Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [125]
36. At this moment, Schlesinger was not averse to provoking Mrs. Kennedy against Sorensen. At the time of these oral history interviews, both men were rushing to complete rival books on President Kennedy, which for a time frayed their relations. In his 2007 autobiography (Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History), Sorensen notes Pearson's charge "that I had privately boasted or indirectly hinted that I had written much of the book (a charge that, I regret to say, may have been—it was all too long ago to remember—partly true)." He insists that "like JFK's speeches, Profiles in Courage was a collaboration, and not a particularly unusual one, inasmuch as our method of collaboration on the book was similar to the method we used in our speeches." Sorensen writes that in 1953, he and JFK agreed that on any outside published work on which they collaborated, Sorensen would receive at least half the fees or royalties. He adds that when Profiles became a major bestseller, generating royalties "far in excess of anything either of us had ever contemplated," JFK "unexpectedly and generously" gave him "a sum to be spread over several years, that I regarded as more than fair," and which, by 1961, still exceeded half the book's earnings. Despite her tart comments about Sorensen during these interviews, Jacqueline soon mended her differences with him and later, during her New York years, their friendship resumed.
37. RFK had served as assistant counsel of Senator Joseph McCarthy's Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations before finally resigning in protest over McCarthy's excesses. From 1957 to 1959, he served as chief counsel for Senator John McClellan's committee on labor racketeering, a perch from which he relentlessly pursued Teamsters president James Hoffa.
38. EDWARD MOORE KENNEDY (1932–2009) was the ninth Kennedy child. After Teddy's birth, Jack asked his parents, "Can I be godfather to the baby?" They agreed. Ted Kennedy was the campaign manager of record when JFK ran for a second term in the Senate, but as he was studying at the University of Virginia law school, he was not involved full-time. In 1962, Ted won his brother's old Senate seat and occupied it until his death.
39. ARTHUR GOLDBERG (1908–1990) of Chicago, son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Ukraine, was general counsel to the AFL-CIO and United Steelworkers before JFK appointed him as labor secretary and then, in September 1962, to the Supreme Court.
40. GEORGE MEANY (1894–1980), a rough-hewn former Bronx plumber, was chief of the AFL-CIO.
41. SEYMOUR HARRIS (1897–1974) was a Harvard economist.
42. The Landrum-Griffin labor reform act of 1959 sought to regulate union practices to avoid the excesses that the Kennedy brothers had uncovered in their hearings. JFK wished to ensure that it did not also restrict honest union activity.
43. In 1957, the French were waging war against Algerians who wished to liberate their country from being a part of "metropolitan France." JFK gave a controversial speech denouncing French dominion over Algeria, taking the then-bold (and farsighted) view that it was in the American interest to side with anticolonial movements, both because it was right and because it would help the United States attract newly independent nations in which such movements had succeeded.
44. From 1951 to 1953, she was the "Inquiring Photographer" for the Washington Times-Herald, whose editor, Frank Waldrop, noted that Jackie "could see around corners." In that role, she covered the coronation of Elizabeth II.
45. In 1954, the French withdrew from Vietnam after an embarrassing defeat at Dien Bien Phu, and the United States was under severe pressure to replace them and pick up the struggle to keep the North Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), from seizing the entire country. JFK was skeptical and wished to learn