Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [104]
Do you remember any particular reaction to Goulart?33
No, that was—that lunch, again, I was sick. And I think he thought Goulart was sort of a shifty character and—you know, I mean, well, I mean, you know—Goulart was really messing everything up, wasn't he?—in the economy and the Communists. I thought—I think he thought he was a faker and a robber and a—but I don't know what he exactly thought.
Did he have any particular—do you remember anything particular about Peru?
Yes, you know, Prado of Peru had been here on a state visit. He was really rather a comic character. But anyway, when he was overthrown, it reminds me so now of everyone saying that the United States recognized the junta in Brazil too quickly, because we held off recognition or something. We cut—
We suspended relations and stopped aid.
That's right. And later on Pat's—Rosita Prado, who Pat34 went to school with, wrote Jack a letter saying, "You saved my father's life"—because they were going to execute Prado and, I guess, his wife. And because of what we did and everything, they let him get out and get to Paris and all that. But, you know, just making it rough for them for a while there. Finally, it made it better in the long run, instead of just saying, "Hooray, hooray, they've overthrown"—and I guess—no—
No, you're absolutely right.
That's right, no—yeah.
What we did was we suspended and said, we will resume if you agree to do certain things like give parties political freedom, restore freedom of the press, agree to hold elections. They finally agreed to do these things, and then we resumed relations, and it made a great difference.
And in Brazil, the minute the junta took over this time, everyone just had cheers. And that was the most disillusioning thing. Betancourt was here talking to me about it, two months ago. He said all—half of Congress, or Parliament, whatever it is, all the great writers, everyone has their civil liberties taken away from them. And that was one of the most despairing things in Latin America—the difference between Kennedy and Johnson. It affected all the countries. Jack never would have done it that way.
Charlie Bartlett played a role in working out the conditions with the new government in Peru. Do you remember anything about that?
No, I didn't know that.
He helped—I think Charlie and Berckemeyer35 were kind of playing on that. Did the Dominican Republic—was there anything particular there? John Bartlow Martin or Bosch?36 Not much.
Well, he just said how insurmountable Bosch's problems were going to be. You know, he hoped so it would work, and then it didn't.
What was his general feeling about the Foreign Service?
Oh, and the State Department.
The State Department.
Well, it was just despair, and he used to talk all the time. You know, he had such high hopes for Rusk in the beginning, when you read his dossier of what the man was. And he liked him, sort of, personally. I mean, you could never say Dean Rusk is mean, or anything, but he saw him get to sort of be the tool, really, and he saw that that man was so—well, could never dare to make a decision or any—he never would make a decision. And Jack used to come home some nights and say, "Goddamn it, Bundy and I get more done in one day in the White House than they do in six months in the State Department." I remember once they'd—they'd asked for some message to be drafted to Russia, a very unimportant one—something like wishing Khrushchev happy birthday—maybe a little more important—and either six or eleven weeks went by and nothing had come. And then—this is another very late example—when I came back from Morocco, I told him of this brilliant,