Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [65]
Yes.
But—and so he always thought so highly of him. He knew just where to turn the minute he needed his military adviser.
We in the White House staff felt very badly, quite apart from the general horror of the thing, but we felt that we'd served the President badly, and some had thought—some had been for the project and others had been against it. But all of us felt that we hadn't done the job that the White House staff ought to be doing in the way—that we'd been too intimidated by all these great figures and hadn't subjected the project to the kind of critical examination it was our job to do. Did he ever comment on that?
No, he never did—but, I mean, I don't think all of you should feel that way because look at what you did at the second Cuba. The thing was you were all cutting your teeth in there and nobody had warned you about this thing. And you—all these supposed experts when you come in fresh yourself, what can you do but sort of take their advice? That's why Lyndon Johnson's so lucky. At least he has a team of people who've been tried. And you hope to God that if the country's been run these past eight years and there'd been crises that those men would know something what they were talking about. So he used to talk later, never about his staff, but, you know, about who he was left, who he inherited to turn to for advice. And that's what he was rather bitter about.
And when the chips were really down, it was Bobby whom he turned to, wasn't it, more than anyone else to talk to and have counsel with?26
That's right. And I remember—and setting Bobby up with that committee27 and I think that's where Bobby and General Taylor's friendship started because I would say after Jack, General Taylor was the man in Washington that Bobby is the closest to, I think—I mean, besides his friends or people in the Justice Department. But there's this really mutual respect they both have for each other. And it's very touching—a very young man and a man who's at the end of his career.
PRESIDENT AND MRS. KENNEDY SPEAKING WITH RETURNED MEMBERS OF THE CUBAN INVASION BRIGADE, MIAMI, 1962
Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
You said, in an earlier tape, that the times that you remembered the President being most depressed and under pressure really—the state committeeman fight in 1956 and the Cuban thing.
Yes, well, not depressed at the state committeeman thing. That was more nervous, apprehensive, he couldn't stop talking about it. You know, then he had to do something to win. This one was sort of blundering along. He wasn't running his own show as he was doing in the Massachusetts fight. And then the awful depression when it ended and caring so about those people.28 And I think the compassion that shows, well, the way he used to talk to me about Cardona afterwards, and the way—then he really felt obligated to get those prisoners out. That was—was that the Christmas later or two Christmases later?
Two Christmases later.
First there were the tractors and Bobby felt so committed to do that. And just at that time, there came an article about Bobby—remember those other boring ones, where they say he was ruthless? And I just thought, "If they could have known the compassion of that boy." You know, you just couldn't let those people molder away in jail. Probably it would be better if you could have, than people see that poor brigade staggering back and remind you all over—the whole country, all over again, of the big failure. But just this urgency to get them out. And then Jack would get so belted for the tractor thing. But he had to do whatever thing he could to get them back. [tape machine turned off, then] Should I tell about that?
Yes.
I have another—I just thought of something else about Bobby's compassion. It must have—last winter—you can find out when it was—that best spy we had in Russia was caught. Was it Penkovsky or Penovsky?29
Yes, Penkovsky.
Well, Bobby was coming