Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot

Jackie Kennedy goes into labor. A Secret Service agent rushes her to the hospital. President Kennedy flies to Boston, where doctors have delivered his son Patrick by cesarean section. Patrick weighs less than five pounds. He labors to breathe. While Jackie recovers, doctors encourage the president to move the newborn to Boston’s Children’s Hospital. Patrick faces difficult odds of survival. Kennedy takes a room at the Ritz-Carlton but soon relocates to an empty room in the hospital. Less than two days after his premature birth, Patrick Kennedy dies. The president holds his son’s hand as the child passes. In the presence of hospital staff, the grieving president keeps his composure. When he returns to the empty hospital room with his longtime friend Dave Powers, President Kennedy weeps. The president leaves the hospital and flies to Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, where his wife is still in recovery.

Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his now-famous “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial. King opens his speech with profound observations, but without his usual thunderous oratory. Inside the White House, the Kennedy brothers watch on TV. Bobby Kennedy has, in fact, helped organize this March on Washington, albeit with some trepidation due to uneasiness over the White House’s relationship with King. John and Bobby Kennedy support King on civil rights, but they do not fully trust King himself. After building to a crescendo, King’s speech reaches its zenith, and his “voice turns golden” as he utters the legendary words, “I have a dream,” leaving 250,000 listeners “beside themselves with emotion and pride” and transforming August 28, 1963, into “the greatest day for civil rights in American history” (203). When King finishes his speech, the president turns to his brother and says of the civil rights leader: “He’s damned good” (204). Less than three weeks later, Klansmen set off a bomb in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four children.

Walter Cronkite of CBS News interviews President Kennedy. Cronkite asks about the 1964 presidential election, and Kennedy concedes that he might lose more Southern states. The president also discusses economic issues such as job creation and tax cuts, which he favors. On the situation in Vietnam, Kennedy declares a reluctance to lose Southeast Asia to the Communists, but he insists that the South Vietnamese must fight and win their own war. He also describes recent events in Vietnam as “very ominous” (208). Jackie stays away from the cameras and continues to grieve in private.

Kennedy has traveled to Montana as part of a conscious effort to build political support in the West. Texas, however, remains critical to the president’s reelection hopes, which is why White House Appointments Secretary Kenny O’Donnell has marked off November 21 and 22 for a fundraising visit to the Lone Star State.

Lee Harvey Oswald takes a bus to Mexico City, where he visits the Cuban embassy in hopes of relocating to Castro’s Communist island.

Jackie Kennedy emerges from her grief and seclusion. She accompanies her sister to Greece. From there, they set off on a two-week pleasure cruise aboard a luxury yacht owned by a “shadowy womanizer,” the filthy-rich Aristotle Onassis (215). Temporarily freed from the demands associated with her role as first lady, Jackie dons a bikini.

An angry President Kennedy tries in vain to reach his wife on the phone. The press is making headlines of her association with Onassis.

In Mexico City, Lee Harvey Oswald antagonizes the Cuban consul, who takes Oswald’s measure and denies him entrance into Cuba. When he returns to Dallas, Oswald phones a pregnant Marina, who is staying at the home of a friend named Ruth Paine. George de Mohrenschildt had put the Oswalds in contact with Paine, who now helps the Oswalds by giving Lee Harvey a “kindly reference” (220) for a job at the Texas School Book Depository.

Jackie Kennedy returns to the White House after nearly four months away from Washington, DC. On October 21, journalist Ben Bradlee and his wife, Tony, two of the Kennedys’ closest friends, join the president and first lady for dinner. Jackie has come under heavy public scrutiny for her Greek adventure. At dinner, she compounds the problem by defending Aristotle Onassis in front of her husband. The president already has told Bradlee that he thinks Jackie feels guilty about her trip. Knowing the first lady’s popularity in the South, Kennedy asks her to accompany him to Texas in late November. The first lady, who has only ever craved her husband’s attention, cheerfully agrees.