Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [64]
How did he feel about—it was Lemnitzer, it was, I think, and the Joint Chiefs he held more responsible privately than anyone else, my impression.
Yes, you know, he never really spoke unkindly about them, but with sort of hopeless, wry laughter, he'd talk about Curtis LeMay. I remember the time of the second Cuba, he got a picture of all our airplanes in Florida, or all over the country just standing on all the runways.19 And he called up LeMay. But, you know, there that man was shouting to go and bomb everything and have a little war and had left all our planes out. You know, LeMay was hard to work with. But, it was the whole thing—the Joint Chiefs, and then, I guess, poor Allen Dulles. And then again, there's Dean Rusk. I don't know if you should have— It seems to me if you're going to do it, you should have had air cover. You know, Dean Rusk, being timid, but all of that—Jack coming in so late to something and everybody—I just wished if he had to do it, they'd let him alone. That was before the hundred days.20 I mean, it was silly. He never liked that hundred-day business in the papers but it was obviously some little press thing—Roosevelt. But you know, before they were even over—so you can see how early that was in the White House.
How did you feel about Dulles after this?
Well, he always liked Allen Dulles and, you know, he thought he was an honorable man, and Allen Dulles always had liked Jack. And I think Allen Dulles sort of cracked up. Oh, because a while later he went out of his way to have him to dinner—or to make someone—I know what it was. Or was it Charlie Wrightsman?21 Yes, Charlie Wrightsman and Jayne were in Washington, and they were coming to the White House. This was just a couple of weeks after Cuba, or a month—and always Allen Dulles had been their little lion. They'd have him down, and trot him out in Florida and everything. And Charlie Wrightsman was there, and he said he wasn't going to see Allen Dulles—usually when he was—when in Washington, he did—because of the way Allen had bungled the Bay of Pigs. Well, that just disgusted Jack so. He was so loyal always to people in, you know, trouble. And so he took me aside and said, "Have Dulles over here for tea or for a drink this afternoon." And he made the special effort to come back from his office and sit around with Jayne and Charlie Wrightsman, just to show Charlie what he thought of Allen Dulles. And, I mean, it made all the difference to Allen Dulles. I was with him about five minutes to ten before Jack got there. He just looked like, I don't know, Cardinal Mindszenty on trial. You know, just a shell of what he was.22 And Jack came and talked—put his arm around him. What's that thing about Morgan? "If you just walk with—through the bank with your arm around me, you don't have to give me a loan?"—or anything?23 Well, wasn't that nice? It was just to show Charlie Wrightsman. But it shows something about Jack. But I mean, he knew he—Dulles had obviously botched everything up. You know, he had a tenderness for the man. And then I guess right after that or Cuba, whenever, he got General Taylor.
Yes. First, he got General Taylor to head an investigation. Remember General Taylor and Bobby made a kind of inquiry into what happened. And then, then he brought General Taylor into the White House.
That's right.
As a kind of military adviser.
General Taylor always used to be in his gray suit then, and sometimes Jack would say, when there'd be a meeting of the Joint Chiefs, you know, that you could just feel these waves going out from them wondering about what Taylor would be like and what a difficult situation it was for Taylor.24 And it was to his amazement; it worked very well.
Had he known General Taylor before this?
I suppose he'd met him a couple of times because he was always talking about his book. And you know, and then he'd say, "Imagine, can you imagine Eisenhower doing that?"—whatever all the things were that