WITH THE KENNEDYS CHP13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Copyrighted

With the campaign over I kept a personal promise to Marina and flew to Dallas. Though it was against every instinct in my soul, I said I would save her marriage to Lee, and my contacts within the Democratic Party would assure the success of my plan.
The bungalow was now a museum to Jane Fonda. Outside was a huge sign reading, FAIR PLAY FOR JANE.

Inside pictures of Jane in every conceivable pose, stills from her films: “Getting Straight”, “Zabriskie Point”, the anti-Kennedy war thriller “M*A*S*H” (she, of course, played the repressed Nurse Hoolihan), “The Raspberry Statement” (famous for its marvelous soundtrack by composer Wild Man Fischer), and the pro-“Shippie”, “Alice’s Floating Restaurant” with its famous pro-Zionist song lyrics, “You can get anything you choose/At Alice’s Restaurant for Jews.”

Marina was in emotional shambles.
“It get much worse, Norm. He call me Jane in close encounters.”
“What time does Lee get home from work?”
“Lee work till eight. School just start two months ago. Lots of returned books.”
“Well, at nine your troubles will all be over.”
Marina hugged me and cried chokingly on my shoulder.
“He make fun of me all the time,” she sobbed. “He say he wish I was Negro. Then I be Black Russian. I no get it. He laugh.”

Lee came home at eight as Marina said and was thrilled to see me. But all he could talk about was Jane Fonda and the work he had done in her behalf. At nine, my friend, Senator Tom Hayden of California arrived with his new bride, Jane Fonda. When Lee first saw Jane he practically melted.
“Your highness,” he said, “How I’ve waited for this moment.”
“Lee,” she answered. “I dearly appreciate what you’ve done for me. Because of you I’ve landed my first serious role. I will be playing, not just playing, starring in a film called ‘Klute’. My first starring role,”
She kissed him and Lee turned beet red.
“May I offer you some borscht?” said Marina, trying to make her presence felt. “Lee hates the stuff, but he is my husband, you know.”

“No, thank you, dear,” said Jane. “But I’d like you to meet my husband. Tom and I married yesterday. I wanted Lee to be the first to know. Even the press hasn’t gotten wind of it yet.”
Lee sulked the rest of the evening. The next day the sign on the lawn came down as did the pictures in the living room one by one, followed by the bedroom and ending with the last still from the semi-classic, “Candy”, in the bathroom beside the shower stall.

I had saved one marriage and decided to initiate another. It wasn’t the most romantic place for a proposal, but I asked Marilyn to marry me in Abe Zapruder’s new film studio. She accepted without hesitation, and Abe broke out the schnapps to celebrate.
I phoned the President with the announcement. I wanted him to be the first to know, even before my parents.
“Norm” he said, “I’m only here two more months, but I’d like, as my last Presidential act, to be the host of a White House wedding.”
“Me, married in the White House?”
“I think it’s rather appropriate,” he answered. “And tell the Sitzmans not to worry about the costs. I can get the hall wholesale, and I’ve got a great caterer who owes me one. Oh yes, he’s Kosher.”

What a wedding it was. First we went to City Hall for the license. There I had a double ceremony. Lee and Marina were finally wedded legally with Marilyn and I. Though I considered Lee as best man, the President was, naturally, my final choice, though Marina was a maid of honor.

After the ceremony, the fun began. First the President made a toast. “I’d like to raise a toast to a man whose fate is intertwined with mine and Norm’s. This man was to be blamed for my murder. But Norm prevented my premature dismissal from life, and Lee became a great soldier and true patriot. Everyone, please rise. I toast Lee Harvey Oswald.”

With great emotion I stood up, took a sip of wine which the President accosted from my lips. He threw the wine glass into the punch bowl and said, “Until a hundred and twenty,” and then the show began.

First, Marilyn was photographed in her lovely bridal gown, designed by Abe Zapruder and photographed by him. He had sold the dress factory and begun a business that today is common: the filming of weddings, bar mitzvahs, graduations and special occasions. Little did Marilyn realize when she first bought him the Bell and Howell 8mm camera where it would all lead.

Then the entertainment. The President had gathered a group of the finest popular Jewish musicians of the time. Jan Peerce was our cantor of the ceremony, but in the evening he invited such Jewish musical stars as Leslie Gore and Neil Diamond to perform as well as Jewish bands such as Country Joe and the Fish, Janis Joplin and the Doors, and for the quiet moments guitarist Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield serenaded us with their acoustic guitars while the guests ate and conversed.
The President invited only two representatives from television, both Jewish: Barbara Walters of CBS and the soft spoken Mike Wallace of ABC. They made me a national figure, and because of this Marilyn appeared on the covers of Vogue and Cosmopolitan. But her sweet demeanor never changed with fame and some minor notoriety.

But the beginning of 1969, just a week later, brought in the Reagan era, and my life in politics slowed down considerably. But there were moments here and there.
For instance, the ex-President was to receive an honorary PHD from Yale University and asked me to write an appropriate speech. I wrote the now famous lines which the President delivered with such great timing: “Now I have the best of two worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree.” It was hard to say, but reports were that the Harvard crowd laughed harder at the delivery.

By an odd coincidence, three of us Democratic survivors went into sports. Hubert Humphrey headed a group that bought the Minnesota Vikings in 1969. Humphrey hired a Minnesota coach who had been a winner in Canada, named Bud Grant. Grant lured former Rose Bowl star, quarterback Joe Japp, from his team in Western Canada, and tightened his defensive front four, later called the Purple People Eaters. While that line consisting of Eller and Wrong Way Marshall, so called because he once picked up a fumble and ran it for a touchdown in the wrong end zone, stopped all opposition running attacks, Kapp, though he could never throw a ball properly, kept hitting wide receiver Gene Washington for touchdowns while fullback Oscar brown sent shivers down the spines of league defenders. Humphrey had created a dynasty.

Meanwhile, the Kennedy brothers bought the Boston Bruins, their local hockey club. After acquiring Phil Esposito, a journeyman center from the Chicago Black Hawks and placing him on a line, with former hacks Wayne Cashman and Ken Hodge, had created the greatest line in hockey history. Bobby Orr, their new defenseman, teamed up brilliantly with his partner, Don Awrey, and average players such as Dallas Smith, Pie Face Mackenzie and 52 year old Johnny Bucyk, became inspired by the smell of victory. The Kennedys also produced a winner.

And I was chairman of the new board of the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. I moved back to Detroit where I hadn’t lived since student days, to be closer to my family. I participated in Jewish organizations, and one decided to honor former Tigers star, Hank Greenberg with some sort of honor. One thing led to another and we funded the new Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Detroit. I hosted the opening ceremony when I personally inducted Sid Luckman, my distant cousin Sandy Koufax, Dolph Shayes, and the deceased boxer Benny Leonard into the Hall. A year later I inducted Maxie Rosenbloom, Red Auerbach and Canadiens owner, Sam Pollock, into the exclusive fraternity of great American sports legends. Though no Europeans were to be inducted, Canadians were since there is very little difference between our and their culture, and we share teams in the same professional leagues and sports.

Of course, this led to my appointment as the chairman of the Jewish Cultural Hall of Fame in Los Angeles. I personally inducted the great comedians Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, George Burns, Jerry Lewis and the Three Stooges into the Hall of Greats. Tony Curtis inducted the late Clara Bow, John Garfield and Paul Muni in the acting field while Sophie Tucker inducted the late Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor and Fanny Brice into the vocal section.

But politically this was a hopelessly slow period for Democratic Presidential politics, and I have little to report. Bobby spent a year in Mexico claiming he ate, of all things, mushrooms and communed with a wise Indian philosopher. He returned politically refreshed and won a Senate seat in New York, though he set up residence there only six months before and hated the place. He preferred Oregon or Colorado, but there were no political openings in sight there, and New York was expediently chosen as his new home.

I got off the hook personally when Earl Warren, after spending two years investigating the Teamsters, declared that “Teamster activities are guided by one man and one man alone, Mr. Jimmy Hoffa. After extensive and exhaustive study we have found Mr. Hoffa to be an exemplary citizen, and any charges of misdeeds are entirely unfounded.” President Reagan dropped all charges against him, and Jimmy took over the reins of the Union until his disappearance six months later. Of course, two years later his body was discovered in many pieces at the bottom of Miami Harbor.

Life was not easy for President Reagan. After the patrol boat Pueblo was seized off the North Korean coast in the spring of ’69, Reagan ordered the bombing raid of Pyong Yang and all the crew members were murdered by the angered victims of the raid.
General Westmoreland, who was supervising the tragic retreat from Vietnam, demanded a landing on North Korea by sea and an attack from the 38th parallel. Reagan rejected the idea and Westmoreland took his views to the press. Reagan had no choice but to fire his wayward General, and he appeared before Congress uttering his immortal observation that “Old soldiers don’t die. They just quietly fade away.”

Westmoreland had the noisiest fading away in history, attacking Reagan’s weaknesses at rallies, ticket tape parades and suppers. He cut into Reagan’s popularity tremendously to our great amusement and joy. 1972’s prospects brightened as Reagan completed Kennedy’s hated retreat yet refused to accept responsibility for punitive action against the “Pueblo massacre.” Already Salinger suggested as a future campaign slogan, “Remember the Pueblo.” But as a sloganeer, Salinger was not respected by the Kennedys. As John once told me, “Do you know what he once suggested as a slogan for my programs? The New Frontier. Can you believe that cliche? After the New Deal he has the nerve to try and rehash something as dumb as the New Frontier.” Actually, my slogan, the Great Society, was the one that stuck within the administration, though the public at large took no notice of the catchy coinage.

Reagan, himself, was no great sloganeer. He plagiarized Kennedy’s Inauguration question, butchered it in fact, reflecting the new mood in America. At his first State of the Union Address he said, “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what you can do for yourself.”

Reagan turned out to be quite a political novice. During his presidency he had received small gifts from supporters, a stereo from bobby Baker, some fertilizer for his ranch from Bill Sol Estes. Then when the press blew these incidents up he was embroiled in a conflict-of-interest scandal, resolved only when it was discovered he had taped his Oval Room conversations and had to hand over these tapes to a Senate investigating committee, though one tape had a mysterious gap of eighteen minutes apparently caused by his secretary pressing on the erase pedal while she was peaking on the phone. The damning conversation, now called the “smoking gun,” went as follows:
Baker: Ron, the speakers give a (expletive deleted) sound. Listen to this Connie Francis disc.
Connie Francis: Lipstick on your collar told a tale on you.
President: (unintelligible)
Connie Francis: Lipstick on your collar said you were untrue.
Baker: (unintelligible) woofers, (unintelligible), tweeters.
Connie Francis: Bet your bottom dollar, you and I are through.
President: (unintelligible) How much is it?
Connie Francis: ‘Cause lipstick on your collar.
Baker: (unintelligible) dollars.
Connie Francis: Told a tale on you.
President: (expletive deleted)
Baker: That’s the going rate.
Connie Francis: Yeah, told a tale on you.
President: Alright. I’ll that the (expletive deleted) deal.
Connie Francis: Mmmmm. Told a tale on you.

