American Experience - Jfk - Part three

Help everyone explore new worlds and ideas. Support your PBS station. NARRATOR: The biggest day of John Kennedy's life to date, Inauguration Day, 1961, dawned gray and frigid. 700 trucks were already out on the streets, clearing eight inches of new-fallen snow from the east front of the Capitol. As the skies began to clear, 20,000 spectators crowded in to await Kennedy's arrival, and the news professionals hauled a bouquet of cameras onto a temporary structure rising high above the other onlookers. EARL WARREN: You, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear. I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear. That you will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States. That I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States. It was bitterly cold, and Kennedy made sure, even though nobody knew he was wearing thermal underwear, he made sure that he would take off his topcoat. He could show somebody who was vital and young. So help you God. So help me God. (crowd applauds) ROBERT DALLEK: When Eisenhower left, at that juncture he was the oldest man in the country's history to have served in the White House. Kennedy coming in was the youngest man to ever have been elected. And so Kennedy wants to underscore that. He wants to emphasize the new, the innovative. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century. RICHARD REEVES: Kennedy understood something that is not so obvious, and that is that words are more important than deeds. You can't govern 300 million people, or 180 million when Kennedy was president, by doing things. You can only do it by rhetoric. NARRATOR: President Kennedy was talking to Americans that day, and to the world. He meant to reassure historic allies and to exalt the virtues of democracy for new governments emerging in Africa, Asia and the Americas. He also had a direct and pointed message for Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. (crowd applauds) Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty. JULIAN BOND: There was enormous optimism. He was young, personable, attractive. He appeared to be friendly and disposed toward people of color. And so there's great hopes that new things would happen. KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND: His inaugural speech was how we as a nation are going to be great. The New Frontier. He was willing to challenge people. And I think each one of us wants to be challenged. We want to think that our life has a mission. And he understood that and reached out to it. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. (crowd applauds) (lively big band music playing) NARRATOR: The new first couple glided through a half-dozen ceremonials, including a gala produced by the president's friend Frank Sinatra showcasing the brilliant sparkle of American celebrity. Jacqueline Kennedy wore white gowns to almost every event: her choice. ♪ A cottage small is all I'm after ♪ ♪ Not one that's spacious and wide... ♪ NARRATOR: Inside the gala and the balls, among the colorful and garish gowns, Mrs. Kennedy stood apart. ♪ Some like the high road, I like the low road... ♪ BEDELL SMITH: Jackie once said that she would like to envision herself as a sort of art director of the 20th century, suspended in a chair over everything else and orchestrating how everything would look. Everything was a scene to be staged. REEVES: People suddenly see this glamorous young couple from the upper class, who are almost impeccable in everything they do in public, and we want to be like them. This is the new America. ♪ When the saints come marching in! ♪ (applause) NARRATOR: If his youth gave him pause, John Kennedy didn't show it. He appeared to be fearless. He ignored anyone who said it was too dangerous for a president to speak off the cuff and held the first live televised press conferences in the White House. He would keep them up throughout his presidency. REPORTER: Congressman Alger of Texas today criticized Mr. Salinger as a, quote, "Young and inexperienced White House publicity man," end quote. (crowd laughing) And he questioned the advisability of having him visit the Soviet Union. I wonder if you have any comments. I know there are always some people who feel that Americans are always young and inexperienced and foreigners are always able and tough and great negotiators. Now he also, as I saw the press, said that Mr. Salinger's main job was to increase my standing in the Gallup polls. Having done that, he's now moving on... (crowd laughing) ...to improve our communication. BEDELL SMITH: Jack Kennedy did have what he called the "great man" theory of governing. And he felt that a leader with the requisite intelligence and persuasive powers, which included charm, I suppose, could have an impact. And he tried to model himself along the lines of leaders that he admired who had had that kind of impact. NARRATOR: John Fitzgerald Kennedy demonstrated that this was his presidency from the start. He appointed Republicans to head the Department of State, Treasury, Defense and the CIA, and when progressive Democrats complained, he waved them off. He also waved off critics who said that his 35-year-old brother, Bobby, was too inexperienced and named him attorney general. He peopled his White House staff with brainy and confident young men, and he wasn't shy about taking charge. EVAN THOMAS: The Kennedys were part of that faith, that belief, born of the New Deal, of winning World War II, this sense that America's time had come. We had the best, the brightest, the smartest, and if you just get enough of those guys in one room, everything will be clear and all problems will be solved. There was sort of a gleeful amateurism to them, this faith that if you're smart and vigorous and aggressive and ambitious, well, things will follow. This was a dangerous formula, I should say, but it was attractive at the time. The system he worked out was kind of a spoke and wheel so that he was in the center, he was the hub, and out to the spokes were the State Department, the national security adviser, whatever. And to get to each other, they had to go through him. BEDELL SMITH: In a way, it was quite improvisational. And he encouraged a lot of clashing ideas. He would sometimes give the same assignment to different people and see what they came up with. TIMOTHY NAFTALI: He wasn't bringing people together in a room to hammer out a consensus. He was bringing people in a room to give him the best information so that he could make the decision. The problem with this system was it depended on the president asking the right questions. If the president was distracted or tired, the system wasn't going to work well. KENNEDY (on tape): Why does a politician continually raise his sights, and leave a job that represented complete satisfaction at one time for a higher position? Question. Paragraph. Part of the reason lies in the normal desire to move ahead, comma, perhaps a more important part lies in the recognition that, uh, that a greater opportunity to determine the direction in which the nation will go lies in higher office. I've come to understand that the presidency is the ultimate source of action. (Dictaphone clicks off) NARRATOR: There was a lot on the young president's plate when he stepped into office: a weak economy, a trade deficit, ominous stirrings in the civil rights movement. Kennedy wasn't pushing *** his domestic agenda. He wanted federal investment in education, a minimum wage bill, maybe guaranteed health care for the elderly. Memorandum to David Bell, Bureau of the Budget... NARRATOR: What truly engaged John Kennedy at the beginning of 1961 was the increasing Soviet menace. Like most Americans, the president was worried engagement with the Russians might spark a hot war or nuclear catastrophe. But Kennedy did not want to appear afraid to face down Nikita Khrushchev. The soviet premier was making noises about annexing democratic West Berlin and actively aiding anti-colonial movements in the Congo, Laos and Vietnam. Khrushchev was even making a play in America's backyard. He had been an ardent supporter of Fidel Castro in the two years since the revolutionary had taken power in Cuba, just 90 miles from the U.S. mainland. THOMAS HUGHES: Khrushchev, as a kind of inauguration present for Kennedy, had given his big speech about national wars of liberation being the future extension of Communist influence. Kennedy made everybody read this. It was required reading in the first weeks of the administration. Kennedy definitely bought this idea of Communism on the march, that we were in this twilight struggle, that we had to face off against the Communists everywhere, that it was this almost sacred duty to face up against the Communist menace. Eisenhower's formula had always been all or nothing: face off against the Communists and say, "We're going to go to nuclear war or nothing." Kennedy thought the smarter thing to do was to be willing to fight small wars. It was called "flexible response." The idea was you can't just threaten nuclear war every time. Kennedy bought into this idea that you could fight small wars, win them, check Communism that way. NARRATOR: In early April 1961, just a few months into Kennedy's presidency, Nikita Khrushchev announced the latest Soviet triumph: the first manned flight into space. Kennedy watched as the Soviets heralded their stunning achievement to the world, just as he was deciding whether or not to execute the most aggressive anti- Communist plot available to him: the takedown of Khrushchev's only real ally in the Western Hemisphere. The plan for an armed overthrow of Fidel Castro in Cuba was a holdover from the Eisenhower administration. More than 1,000 U.S.