Controversy And Other Essays in Journalism (1950–1975) Read online

  Before a taping session four weeks after we had met, she asked me, “Are you just going to put down all the facts, who ate what for breakfast and all that, or are you going to put yourself in the book, too?” I replied that I didn’t see how I could very well keep myself out of it. “Good,” she said emphatically. And so, for better or for worse, I was to be there. After the book appeared, Jerzy Kosinski told me that he thought its greatest value was its duality: the way it described events and, simultaneously, how people responded to them. Of the many words which the book provoked, that was the most perceptive comment I heard. Its implications explain why writing it was so great a strain.

  The research was also difficult—about half the people I interviewed displayed deep emotional distress while trying to answer my questions—though none of the other sessions were as affecting as those with Jackie. Future historians may be puzzled by odd clunking noises on the tapes. They were ice cubes. The only way we could get through those long evenings was with the aid of great containers of daiquiris. (Bobby wouldn’t drink while being interviewed. His replies are abrupt, often monosyllabic—and much less responsive.) There are also frequent sounds of matches being struck. Before our first taping I had carefully put the Wollensak recorder where I would see it and she wouldn’t. I didn’t want her to worry about the machine. Also, I had to be sure that the little light on it was winking, that the reels were turning, that all this wasn’t being lost. It was a good plan. Its defect was revealed to me when she took the wrong chair. Then the only way I could check the light was by hunching up. It was an odd movement; I needed an excuse for it. A cigarette box on a low table provided one. Before that evening I hadn’t smoked for two years. At the end of it I was puffing away, and eight more years would pass before I could quit again.

  Early in our acquaintance she made plain her feelings about another writer, Jim Bishop. His style, his taste, his standards, and his personality were, I gathered, all abominations to her. I didn’t know Bishop, and, though I had once read a book by him, I had forgotten most of it. She told me not to bother looking it up. The important thing, she said, was that I had been asked to write a book about the assassination, while he quite definitely had not. She explained that he had continued to try securing her cooperation, and that of other members of the family and their friends, for a book which would be called The Day Kennedy Was Shot. He wouldn’t get it, she said emphatically; by choosing me she had, so to speak, cut him off at the pass. From time to time she would express curiosity about whether or not he was still going ahead.

  That fall, after she had moved to 1040 Fifth Avenue in New York, she learned that she had not, in fact, discouraged him, and on September 17, 1964, she wrote him, appealing to him to abandon his plans. She said in part:

  As you know—it was my fear as long ago as December—that all sorts of different and never ending, conflicting, and sometimes sensational things would be written about President Kennedy’s death.

  So I hired William Manchester—to protect President Kennedy and the truth. He was to interrogate everyone who had any connection with those days—and if I decide the book should never be published—then Mr. Manchester will be reimbursed for his time. Or if I decide it should be known—I will decide when it should be published—sometime in the future when the pain is not so fresh. I suppose I must let it appear—for I have no right to suppress history, which people have a right to know, for reasons of private pain.

  She sent me a copy of this, and I was troubled. She had not “hired” me. I had not agreed to be “reimbursed” for my time, and I certainly had not consented to permit anyone to decide whether or not my book should be published. Had Bobby raised such a possibility during our discussions, I would have withdrawn immediately. Before I could point this out to her, however, she forwarded me a copy of a second letter to Bishop. He had again refused to drop his project, and now she wrote him:

  I chose Mr. Manchester because I respect his ability and because I believe him capable of detachment and historical accuracy…. I exercise no surveillance over what he is doing, and I do not plan to. He will present his finished manuscript and it will be published with no censorship from myself or from anyone else. I have too much respect for history to tamper with the results of his research…. I have no wish to decide who writes history. Many people will write of last November for years—but the serious ones will wait until after Mr. Manchester’s book appears. This book will be the one that historians will respect…. What I am dedicated to is the accurate history of those days and that will come from Mr. Manchester.