Further difficulties arose in his Presidency. The space program suffered a major setback as Neil Armstrong set his foot on the moon said, “This is one small step for mankind, whoops,” and was never heard from again as he sunk into the lunar quicksand. Soviet unmanned flights were sending back more information, cheaper and without the loss of astronauts, and Reagan was caught in his own Sputnik-like controversy. Bobby, grabbing on the weakness, began speaking of a “rocket gap” with the Soviets, a phrase I humbly take credit for.

Two diplomatic failures also marred the Reagan Presidency. In a last gasp effort at international prestige, Reagan sent a stuttering college professor, Henry Kissinger, to China to try and mend fences there. Two days after his arrival, Kissinger was arrested for spying and still languishes in Chung Chu prison despite intense diplomatic efforts to free him.

And of course, there was the Kirkpatrick episode. A democratic intellectual, Jean Kirkpatrick, was appointed Ambassador to Uganda. Invited one evening to a dinner at the Presidential Palace of Idi Amin she disappeared and was rumored to have been eaten by the President and his cabinet.

Criticizing Reagan became a media passion. On a television interview Reagan was asked by meek Mike Wallace who his favorite president was. Reagan said Wilson because of his unbending principles. Perhaps a noble choice, but the press compared Reagan to Wilson, a weak politician who got none of his grand plans to work, and the image stuck.

Then came the disastrous interview. Gay Liberation was new to America, but led by Walter Jenkins it became a potent issue. Gay, an underground codeword for queer, started flexing its political muscles and affecting mayoral elections on the West Coast. Reagan agreed to be interviewed by Playboy, a magazine founded in the fifties, propounding antiquated liberal sexual views, but kept alive by a combination of tradition and an aging readership. The interviewer asked Reagan where he stood on gay rights, and he gave a typically political answer, neither for nor opposed. He said though he himself felt lust in the heart occasionally for some men that his strong sense of morality prevented him acting against his better nature.

Naturally he was attacked both for his admission and for agreeing to be interviewed by such a lurid magazine. And on this point I must agree with the media. It is beneath a President’s dignity to appear in the same magazine as half-clothed nubile young women. Marilyn was especially upset by this breach of the sanctity of the Presidency.

But Reagan had his moments. It was he who suggested a Cuban team in the American Baseball League, and it was at his urging that freed insurgent Fidel Castro agreed to coach the team. And it was their victory over the Mets in the 1970 World Series that cemented Cuban-American relations.
And the shrewd futurist prepared a new candidate for ’72. Reagan kicked off the opening of the ’70 Super Bowl won by the Buffalo Bills over the Kansas City Chiefs. Preferring to go with the winner, he invited Jack Kemp over Len Dawson to a personal dinner highly publicized by the media. He claimed Kemp was highly articulate and a natural leader. How funny is fate. Had the Chiefs won, it could have been Len Dawson sitting in the Senate and vying for a future Presidency.

It is a peculiarity of American politics that athletes who get in the news get into power. Inspired by Joan Kennedy’s example, two women swimmers, Sharon Wichman and Kaye Hall accepted their gold medals in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics by holding their fists in the air in the feminist salute during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner, and instead of being punished now sit in the California Legislature, and U.S. Congress, elected by a misguided but activist female constituency. And even entertainers like Reagan himself are at an advantage. Pat Paulsen, a star of the hilarious, though anti-Kennedy Smothers Brothers Show, took a joke write-in candidacy where he declared his opponent to be a “known heterosexual,” into a genuine house seat.

Yet one can never find a formula for success in American politics. Bob Beamon is a loser. At the ’68 Olympics he broke both legs in the long jump event, yet today he is the first black mayor of Wichita, Kansas. There is just no simple explanation for voter preference. Once the media makes the public aware of a person even a good, though losing, try can be an attribute

By 1970 the philanderies of Michigan Senator Jim Royal had become rumor and then confirmed. A Senate seat was going to be open, and the Michigan Democratic Part tried to draft me to run for it. Though pregnant with our first child, Marilyn encouraged me to run for it, but I had to speak to the Kennedys first. They were my benefactors, after all.

A meeting at the Chappaquidic home of Teddy was arranged. It was very peaceful there. Teddy’s two children took their swimming lessons from their able teacher, Mary Joe, while the meeting took place. A surprise guest arrived, William Randolph Hearst II. While his daughter and her friend, Squeaky Fromme, splashed in the pool with Mary Joe and the Kennedy children, high politics as being decided. Hearst came to say his Detroit paper would back my candidacy unconditionally. That meant a lot of votes.

But the Kennedys had mixed feelings about the candidacy, and John was violently opposed to it.
“Reporters start looking into candidates,” he said. “Things are discovered, other things are revealed. It can be embarrassing,” he said.
“But, Mr. President, I have nothing to hide.”
“You think you have nothing to hide. You don’t know what you have to hide.”

I didn’t understand the implication that Bobby made the final statement. “John, we have something good for us in the future. Let’s say I try of ’72. Norm here would carry on the line so to speak. I couldn’t ask Teddy to be my Vice-President. That would look ridiculous . But Norm here would be a very good candidate if he’s been an acceptable Senator.

For some reason that ended the discussion. I would be running against Bill Milliken with the blessings of Hearst and the Kennedys.
The fight against Bill Milliken was touchy, but I came out the victor. I was a good Senator, though not a controversial one. I was loyal and voted with my Party. But I knew that ’72 and the Vice-Presidency was my objective. Bobby had to win.

There was a lot of objection to Bobby at first. He was considered ruthless because of the way he harassed the now-martyred Jimmy Hoffa. Previous to the New Hampshire Primary it looked like the Presidential candidate would be Ed Muskie. But an odd event occurred. Thinking he was one of the gang, he called a group of French Canadians “Canucks.” The Manchester newspaper, a proud and independent journal, called Muskie a racist and made attacks on his wife’s character. On a snowy evening, Muskie broke down in tears before the TV cameras.
“Look, my wife’s not perfect. Some nights, I mean some days, she can be, she can be, I mean, sometimes she’s a bit, but over all, she’s…”
And then the tears flowed unabashedly. He was through, and Bobby was in. No one was prepared for Muskie falling to pieces, and we were there to pick them up. The years in Mexico and the years in New York had prepared Bobby for his task, and what a candidate he was.

The Republicans had chosen Vice-President Agnew as their candidate. Though Agnew would not have run had Reagan decided to, the Pueblo massacre and public dissatisfaction with his lack of reprisal led to his resignation speech on the eve of the New Hampshire Primary. He swore on national television that he would seek peace with North Korea, and he would not seek nor accept the candidacy of his Party.
Angew’s main rival was General Westmoreland, but heisted Pentagon documents, edited by former State Department official, Daniel Ellsberg, and published in the Los Angeles Times, revealed Westmoreland’s role in the retreat from Asia. The General was shown to be a party to deceit of the American public and far less resolute than his public image revealed. Agnew’s reputation for scrupulous honesty won him the nomination.

But Agnew could not live down Reagan’s failures. Even with the burden of a Jewish Vice-President, Bobby won thirty-eight states and the Presidency. Marilyn was so proud the night we won. She would be Second Lady and our son, Aaron, twelfth child.
It was at the Inauguration that my life finally made sense to me. Of course it was a busy time for all of us. On the podium Rod McKuen read one of his lovely pieces of poetry, and the new coach of the Cuban baseball club, Che Guevara, a former guerilla who recanted revolution in favor of money, gave a moving speech recounting the closer ties between his country and our since the first Kennedy Administration.

Then Bobby gave his speech and for the first time in almost a decade, I played no role in its content. But I was Bobby’s major theme. He stated that for the first time a Jew and the son of Holocaust refugees was Vice-President of our great Republic, and if evil or unfortunate fate held sway that I would lead the nation. He spoke of my experience as a rebirth, and that was to be America’s experience under his administration—a rebirth. That was the label that stuck with him through his successful years as President.

Just before the Inauguration Ball Bobby and John called me into a private study in the White House. John was first to let me know.
“Norm” he said, “I’ll be blunt. You’re my brother.”
“Well, sir,” I replied, “I’ve always felt close to you, and I appreciate…”
“Norm,” Bobby interrupted. “In 1939 Golda Meir spent time in London as representative of the Jewish Agency there. My father, Joseph P. Kennedy, met with Golda on many occasions. She was soliciting American support for the concept of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. As it turns out they had what today we call a fling. Perhaps more than that. From the letters we have in our archives we believe he genuinely loved her.”
“You’re not trying to say…”

“Norm,” said John. “You are the result of their liaison. You were born on a kibbutz in Palestine in 1940. Your foster parents had escaped to Palestine from Germany but found life there too difficult. Golda made a search. She wanted a couple who applied both for adoption of a child and a visa to America. When your foster parents were located and interviewed, both you and their visas were granted. Golda took care of the adoption, my father arranged the visa.”

“Why didn’t she just raise me?”
“You weren’t her husband’s child, and my father could arrange your successful future.”
“You mean I’m Vice-President by his manipulations?”
“No. Here’s where the gods intervened. Golda used her friendship with Jimmy Hoffa to get you started in life with a good job. You preventing my assassination was divine intervention. But when it took place we spared no effort in furthering your career. Don’t forget, in 1963 you were not ready to be a Presidential advisor. You were inexperienced, and your talents were not really apparent to anyone. You’ve grown as we expected from a Kennedy.”

I sat down, my face blanched. Then came the documents. The letters between Golda and Joseph, my adoption papers, the letter from Joseph to the Immigration Department recommending, demanding, the immediate acceptance of my parents’ visas. There was no doubt. I was the Kennedys’ half-brother. What could I do? I hugged my new family.
My parents have since departed. They knew their son only as their prodigy who would someday become President. Time has passed, and I will always be Norm Mandel to my wife and children and President Mandel to the American people. But as far as John, Bobby and Teddy are concerned, I am now President Norman Kennedy Mandel. THE END

WITH THE KENNEDYS CHP12

CHAPTER TWELVE
Copyright

1968 was a year of turmoil in America as a result of the backlash against Kennedy’s Vietnam policies. It was not going to be easy electing a Democrat to the Presidency, and at least one Democrat, a hawkish wimpy Senator from Minnesota by the name of Eugene McCarthy exploited the dissatisfaction of the nation’s youth.
McCarthy was fortunate to have a determined campaign manager in Abbie Hoffman.

Organizing brigades of volunteer students, Hoffman literally knocked on every door in New Hampshire on behalf of his candidate. He struck a chord with the citizens of this tiny conservative backwoods state, considered by many an island of ignorance in a sea of enlightenment. They, too, despised what they called the retreat from Asia or the Vietnam sellout.
McCarthy argued that since we sacrificed so much in Vietnam, the only true victory would be for us to stay there, or as the President called it, to colonize the place. McCarthy was only puppeting the cries of an empty youth movement that five years later was a dying force.

