen. I nodded agreement, moved away.
I heard the helicopters landing on the South Lawn. The staff was flying to the airport to meet the incoming plane. I didn’t want to join a greeting party, a masquerade, a delegation to meet flesh empty of life, of meaning. I went to the rear entrance of the White House toward the helicopters, torn, uncertain. I couldn’t go … went back to see if I could help Sarge, who remained. We slumped in chairs, talked for a moment or two. He said little; his face was drawn but he maintained control of himself, of the situation.
People began returning. They had seen the casket come off the plane — Jackie behind it. Soon word came that the casket had gone to the Bethesda Naval Hospital, would be brought back later that night to lie in state in the East Room. Jackie wanted the East Room to look as it did when Lincoln’s body lay there. I grabbed the Sandburg biography from the Cabinet Room. It had a description which I brought over to Bill Walton (a family friend and artist who had been asked to prepare the room). Bill was already at work. Arthur got someone to go to the Library of Congress. They returned with a contemporary sketch and newspaper description of Lincoln lying in state in the East Room. It had been open to the public. Sarge said there wouldn’t be time for that. The public would view it at the Capitol Rotunda.
We learned that Jackie and Bobby had gone to the hospital with the casket. We were told the body would be prepared there; we could tell the man from Gawlers undertakers to leave. Someone did. We worked on the East Room. We got an upholsterer, the same man who had upholstered the White House furniture for Jackie. We needed a catafalque and were told there was one over at Fort Myer like the one used for Lincoln. We sent for it. We were told everything should be ready by 12:30. I went over, said the middle chandelier would have to come down. Walton said, “Let’s wait and see how big the catafalque is.” I said, “It was done for Lincoln … look at the picture.” He said, a little irritated, “Let’s see.” We were all a little frantic, concentrating on details, controlling our feelings, trying not to get annoyed by minor disagreements, keeping absorbed in the work. Sarge said he wanted an honor guard along the curved entrance, and lights to light them. The White House man said TV lights would do it. Sarge said no. They were too bright. Much discussion about small 150-watt spots: Could they be put in trees? Not possible. Finally, we went to the D.C. police department for small flares which they used in streets. Shriver said troops would come to form an honor guard inside the White House, and along the outside walk. We worked to decorate the East Room with black crepe. It was going slowly. Much debate as to whether the folds around the chandelier were deep enough. I said I didn’t think so — it looked a little ludicrous, like a black brassiere or short panties. The symbolism of women’s underwear kept popping into my mind. I thought it would look a little absurd, perhaps obscene. Walton disagreed. I was upset. It seemed terribly important. It wasn’t.
The time had been postponed to 1:30. The catafalque had not yet arrived. I called the military office, asked where it was. It was getting late. They put a tracer on it, sent men out looking for it as it had left the fort. I was harsh. We need it right away, hurry up. It shortly arrived. It had no superstructure and so the chandelier didn’t have to come down. We set it up in the middle of the room. Black stand in black base.
The candlesticks were too big and ornate, metallic. We got four others, simpler, with glossy wooden arms. We tested them to see if they would light. I lit one with a match. They did light. The priests arrived and sat around. Four small stands for kneeling were set up. Two on the side of the catafalque facing entrance for priests. Two other at foot of casket for mourners. We needed a crucifix. The one they had was too big. Sarge sent out to his house for his crucifix, saying, “Of course, I’d be honored if they used mine. It was given to me by Cardinal Gibbon” (his godfather, I think).
Time of arrival kept getting postponed. I walked out many times into the front entrance of the White House. It was crisply cool. Along the driveway, toward the gates, the bright TV lights shone. A crowd of people silently gathered along the front fence and across the street. I had gone down to Janet Travell and gotten some Dexamil and took one. She asked me to lie down for five minutes. I said I couldn’t, “Thank you very much, Janet,” took pills with me, and went. We kept drinking coffee. It was brought out to us. And then sandwiches. Over in Dungan’s office we had eaten hamburgers. I went in the kitchen a couple of times for coffee as the night wore on. The troops for the inside honor guard had come in. We debated their placement. The troops who were to line the driveway had not arrived. I spoke harshly to Shepard (a military aide), as did Sarge. Shepard ordered the troops to come from the marine barracks at 3th and I. They arrived a few minutes before the coffin. There were only about fifteen of them. Instead of stationing them along the walk, we decided they should form a double column and march up the driveway ahead of the hearse. They were brought down to stand at the gate. They double-timed up from the rear and through the front entrance, where they went into formation and were told what to do.
I walked inside. Arthur and Bill Wirtz were talking in the Blue Room. Pierre Salinger had arrived, looking haggard. His plane with Rusk had been an hour and a half out of Honolulu when the word came. They turned around, refueled in twenty-five minutes, and flew straight back. In the plane all had been quiet, no one moved or said anything for half an hour. Then people played bridge, talked softly, read papers as the came. Rusk had a quiet talk with those in the plane. Pierre looked very distraught and went off.