  After that I felt easier, naively believing that all possibility of conflict between us was past. Actually the Bishop factor had complicated my work by introducing a new factor, speed. Friends in publishing told me that he was plunging ahead. I came to accept it as part of my mandate that I must beat him to the bookstores. On January 12, 1965, when I dined at La Caravelle on Manhattan’s West Side with Bobby, we talked of that, I assured him that I would be finished well before the five years we had originally envisaged, and said that I might even be ready within three years. Meantime it had occurred to me that our original plan, for publication in 1968, could be a trap for Bob. I explained. That would be a presidential election year. If the book appeared on November 22, the prepublication excerpts in magazines would come out during the campaign. His political plans were then uncertain, but if he were running on the national ticket, and it was conceivable, the book might be construed as a plea for sympathy. So he, too, might have good reason for wanting it out earlier. He agreed. As we left matters that evening, I undertook to write a strong foreword assuming full responsibility for the text, while he in turn promised that either he or his agents would promptly read the completed manuscript for the purposes of approval.

  The year 1965 was grueling for me. First in Washington and then, that autumn, back at my home in Middletown, I wrote fourteen or fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. Arthur Schlesinger, a friend as well as a colleague, told mutual friends that he was afraid I might be on the verge of a breakdown. And so I was. On November 26 I was admitted to a Connecticut hospital with nervous exhaustion. When I regained my feet after ten days and encountered Sander Vanocur at a cocktail party, he told me that rumors about my condition were “all over Washington,” and that, according to one story, I had lapsed into catatonic schizophrenia. Sandy wanted me to appear at the National Press Club with him so that reporters could see for themselves that it wasn’t true. I declined. I felt I had to get back to the book. Finishing it had become an obsession with me. By early February I had a complete draft, and on March 8 I wrote Jackie, Bob, Don, and Evan Thomas at Harper’s that my secretary was typing the fair copy. Jackie replied March 14:

  Dear Bill,

  I was very touched to receive your letter and am so glad for you that the book is finished. I know and appreciate all you went through in writing it. After Bob Kennedy and Evan Thomas have gone over the manuscript, I want you to know that I will read it too, whenever they think I should. Thank you, Bill, for all you did.

  Affectionately,

  JACKIE

  Soon thereafter Evan Thomas, who had been conferring with Bobby, informed me that she wouldn’t be reading it at all, because that would only reawaken agonizing memories for her. For the same reason, Bob wouldn’t read it either. Instead he was delegating his and Jackie’s right of approval to Ed Guthman, who had left the Justice Department to become National Editor of the Los Angeles Times, and John Seigenthaler, the blond, tough editor of the Nashville Tennessean and Bobby’s best friend. Guthman, Seigenthaler, Evan, and Don made four readers. Just in case Jackie changed her mind about going over it, I made five copies of the 1,201-page manuscript and packed them in a suitcase. On Friday, March 25, 1966, I boarded a Middletown-to-New York Trailways bus. The suitcase weighed 77 pounds. It was the only time I have had to pay an excess-baggage fee on a bus.

  My first stop was at Harper’s, where I left the ribbon copy. Then, after I had dropped off D
on’s manuscript, Evan accompanied me while I delivered the three remaining copies to Bob’s Manhattan office on East Forty-fifth Street, and he and I took Angie Novello, Bob’s devoted private secretary, to lunch at Le Valois. Afterward Angie and I called on Pam Turnure, Jackie’s private secretary, at her Park Avenue office. Pam, Angie, and I took a cab to the Kennedy suite in the Carlyle Hotel, where we toasted the completion of the book. I remember Pam marveling at the recent reconciliation between Jackie and Arthur Schlesinger; Jackie had been very cross with him when A Thousand Days had been serialized in Life the previous year, but now his book was winning awards, and she admired him again. At that point I had to leave to catch a 7 P.M. bus back to Middletown. Pam rode down in the elevator with me. As we passed through the lobby and out into the street, I asked her whether I should provide Jackie with one of the copies of the manuscript. She said I shouldn’t, and told me to “work through Bob, who is representing Jackie.”