When the President announced his complete troop withdrawal from Vietnam, ROTC members on campuses throughout the country began teach-ins against the decision. These evolved into full-scale riots and takeovers of buildings throughout the nation. The hotbed of this radicalism was the University of Minnesota, but even more staid institutions such as Columbia and the Berkeley campus of the University of California joined in the nonsense. By the end of the school year American higher education was virtually at a standstill.

Then came the Summer of Hate, and the whole political equation of America turned topsy-turvy.
I suppose America first became aware of the extent of this new youth movement that weekend in June when half a million self-styled survivalists crowded into a cow pasture in Watkins Glen, near Woodstock, New York, to hear their movement’s spokeswoman, Diana Ross. Between the music, crowd agitators twenty years older than the average age of the audience offered one vindictive speech after another against the President’s Vietnam policy. A Jewish soul group called Hy and Family Cohen went so far as to burn our noble flag.

This counterculture movement determined that America must stay physically fit to greet any attack from the Asians or the Commies, and while the music blared they fiendishly swallowed diet pills and Metrical cookies. Overdoses were common, and fake cookies laced with high doses of sugar were pawned off as the real thing to the gullible youngsters. Cookie dealers preyed on the innocence of youth and fortunes were made in a weekend.

Then that awful Friday night in California when Charles Manson’s gang, after gorging on the deadly amphetamine/metrical cocktail and singing the revolutionary verses of the Four Seasons burst into director Clint Eastwood’s Beverly Hills home only to find him not there. I need only capsulize the rest of this gruesome history. Clint’s pregnant wife, Annette Funicello, was brutally stabbed along with dinner guests Shecky Greene and Nipsey Russell. Written in blood smeared on the wall above her were the ominous words, “Rag Doll,” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry.”

Attacks on Kennedy came from all quarters, even literature, as a scathing satirical denunciation of his Vietnam policy appeared in a widely read volume called “MacJack.”
It was against this background that we had to elect a Democrat to the Presidency. The President realized our dilemma and sought the first show of toughness he could find.
Evidence came to us that the Soviet Union, against all the peace accords, was still filtering weapons to the few remaining insurgents in the South. Kennedy retaliated by supplying arms to Czech and Polish underground terrorist groups. Many saw this policy as too little, too late.

I tried a couple of PR moves to boost the President’s image and give his party a shot at the upcoming election. First I arranged a cameo appearance on the irreverent TV show, “Laugh-In”. He had a pail of water thrown at him and replied, “Sock it to me”. Many thought he was a good sport after that, but the stunt made merely a dent in his Gallup approval rating: from 25 percent to 25.5 percent, the lowest since Truman left office.

Next I tried for the women’s vote by having him appear as a judge at the show that has become the greatest source of pride to American Womanhood, the “Miss America Pageant” held that year in Houston. Bert Parks introduced him, but applause was mixed with boos. In fact, the boos dominated. And the final winner, a luscious, leggy blonde named Gloria Steinhem, refused to accept the crown from him as an embarrassing political gesture on behalf of our brave boys in Vietnam.

On the Republican side, there was some good news for us. Governor Romney, up till then the Party’s frontrunner, had eliminated himself in a blaze of controversy. He was returning to his summer home on Mackinac Island with a devoted, young female campaign worker, when his car overturned into a pond, and she was drowned. Finding no one up at that hour on the island, he claimed he swam Mackinac Straits and part of Lake Michigan and arrived at a motel in Marquette where, dripping wet, he phoned the police after complaining to the switchboard of a noisy party in the room below him. Needless-to-say, no one believed a word of this hogwash, and his career nationally was wrecked.

But that still left Rockefeller, Nixon or Reagan, and polls showed all of them would have swamped any Democratic candidate if the election were held today. Only McCarthy put up a reasonable opposition, and that is one man I opposed if only because of his wretched poetry.
More worrying was our second most popular contender, George Wallace. The former governor of Alabama split the white vote with McCarthy but won the Labor vote hands down. Only Bobby and Humphrey represented the liberal wing of the Party, and they were buried in the polls. Nixon was part of the reason. He called Bobby a member of the Kennedy Clan, which created an administration of the worst and the dumbest. He called Humphrey, Hubert Horatio Hornblower, which aptly described his blabbermouth tendencies, and that image stuck with the poor man.

A dark horse in the figure of Jimmy Carter, Governor of Georgia, appeared, but the President dismissed his chances after reading an FBI report that claimed his family was mostly insane. One sister was a “holy-roller”, and his younger brother, Billy, was fond of urinating into public drinking fountains.
So who could be built up into a winner for the party? For many weeks we worked on the most natural choice, Vice-President Johnson. But the task was thankless. His actions made him more of a public liability than anything else. In a one-week span he held two of his kittens up by their tails for the cameras and showed off his hemorrhoids to the press.

But while I undertook the job of turning him into a true Presidential candidate, two crises erupted around his daughter, Lynda Bird. Lynda Bird was engaged to marry a very peculiar actor named George Hamilton. As the wedding neared, a perfect PR event, an old promise came to haunt Lyndon at the Johnson Ranch. While on a goodwill mission to Pakistan, the Vice-President invited a camel driver to come visit him at his ranch. One day the camel driver showed up, camel and all, to the mixed delight of the press. A major human political story took shape nationwide.

It wouldn’t have been so bad had he been a polite guest, but if anyone thought Johnson had boorish tendencies, they’ve never met Ahmat Teware. Okay, so he refused to eat with cutlery and thought belching after a meal was a compliment. But when he explained why he couldn’t shake hands with his right hand, even the usually stoic Lady Bird Johnson was moved to revulsion.
And to add to the PR difficulties, he had fallen in love with Lynda Bird, and Lynda Bird was showing no public disapproval, to my great chagrin.

I spoke to her privately and asked her why she was playing with his affections in public.
“I want to break the wedding with George,” she answered.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because,” she said, and burst out sobbing, “because,” she tried again. On the third attempt she blurted it out. “Because he’s a vampire.”
“What?”
“I mean it. A vampire. He has a disease called ‘porphyria.’ A vital heme is missing in the blood, and it causes all kinds of strange reactions to the sun. If he’s out in daylight for five minutes he starts growing hair all over his body that falls out at night. The only way he can go outside is if he gets a small transfusion of blood with the heme. Like mine, for instance. You think these are hickeys?” she said as she pulled down her collar. Her neck was ghastly. “You notice that half the mirrors on the ranch are cracked? Figure it out. My mother hasn’t been able to.”

“Did you tell her you were marrying a vampire?”
“She said she understood the problem, but we were committed. She suggested I refuse to consummate the marriage until after the election and then get it annulled.”
“What about your father?”
“He said a vampire’s not so bad. At least George isn’t a colored boy. That would kill him in the South. Maybe everywhere. So that’s why I’m playing up to Ahmet. Maybe he’ll get the hint and get me out of this Transylvanian nightmare.”

There was no doubt about it. Lynda had a problem. But then so did her father and by proxy, me. It wasn’t easy getting the photographers to squelch the photo of Lynda taking her moonlight camel ride into the Texas desert. I owe a few people on that one.
One morning he made his final offer to the Vice-President. “Fifty camels for your daughter.”
“Young man,” Johnson replied. “That is absurd.”
“Please, Daddy,” cried Lynda. “Fifty isn’t so bad.” Turning to Ahmet she whispered, “Offer him sixty.”
“Sixty,” he said, “And one of my wives. The one that please you most.”
“Come on, Daddy, that’s fair.”
“And where would you young lovebirds live?” demanded the Vice-President.
“Pakistan,” they replied in unison.
“Young lady,” said Johnson. “When I become President you will live in Romania because your husband George will be appointed Ambassador to there. And that’s final.”

I had a first class PR problem on my hand. The first thing that had to be arranged was Ahmet leaving with or without his camels. This was achieved with easy and spectacular success by methods I cannot divulge but Ahmet is now the director of the American Post Office on one of the Solomon Islands today. And, as you know, Lynda and George, after a tempestuous marriage, are no longer husband and wife.

My own personal choice as candidate was Bobby Kennedy, but the LSD business was having a deleterious effect on his chances. By the spring of ’68 the survivalist movement had become a real force in the nation. Millions of bearded, middle and upper class young people, mostly college students and their beaded women with their unshaved legs were busy building fallout shelters, stocking them with freeze-dried food, enjoying daily rounds of target practice and taking a drug called LSD.

In the summer of ’67 young idealists seeking an escape from liberal, sellout America, gathered in San Francisco Harbor and began preparing to escape the coming nuclear holocaust in ships fitted for two years of survival at mid-sea. Because of this they were called “shippies.”
The “shippies” began experimenting with a drug developed in Switzerland in the mid-thirties called “Lysergic Acid Diethylmide” or LSD. The “shippies” claimed they saw reality more clearly by uncovering truths buried deep in the subconscious and surfacing in the form of detailed hallucinations. A sub-movement led by former Admiral Timothy Leary spread the joys of this drug, and millions were experimenting with it. Unfortunately, this put Bobby in an uncomfortable situation. The Justice Department had jurisdiction over the FDA , and LSD was then a legal drug. By banning it, Bobby would isolate the survivalist vote which was then considerable in California, a state he had to win in the primaries. But average Americans were shocked when their children began experimenting with the drug, and in a moment of divine inspiration expressed the belief that their parents were “pigs.”

A decision had to be made, and Bobby’s solution was to take LSD and decide by personal experience. He apparently enjoyed its effects, though publicly he spoke of it as a danger.
Still, it made my life more difficult. Of all the primary candidates I chose to be PR director for Bobby, though Teddy begged me to run his campaign. We shall arrive at that aspect of the campaign later.

Just before the Oregon campaign we had a strategy meeting. Bobby said to me, “Norm, I’ve thought of the greatest slogan ever. Get ready for this: “God is Groovy”.
“Pardon me?”
“God is Groovy. Bobby for President. Isn’t that great? It’s so optimistic, yet so true. Who could resist voting for a candidate who thinks God is groovy?”
“I don’t think that’s an issue in Oregon.”
“Excuse me, Norm, I didn’t mean to interrupt or anything, but your face is melting.”
“What?”
“Norm, now listen carefully. I want you to tell me if I should go public with this announcement…I know what it’s like to be dead.”
“No, I think we should keep a lid on that.”
“But I’m the only candidate who momentarily was in touch with infinity. I died for a moment, rose to the ceiling, looked down and saw myself dead. I have astral projected. I have left my body as a free spirit and chose to reunite with it just to win in Oregon. I think the people would appreciate knowing that. I could say I came a long way to meet you folks and really mean it.”
“Not a catchy campaign approach.”

