Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot

It is Inauguration Day. Chief Justice Earl Warren administers the Oath of Office to incoming President John F. Kennedy. Standing nearby are three people incredibly important in Kennedy’s life: his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, the new attorney-general; his running mate and now vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson; and his 31-year-old wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Some of Kennedy’s celebrity friends, including singer Frank Sinatra, partied well into the night and thus chose not to attend the swearing-in ceremony. Secret Service agents scan the crowd. Kennedy completes the oath and then delivers his Inaugural Address, which he fine-tuned the night before after comparing it with Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural. Kennedy’s address is “an instant classic” (12). The new president will face a litany of challenges: Cuba, Vietnam, civil rights, and the power of the Mafia.

Meanwhile, in the city of Minsk, capital of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine and a defector from the United States, toils in anonymity and longs to return home.

The chapter explains the origins of a treasured coconut that sits on the new president’s desk. It also flashes back to young John F. Kennedy’s first experience of leadership.

During World War II, Lieutenant John F. Kennedy commanded PT-109, a patrol torpedo boat, when it collided with a Japanese destroyer and was sliced in half. Surviving crewmen gathered on the forward section of PT-109’s hull, which remained afloat, as they waited for their commander to devise a plan. At first, Kennedy solicited ideas from the crewmen, but he soon realized that he must be the one to act. A onetime member of the Harvard University swim team, Kennedy ordered his men to swim three miles to an island so small that the Japanese would be unlikely to notice it or them. Kennedy then swam alone toward another island, planning to use a recovered lantern to signal other PT-boats. However, the currents worked against him, and he had to return to his crew. Four days passed. Plagued by hunger and thirst, Kennedy and Ensign George Ross swam to the island of Nauru, where they encountered a group of locals. Kennedy carved a message into a coconut, which the Nauruans carried to a lieutenant who commanded a nearby New Zealand infantry detachment. The officer alerted the US Navy, which rescued Kennedy and his men.

The chapter concludes in January 1946. Kennedy is making his first run for Congress. Campaign manager Dave Powers listens as Kennedy tells the PT-109 story to a group of Gold Star Mothers in Boston. Powers concludes that the PT-109 saga must become a biographical centerpiece of Kennedy’s quest for political office.

Every afternoon at 1:00, the new president swims naked in the White House’s indoor pool to bring relief for chronic back pain. On the whole, the Kennedy White House is far less formal than that of its predecessor, but Kennedy does stick to a rigid daily schedule. With the notable exceptions of the first lady and Evelyn Lincoln, his personal secretary, Kennedy is nearly always surrounded by male staffers, which leads to a fair amount of ribaldry. The president’s close-knit, male-dominated inner circle also enables his frequent, casual sexual escapades outside of his marriage.

Jackie Kennedy smokes a pack of cigarettes each day, a habit that, like nearly everything in her heavily scrutinized life, she prefers to hide from the public. She devotes most of her time to looking after her young children, three-year-old Caroline and three-month-old John Jr. She also has ambitious plans to redecorate the White House.

In Minsk, Lee Harvey Oswald meets and marries a beautiful and talkative young Russian woman named Marina Prusakova.