-sponsored Cuban exiles were already in Guatemala training for the invasion when Kennedy took office. At a meeting the day before his inauguration, Kennedy had spent little time asking the outgoing president about Cuba and walked away with the idea that prospects for success were good, that national security required action. THOMAS: They were a little bit ships passing in the night when they met at the White House in December and then in January 1960, '61. And it's too bad. They needed to have a better conversation than they did. Eisenhower should have said to Kennedy, "Hey, take it easy on this. "Make sure you really talk to the generals before you invade Cuba." But he didn't. This really was a CIA operation. And there was a man named Richard Bissell who ran Covert Operations at the CIA. Very ambitious, very aggressive, wanted to be head of the CIA, was basically banking on success in Cuba carrying him there. And what Bissell was selling was the invasion of Cuba, that they were going to get rid of Castro, but also a whole world of covert action: that by subterfuge, the United States could get its way in the world. And the Kennedys fell for *** Bissell. The only National Security Council meeting that I attended was the meeting at which the president discussed the Bay of Pigs. And I remember Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, said that once the invasion began, there would be a national uprising. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind, nor, I think, as we left that day, in the president's mind, that once the invasion was underway, that there would be a popular uprising among the Cuban people. REEVES: Kennedy had a real respect for the people in the intelligence agency and made the obvious assumption they knew what they were doing. NARRATOR: The president wanted to believe he could have it both ways. He hoped to overthrow Castro without leaving behind American fingerprints and without poking a finger in Khrushchev's eye. THOMAS: Kennedy does have some qualms about the invasion plan. It's a little bit too loud and noisy, as they say, and he wants to tone it down. So like a politician, he looks for a compromise. "I want something quieter. "I want you to go on a beach, "in an area which is far away from an urban center, "so that this is not picked up. "Set up a camp on Cuban soil "and then establish a government there, "and make the government there responsible for air attacks "so that it's viewed as the Cubans... "Okay, we're helping the Cubans, "but it is ultimately the Cubans fighting for the Cubans. Can you do that?" "Yes, Mr. President." THOMAS: The fact that the military's signing off on it just means what they're really saying is, "This is a CIA operation. It's their problem if it fails." Kennedy is not sophisticated enough, not experienced enough to understand that. ANNOUNCER: The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. Cuban Army pilots opened the first phase of organized revolt with bombing raids on three military bases... NARRATOR: The invasion unraveled from the start. The initial air campaign on April 15, 1961, was a disaster, and a very public one. ANNOUNCER: In Havana, acting foreign minister Olivares shows diplomats rockets fired from the Cuban raiders which he claims have U.S. markings. NARRATOR: Kennedy sent his ambassador to the U.N. to make a hasty and formal denial of U.S. involvement in the initial air strikes. ADLAI STEVENSON: The United States has committed no aggression against Cuba and no offensive has been launched from Florida or from any other part of the United States. NARRATOR: By the time the American-trained and equipped invasion force began its cruise toward the tiny Caribbean island the following day, the coup in Cuba was a poorly kept secret. MICHAEL DOBBS: The exiles landed in small boats at the Bay of Pigs, which is a very remote part of Cuba, not near any town at all. The Cuban authorities had heard about the invasion, and they were able to surround this exile force very quickly, isolate them and begin to massacre them, kill them, capture them. And that put the president in a very difficult position. Either he had to commit U.S. forces to rescue this abortive invasion force or he had to deny all connection with it. NARRATOR: While the remaining Cuban exile force dug in, the CIA and the military begged Kennedy to commit more troops, or at least okay powerful air strikes in support of the invaders on that beachhead. The president demurred. NAFTALI: The facts on the ground got worse and worse and worse for the exiles who had invaded with U.S. support. It was a total disaster. NARRATOR: There was no popular uprising in Cuba. Castro bragged about his stunning defiance of the United States. His popularity in Cuba soared. Nikita Khrushchev wagged his finger at the new American president, who had been defeated and caught in an embarrassing lie. Of the 1,400 Cuban exiles who made the attack, 1,200 were killed or captured. Many of the survivors were headed for firing squads. NASAW: The Bay of Pigs is the low point not only of the Kennedy presidency but maybe of any presidency. As Jackie says, she had never seen her husband as distraught, as defeated. She caught him a couple of times just weeping. This is a decision-making that depended on the guy in the middle asking the right questions and getting the right answers, and it failed. And he knew who was at fault. He was pretty depressed, sitting in his office, saying, "How could I be so stupid? Why did I listen to those people?" NASAW: And as the days went on, he didn't feel better. He couldn't get himself out of this depression, he couldn't rouse himself. At one point, Bobby came to Jack in the Oval Office and said, "Let's call Dad. He'll make us feel better." THOMAS: Right after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy calls President Eisenhower and asks to meet him at Camp David. And Kennedy says, "What went wrong?" And President Eisenhower starts quizzing him. He said, "Now, when you met about this, "did you meet in a big group and have a true back-and-forth, "or did you meet with people alone, one on one, and not really have a full debate?" And it comes out in this meeting that Kennedy never really talked to the generals about what they really thought. And Eisenhower kind of shakes his head and says, "You know, next time, you're going to have to do better, Mr. President." DALLEK: It humbled him, but most important, it made him deeply skeptical of taking advice at face value from people who were supposed to be experts in the military, in the intelligence community, in the CIA. And he realized he had to make critical evaluations of what people were telling him, and he had to be skeptical. He decided to set in motion really a revival of his administration, and it leads him to decide to do the sort of unprecedented: to have a second State of the Union speech. Kennedy's trying to revive his presidency after the Bay of Pigs. HUGHES: Kennedy was always being confronted at the wrong time with the wrong problem. And he regards all these things as terrible, competitive distractions. REEVES: He learned about the Freedom Riders when he got his New York Times that particular morning, and there was a picture of the bus burning in Anniston, Alabama. And his response was, "What the hell is this?" NARRATOR: In mid-May 1961, a group of Americans trying to focus attention on the illegal segregation of interstate bus lines in the South ran into more resistance than they'd expected. White supremacists in Alabama had firebombed one passenger bus the protesters were on and beaten them bloody. John Kennedy was ten days away from a major address to Congress; he was also busy preparing for his historic summit with Nikita Khrushchev, which was just three weeks away. He didn't want America's race problems to be splashed all over the press of the world, and therefore, out of the blue, learning about it, I answer his call on the phone when he suddenly discovers the Freedom Riders are riding into danger. And he said, "Get your friends off those buses. Find a way to stop it." JULIAN BOND: There's a feeling that the Kennedy administration wants to treat the civil rights movement generally, the Freedom Riders particularly, as an irritant. "These are people getting in our way. "These are people upsetting our plans. "These are people who are taking attention away from what we want to do." REEVES: At that time, a Democratic president was totally at the mercy of Southern Democrats. They ran the Congress. And they were segregationists. And he did not want to lose control of Congress over, you know, a few black kids. NAFTALI: That was the battle in 1961 he didn't want to fight. And the president and Robert Kennedy reacted to this by saying, "Not now." It's politically understandable, but historically, it's inexcusable. NARRATOR: Kennedy was wary of sending federal troops to protect the Freedom Riders; he knew it would inflame white Southern Democrats. Justice Department officials called the protest leaders and warned them that the United States government could not assure their safety if they continued and asked them to stand down. BOND: The optimism that had enveloped the Kennedys, I think, from Election Day forward began to diminish, and it kept going down and down and down and down and down. NARRATOR: The Freedom Riders refused to suspend their campaign, though they held out little hope of federal protection. "This *** civil rights mess," Kennedy complained. He tried to satisfy both sides. He sent his attorney general brother out to make statements chastising both the Freedom Riders and their attackers. He dispatched a Justice Department aide, a Southerner named John Seigenthaler, to try to keep a lid on the situation and to explain to local authorities that it was their duty to protect the protesters from the white mobs. This assignment landed Seigenthaler in a parking lot of the Montgomery bus