“Okay, then, try this. You know how I love to walk barefoot on the beach early in the morning. Well, get this. I was on a beach near Portland minding my own business when guess who I see in the water? You’ll never guess. I saw King Neptune. So I went in and joined him. I splashed around in the water with THE King Neptune, and if you don’t believe me ask Vinnie Lombardi, my Secret Service agent. He practically caught pneumonia dragging me to shore.”

The Oregon campaign was tough. Bobby listened to my appeals and publicly came off well till the Eugene speech now mockingly referred to as Bobby’s ‘ego lecture’. Bobby decided the people of Oregon should be told of his marvelous discovery; that there is no ego, or as he unfortunately said, “ego is bull.” He accused the other candidates of running, not for the nation’s good, but because they are insecure people who need power to fulfill their bruised egos. He said he wasn’t like that.

He just enjoyed politics which he called “a far out job. One crazy gig after another. Last week I played in Omaha to a great crowd and this week I’ve been getting high just listening to you Oregonians. You know you’re a real trip.”
Teddy was frightened by the new Bobby and wanted to see a Kennedy dynasty continued. So he entered the race against his brother and with his other brother’s permission, if not outright backing. Teddy, who is not as witty as John, received a great routine from his brother which made him a popular speaker wherever he went.

The routine would begin after he was introduced on the dais by an overly long speech. Staring first at the introducer he would say, “I remember once someone introduced me saying I was a graduate of Yale. As if that weren’t information enough he explained what Yale’s letters meant. Y was for Youth and spent ten minutes explaining the virtue of my youth. A was for Athletics, and he spent ten minutes saying what a great sportsman I was and so on. Finally I got up to speak and said to the audience, ‘You people are very lucky. You’re lucky I didn’t graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.’”
The crowds loved that, and he was on his way. Bobby was afraid of his brother winning, and on the day that turned the tide against him he was thrilled.
“Can you believe it? Joan’s announcing their divorce tonight!”
“How do you know?”
“Joan phoned Jack Anderson and said her husband was keeping her a virtual prisoner because she threatened to tell all. I knew their marriage was on the rocks, but how’s that for revenge? She’s announcing it now, and you can bet Teddy’s doing what he can to stop her. This is juicy.”

“Why is she demanding the divorce?”
“According to Anderson she wants to grow and she feels smothered in their relationship. She’s tired of being Teddy’s wife, she wants to find herself, the real Joan. And there’s more. She met some Greek, and they’re going off in his boat somewhere to seek truth. She’s running off with a rich “shippie”. And best of all, she won’t fight for the children. Ted can keep them, because—now get this, it’s rich—because she’s tired of being just a mother. Women have been repressed for too long, and she’s—listen closely, it’s hilarious—striking a blow for women’s liberation.”

Bobby was on the floor, tears rolling down his cheeks. He had trouble catching his breath, and I thought he was a secret epileptic. But this attack of laughter was nothing compared to the one that followed Joan’s televised press conference. Not only did she say everything Bobby claimed she would, but at the end of the conference she turned around, took her bra off, put her blouse back on, turned around and burned her bra. First, Bobby’s face crinkled up, a distorted smile appeared which was followed by a two hour laughing fit followed by days of spontaneous giggling. Often he would mimic a song called “We Love You, Conrad” from the hit play, “Bye Bye Birdie”, singing instead, “We Love You, Joanie, Oh Yes We Do.”

Strangely, Joan struck a nerve with millions of American women, and when the reigning Miss America called the coveted pageant a meat show and burned her bra on the “Vaughan Meader Show,” a movement started out of nowhere that was destined to lead millions of women to unfortunate careers, childlessness, frustration, man-hatred, lesbianism, and loneliness. The sanctity of the American family was also threatened by Joan’s irresponsibility, and divorce rates soared as women big and small decided they wanted to grow. Many were attracted by the survivalists and joined communes, others finding in Joan a role model, drifted towards the “shippies.”

Of course Teddy’s hopes were dashed by all this. At rallies rowdy women would accuse him of “depriving his wife control over her own body,” a concept he was entirely unprepared to deal with for no answer seemed to be satisfactory when the concept was foreign. Average men and women spouted the old standard “if you can’t control your wife, how can you control the country” dogma.

Politics do make strange bedfellows, and after the California primary, Newsweek hired the Harris Poll to see if any combination of Democrat Presidential and Vice-Presidential tickets could win the election. While McCarthy-Muskie and Kennedy-Carter would be swamped by any of the Republican contenders, a Humphrey-Wallace ticket would win the election. It seems that Humphrey, being the leading liberal candidate, and Wallace, being the leading conservative candidate, attracted a wide enough constituency to win the upcoming election.

Now I know personally that neither candidate wanted this, but a grassroots upsurge promoting a Humphrey-Wallace ticket grew and grew and grew. Both candidates were forced to consider the possibilities. Interested interlocutors willing to do anything to put their candidates in power, and seeing their only hope in this ticket, met and presented each candidate with a list of issues and a questionnaire asking how each would deal with them. The idea was to find common ground for an alliance. It was discovered that the only matter on which the two shared an opinion was that Jefferson City should remain the capital of Missouri.
But the possibility of the alliance would not go away. It seems both candidates had the most loyal supporters, and they wanted to see their men in power no matter who he was associated with. Wallace supporters especially were thrilled when this golden opportunity to share power arose.

Once again the interlocutors sought compromise. They gave both candidates a list of issues, and both were asked in two words to answer where they stood on each. A computer would compare the results and plan a viable campaign.
The following, for the first time in print, was the result of the questionnaire:
SUBJECT
Cuba HUMPHREY Improve relations WALLACE Nuke`em
Vietnam HUMPHREY Leave gracefully WALLACE Nuke North
Civil Rights HUMPHREY Improve programs WALLACE Cancel legislation
Soviet Union HUMPHREY Detente initiated WALLACE Dismemberment of
France HUMPHREY Closer ties WALLACE Who cares?
Crime HUMPHREY Rehabilitation programs WALLACE Chain gangs
Pornography HUMPHREY Local standards WALLACE Selected castration
Unions HUMPHREY Support programs WALLACE Mass lockouts
Nuclear proliferation HUMPHREY Create ceilings WALLACE Begin immediately
African relations HUMPHREY Strengthen role WALLACE Misogyny enforcement
China HUMPHREY Handle gingerly WALLACE Sterilization drugs
States Rights HUMPHREYCertain areas WALLACE Favorite topic

The results were fed into a computer by whiz kid, Steven Jobs, and the computer, after shorting out, refused to start up again. A higher K—IBM was next employed and said the solution was in the hands of higher powers than itself. IBM officials claimed this was the first instance of a computer hinting at the existence of God.

The movement died when both candidates publicly killed it. Still, there was no denying Wallace’s popularity in California. It portended a real change of mood in the country that we were sadly reluctant to acknowledge. We hoped it would go away by Election Day and, of course, we were very mistaken.

Here was Bobby’s strategy with which I concurred and helped plan. Cezar Chavez was leading a boycott of California grapes to protest working conditions of Mexican laborers, and seeking both the liberal and Chicano vote, we backed him. I arranged photo sessions with Bobby and Chavez, and he endorsed us publicly.

Wallace, on the other hand, stressed that the Mexicans were mostly in the country illegally and had no rights as American citizens, especially not the right to strike. He spoke of Latin Catholic America’s horrifying birthrate and predicted that if this illegal immigration kept up, they would swamp Anglo-America. He asked why Anglos aren’t moving there, and he spoke of a time when revolutionary groups would claim the American Southwest was Latin originally and would try to win it back with violence. His solutions included an electric fence along the whole Mexican border and border guards with orders to shoot to kill smugglers of immigrants and labor camps for the immigrants themselves. And on this issue he won the primary.

That was certain to divide the upcoming convention, yet California left a more profound effect on the Republicans. The shooting at the Ambassador Hotel had shocked me. As a child whose parents knew violence and came to America to escape it, I had felt personally violated. Though I never liked the victim, it was as if the gunman had attacked me, not Richard Nixon, and shot down many of the beliefs and concepts I held dear.

Nixon addressed supporters, and his final words were, “On to Miami.” He was the jubilant winner of a state that rejected him for governor because of his amazing statement that, “the nation can’t stand pat,” which led to his later divorce. After his loss he called an embarrassing “last” press conference apologizing to reporters for his attacks on their integrity and thanking them for their support over the years.

With his final words spoken, he entered the kitchen of the hotel where a crazed Palestinian and leader of an unknown lunatic group called the PLO, Yassir Arafat, pulled the trigger.
I can still recall the screams of “Oh no, no, no,” as Roman Gabriel, an ardent Nixon supporter and pantyhose executive, wrestled Yassir to the ground, and Nixon lay motionless in a pool of blood.
Thank God for modern medicine. Rushed to the operation that saved his life, Nixon was saved, though he remains paralyzed from the waist down today.

One must dwell on the “what ifs” of Nixon. What if he had not been shot? He, in my opinion, would have been the Republicans’ candidate despite the half-truth labels that stuck with him all his life and gave him his nickname, Sticky Dickie. What if he had been President? I believe he would have been a do-nothing president, avoiding issues and scandal. And I believe he would have presided over a quiet period in American history characterized by nothing.

Yet, “what ifs” mean nothing. The Republican convention held in Miami was a shootout between Reagan and Rockefeller which was Reagan’s victory after the third round of voting. In desperation, a Rockefeller-Lindsay coalition tried to stop the Oscar-winning thespian, but to no avail. Reagan’s Shakespearean background made him too fine a dramatist to ever lose to the scion of America’s wealthiest family and the inventor of modern prison reform as we know it today.

Chicago was a different convention. I thought it was a bad choice. The Negroes had recently rioted there, and the largely Polish-German white population despised the President’s retreat policy from Vietnam. But as Fred Sorenson explained to me, if it weren’t for Mayor Daley stuffing ballot boxes in 1960, we would have lost Illinois and the election.

As an aside, Lyndon Johnson won his 1948 Senatorial seat by 87 votes, and there were rumors that he stole votes to win. Later he would jokingly say, “I never stole ‘em. Ah just borrowed them. Ah gave ‘em all back in 1960.”
Outside the convention at Lincoln Park, Abbie Hoffman had gathered his “McCarthy is President” (MIP) Party, and it’s followers called MIPPIES, to protest America’s surrender in Asia. As the reader is well aware, blood was shed in their confrontation with the police.

Later at the Chicago Eight trial, conducted partly in Yiddish by both Abbie and Judge Hoffman, it was revealed that a conspiracy of industrialists and students had crossed state lines to foment anarchy.
Of course the biggest embarrassment of the convention was when Hoffman led his students to the Vietnamese Consulate in Chicago and took it over, holding the innocent diplomats hostage until all American soldiers serving in Vietnam stayed there until replaced.

With blood and kidnapping and blackmail and extortion on the airwaves, we tried to hold a convention. Coming into the Amphitheatre, George Wallace who claimed he wanted to change the Peace Corps in the Peace Corpse, had the most committed delegates. We liberals were prepared to do anything to stop him and combined, our support outnumbered his.

