Killing Kennedy

Hidell.”
    Oswald has no special plans for his new pistol. Nobody has been making threats on his life, and for now he has no intention to kill anyone. He merely likes the idea of owning a gun—just in case.
    *   *   *
    January comes to an end, and with it the Mona Lisa ’s stay in Washington, D.C. On February 4 another high-security motorcade drives the painting to New York, where “Mona Mania” reaches even greater heights.
    January has been an amazing month for the president and Mrs. Kennedy. The glamour surrounding the Mona Lisa has temporarily overshadowed the fear of the cold war. Two years into the Kennedy presidency, and it is clear to the world that John and Jackie are in control of America’s fate.
    Thus, Jackie Kennedy may be right: this might just be Camelot—or at least part of it. For her there is no dark side to the story—although it definitely exists.
    When Jackie thinks of Camelot , she focuses on the final act of the play, where King Arthur regains his wonder and hope. But she overlooks the rest of the story. Camelot is fraught with tragedy, infighting, and betrayal. There is danger and death. More than half the Knights of the Round Table are slain before the final curtain falls.
    And Queen Guinevere, the heroine with whom Jackie so identifies, ends up alone.

 
    9
    M ARCH 11, 1963
    S T. A UGUSTINE, F LORIDA
    8:00 P.M.
    The loneliest man in Camelot wants to be president of the United States.
    Lyndon Baines Johnson stands bathed in a spotlight. His typewritten speech lies before him on the lectern, but he is not focused on the words. He’s more interested in the two tables of voters somewhere out in the audience who might just make that impossible presidential dream come true someday.
    What Lyndon Johnson wants, above all else, is a return to power. He adores power. And he will endure anything to know that heady sensation once again.
    Anything.
    The vice president searches the room for the “Negro tables,” desperate to know if his political gamble will pay off.
    *   *   *
    Robert Francis Kennedy also wants to be president of the United States.
    With five years to go before the 1968 election, an article by Gore Vidal in Esquire magazine’s March issue picks him to win the Democratic nomination over Lyndon Johnson.
    Bobby Kennedy has become such a political force that even the vice president worries he is powerless to stop Bobby from winning in 1968.
    It all seems so easy: JFK until 1968, then Bobby takes the White House, and then wins again in 1972, and then maybe even Teddy in 1976 and 1980. The Kennedy dynasty is poised to control the American presidency for the next twenty years. It’s almost a sure thing.
    But there are no sure things in politics. And little does LBJ know that insidious forces are possibly targeting Bobby even now—plotting not only the attorney general’s downfall, but that of the entire Kennedy family political dynasty.
    *   *   *
    August 5, 1962. Marilyn Monroe lies naked facedown on her bed. She is dead. Police investigators see no sign of trauma. The Los Angeles coroner will later conclude that the actress died from an overdose of barbiturates. Yet her stomach is almost completely empty, with no pill residue whatsoever.
    The public instantly chalks up Marilyn’s death to a life of excess. The tabloids have firmly established that she is a substance abuser. So there is little public outcry for a closer look at what happened to the glamorous actress.
    But there is a darker theory circulating in the precincts of organized crime. Mafia lore suggests that the old Sam Giancana–CIA connection from the Operation Mongoose days is still quietly active. The theory holds that Giancana conspired to have Monroe murdered by a team of four hit men who entered her home, taped her mouth shut, and injected a lethal suppository of barbiturates and chloral hydrate into her anus. This was done to prevent the vomiting that often accompanies an oral drug overdose. The tape was removed from her mouth once she was dead, and Monroe’s body wiped clean.
    Giancana’s motivation was revenge for Bobby Kennedy’s ongoing Justice Department investigations into organized criminal activity. The intent of the killers, according to that same Mafia legend, was to implicate Bobby in the murder. However, their plans went awry when Bobby was tipped off by anonymous sources that Marilyn Monroe had unexpectedly died. The attorney general then ordered Peter Lawford to arrange