station, where the local police refused to stand between the Freedom Riders and a group of armed and angry segregationists. SEIGENTHALER: There were people there that day who would have killed those kids just because they were black. I mean, they were intent on maiming and crippling and killing. I think the violence visited on the Freedom Riders that day in that Greyhound parking lot in Montgomery shattered those hopes that the administration could somehow navigate through the troubled waters of race in the South. Certainly they understood that there were going to be problems. But this was one that required federal intervention; this was one that required sending in 400 marshals one afternoon. And once that was done, the idea that you were going to be able to navigate those troubled waters, you realized that was probably a false hope. (applause) NARRATOR: Once the federal marshals were in place in Alabama, Kennedy changed the subject from civil rights. When he addressed a rare joint session of Congress four days later, the president mentioned civil rights only glancingly. He would not say a single word about the Freedom Riders. "These are extraordinary times," Kennedy explained, "and we need to keep our eye on the most important issue: the global struggle for freedom." KENNEDY: The great battleground for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe: Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, the lands of the rising people. Their revolution is the greatest in human history. NARRATOR: To promote the cause of democracy around the world, he asked young Americans to join the newly formed Peace Corps, and he asked Congress for money to aid emerging nations. He also called for a bold new move into the heavens. KENNEDY: Finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth. NARRATOR: The moon-shot had less to do with science and discovery than it did with projecting to the Soviets American resolve. Kennedy was scheduled to take his first overseas trip within a week of that address to Paris, Vienna and London. The most important leg was Vienna, where the president would be meeting face-to-face with Nikita Khrushchev. Kennedy was very confident of his own charm and whatnot, and he expected he could seduce Khrushchev. SALINGER: The President and Chairman Khrushchev understand that this meeting is not for the purpose of negotiating or reaching agreement on the major international problems... NARRATOR: Kennedy had a big agenda in Vienna. He wanted to persuade Khrushchev to back off in West Berlin, to join him in decelerating weapons programs, and to suspend nuclear testing. SALINGER ...and a general exchange of views on the major issues which affect the relationships between the two countries. NARRATOR: The nuclear stand-down was the president's highest priority. DALLEK: Kennedy had a meeting with his chiefs early in his presidency in which they describe to him the plans for a nuclear war in which they would kill 175 million people, devastate every major city in the Soviet Union and China. And as he walks out of the room, he turns to Dean Rusk and he says, "And we call ourselves the human race." If there was anything that horrified him in that presidency, it was the thought of having to pull that nuclear trigger. ANNOUNCER: Paris, the city of light, outdoes itself in the warmth and splendor of its welcome to President and Mrs. Kennedy, here en route to the fateful Vienna meeting with Soviet Premier Khrushchev. French president de Gaulle, remarkably relaxed and cordial, greets the visiting Americans... BEDELL SMITH: There was a great deal of interest in that first trip. Jackie understood this. She studied very hard. She studied State Department documents. She hired a tutor to brush up her French. And when they arrived in Paris, people went wild. (applause) I do not, uh, think it altogether inappropriate to introduce myself to this audience. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I've enjoyed it. (laughter and applause) NARRATOR: The success of the sit-down with Khrushchev in Vienna was up to the president himself. There were two long days of meetings on the schedule, and Kennedy's serious health problems had flared again. Kennedy had wrenched his back on a trip to Canada several weeks before they went to Paris and was in a lot of pain, more pain than usual. He had enlisted the services of a controversial doctor. REEVES: Max Jacobson, Dr. Feelgood, who was unofficially his doctor, was flown over with his wife, the only two passengers on a chartered plane. And then they were kept in the hotel where the Secret Service was so that the more mainstream doctors wouldn't know that Kennedy was being pumped up. DALLEK: Bobby Kennedy cautioned his brother against letting this guy, who some said was a quack, letting him shoot him up with these kinds of painkillers, and uh, "Do you know what's in these injections?" And Jack said, "I don't care