But, of course, the convention became deadlocked and voting meant nothing. It was a convention decided by committee. The question was how much the final candidate should divorce himself from the President’s policies without compromising the Party’s principles. Two days before, the Ray Coniff Singers, hardly a political outfit, had performed at the White House, and before singing pleaded to keep the boys in Nam. This embarrassing incident was news everywhere as we decided on our man to run for the presidency.

Bobby had isolated his hopes by telling delegates he had actually seen the Jolly Green Giant overlooking the little folks of the San Joachin Valley while he was campaigning in California. Lyndon and Ted had their own problems, previously explained , and McCarthy was viewed as too right wing for a coalition of delegates determined to nominate a liberal candidate. From the smoke filled back room came our surprise compromise, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota.

McGovern won the nomination, despite a complete apathy towards his candidacy by most of the delegates, and he named Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his running mate. (Since the election they have not seen each other, even socially.)
And the race was on. While Eagleton defended the President, Reagan used his Hollywood connections to run what is now called a media campaign.
He convinced his good friend and everybody’s favorite sergeant, Phil Silvers, to perform on his behalf in Vietnam. The episode of Sergeant Bilko was beamed live to 120 million Americans, the largest single audience for any show in history. And what a hilarious episode it was.

Bilko buys a Geiger counter to get rich quick by finding uranium. After some searching he finds a high level of radiation under Colonel Hall’s house. He has to dig for the valuable ore so he lures Colonel Hall to a Bridge game with another officer at a base a hundred miles away.
The colonel comes back early and discovers all of Bilko’s platoon, including Rocco and Doberman, busy digging up his basement.
“Bilko,” he says, “What is the meaning of this?”
“Oh, Colonel Hall,” he answers, “You discovered our little surprise.”
“What do you mean, Bilko?”
“Well, because your men love you so much, we were going to build you a rec room. But you came in and spoiled everything.”
“Bilko, I’m very touched.”

So the digging goes on and the uranium was just a watch with a glow dial. The crowd of soldiers loved it. Paul Ford took five long ovations, and Phil Silvers literally could not leave the stage. And then the plug for Reagan. Oooh, that hurt us.

And, of course, the Eagleton affair. The press found out Eagleton was a pyromaniac, having started two churches on fire and was arrested three times for child molestation. Still, McGovern, for reasons one cannot yet fathom, said he would back his man 1000 percent. However, after Eagleton privately confessed that yes, he enjoyed torching churches, but it should have no effect on how he conducts the business of government, McGovern dropped his candidate and even more crazily nominated the head of the much hated Peace Corps, Sergeant Shriver, as his new Vice-Presidential choice. What a headache his campaign was becoming. What else could possibly go wrong?

Well, as we all know, the television debate with Reagan was the what else. Defending Kennedy’s rapprochement with the Communist East, McGovern claimed the North Vietnamese would be as free as good men are in Poland today.

Now I’m prepared for a little hyperbole now and then, but no one in the Iron Curtain nations can be truthfully called free. The next day the Los Angeles Times printed a cartoon of a group of Polish workers. The caption read, “I don’t know? How many George McGoverns does it take to screw in a light bulb?”
After that the McGovern joke fad spread like wildfire. Why is TGIF written on McGovern’s shoes? To remind him that Toes Go In First. Why did McGovern ask for his pizza to be cut into four pieces? He can’t finish eight. And on and on ad infinitum.
He became a joke, and Ronal Reagan became President of the United States.

ECC12
12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

WITH THE KENNEDYS CHP11 (Thrilling isn`t?)

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Copyrighted

My own day of reckoning was soon to arrive. In the Fall of ’67 Robert Kennedy appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to head a commission on Teamsters activities. Bobby was determined that Mr. Hoffa be exposed for his supposed excesses and links to organized crime.
Bobby knew the quandary I was in, or at least he thought he knew. He invited me into his office and explained that his attack on my previous and future employer was justified. He had ordered the BGI to tap Mr. Hoffa’s phone, and he played me the recordings.

I was shocked. The man whom Golda loved, and who was holding a gun to my parents’ heads was consorting with criminals, taking Union funds, and making loans for drug deals, for financing casinos in Cuba, for blackmailing Senators. There was no doubt, the Attorney General had the stronger case of the two. And there was no doubt Hoffa was capable of and probably would kill my parents if I disappointed him. I stared at Bobby as if through a gun sight and urged him to pursue the investigation.

If Vietnam had taught me anything, it was a repugnance of violence. Sure, there were good times. There was the beer at the PX, the card games into the night, the bars of Saigon, but all that paled in my mind when I considered napalmed children I had seen, the ooze of brain matter dripping onto the shirt of a surviving companion, the intestines held in the hands of the orderly as the soldier was admitted to my hospital. I despised murder and was asked to perform one. Yet if I didn’t do it, two more murders would result.
I began planning how I would do it, then I found some excuse to put it off.

At a Bobby Kennedy party I offered to bring him a drink. He accepted, and this was my opportunity. I put the powder in his glass and gave him the drink. As he was about to sip it I grabbed it from his lips and threw it into the swimming pool. Bobby looked astonished. But he relaxed when I said, “It’s a Jewish custom. If a guest throws his host’s drink into a pool as he is drinking it, the host will live to a hundred and twenty.”

Bobby said it was a beautiful tradition, and when Arthur Goldberg’s son was Bar Mitzvahed, Bobby took the wine cup from Arthur’s mouth as he was about to drink, threw it in the punchbowl and said, “May you live to a hundred and twenty.” Mr. Goldberg took several moments before deciding to thank the Attorney General. When Bobby took a sip of his drink, Mr. Goldberg assuming he had witnessed an Irish custom, thrust the cup from his lips and threw it in the punchbowl. When Mr. Goldberg did the same thing at the Kennedy’s anniversary party, the President was unamused until Bobby defused the situation explaining that it was an act of respect among the Jewish people.

Yet it was the President’s own courage that convinced me I could not give in to Hoffa. What I am about to relate has never been revealed before. In l967, four-year-old John Kennedy, Jr., “John John” as we called him, was snatched from his nanny and two Secret Service men brutally murdered by men claiming to represent the Teamsters but claiming also that Mr. Hoffa was unaware of the plot they hatched in his behalf.

A President’s son kidnapped. The ransom? The Justice Department would drop all charges against Jimmy Hoffa. The President did not let the kidnapping leak to the press and attempted to conduct the affairs of state as usual lest he endanger his son’s life.
Jackie, Bobby, Teddy and Rose all pressed him to drop the charges. But he would not. He was no longer John Kennedy, citizen, he was the Government of the United States, and the nation could not be blackmailed by crooks.

The President called me into his office. He had not slept in days and he slurred his words. Unfortunately the press were writing of the President’s weariness or drinking habits, depending on maliciousness, and I understood why. He was not himself. He looked very much older.
“Norman,” he said, “I have an assignment for you. You are going to save my son.”
“How?”
“You are Teamster on my staff, and they want you to conduct negotiations in Dallas.”
“What will you give them for your son?”
“Lower interstate highway tolls which were planned anyway. And that’s it.”
“But if I fail, you’ll blame me for your son’s loss.”
“I would never be so petty, Norman. Just do your best. I trust you.”
I knew then that I would never, ever kill Bobby.

I arrived in Dallas and went to my old office. The message awaiting me was to meet at the Carousel Club at midnight. So what else is new, I thought?
I had time to spare and a great desire to see Marina, so I arranged to see her while Lee worked. I would see Lee later.



Her home had changed. The picture of Czar Nicholas the Second came down, and it its place was a picture of Jane Fonda in black boots and skimpy garb taken from the classic Roger Vadim film, “Barbarella”. But there was more. Jane had been typecast as a sex queen and wasn’t getting the serious roles she wanted. She campaigned strongly for the role in “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” Rumor was that Liz Taylor would get the part, so Lee formed a “Fair Play for Jane” committee. Jane Fonda fans throughout the country united behind their favorite star.



“He’s obsessed,” said Marina. “What went on between them in Vietnam?”
“Nothing,” I answered. “Honest. Absolutely nothing.”
“I’m losing him, Norm. I can feel it.”
And I was losing her. I could feel it. Jealousy was about to make Marina love Lee despite the circumstances of their marriage. I promised her I’d help work things out. She showed me a letter from Peter Fonda. No one would let him make a motorcycle movie about America’s natural beauty, and he wondered if Lee would form a “Fair Play for Peter” Committee. This had gone too far I could see.

When I saw Marilyn at the Carousel Club that evening it was as if I were seeing her for the first time again. She was lovely, Marina was drifting from me, and Marilyn was thrilled to see me. Overwhelmed even. Maybe I had missed her in Vietnam though I didn’t feel it then.

But more important business was at hand. Mr. Hoffa awaited my presence. “You let me down, Norm” he said.
“I couldn’t do it. I told you that, and you didn’t believe me. Well, I can’t do it.”
“We know. Jack convinced me to leave your parents be. He’s an old softie about them. So we had to take a different strategy. Thus you being here tonight.”
“You know, if you don’t return the child I’ll be forced to hand in my resignation to the Teamsters.
“Norman, sometimes I wonder if you’re real. We’ll kill him, Norm if those charges aren’t dropped.”

“The President told me to inform you that you also have family, and he also has armed men in his employ. He finds the whole affair revolting, but if his child dies you and your loved ones are in danger. Want the full text of his message?”
“I was afraid he’d think like that. I should have guessed it after Nam and Cuba. Now for the last time, Mandel, will you kill Bobby?”
“No.”
“Alright, the side of justice and truth will be victorious. Inform your President that he may pick up his child tomorrow in Dallas.”

The President flew to Dallas. We were told to have a normal social evening that would attract little suspicion. The child would be waiting for him at the Carousel Club.
I called Jack Ruby and asked him to close the club. The President could not be seen at a strip joint. He refused saying the child would be there, and the President would autograph a picture for his now famous wall.

Having no choice, the President, Marilyn, Lee, Marina and I planned an evening together. As we approached the club Jack Ruby was waiting outside for us. He had a blank, cold stare on his face and did not react as I approached and said, “Hi, Jack.” He lifted a pistol from his pocket, and I jumped on the President. The shot hit me in the back of my thigh. Lee lunged at Ruby, fought for the pistol and a shot was heard. We saw Jack Ruby slump to the ground killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. A voice cried, “Daddy, daddy,” as John John ran from the club into his father’s waiting arms.



ECC12
12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

WITH THE KENNEDYS CHP10

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

Post Vietnam was a turbulent era for America and the world. Returning Negroes found no work for themselves and rioted viciously. The man who quelled the worst of the riots was Roy Wilkins, who proved himself a major leader of our times in Vietnam. He appeared in Watts. Literally walking into a firefight and begged for cooled tempers. He would find work for each and every returning veteran.
The press took this as a literal promise, and Kennedy appointed Wilkins to head the Office of Negro Employment.

