and B. K. Nehru and Madame Pandit and her sister.19 It was much more like a family group. The meals were pleasant. And when we got to Pakistan—of course, I basically like the Paks more than the Indians. They're sort of more manly, and Ayub never stopped talking politics or how he hated Nehru or couldn't stand him.20 And I did get a message from the State Department from Ken to make sure that it looked like McConaughy was an old friend of Jack's.21 So the first thing I did when McConaughy and Ayub—McConaughy got there the day I did—the day before, as the ambassador. So, I tried to sort of say—set it up that they'd known each other from when and everything. And McConaughy said, "Oh, no"—that's right in front of Ayub—"That's not true at all, Mrs. Kennedy. The first time I ever met the President was two weeks ago when I gave—" And the only time I ever wrote Jack a letter, which I wrote coming down from the Khyber Pass and gave him when I got home, was what a hopeless ambassador McConaughy was for Pakistan, and all the reasons and all the things I thought the ambassador there should be, which was a gentleman, a soldier, and a friend of the President's. And I suggested some other people—Bill Blair and Bill Battle.22 And Jack was so impressed by that letter, he showed it to Dean Rusk, whose big choice McConaughy had been, and said, "This is the kind of letter I should be getting from the inspectors of embassies." I mean, he'd never been for McConaughy, who was a sweet man, but just such a— When we went to Rawalpindi, that Paris Match reporter was yelling, as we got off the plane, "Bonjour, Jacqueline!" And that night McConaughy said to Ayub Khan, "Mr. President, I was so interested to hear all that French at the airport today. I never realized there was so much French influence in Pakistan." Well, Ayub just looked at him and said, "I think if—you will find out that the influence here has been mainly British." But you know—Dean Rusk! Anyway, that was my trip. And our trip was so exhausting that all through Pakistan, Lee and I were having nosebleeds every day and night. So we were really tired when we got home.
Did the President talk much about Africa? The Congo?
Yes. Once he said about Ed Gullion and Bill Attwood—and Bill Attwood had gotten sick there and everything and, you know, you were so sorry for him—he said, "Those are so much more the important places to be now as a diplomat." And he said, "London and Paris and everything don't matter anymore. There's the telephone and, you know, it's really done that way. But," he says, "it's those far-out places in Africa that are, you know, the exciting places for a diplomat to be, and where you can do the most." Well, Ed Gullion, he'd always had a special feeling for, because when he was doing his Indochina speech, which was the year before we were married, because I'd had to type it all up from that summer—I mean, translate all these French books and everything—Ed Gullion was the only person in the State Department who would sort of talk to Jack, and who would really say how awful Indochina was and the way it was going.23 And I guess he got fired because of that, or—or else he got—no, he got put in some—
He got shifted out of that area and given other things.
Yeah. And put in some pathetic little post. We always used to see him all the time and, well then, I think Jack named him to the Congo, just showed what he thought of him. He really thought he was exceptional.
In 1963, one of the big things on the President's mind was, of course, Vietnam and Diem and Madame Nhu, and all that.24
Yes, well, you know, obviously it was trouble for so long and you didn't ask Jack about it when he came home, and everything. But I know once—I forget how long Lodge was out there before things really got bad. About how many months?
He was out about, I guess, about three months before Diem was thrown out.
Well, I know that he started acting rather strangely, and he said he wouldn't answer their cables and you couldn't get through or—anyway, as if he was kind of taking it into his