if it's dog ***. It makes me feel better." BEDELL SMITH: A half-hour before he was due to meet with Khrushchev, Kennedy summoned him to his room and asked him to give him a big injection, because he knew he was going to be faced with a long meeting with Khrushchev and he wanted to be able to withstand that length of time without suffering the kind of back pain that he had been enduring. NARRATOR: Dr. Feelgood's cocktails were a potent mix of painkillers and amphetamines. Nobody but Jackie and Bobby knew about the injections, and nobody on the staff suspected. HUGHES: Despite all the briefings about what a crude, emotional peasant Khrushchev was, Kennedy couldn't have been prepared for what he was up against. Khrushchev thought of him as young, weak, ineffective, and probably a pushover. And Kennedy defended himself limply. NAFTALI: Khrushchev wanted Vienna to be humiliating for the American president. That was the goal. There was nothing that Kennedy could say or do at Vienna that would have derailed Khrushchev's strategy. Kennedy walked into an ambush. What he hopes to do is work out some kind of accommodation with Khrushchev over Berlin. The Soviets are chagrined by the fact that Berlin is a corridor of escape for people from the Eastern European satellite countries; that they're running out of there, fleeing Eastern Europe, where Communism is in control, to go to the West. And Khrushchev is embarrassed by this. NARRATION The Soviet premier was matter-of-fact in his presentation to Kennedy about Berlin. He was ready to unify the city under the control of his ally East Germany and to erase any U.S. and NATO presence in the city. DALLEK: By the end of the meeting, Khrushchev says, "We're going forward. You press us, that's your problem." And Kennedy said, "It's going to be a very cold winter." DOBBS: Khrushchev talked about nuclear weapons in a very informal way that worried Kennedy. Kennedy, when he came out of that meeting with Khrushchev, was really shaken. I will tell you now that it was a very sober two days. There was no discourtesy, no loss of tempers, no threats or ultimatums by either side, no advantage or concession was either gained or given, no major decision was either planned or taken. No spectacular progress was either achieved or pretended. NAFTALI: He assumed certain things about Khrushchev that proved to be wrong. "If this guy doesn't share my concern about nuclear danger, how am I going to deal with him over Europe?" There was no ground that he could see for compromise, and that left Kennedy in a very dangerous situation. It left the country in a dangerous situation. NARRATOR: The president found it increasingly difficult to read Nikita Khrushchev in the months after Vienna. The Soviet leader kept Kennedy off balance. He backed off on his Berlin threat, building a wall around the Soviet-controlled sector of the city to stem the flood of defectors, but leaving in place the post-war agreements between East and West. Then, in spite of Kennedy's direct warnings, he restarted Soviet nuclear testing. (explosion) NAFTALI: Khrushchev's decision to resume testing in summer of 1961-- not just any kind of testing; he decided to detonate the largest bomb ever detonated before-- put Kennedy in a difficult position. He has many advisers who are arguing, "You've got to resume testing," and he doesn't want to do it. And he keeps putting it off, hoping that something will happen in the negotiations with the Soviets. "The nuclear scientists are arguing that you need to do it. "We're going to make bombs better and more effective, more efficient." It's the time when they start thinking about a neutron bomb. And Kennedy is much less interested in all of that than he is in trying to keep the world away from the brink of nuclear war. NARRATOR: Kennedy believed he had to show strength, and asking Congress to fund an increasing buildup of military capability and weapons systems wasn't enough. He decided to make a stand in a country in Southeast Asia few Americans had ever heard of: Vietnam. The Communist-backed Viet Cong appeared to be winning there. DALLEK: There were people urging Kennedy to understand that if the Viet Cong guerrillas succeed in South Vietnam, it's going to be seen as a model for guerrilla warfare in other developing nations. And so beating back this insurgency not only saves Vietnam from Communism, but it's going to discourage the guerrilla campaigns in other Third World countries. Having suffered setbacks and not ousting Castro from Cuba, having sort of lost the debate, so to speak, in Vienna with Khrushchev, being under the gun in relation to Berlin, he feels he can't step aside on Vietnam, however marginal it may be in his own mind and in the minds of some others telling him that this piece of territory is not all that important to America's strategic security. NARRATOR: Kennedy was wary of being drawn into another debacle like Bay of