A national campaign to hire Negroes was the result, and many people who thought they couldn’t afford live-in help decided that if they skipped vacation this year to do their part, well, maybe they could. It was the end of inner city unemployment that stopped the riots.

Of course when Castro decided to spread his revolution worldwide, that was his undoing. He gathered a meeting of revolutionary groups and Third World dignitaries in 1966 and began planning hijackings, bombings and kidnappings to bring down the capitalist order. He set an example by blocking water supplies to our naval base at Guantanamo Bay and Kennedy reacted forcefully. The invasion lasted a week before Havana fell, and though pockets of resistance still exist in the jungle, today Cubans are happy-go-lucky Latins, dancing and singing for the tourists who crowd the island. And President Ricky Ricardo is loyal to America and trustworthy to a fault. Today’s leader, Little Ricky Ricardo, follows in his father’s noble footsteps.

My own triumph on the world stage came after the Six Day War. The Arabs blockaded Israel in June of ’67, and Israel reacted with surgical strikes that won them the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria and Judea and Samaria from Jordan. The President conferred with Arthur Goldberg and a brilliant plan resulted. World opinion was so pro-Israel and so anti-Arab that the time was ripe for solutions.

Israel was asked by Kennedy to declare the Sinai Peninsula from the Gaza Strip to El A-rish and down to Ras Muhammed at the Southern tip, a Palestinian State. The land had a population of only 15 thousand Bedouin and could support a state with proper planning and a huge infusion of cash and Nile River water.
It was a daring plan, but something daring had to be done. When Saudi Arabia declared an oil embargo against the U.S. in retaliation for its pro-Israel stance during the humiliating war, other Arab nations followed. A serious energy crisis resulted from a shortage of oil at the refineries.

We had trouble dealing with the crisis and tempers in America rose when gas rationing combined with lowered thermostats became emergency law. People were actually killed in lines to gas pumps. Lyndon Johnson suggested a public relations ploy that we accepted. He suggested saving energy at the White House by shutting off the lights at night. The program was judiciously cancelled when Jackie broke her leg trying to find the bathroom.

My assignment was to fly to Israel and convince Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, of the worthiness of Kennedy’s plan. I couldn’t understand why he chose me. He said it was because I was Jewish, and she’d be more sympathetic. But I told him, Arthur Goldberg was Jewish and it was his idea. Then he added that I was a recent war veteran who was wounded in action. She would respond to that.
Respond isn’t the word.

The lady practically smothered me to death. I sat in her kitchen explaining Kennedy’s plan point by point, and all she said was, “Please, have some more cheesecake.”
She told me she knew my former boss, Mr. Hoffa, very well. As a representative of the Israeli Labor union, the Histadrut, she met world union leaders. Apparently she and Mr. Hoffa had met in the early fifties and got along splendidly. In fact, in Detroit in 1956, Jimmy organized a huge fundraising dinner for the Jimmy Hoffa Children’s Home in Israel.

I got nowhere with her the first night and got up to leave for my hotel.
“Wait a minute,” she said.
I stopped. Had she had a change of heart?
“You forgot to put on a sweater.”
“It’s July,” I answered.
“You can never be too warm. One little wind, and you’ve got a cold. A strong breeze and it’s pneumonia. You don’t want you to get a stroke like your father.”
I was certain she had received false briefing. My father was healthy as a horse, and I told her.

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “And I’m glad to hear it. But put on a jacket, just for me, maybe?”
Well, the old Mandel charm broke her down. She finally accepted Kennedy’s plan, saying, “If you think it’s a good idea, then who am I to argue? What does an old lady know? But remember, when you get back home, always listen to your mother and be good. She may not live forever.”

The Palestinian state was rejected vehemently by Egypt, but Anwar Sadat’s triumphant visit to El Arish a decade later was the start of a new era in cooperation. Sadat offered the waters of the Nile for irrigation and with the help of Israeli agricultural technology the Sinai Desert is blooming again. I cannot but feel goose bumps when I consider my role in this feat.

ECC12
12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

WITH THE KENNEDYS CHP9

CHAPTER NINE
Copyright

I must say my enlistment was not a quiet affair. I appeared on the Vaughan Meader Show. A surprise guest, President Kennedy, showed up and presented me with a mezuzah, saying after he hoped it would bring me home safely and protect me all my days.

Ironically Vaughan Meader began his career imitating John Kennedy. The success of his First Family album led him to a career as a talk show host after Jack Paar left the “Tonight Show”. Three people were up for the lucrative job: him, Woody Woodbury and Johnny Carson. Woodbury was deemed a bit too racy and Carson refused to leave his highly acclaimed afternoon show, “Who Do You Trust?”

So Meader got the post after stealing Ed McMahon from Carson to host the new “Tonight Show”. Unfortunately, that chemistry wasn’t right, and McMahon left the show to head the publicity department of Schlitz beer, and Meader broke new ground by having a hostless talk show.

Meader’s success spurned offshoots. The notoriously depraved comic, Lenny Bruce, found great success with this sketch:
John Kennedy is supposed to host Ray Charles for lunch at the White House. But just before Ray arrives, a major crisis with the Russians calls him away. He doesn’t want to disappoint Ray, who came all the way from Atlanta to visit him, so he calls Vaughan Meader and asks him to sit in for him and pretend he’s the President. Ray wouldn’t know the difference anyway. Vaughan, who is pretty eccentric, agrees.

“What an honor to meet you, Mr. President,” Ray tells Vaughan.
“The honor is all mine,” says Vaughan in an exaggerated imitation of Kennedy. “You have a wonderful sense of rhythm and are a credit to your race.”
“Thank you. And how is Jackie?”
“Jackie who?”
“Your wife, Jackie.”
“Oh, she’s fine. She’s pregnant again.”
“But she just gave birth last week.”
“Oh yes. Well, we don’t believe in wasting time around here.”
“And how’s your daughter, Caroline?”
“Oh, she’s getting ready for college.”
“But she’s only three.”
“I see. Yes. Well, it takes her a long time to get ready.”

The President loved Meader’s First Family and despised Bruce’s misguided monologues. But in a free country anyone can express themselves as they choose, and ironically Bruce’s career is still going strong while Meader eventually faded into relative obscurity, finally taking work as a sign assembler in Portland, Maine.

Also on the show was a rock and roll group called the Beatles. I met them backstage and took a liking to their witty spokesman, Ringo Starr. He thought they should have been more popular than they were and assumed that America wasn’t ready for their unique contribution. “The times are against us,” he said. And I guess he was right. How could these mopheads compete with the genius of a Bobby Rydell or Connie Francis?

Kennedy’s appearance on the show was a triumph. He was both dignified and playful. He replaced Ringo on the drums for a rousing though off-beat version of a song called “Twist and Shout”. And when the time came to present my mezuzah, he was austere, and prepared, even offering a prayer in badly enunciated Hebrew. For this he received some mild applause that was prolonged by the Jews in the studio audience led by Brian Epstein, the manager of Ringo and his band.

The next day I enlisted, possibly the first enlistment to be recorded on television since Elvis Presley’s. I hoped I would not share the same fate as Presley who is still recovering from his shrapnel wounds.
Shortly after my enlistment, the President declared war on Vietnam officially and whether through my example partly or just the President’s, half a million more young men volunteered for service the following week.

The White House had planned a fine good-bye party for me, and I would be taking a guest. Jack Ruby was in town, he claimed on business, and begged me to let him meet the President. How could I refuse? He was my girlfriend’s employer after all.
The party was, as they say in the movies, a gala affair. The President spared no expense and what a guest list was prepared! There to wish me luck were the likes of Averil Harriman, Arthur Goldberg, Cardinal Cushing, Adam Clayton Powell and Shelly Fabares.

I introduced Ruby to the President and he was gushing with praise. He said it was the most memorable day of his life and thanked the President effusively for taking the time to greet him. The President gave the old any friend of Norm’s reply but seemed astounded when Ruby said, “Norm is really becoming a top aide to you, huh?”
“He’s become very valuable, indeed,” said the President. I blushed in gratitude.
“But he’s more than just an aide, isn’t he?” asked Ruby.
“What do you mean?”
“The more he works with you, the more you two resemble each other.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ruby. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
“Why, my friend, Mr. Hoffa, says you’re practically like brothers.”
The President’s face joined me in blush and he walked away quickly. I was ashamed of Jack for pumping my importance up so much. The President liked me, but what was this brother business of Jack’s? And why mention Hoffa when Ruby was aware that Bobby was committed to convicting him within two years?

But other than this incident, my send-off was inspiring. My Service at the beginning was less so. As a child I hated both Phys Ed class and summer camp. The army was a perfect combination of both. But, against my will, I was put into an officer’s training course. I would have been satisfied being an ordinary foot soldier, but the army insisted on promoting my advancement. Though we have an egalitarian force, my being a Presidential aide possibly influenced my advancement to rank of second lieutenant by the time I arrived in Vietnam.

No war is good, but the camaraderie and sense of purpose made this one special. Our enemy from the North fought too valiantly and was prepared to take upon himself too much personal sacrifice. In fact, the war was being fought to a draw until Kennedy announced his trade embargo on the Soviet Union, the Viet Cong’s chief supplier. The President convinced even food exporters like Argentina, Australia and Canada to obey his call for an embargo, and eventually food shortages in Moscow meant arms shortages in Hanoi.

But China filled the vacuum just as the Soviet Union seemed ready to talk peace, or at least, settlement. It was then that the President ordered his two-pronged offensive. I led my unit in the invasion of North Vietnam at Na Tinh, just north of the eighteenth parallel, joined by Australian, Thai, Korean and New Zealand forces. By the time the two-pronged attack was over we had formed an effective barrier across the 17th parallel into Laos, cutting off the North Vietnamese men and material to the South and we had invaded the North, establishing an impregnable beachhead that threatened Hanoi itself.

Of course, in this invasion I was wounded as my Jeep drove over a mine. I felt tremendous guilt lying in the hospital while my unit shared the glory of victorious achievement, but I was fortunate enough to share a hospital room with Cassius Clay, a boxer who had served with great distinction in Nam but whose career was to end because of disfigurement of his face, arms and hands. A modest fellow by nature, I never heard a peep of disappointment from him though I’m certain his anguish was well-hidden. He just read Milton and Keats and spoke of the day when he could walk to church by himself, like he was so fond of doing in Louisville.

Lee was a great comfort to me, and when the World Series began, he got a ten-day furlough to come watch it with me. Were it not for the glories of the Telstar satellite, this war would have been unbearable for the men. But television and war became natural allies. While it beamed Dr. Kildare and Hazel to us, it also beamed bravery and good spirits back to the U.S.
I introduced my friend to my roommate. “Lee Harvey Oswald, I’d like to make your acquaintance with Cassius Clay.”
“Hey,” Lee said, “Didn’t I see you fight Chuvalo?”
“Yeah, but that was a long time ago.”
“You were great. The guy’s a Mack truck, but you pulverized him.”
“Yeah. He had an iron jaw and no punch. I flew like a butterfly and I stung like a bee.”
“So, who do you think’s gonna take the series?”
“I give it to the Dodgers. Koufax and Drysdale together can’t be beat.”

