The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [356]
Kennedy’s back once again became so painful the week before Christmas that in Palm Beach he had to go to bed. Outside his door his doctors began their minuet in earnest again, Dr. Burkley, Dr. Travell, Dr. Kraus, and Dr. Wade all standing there offering medical advice. Dr. Travell, as always, was ready with her injections of novocaine to deaden the pain, a treatment that appalled the other physicians. When the doctors were shown into the bedroom, Dr. Kraus dramatically raised the subject with the ailing president. “I will not treat this patient if she touches him again,” he asserted, staring at Dr. Travell. “Even once.” Kennedy appeared to nod his acceptance.
On Christmas day, Dr. Travell went into Kennedy’s bedroom to talk to him about a front-page story in that morning’s paper with the headline: “Dr. Travell Quitting as Kennedy’s Doctor.” After listening to the doctor, the president apparently decided against formally accepting her resignation but decided to let her keep the title while taking away most of her authority. “I hate to use the word blackmail,” Dr. Cohen said, “but essentially this is how she kept her tentacles stuck to the White House.”
After this meeting Dr. Burkley became in effect Kennedy’s White House physician, though the change was not made public until 1963. Dr. Travell kept her office in the White House, though many members of the staff no longer visited her. She had the title that she wanted above all things, but she no longer had authority over the president’s medical treatment.
As for Dr. Cohen, he kept secret all that he knew about the president’s health. When the physician died in 1999, he had no idea that his letters had been saved by Evelyn Lincoln. “I asked him many times to dictate his memories, particularly about Kennedy’s care, and then at least there would be a straight record of it,” said Dr. Becker. “He was not interested. He was afraid it would get in the wrong hands.”
The medications that Kennedy was taking, along with his various medical problems, might have diminished his sexual drive or even rendered him impotent. That is why Dr. Jacobson may have included one of the newly discovered anabolic steroids such as nandrolone or testosterone in his medical cocktail. For the president, sex had always been a life force, an assertion that he would never be tied down to all the routines of the sick and the dying. Beyond that, rapacious sex was part of his father’s definition of a true man. If anything, Kennedy was even more interested in the sweet touch of female flesh, in laughter that had no reason but to please, in meetings that had no purpose but pleasure. He was greedy for it, frolicking in the White House pool with two young aides known as Fiddle and Faddle, insisting that there be women available when he traveled, scheduling his women in the White House when Jackie was away.
The haunting question is, to what extent did the president’s sexual practices affect his administration? A successful leader minimizes the natural vulnerabilities of the political life, in votes cast and in actions taken. Kennedy cavalierly exposed himself to a number of people who made their livings in part by trading on the vulnerabilities of the weak and susceptible, be they a Mafia figure like Sam Giancana or a corporate lobbyist like William Thompson, who was one of Kennedy’s procurers. To these men, overt blackmail was only the final and usually unnecessary step along a dark road that Kennedy had only begun to travel.
One of the FBI’s informers