  The next morning I took my Krupp research notes out of the Wesleyan Library vault and picked up where I had left off on that project, partly out of a sense of obligation to Little, Brown, who had continued to advance me money on it while I was writing for another publisher, but also because I yearned for the change in material. Writing about the assassination had been anguish all the way. Now I was describing the Franco-Prussian War. It was fascinating. And I didn’t give a damn who won it.

  ***

  The weeks which followed were a euphoric time for me. I felt a sense of achievement over the task finished, the new book was going well, and I was seeing much more of my family, always my sheet anchor. Meanwhile I was reading about Jackie and Bobby in the newspapers. He was very active. At various times stories told of his marching in a Manhattan parade, delivering a speech in Mississippi, speaking to Alabama college students, campaigning for a reform candidate in New York, being cheered at the Calgary Stampede, laying a cornerstone in Ethiopia, being received by the Pope, marching in another Manhattan parade, and shooting some rapids on a raft in Idaho.

  Jackie was, if anything, busier. Fully emerged from mourning now, she was photographed dancing, skiing, riding in a New Jersey hunt, cruising along the Dalmatian coast, greeting European nobility, and visiting Acapulco, the West Indies, and Spain, where, before donning a dashing Andalusian costume, she received the attentions of a hairdresser who had been flown from Madrid to Seville for the occasion. She was reported to be romantically interested in the Spanish ambassador to the Vatican. It was reported that she was not speaking to Princess Grace of Monaco. Women’s Wear Daily reported that she had become one of the “REALGIRLS—honest, natural, open, de-contrived, de-kooked, delicious, subtle, feminine, young, modern, in love with life, knows how to have fun.” Back in New York the first week in May, she encountered Richard Goodwin, formerly a Kennedy aide and now a neighbor of mine in Middletown. She told Dick that she felt “warmly” toward me, that she favored an early publication date, and that she hoped I understood why she could not read the book.

  By now she and Bob had plenty of surrogates. Don and Evan read the manuscript at once, and Cass Canfield, chairman of the Harper’s board, went over Evan’s copy. Ed Guthman and John Seigenthaler prepared detailed memoranda on their reactions. Over an eight-week period Ethel Kennedy read the third copy I had left in Bob’s Manhattan office; she forwarded her comments to John in Nashville. Dick Goodwin had borrowed my carbon of the original typescript, and at my request Evan had sent a Xerox to Arthur Schlesinger.

  All spring their reactions were coming in. They were uniformly encouraging. Congdon and Seigenthaler were early enthusiasts. Guthman wrote: “It is a great job and I believe it will be a landmark in the history of the Kennedy era.” Cass wrote me that the book was “a work of unusual distinction and great power. It will be well in demand long after you and I have disappeared from the scene.” Evan told me that it was “the finest book I’ve read in twenty years here.” Goodwin called it “a masterful achievement.” Opening a six-page memorandum to Bobby, Evan, and me, Schlesinger wrote: “I think this is a remarkable and potentially a great book. The research, the feeling, the narrative power, the evocation of personality and atmosphere, much of the writing—all are superb. The text gets constantly better as the narrative takes over. The rendition of the flight back to Washington on AF-1, for example, is magnificent.” Arthur expressed “deep confidence and admiration for the book,” and then he wrote me directly:

  It is an extraordinary job of synthesis and research and you are to be greatly congratulated on it…. I hope you can stop them from editing too much history out of the manuscript…. I know how you must feel to have the major agony over and yet still have to face a host of minor irritations. Let me know if I can help in any way to make the process less painful.

  The readers’ approval of the book’s broad sweep did not mean that they were uncritical of it. Quite the contrary. These men were professionals. They would have been faithless to history if they had withheld their reservations. And they had plenty of them. This had been an easy book to overwrite. I had not always succeeded in resisting the temptations to embroider the obvious and to idealize the dead President. Schlesinger, for example, felt that John Kennedy was portrayed as too much of a “husband, father, the young prince and not the world leader and tough politician…. Worse, the narrative is too often interrupted by passages of sententious generalization.” Similarly, another reader wrote that “It’s almost as though Manchester had become so deeply involved in this tragic narrative that he could not resist turning it into a magic fairy tale. The marvelous Irish politician who became one of the world’s great statesmen is almost deprived of his miraculous self; being seen as the child of Arthur and Guinevere [while] Black Jack Bouvier’s daughter is somehow deprived of some of her hard-won stature by being born of elves in a fairy glade and dressed in… magic cloth of gold.”