I interrupted to disagree. The Twins were the most exciting team in recent American League history. What an outfield led by today’s Hall of Famer, Bob Allison! And what an infield! Zoilo at short, Harmon at first, and the greatest hitter of modern times, Richie Rollins, at third. As for the mound, Earl Battey could barely hold onto Jimmy Kitty Kaat’s knucklers or the sliding fastball of Negro pitcher Mudcat Grant.

My instincts were better, but not by much. The Series went seven games. Killebrew could not hit off Koufax, but on the first pitch of the bottom of the tenth inning at Dodger Stadium, Jimmy Hall sent a curve ball into the second row of the right field bleachers, and it was all over. The Twins dynasty had begun.

When I was recovered enough to walk, I acted as a White House liaison for special visitors. I hosted Lyndon Johnson and his aide Walter Jenkins, who insisted on saving taxpayer’s money by staying at the Saigon YMCA. Later Bob Hope led his band of beauties for a USO show, and I was asked to host him.
I remembered Lee taking his whole furlough to help me recover, and I saw an opportunity to repay him. I knew he loved Bob Hope, and I’d arrange a backstage seat for him. He was thrilled but this led to our first altercation. It was, of course, over a girl.

Bob brought beautiful women to boost our soldiers’ morale, and besides Miss America he brought the lovely and leggy star of “Barbarella”, Jane Fonda, with his show. We met her at rehearsal, and Lee immediately decided he had to meet her personally. Unfortunately, that was my idea as well.
“You’re married,” I told Lee. “What about Marina?”
“I fake married her because the CIA made me. If you leave me alone with Jane, I’ll let you have her when we get back.”

This was admittedly tempting, but Jane was here and Marina was there so I fought for Jane. Lee rushed to her after she finished her shtick with Bob.
“I loved you in ‘Tall Story,’” he said. “It was a brilliant film.”
I arrived and said, “I thought ‘Any Wednesday’ was better. Especially the “she has an unusual name, Elaine,” scene.”
“Boys, boys, you’re both right. Both films were marvels of comic timing.”
Though we fought over her at first, I won in the end. She heard I stayed at a military hospital in Saigon until I was fit again for battle, and she just had to visit me there. I was told later that her publicized visit to my Saigon hospital was a publicity coup for her back home.

Unfortunately China’s material, if not actual, physical, support was beginning to undo the President’s good work and that of his scrupulous General, Westmoreland. The insurgents had succeeded in gaining control of the countryside around Saigon, and the capital was literally under siege.
It was at this moment that Kennedy arrived and gave his famed “I am a Saigoner” speech and threatened a nuclear attack on China if the insurgents did not cross the 17th parallel immediately.

Talk about brinkmanship working. China had exploded a bomb, and that may have been its only one. And it had no way to reach America by either plane or missile. There was tension, of course, when she threatened to nuke Saigon, as Kennedy had calculated, but she relented in the face of overwhelming superiority and the insurgents went home. I can now reveal that this was because of a face-saving plan by Kennedy. He agreed privately to send all American troops home in return for China’s promise not to interfere with the South. So China claimed it threw out the Americans. We claimed we saved the Southern democracy, and the war ended.

ECC12
12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

WITH THE KENNEDYS CHP8

CHAPTER EIGHT
Copyrighted

With the campaign over, I was to enlist for Vietnam. I was excited. We were making progress. Every night on the news we saw Vietnamese soldiers fighting side by side with their American superiors looking proudly on. It reminded me of the proud father standing beside his growing son and beaming with pride as his son recites a perfect Haftorah in the Bar Mitzvah ceremony. I was anxious to be a part of the team.

Television took advantage of the nation’s newfound love of their Vietnamese allies. Several shows featuring Vietnamese stars were broadcast, the most famous concerning the Vietnamese army officer who sets up a detective agency in Los Angeles employing three beautiful Vietnamese girls as his detectives. Of course I’m referring to “Charlie’s Charlies”.

Before I was to enlist I was to appear in the Oswald trial being heard in Dallas. I was to be the last witness for the defense. Before I flew to Dallas, this strange case was already world news.
It seemed incredible at the time though time has dulled the sense of incredulity, that a strange conspiracy between the Mafia and the CIA was the guilty party in a Presidential assassination attempt. But that is what the defense, skillfully headed by William Kunstler, was claiming. And more and more this preposterous line of defense was winning out.

Back in the Batista days of Cuba, organized crime used the island for gambling revenues, laundering money, prostitution rings and the like. It was a very profitable place for organized crime, and they wanted the man who threw them out, Fidel Castro, removed.
The CIA, for reasons of national security, also wanted Castro removed, and a group which included skilled agents such as Howard Hunt, Eugene Martinez and Bernard Barker, organized a group of disgruntled refugees into a small militia to retake the island by force.

They turned to organized crime originally for their contacts within Cuba, and their knowledge of the island, which became valuable intelligence material. Later the Mafia, as organized crime is commonly known, took a greater interest in the project and even financed certain aspects of it.
By an odd coincidence the new Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy, began a campaign aimed at eliminating organized crime. Top Mafia chieftains were jailed on any pretext and others harassed day and night.

After the Kennedy Administration refused to militarily support the Bay of Pigs operation, the CIA group decided only a different administration would have the guts to challenge the Marxist cancer in the Caribbean. The Mafia, meanwhile, decided that the Kennedy Administration had to be eliminated. So an alliance of these Bay of Pigs planners was formed.

Organized crime knew how to kill someone coolly, professionally and without getting caught. The CIA knew how to set up a sucker and make him look like a lone, demented assassin. Lee Harvey Oswald had been waiting for an assignment for years. He had a strange cover arranged for him ready to use when the moment required. He was now ordered into action. He would head the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and he would publicize pro-Castro beliefs in the press and on radio.

Why, he did not know, but he obeyed his superiors and was rewarded with his own office in New Orleans and a pay hike to boot.
I testified after a trio of hoods names Roselli, Giancanna and Trafficante. Kunstler tripped them all up, and each took the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination. As a member of the President’s personal staff, I was to appear last to make the best impression on the jury.
I waited in the anteroom until I was called to testify.

I entered the courtroom and saw Marilyn on my right in the third row from the back. She seemed more mature, wearing much rouge and face powder. I smiled at her and then saw Marina seated in the row behind her. I made a compromise—I stared in between them, not committing myself to either and waved. Three people all waved back at me at the same time, Marina, Marilyn and the bag lady I was staring at who usually preferred dirty divorce cases over political conspiracies.

I testified to seeing Oswald at the scene of the crime, with what appeared to be a suspicious package which, when asked, he claimed were curtain rods. Kunstler then asked me to identify a package which, I agreed, looked like the one I had seen Lee carrying. He pulled out a receipt from a hardware store. The rods were purchased on November 22 of 1963.
Then I testified that moments before the attempted assassination I saw Lee in the second floor cafeteria drinking a Coke, not in the seventh floor shooting gallery.

This really saved the case. Lee was seen away from anywhere a President could be shot from. A Presidential aide had said so and that was alibi enough. The jury freed him after only a thirty-minute debate.
After hearing his verdict the ebullient Lee insisted I join him and his “wife” for celebration drinks when things quieted down, maybe the next day. I took his number, which I knew by heart anyway, as Marilyn came up to me and kissed my cheek for the first time in months. He looked at her and said, “And please bring your pretty friend with you.”
“Great,” I said, “I’ll call tomorrow.”
Marina hugged her jubilant “husband” while staring over his shoulder at me. I hoped she would be discrete tomorrow.

Lee was something of a national hero by the time we all met for drinks the next night at the Carousel Club. Jack insisted on serving our table personally.
“Congratulations, Mr. Oswald,” said Ruby. “I hear they’re going to make a movie of your story.”
“The news is out already?”
“Sure. They even named the actor who’s gong to play you.”
“Who?”
“Cliff Robertson.”

Jack presented a photo of Lee he clipped out of a magazine. “Mr. Oswald, I’d be honored if you’d sign this photo. I’d like to display it on my wall beside the picture of Jimmy Hoffa, another frequent patron.”
“Sure, Jack. What should I write?”
Jack gave him a pen and said, “Please write, ‘To Jack Ruby from his good friend Lee Harvey Oswald.’”
“Sure, Jack, my pleasure.”

Marina and I shared a secret together. Neither of us was altogether successful in feigning unfamiliarity. Our self-conscious attempts at coldness revealed our true feelings for each other. Marina kept the conversation light. “You have a lovely red glow in your complexion,” she told Marilyn.
“Thank you.”
“It’s so rare for a hot climate. Do you use borscht?”
Oh no, I thought. Marilyn would put two and two together.
“I did once but I found it too harsh,” she answered.
Fortunately Lee changed the subject. “Norman, Jack Anderson told me you’re going to enlist in the army.”
Marilyn looked shocked.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “No one’s supposed to know yet. Someone must have leaked it to him.”
“Why, Norman, why?” she asked somewhat desperately.
“Because the man I serve called our country to support him in a just war, and I’m answering his call.”

She sat silently. Lee became agitated. “Norm” he said, “When Anderson told me that I got to thinking. I wasn’t a very good Marine, and I let people use me. Now it’s time I showed I’m a real American, not a friend of Castro’s. They could use a good radio instructor in Nam, what do you figure?”
“I’m sure they could,” I answered.
“Well, I think I’ll re-enlist and maybe join you there.”
Marina and Marilyn stared at each other with great emotion. Lee and I both felt it. Was it because they shared the common grief of sending their men to war, or was it deeper than that? I tried not looking at Marina although Lee kept staring at Marilyn. And not only into her eyes. Lower even. But Marilyn just kept staring at Marina.

Jack disturbed the unpleasant, pregnant silence with a note which he said a friend of mine had asked him to deliver. I read it:
“Congratulations. You won the election. Bet your folks are very happy. Remember, first safe opportunity.”
- Jimmy

“What is it, honey?” asked Marilyn. She never called me honey before. Was this the sign of better things for tonight, the last time I would see her before going to war?
As it turned out, no. Marilyn shared the same archaic view as I, that no man respected a woman whose virtue was in doubt. I ripped up the note and said, “Let’s get out of here. It’s getting crowded.”
“But the strippers are starting soon,” said Marilyn.
“Yeah, Norm,” agreed Lee. “What about the strippers you promised us?”
“Lee, I want you to look me up in Nam when you get there. But tonight Marilyn and I have important things to discuss.”
“We do?” asked Marilyn.
“You do?” said Marina.
“Yes, we do,” I told them both and stormed out of the club.

Of course we didn’t, but too much was on my mind. The pressure was getting to me. The next day on the way to the airport I said to Marilyn, “When I get back, maybe we should, you know?”
“Get married?”
“No, I mean, you know?”
“What do you mean, you know?”
“Yeah, I meant maybe get married for, oh, you know?”
“Children and a family.”
“Yeah, you know.”

