Killing Kennedy

JFK returns, overriding his libido. He is willing to take great personal risks to satisfy his sexual needs, but he does not gamble when it comes to remaining in power. Better to have Monroe and Sinatra and the Mafia as enemies whom he can view from a wary distance, rather than as friends who could drag him down.
    At the lectern before the party faithful in New York City, the president adopts the chaste mien of an altar boy. “I can now retire from politics after having ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet and wholesome way,” the president speaks into the microphone, his wry delivery suggesting that he is above such sexual shenanigans.
    But the president hasn’t given up on extramarital affairs. He is just beginning a new long-term relationship with a nineteen-year-old virgin whom he deflowers on Jackie’s bed.
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    The presidency is a daunting and lonely job. Moments like the Madison Square Garden party offer a welcome respite from the pressure. JFK basks in the birthday appreciation, which comes in the midst of a campaign rally that raises more than $1 million for the Democratic Party.
    The president has no way of knowing that he will celebrate this special day just one more time.
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    In the faraway Soviet city of Minsk, Lee Harvey Oswald has finally cleared the tangle of red tape that has prevented him from returning home.
    The plan now is for him, Marina, and five-week-old June Lee to take the train to the American embassy in Moscow to pick up their travel documents.
    On May 18, Oswald is discharged from his job at the Gorizont (Horizon) Electronics Factory. Few are sad to see him go. The plant director thinks Oswald is careless and oversensitive and lacks initiative. Even Marina thinks her new husband is lazy and knows he resents taking orders.
    The Oswalds arrive in Moscow on May 24, 1962, the same day that navy test pilot Scott Carpenter becomes the second American astronaut to orbit the earth. President Kennedy is quick to commend Carpenter for his courage and skill, even as he grapples with Congress over the issue of affordable nationwide health care.
    On June 1 the Oswalds board a train from Moscow to Holland. Lee Harvey carries a promissory note from the U.S. embassy for $435.71 to help start his life anew in America. On June 2, as Secretary of the Navy John Connally wins a runoff to become the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas, the Oswalds’ train crosses the Soviet border at Brest. Two days later they board the SS Maasdam , bound for America, where they stay belowdecks most of the journey. Oswald is ashamed of Marina’s cheap dresses and doesn’t want her to be seen in public. He passes the time in their small cabin writing rants about his growing disillusionment with governmental power.

    Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald with their daughter, June Lee, in 1962. (Getty Images)
    The Maasdam docks in Hoboken, New Jersey—Frank Sinatra’s hometown—on June 13, 1962. The Oswalds pass through customs without incident and take a small room at New York City’s Times Square Hotel. The plan is to stay there until they can afford to fly to Texas, where Oswald’s brother Robert lives. There, Oswald can finally settle down and find work.
    The next morning, in far-off Vietnam, South Vietnamese soldiers are flown aboard U.S. helicopters to combat a Communist stronghold, a move that forces President Kennedy to backpedal publicly on the issue of direct U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, a war that he believes is vital to stanching the worldwide spread of communism.
    Meanwhile, thanks to a loan from his brother, Lee Harvey Oswald and his family fly to Dallas. The city simmers with a rage that mirrors Oswald’s ongoing personal unhappiness in many ways. The Deep South swung in President Kennedy’s favor during the election, but there are pockets of militant anger about Kennedy being the first Roman Catholic president, his desire to bring about racial equality, and what some perceive as his Communist tendencies.
    This is the environment into which the Oswald family arrives. They land at a Dallas area airport called Love Field, where the president and First Lady will touch down aboard Air Force One in seventeen short months.
    Oswald is unhappy that his return to the United States has not attracted widespread media attention—or any media attention, for that matter. But even as he fumes that the press is nowhere in sight, he has no idea that he is being secretly