  So I revised and rewrote. The analyses from Seigenthaler and Guthman received priority, for practical reasons; until they had approved the book in Bobby’s name, it could not be scheduled for publication and I could not receive my third $12,000 from Harper’s, a matter of some concern to me at the time. Had either John or Ed injected political considerations into the editing, I would have been quick to protest, but at this stage there was none of that. Here are a few of Guthman’s comments to Evan, taken at random:

  Page 10—First line. Question the use of the word… “ignorant.” I think this should be checked. Largely unfamiliar or unacquainted might be better.

  Page 71—22nd line. Question whether it is correct to say RFK personally supervised security for the Venezuelan trip. That should be checked.

  Page 84—3rd line. What was Alger’s role in Mrs. Johnson’s spit shower? Should be explained or eliminated.

  Page 457—Reference to Arlington marshals. They were deputy U.S. marshals from the District of Columbia. Check with Jim McShane.

  Page 645—15th-16th lines. Is it correct that “like Wirtz, Udall had been a Johnson partisan….?” I thought Udall had wrapped up the Arizona delegation for Kennedy.

  Page 686—Reference to Angel’s four mighty Boeing engines. The plane is a Boeing but the engines are Pratt-Whitney.

  Page 746–7—Question that inclusion of the unattributed notation in a diary about Humphrey. It seems gratuitous.

  Page 1177—Wrong identification for Carmine Bellino. He is a certified public accountant.

  Page 1186—Harold Reis has a title; first assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel or else executive assistant to the attorney general.

  I have re-read the part in which Caroline is told. I don’t agree with you and John. I think the circumstances are understandable and I don’t see how it can be omitted.

  ***

  Altogether, Guthman and Seigenthaler pressed for over a hundred changes, virtually all of which improved the manuscript. Dick Goodwin recommended just three, and they, too, were adopted—the deletion of a comment about John Connally by Jackie, the cutting of a melodramat
ic passage at the end of the tenth chapter, and a new title. The working title had been The Death of Lancer, Lancer having been the Secret Service’s code name for President Kennedy. Goodwin suggested I change it to The Death of a President. John and Ed preferred Lancer (so, it later developed, did Bobby) but I was convinced that Dick was right, Arthur agreed with me, and none of the others felt strongly enough to argue about it.

  One Saturday afternoon in early May I was at a cocktail party in eastern Connecticut, talking to Douglass Cater, then a Special Assistant to President Johnson, when Goodwin came over and said to Cater, “Manchester has written a great book, but your boss and my ex-boss may not think so.” I reminded Dick that we were working with a manuscript which was still in the process of change, but the memory of the exchange lingered because it was the first indication that I might have problems arising from my treatment of LBJ. I knew that Kennedy’s successor was suspicious of my project; he and Marina Oswald, the assassin’s widow, were the only two principals who had declined to be interviewed by me. I was also aware that my feelings toward him were less than reverential; other readers had proposed that I temper my criticism of him, and because I was striving for detachment I had responded to all these proposals. What I did not then know was that anxiety over Johnson’s reaction would play a growing role in what had been, until then, a dispassionate editorial process.

  The next indication of this came in copy of a memorandum written by Schlesinger. Arthur had been studying a copy of the manuscript which had been marked up by Evan Thomas. The Schlesinger memo was peppered with such remarks as “92–93: keep this paragraph—it consists of facts, not opinions;” “398: restore passage marked for deletion; it sums up a point;” “821–2: restore deletions. An essential part of the story;” “876: restore deleted passage at bottom of page. True and important;” and “1111: of course LBJ had more confidence in Rusk than Kennedy. Why delete?”