ECC12
12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

WITH THE KENNEDYS CHP7

CHAPTER SEVEN
Copyrighted

The 1964 campaign began for me with a lecture on the press given to me by Pierre Salinger.
“Norm” he said, “We need the press, everyone needs the press, but you have little experience with them.”
“Well, I’m told I handled them well when Hoffa started making the news.”
“Not well enough. I predict Bobby gets Hoffa to trial sometime after the election. You have to understand reporters. I work with them daily, and believe me, they’re the most pathetic lot I’ve ever seen. They drink too much, travel too much, and see too much. Their marriages are wrecks, they are incredibly jealous of anyone who gets ahead, dream of Pulitzer Prizes they’ll never get but keep trying for the Prize by uncovering dirt. The dirtier the dirt, the faster they think they’ll get ahead. They think they’re performing a public service by exposing a politician’s private quirks, but no one has ever found a correlation between private morality and public duty.

Look what they’ve done to Rockefeller. The guy remarries a pretty young gal and they crucify him for it. Hell, who wouldn’t do the same thing if they could.”
“A man who can’t handle his own marriage wouldn’t be very good managing the country,” I suggested.
“Do you really believe that? Asked Salinger. “That’s the press’s line to justify their voyeurism, but there’s not an ounce of truth in it. He had an empty first marriage, and this new woman, what’s her name, Bouncy, Sleepy, Dopey?”
“Happy,” I said.
“Right, she makes him feel alive again. The man’s in tune with the country and could beat us. He’s rich, but that’s no issue. Joseph Kennedy was no slouch either. But the press knocked him out of the race, and the Republicans are going to be stuck with Goldwater. You watch.”
“So how do we handle them?”
“You gotta keep ahead of them. Keep finding interesting non-controversial stories for them to write about the administration. We’ll worry about keeping the bad ones out of their hands.”

So I looked for gimmicks essentially. I hired William Manchester to write a glowing biography of Mrs. Connally which was less flattering than we intended. To justify our entry into Vietnam I ghost-wrote a book for the President called “Profiles in Cowardice—A History of American Expediency.” The President found six examples of moments America should have entered a war and lost, by lack of resolve, either trading partners or nations on the road to democracy.

The chapter that won him the most praise, “Yalta, the Sacrifice of Eastern Europe”, was my idea, but Kennedy proposed that a small nuclear device on Moscow in 1945 would have brought down the Iron Curtain. I liked the idea and enjoyed expanding on it. The chapter I excluded was, in fact, never written: The loss of Cuba in 1959 and the refusal to back the Bay of Pigs invaders with the military support they so deserved.

Bobby ran his brother’s campaign skillfully, and I didn’t have much to do at times. Bobby’s campaign assistant, Dick Tuck, appeared at Goldwater rallies, and trouble seemed to plague Goldwater wherever he went. But I am responsible for one coup…I hired Allan Sherman, that magnificent song parodist who made the summer of “63 memorable with his hilarious “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh”, to write a pro-Kennedy campaign song called “Let’s All Call Up AT&T and Protest To The President’s March”. It was a send-up of Kennedy’s physical fitness programs as sung by fat, lazy people. It was a wonderful vehicle for the campaign.

Six months previously Sherman recorded “Beautiful Teamsters” and was paid well for the effort. The song, sung to the tune of “Beautiful Dreamer” had such lines as:

Beautiful Teamsters, please let me join
Can’t drive a truck, but I’m willing to loin…
Driving by night with no opposition
Tanks to the Interstate Commerce Commission

There was one minor image crisis which I helped manage. Pope John XXIII had died, and we had to decide if it was politically wise for the President to appear at his funeral. But the truth is Kennedy wasn’t fond of the Pope. He once threatened to excommunicate him if he didn’t change the name of the Statue of Liberty to Our Lady of the Harbor. The President never forgave him that threat and decided to send Johnson instead. But Johnson was from a Baptist background and didn’t know any Catholic Church protocol, so Teddy Kennedy represented his brother in Rome.

Sadly, the week-long wake in his hotel room raised a few eyebrows in the Holy City and we had to control the damage in the press. But Pierre had experience covering up such stories. When Bobby threw parties, guests were known to fall into his pool fully clothed, but these events never gathered much press space even when Senator Mills died. Bobby, however, was bereaved and spent months consoling Mills’ close friend and constant companion, Fannie Foxe, a brilliant Argentinean social wit and performer of exotic dance.

I guess I should mention the rather touchy subject of Jackie, an issue I helped defuse. According to a close confidante of mine who I will, in the name of propriety, call Fred Sorenson, the President and his wife were for all purposes separated. He had liaisons and used to send Jackie off to the far corners of America to accommodate them. One night she would attend a Rotary Club Dinner in Casper, Wyoming, the next day dedicate an Old Age Home in Seattle. Her familiar leopard skin pill box hat became the subject of an amusing song by Bob Dylan who would later sing it at our campaign rallies. He was a nice boy, and we belonged the same Zionist Youth Organization.

Everyone in the press was aware of the President’s activities, but no one would besmirch his name or sink so low as to reveal them. The result was a misdirected attack on Jackie’s extravagant spending habits. I defused the potentially explosive issue by hiring Chubby Checker to create a dance sensation called “The Jackie”. That made her a hero to youth and untouchable to the wary press.

Now according to Fred, and I could never confirm this from anyone else, a major crisis involving the President’s friendship to actress Marilyn Monroe almost leaked to the press. Apparently Mr. Hoffa sent former baseball star, Joe DiMaggio, to the White House to request an end to the Justice Department’s investigation of the Teamsters. Apparently, Marilyn was beginning to speak of her friendship with the President and did so with DiMaggio a few hours before she tragically passed away. Although I used DiMaggio’s visit as a fine photo opportunity aimed at the Italian and jock votes, DiMaggio used the opportunity as a concerned ex-husband of the deceased to speak on behalf of Mr. Hoffa. I know none of the details except what we all know: that is, that after Mr. DiMaggio’s terrible accident, he was named the American Ambassador to the Fiji Islands.

This incident did get back to Jackie, and she threatened a divorce right in the middle of the campaign. Remembering what the press did to Rockefeller, this had to be prevented at all costs. And it did cost, when they finally divorced. But during the campaign Jackie was the model of propriety. When Teddy’s ex-wife, Joan, married Greek shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis, she expressed memorable disapproval. And I’ve been told the night she danced “The Jackie” with Chubby Checker on the “Ed Sullivan Show” she won our side another 5 million votes. Chalk that idea up to me.
But I guess our biggest containment problem concerned the Office of Economic Opportunity. It was a tremendous victory when, despite a filibuster of old Southern Senators, the Civil Rights Act followed.

The Act authorized an agency to find employment for the underprivileged and offer food stamps so all those who had fewer opportunities could at least have the inalienable right to minimum nutrition.
The first problem was the appointment of brother-in-law, Sergeant Shriver, to head the office. Once again nepotism charges arose. I used the image of Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table at Camelot to describe Kennedy’s inner circle, but the media used images like a clan or The Klan. I ever found the right image to justify this blatant nepotism. Camelot just never caught on, though we gave it a good shot, even leaking to the press that “Camelot” was the President’s favorite play. The tack failed totally with the public.

The second problem was that some people were abusing the food stamps program unmercifully, even going to the extreme of reading the obituaries and registering for stamps under the names of the deceased. Often the food was sold in a kind of inner city black market and often the spare stamps were used to buy such luxury items as expensive liquor. The press put us on the defensive, and I tried to retaliate.

I spoke of the few exploiters and many benefactors. An old ploy, but based on truth nonetheless, even if not an absolute truth. I quoted studies proving protein deficiency in youth lowers the I.Q., and thus the intellectual potential of poor Americans. I claimed we were fighting juvenile delinquency and the drop-out rate. But juvenile delinquency rose, and the drop-out rate rose, and since Americans spoke of a crisis in education ever since the Sputnik was launched, so many statistics disproving my claims were found that I felt it wise just to ignore the food stamps crisis and hope it would go away.
But the issue wouldn’t go away, and the President’s liberal economic policies, which are based on the modern welfare state, were called into serious question by Goldwater. He was picking up in the polls on this one little issue. The President called me into his office to discuss the dilemma.

“Norm,” he said, “Goldwater’s new slogan worries me. The one that goes ‘In Your Heart You Know He’s Right.’”
“Why does it worry you?”
“Because in my heart I know he’s right.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Look, there are two kinds of economics: Goldwater’s kind and mine, which are liberal for the time being. Liberal economics means taxing people to death to finance pie in the sky social projects that never work. Goldwater’s economics recognize that despite the disgust most people feel towards big business, if big business is healthy, the nation is healthy. In everyone’s hearts they think Goldwater is right and this food stamp business is bringing it all to a head. We have to counter it fast.”

“How can you espouse economics you don’t believe in?”
“Because America is now rich enough to cure its race problems. This is an opportunity that has to be taken advantage of now. Look, my dad was in big business and big business got me where I am. But big business can afford a slack period, the Negroes can’t. I think most Americans feel that , and will vote with their hearts and not their pocketbooks, but I can’t be sure. Please counter the Goldwater strategy.”

It was a big assignment, and it was mine. The President even gave me a staff of idea men, one of whom suggested we play on Goldwater’s Jewish connection and stir up a little anti-Semitism. Needless-to-say he didn’t last long.

Finally Goldwater gave us the issue we needed. Speaking to an audience of American Legionnaires in Philadelphia, he asked why Americans should die for a bunch of ungrateful and even hostile foreigners when one nuclear bomb could send the insurgents packing. Even though Kennedy personally favored such a strategy, he had the wisdom not to articulate it in public. After that the race was on.

First I had a commercial prepared for the World Series spots. A little girl picking petals off a daisy and counting downward with each petal is montaged with a nuclear countdown. Republican protests were so loud the commercial was scrapped from the rest of the series. I asked Sandy Koufax, a distant cousin, if he’d mind objecting to the commercial being taken out. He agreed, and Goldwater’s nuclear policies became small talk for Dizzy Dean and Peewee Reese between pitches.

But the topper was my counter-slogan, “In Your Guts You Know He’s Nuts.” Dick Tuck had the sign prominently appearing at Goldwater rallies throughout the country.
Goldwater was so rattled that he made a statement that was his doom. Visiting a typical family in New England, with the cameras rolling, he thanked them for their hospitality and left saying, “This was a fine opportunity for you both to speak your mind and see if I have one.” That was it. He was pegged a nut.

Even his Vice-Presidential candidate, the charismatic William Miller, stopped campaigning and with two months left before the election took a ten-day trip to Tokyo to see the Olympics. In November Goldwater won the Southwest and overwhelmingly took the Japanese vote. But that was it. My man, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was to be President for four more years.

ECC12
12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.