The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [286]
Jack was the elegant troubadour of this new era, celebrating the unprecedented challenge that he believed his nation faced, yet knowing that these would be years of immense uncertainty and danger. The restless spirit of America would not be contained much longer, and the new president would either ride the whirlwind or the whirlwind would ride him.
Jack believed that the next president would have to act with unprecedented vigor, projecting onto the nation some of his own energy and will. During the tough months of the campaign, he could not stumble even once. As Feldman realized, Jack could dispel the rumors only by running a campaign that was an endurance contest merciless in its intensity and brutal in its scheduling. Beyond that, his minions would have to continue doing a brilliant job of disguising his health problems and preventing his enemies from learning the truth.
Jack’s campaign had already been in the unpleasant position of having to find an acknowledged authority to say something that was untrue about Jack’s Addison’s disease. In early June 1960, Dr. Janet Travell and Dr. Eugene Cohen sat down to write a health certificate for Kennedy. Dr. Cohen
was a prominent endocrinologist who had taken over Jack’s cure after the death of Dr. Shorr in January 1956. It was Dr. Cohen’s analysis of Jack’s adrenal condition that mattered. Dr. Travell recalled that Dr. Cohen said that he “didn’t like publicity” and “didn’t want to get mixed up in this,” and “we fought over every word…. We spent 3 or 4 hours on it.” The fighting was over the truth. Dr. Travell was a woman of immense political ambition who sought to advance herself through her relationship with Jack. Dr. Cohen was concerned only with the care of his patient.
In the end, after all the negotiating, Dr. Travell and Dr. Cohen signed a joint letter stating: “With respect to the old problem of adrenal insufficiency, as late as December 1958, [when] you had a general check-up with a specific test of adrenal function, the result showed that your adrenal glands do function.” That was a legalistic way of getting around the hard truth that Jack had a serious condition, but the statement was hardly strong enough to make the suspicious turn toward other subjects.
Later that month, the two doctors traveled to Boston to see Dr. Cohen’s colleague and another of Jack’s doctors, the equally highly regarded endocrinologist Dr. Elmer C. Bartels at the Lahey Clinic. Dr. Travell described the trip as “an important tactical move.” She wrote Dr. Bartels afterward to express her concern “about the security of the nurses’ notes at the Lahey Clinic” and noting that he planned to write his own letter about Jack’s health. Dr. Bartels may have written such a letter, but if he did, it was not considered strong enough to release, and no copy of such a document has surfaced.
India Edwards’s dramatic attack on Jack’s health was just what he had feared might happen. Immediately Dr. Travell wrote another letter to Bobby in Los Angeles in her own name, stating baldly: “Senator Kennedy does not have Addison’s disease.” Dr. Travell knew little about Addison’s disease, though she presumably knew enough to realize that her statement was at best a half-truth. Even the doctor realized that she had gone too far in her disingenuous attempt to protect Jack. After the nomination was secure, she qualified her statement in another letter signed also by Dr. Cohen (“You do not have classical Addison’s disease”) and asked Bobby to destroy her previous letter. When Dr. Travell and Dr. Cohen’s offices were broken into by someone apparently searching for Jack’s medical records, she sequestered the documents and went around to the hospitals where he had been a patient, gathering up all his medical reports. “I tracked down almost everything that was available,” Dr. Travell recalled.