I stood on the front portico, out of sight of reporters and cameramen. I wanted to see the car enter. It came in, black, dark, headlights, the guard began its march. I rushed through the back entrance to the far corner of the East Room, where we had agreed to stand. Pierre was there, and Arthur and Bill and Ralph, and the others who had worked there that night. We waited in silence, grief. The casket slowly came in the door. I tried, but could not stop sobbing. He was there, in that casket. They placed the casket on the catafalque. Mrs. Kennedy stood there beside Bobby. Kenny and Larry came in behind them and moved to the side.
She had on a pink dress, some said it was bloodstained but I didn’t see the blood. Her face was fixed straight ahead, lovely, painful to see. A small altar boy, wearing a cassock and carrying a forked metal taper, went to light the candles. They lit with great difficulty. He stood in front of one for several seconds. It finally lit. He went to the last one. It wouldn’t light. Finally his taper went out and he took out a match to relight it, but, as he did, the candle started up into life and he walked away. We were all immobile, every attention fixed on the boy and his efforts to light the candle, let it light! Yet not caring. Time seemed to stand still. The priest said a short prayer. Mrs. Kennedy walked over to the coffin, knelt on the base, turned her head away from where we were standing, rested her cheek along the flag which draped the coffin. Her hands went up over it, embracing the casket for a moment. She got up. Bobby held her by the arm as she walked out. The rest of us stood there for a moment, weeping.
Then we all started to go. I moved a little from room to room. I saw Sarge and Jean Smith come in and kneel in prayer on the two stands beside the casket. Bobby came down. He opened the casket and asked Bill and Arthur to look. They were debating whether it should be open. But, Arthur told me, the reconstructed face was white and waxy. It didn’t look like him. It was open for 5–10 minutes and then closed forever. It would be closed for the funeral and while lying in state at the Capitol.
I stood way down the corridor. I couldn’t talk to anyone. Finally Arthur and Bob McNamara left and I followed them out to my car. It was about 5:15. I took Joe English home and then drove to Arthur’s house in Georgetown. He was seated in front of his typewriter. I sat, we drank, consoled each other with our talk. We mentioned Oswald briefly but it was the dream talk of fatigue and grief-ridden men. I left as the sun was rising, went to bed about 6:30, to rise the next day at 8:30.
Saturday, November 23: I woke at 8:30, dressed, and returned to the White House — to Dungan’s office. We waited there, working on more details. Sandra arrived at about 11:30. We went over to the line to pass in front of the casket. We filed slowly through the Blue and Green rooms and into the East Room. The line went across the room and past the coffin. There were tears and the contorted features of controlled anguish everywhere. Sandra passed by crying. I paused a moment in front of the casket — it was unimaginable that he lay in that box. I tried to picture it but I couldn’t. I tried to think the right profound thoughts about destiny … blighted hope … freshness decayed … all that was wanted, that could have been. But the thoughts were unreal. I could not escape from myself. There were tears. They came from another part of me of which I was not then aware, or was too tired to be aware. We went past and down and back to Arthur’s office. Marion Schlesinger and the children came in. We said hello, subdued, trying not to look at each other, struggling to recapture poise. They left and went to view the coffin. Sandra and I sat there, silently, trying not to think, yet struggling to imagine. Arthur and Marion returned. We sat and talked. Arthur said how he wanted to leave now, it had all gone for him. He had come to Washington not in search of a job but to work for JFK. He had planned to leave after the election anyway. It was not yet time to argue our intentions. Passion had to drain away before discussion could begin. Sandra came back. A little later, I left. I would see everyone at the Occidental Restaurant. In the West Wing I met Sarge with Joe English, Bill Haddad, and others. Sarge began to tell anecdotes about the Peace Corps. Our loud conversation, even laughter, contrasted with the muffled atmosphere around us. Sorensen came and sat down by himself at a table — quiet, unseeing, only his drawn pale features betraying emotion.
Then there were the ceremonies of mourning and burial. There is no need for description. The long silent lines outside the Capitol, the ritual mass, a riderless horse, the roar of jets overhead in the formation of death, a meticulously folded flag placed in the widow’s arms, all implanted in the memory of the living, later exposed to the half-comprehending perceptions of the then unborn. For a moment a turbulently discordant America was fused in a single sentiment, joined by an irrecoverable departure.
And not just in America. Young people grieved in the streets of Moscow. On the plateau of the Andes, campesinos knelt in the fields. On a remote river in the Sudan, a young American stopped at the single store in a small village to buy food. The old man behind the counter slowly wrote down the prices on a piece of scrap paper and, after he had calculated the total, he carefully, slowly, scraped a dark penciled border around the bill. The American watched patiently and, when it was finished, asked why he had done that. “Haven’t you heard?” the old man said evenly. “The greatest man in the world is dead today.”
It was the first worldwide mourning in history. And perhaps the last.