The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [451]
Kennedy did not seem to realize that circumspection is the key to an adulterer’s long-term success. Presumably he knew that Florence Kater was still obsessed with exposing an affair between him and Pamela Turnure. Even so, he brought Turnure into the White House as Jackie’s press secretary.
The matter was of serious enough consequence that in October 1961, Bobby’s press secretary, Edwin Guthman, sent to the FBI a copy of one of Kater’s letters to the attorney general calling the president a “debaucher of a girl young enough to be his daughter and his cynical knowledge that the press will cover up for him is such that he has brought her into the White House itself as his wife’s press secretary.” He included a cover letter that asked whether the agency “had anything in files on the writer, Florence Mary Kater.” Although the FBI had nothing on Kennedy’s tormenter, the agency had a copy of the letter Kater had sent out in 1959 and noted that it had been distributed widely, including to the NBC journalist David Brinkley.
Kater finally managed to find someone willing to publish her tale. In November 1963, The Thunderbolt became the first publication to print Kater’s charges in explicit detail. The racist newspaper that called itself “The White Man’s Viewpoint” included a photo of Kater picketing outside the White House in which she carries a large placard condemning the philandering president, a photo of what appeared to be the then-Senator Kennedy shielding his face as he hurried out of Turnure’s Georgetown apartment, and the transcript of a tape recording of Kennedy and Turnure made on July 1, 1958. The Katers, who had lived downstairs from Turnure, had secretly recorded Kennedy’s visit late one night. The tape included sounds of a couple making love and having a testy contretemps. “I think that all men are cheaters,” the woman said, her guest presumably giving her ample evidence of that.
There was other innuendo already appearing in publications more legitimate than The Thunderbolt. In July, the FBI had taken note of a column in Photoplay, a popular fan magazine, by Walter Winchell, who included a blind item concerning Marilyn Monroe and an anonymous powerful man who could have been either the president or the attorney general.
It was almost inevitable that either before or during the 1964 election, speculation about Kennedy’s sexual activities would move from occasional innuendo in the gamier gossip columns and tabloids to full-scale articles in major newspapers and magazines. Guthman is convinced that Kennedy’s sexual conduct, particularly with Exner, “would have been an issue in the campaign.” Kennedy’s aide Mike Feldman and Hoover’s deputy Cartha DeLoach both believe that though the matter probably would have surfaced, the president would have successfully dismissed it as nothing but baseless campaign innuendo.
The public knew nothing about the president’s sexual appetites and thought him an exemplary husband. Kennedy was an immensely popular president, not only admired but revered. Yet he was increasingly dogged by a multitude of problems. These were not grand crises in which he could stand stalwartly on the deck of the ship of state, most Americans hewing to his judgment no matter where he led them. These were pesky, petty squalls that risked slowly sapping away the energy and strength of his administration.
In the middle of July, Kennedy’s secretary brought him a cover letter and a series of memos from his friend Charles Bartlett. “I know how you dislike bearers of bad news but I am passing these memos along under a deep conviction that they deal with an area which urgently requires your personal scrutiny,” the columnist wrote. “An aura of scandal is building up…. At best O’Donnell, O’Brien … are performing legitimate political functions in a way that is breeding resentment and suspicion. At worst they are the heart of an extensive corruption which is reaching