Killing Kennedy

contraceptive device known simply as “The Pill.”
    On the radio, Chubby Checker is exhorting young Americans to do the Twist, while Elvis Presley is asking women everywhere if they’re lonesome tonight.
    But inside the Kennedy White House, Jackie sees to it that none of these political and social upheavals intrude on creating the perfect environment to raise a family. Her schedule revolves around her children. In a break from the traditional style of First Lady parenting, in which children are managed by the household staff, she is completely involved in the lives of three-year-old Caroline and baby John, taking them with her to meetings and on errands.
    As she grows more comfortable in the White House, it will not be uncommon for Jackie to camouflage herself with a scarf and heavy coat and take the children to the circus or a park—discreetly followed by the Secret Service.
    The sight of the First Lady playing with her children on the South Lawn will also soon become commonplace, causing one observer to note that Jackie is “so like a little girl who had never grown up.” Indeed, she speaks with the same breathy, almost childlike voice of actress Marilyn Monroe.
    The First Lady likes to think of herself as a traditional wife and dotes on her husband. But she also has a fiercely independent streak, breaking White House protocol by refusing to attend the myriad teas and social functions other First Ladies have endured. Jackie prefers to spend time with her children or concoct designs for a lavish renovation of the White House, an activity that does not interest her husband, who has little aesthetic sense when it comes to such matters. Jackie Kennedy refers to her new home as “the president’s house” and takes her inspiration from Thomas Jefferson’s White House, elaborately decorated by the former ambassador to France.

    Jackie was a devoted mother to her children, Caroline and John F. Kennedy Jr., pictured here playing with his mother’s necklace in the West Bedroom. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)
    The current décor dates to the Truman administration. Many pieces of furniture are reproductions instead of actual period originals, giving America’s most notable residence a cheap, derivative feel rather than an aura of grandeur. Jackie is assembling a team of top collectors to enhance the décor of the White House in every possible way.
    She thinks she has years to finish.
    At least four. Perhaps even eight.
    She thinks.

 
    3
    A PRIL 17, 1961
    W ASHINGTON, D . C ./ B AY OF P IGS, C UBA
    9:40 A.M.
    John F. Kennedy absentmindedly buttons his suit coat. He is seated aboard Marine One, his presidential Marine Corps helicopter, as it flares for a landing on the South Lawn of the White House. He has just spent a most unrelaxing weekend at Glen Ora, the family’s four-hundred-acre rented country retreat in Virginia that the Secret Service has code-named Chateau.
    The president is meticulous about his appearance and will change his clothes completely at least three more times today, on each occasion putting on yet another crisply starched shirt, a new tie, and a suit custom-tailored by Brooks Brothers. His suit coats are invariably charcoal or deep blue. But it is not vanity that drives John Kennedy’s obsession with clothing. Rather, it is a peculiar quirk of his personality that he is uncomfortable if he wears a garment too long. He drives his longtime valet, George Thomas, crazy with his constant changes.
    But right now Kennedy is not concentrating on his personal appearance, even though he does, as always, pat the top of his head to make sure every strand of hair is in place. Habits are hard to break.
    Kennedy is preoccupied with Cuba. Roughly twelve hundred miles due south of Washington, D.C., a battlefield is taking shape. Kennedy has authorized a covert invasion of the island nation, sending fourteen hundred anti-Castro exiles to do a job that the U.S. military, by rule of international law, cannot do itself. The freedom fighters’ goal is nothing less than the overthrow of the Cuban government. The plan has been in the works since long before Kennedy was elected. Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have assured the president that the mission will succeed. But it is Kennedy who has given the go-ahead—and it is he who will take the blame if the mission fails.
    Once the UH-34 helicopter touches down on