Pigs. He asked the secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, and his only trusted military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor, to give him a reasonable plan. He wanted them to assess the U.S.'s chosen ally there, President Ngo Dinh Diem, to determine the popularity of his South Vietnamese government and the strength of his military. He asked brother Bobby to stay in the loop, too. NAFTALI: Maxwell Taylor and Robert McNamara lay out for Kennedy in late 1961 a set of proposals to manage the problem in South Vietnam, and that involves sending troops. The understanding is that those troops will not engage in combat. Kennedy wanted it to be South Vietnam fighting South Vietnam's war, with American help. THOMAS: And the idea is that guerrilla fighters are going to win the hearts and minds of the populace against the Communists, that they're going to fight fire with fire, they're going to fight dirty if they have to, but they're also going to build schools and hospitals. And the Green Berets get started in the military. The regular military doesn't really like this very much, but Bobby Kennedy likes it and the Kennedys generally like it, and they go to demonstrations of Green Berets swinging from the branches and jumping from trees. And it becomes a kind of fad, but really informs our early Vietnam policy. We would go in there to fight a guerrilla war. His preference is to use covert action and the CIA to build up allies in a state and let them fight the overt military conflict. Kennedy was on the forefront of believing that these paramilitary activities were a better use of force and American special forces officers could help as advisers. HUGHES: The more Kennedy talked about counterinsurgency in his press conferences, and the more the line was set that the Russian challenge was going to be informal warfare, the more everybody sort of climbed on board that boat. Bobby had a green beret on his desk in the Justice Department to symbolize where our hearts and minds were. NARRATOR: The pressures of the presidency were taking a heavy toll on Kennedy's health. He required as many as seven injections of Novocaine in his back in a single day and was still often unable to bend over to put on his own socks. He was on codeine, demerol and methadone for pain, corticosteroids to control his Addison's disease, paregoric for his bad digestion. He sometimes needed Nembutal to help him sleep. His nights were often long and uncomfortable. When the 44-year-old president was feeling down or awake and pacing in the middle of the night, he would pick up the phone and call New York or Palm Beach or Hyannisport and hear the friendly voice of Joe Sr. BEDELL SMITH: He didn't intrude on specific policies, but the fact that he was there, that he could share his experience and his point of view was very important to Jack. And in December of 1961, he had a debilitating stroke and never regained his power of speech. Kennedy would continue to call him on the phone and would sort of fill him in on events and people and things that were happening, but all that he heard at the other end of the line were sort of guttural grunts in reply. When somebody proposed writing a book about the first Kennedy year, he said, "Why would anybody want to write a book about disasters? "I've lost Bay of Pigs. "I had a terrible confrontation with Khrushchev in Vienna. The Berlin Wall went up." He sees his first year as a pretty miserable experience, and there's no significant gain that he can point to either on the domestic or the foreign scene. And so he's badly frustrated. NARRATOR: She didn't talk much or give speeches. Politics unnerved her. She was shy to begin with and unsure how to find common ground with most of her fellow Americans. But once Jacqueline Kennedy settled in as first lady, she came to appreciate the singular advantage of life in the White House: she could be walled away from the general run of voters and still satisfy their hunger for her. Jackie was a great student of 18th and 19th century Europe, and she really set out to create a kind of court in the White House. Her dress designer, Oleg Cassini, even said that she wanted to create a Versailles in Washington, and part of that was not only to project elegance, but it was also to kind of raise the game and put a premium on celebrating beauty, first of all, and a level of intellectual engagement, and celebrating artists and writers and performers in ways that hadn't been done certainly in the Eisenhower administration. NARRATOR: John Kennedy's taste ran more to political biography and spy novels, Sinatra and show tunes. So Jackie learned to strike hard bargains, like the time the president sent his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, to ask her to attend a publicity event he couldn't make. Salinger failed. Jack Kennedy said, "I'll try." He went up. He was upstairs for 20 minutes, and he