Killing Kennedy

around-the-world trip, JFK is delighted, calling it “a damn good idea.”
    Just to reinforce the journey’s importance, the vice president is allowed the use of a presidential airplane.
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    More than 110 men would not have died if JFK had canceled the Bay of Pigs invasion. And more than 1,200 freedom fighters would not have been captured and sentenced to Castro’s brutal prisons. The Bay of Pigs not only exposed flaws in Kennedy’s international policy, but it also eroded the power the voters had given him—even if this was unbeknownst to them at the time. Kennedy was indecisive at a time when he should have been resolute. He allowed himself to be misled. It is impossible to ascertain why. But there is no question that in the first major test of his administration, Kennedy’s leadership failed.
    The harrowing days of April 1961 taught the Kennedy brothers an indelible lesson: they are on their own. Their advisers are not worth shoe polish. In order to restore America’s power position, the Kennedy brothers will have to find a way to defeat their enemies, both abroad and, especially, in Washington, D.C.
    *   *   *
    Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, the U.S. State Department has decided to return Lee Harvey Oswald’s American passport and allow him to return home. But while Oswald is quite anxious to leave the Soviet Union, he is no longer the unattached nomad who defected nearly two years earlier. He delays his departure until a time when Marina and their unborn child can travel with him.
    He also delays telling Marina that they are going anywhere.
    Finally, Oswald breaks the news. “My wife is slightly startled”—he writes in his journal on June 1, after finally telling Marina that they are leaving the Soviet Union, most likely forever—“but then encourages me to do what I wish to do.”
    Marina is on the verge of leaving behind everything she knows for a life of uncertainty with a man she barely knows. But she accepts this hard reality because she has already learned one great truism about Lee Harvey Oswald: he always does what he wants to do, no matter how many obstacles are thrown in his path.
    Always.

 
    4
    F EBRUARY 14, 1962
    W ASHINGTON, D . C .
    8:00 P.M.
    The First Lady glides alone down a hallway, walking straight toward the six-foot-high television camera bearing the logo of the CBS eye. Her outfit and lipstick are a striking red, accenting her full lips and auburn bouffant hairdo. The camera will broadcast only in black and white, so this detail is lost on the forty-six million Americans tuning in to NBC and CBS to watch her televised tour of the White House. This is Jackie’s moment in the national spotlight, a chance to show off the ongoing effort to restore her beloved “Maison Blanche.”
    Jackie pretends that the camera is not there. This is the way she goes through life as well, feigning ignorance and keeping a discreet distance from all but a few trusted confidants. Despite her practical detachment, Jackie is anything but unaware of her circumstance, having written and edited the show’s script herself, filling the document’s margins with small reminders about a piece of furniture’s history and the names of wealthy donors. She knows not only the renovation status of each of the White House’s fifty-four rooms and sixteen baths but also the complete history of the 170-year-old building itself.
    And yet, as America will learn over the course of the broadcast, the First Lady does not come across as a pompous know-it-all. In fact, she doesn’t even like to be called “the First Lady”; she thinks it sounds like the name of a racehorse. This ability to laugh at herself gives Jackie that precious gift of appearing vulnerable and shy, rather than aloof, even as she speaks with an upper-crust accent. Many men find her sexy, and many women see her as an approachable icon. Throughout the first year of her husband’s presidency, her perceived accessibility has endeared Jackie Kennedy to America and the world.
    President Kennedy made light of this when they visited Paris in June 1961, on a state visit to meet French president Charles de Gaulle. The Bay of Pigs had taken place just six weeks earlier, and JFK’s image had been vastly diminished in the estimation of many European leaders. But not so Jackie’s image. When Air Force One touched down at Orly Airport, she was hailed as the very picture of glamour, poise, and beauty. The president couldn’t help but