came back down and said she was going to do it. And Salinger said, "What did you have to give her? A new dress?" And he said, "Worse than that. Two symphonies." NARRATOR: Jackie Kennedy spent much of her time and energy in the first year restoring the White House. She raised more than a million dollars for the project, hired an expert on American antiquities and decorative arts along with her favorite interior designer from Paris, and remade the stodgy old pile. Her passion for the project was evident, which Dr. Martin Luther King learned when a Kennedy aide, Harris Wofford, sneaked him into the private residence for a meeting with the president. WOFFORD: Kennedy had to tell King that there would be no effort to get a civil rights bill through the first Congress, and it was a great concern as to how King would take this. And we got in the elevator to go up, and it went down instead, and Jacqueline Kennedy got on, in jeans and soot on her face. And I introduced her to Dr. King, and she said, "Oh, Dr. King, "I just wish you had been in the basement with me this morning "looking at Andrew Jackson furniture. You would have been thrilled down there." And we got off, and she said, "But you have other things to talk to Jack about, I know." And I thought to myself, "She sounded a little wacky. A little bit charming, but wacky." King was completely mellowed by it. He said, "My, wasn't that something?" NARRATOR: The first lady was so pleased with the results that she agreed to unveil her handiwork to the American people in an hour-long television special: "A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy." Mrs. Kennedy, I want to thank you for letting us visit your official home. This is obviously the room from which much of your work on it is directed. Yes, it's attic and cellar all in one. BEDELL SMITH: She prepared assiduously for the day of shooting. The shooting took seven hours. There were eight cameras. The producer, Perry Wolff, was amused that between takes, she smoked almost nonstop. And he saw that every time she smoked, she took her cigarette and she dumped the ash on the beautiful tapestry bench that she was sitting on. But she performed impeccably. CHARLES COLLINGWOOD: Mrs. Kennedy, do you spend a great deal of time in the Lincoln Room? We did in the beginning. It was where we lived when we first came here, when our rooms at the other end of the hall were being painted. I loved living in this room. It's on the sunny side of the house, and one of Andrew Jackson's magnolia trees is right outside the window. BEDELL SMITH: That night, Perry Wolff stayed around and showed them some of the early rushes. And when the lights came up, Perry Wolff told me that he looked over at Jack and he saw a look of pure adoration and admiration. NARRATOR: Wolff would later recall sitting behind the couple in the darkness, watching Jacqueline in an unguarded moment rest her head on her husband's shoulder as they watched her performance. "There was an exchange of affection," Wolff noted, "that belied many of the stories I had heard." DALLEK: The fact of the matter is that even though he loves her, it doesn't deter him from having affairs. THOMAS: John F. Kennedy, for all his many, many qualities, was reckless about his womanizing. It's a long list of all different kinds: society matrons, 19-year-olds... I mean, it just went on and on. BEDELL SMITH: He was abetted by two of his closest aides, Ken O'Donnell and Dave Powers. And also, most of the people who covered the White House in the press were well aware that Kennedy was engaging in private *** escapades in the White House, in Palm Springs, in Malibu, in New York, and even during one of his summit meetings with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in Nassau. NARRATOR: Kennedy could be frank and self-aware about his behavior. Once, when a friend asked why he took the risk, he said simply, "I guess it's because I just can't help it." You didn't raise the question of the Kennedy women anywhere around, I mean, although everybody knew what was going on. The press was totally compliant with this, and Kennedy felt he could depend upon them all. NAFTALI: There was a code among the political press not to speak of it, partly because it was mutual assured destruction. Everybody had a secret. It wasn't that everyone had decided that this didn't matter. It was simply that everybody had dirt on everybody else. And Kennedy was very comfortable in that environment, and that environment had protected him. BEDELL SMITH: Jackie did understand that this was an aspect of him that there was nothing she could do about. And she made her peace with it. It sort of gave her a pass to go out and spend a lot of time in the country. She took off on extended vacations. She went to Italy for a long time. She basically every summer would spend her time in Hyannis a good distance from the Kennedy compound and enjoy her solitude there.