Conversations with Kennedy by Benjamin C. Bradlee

Author:Benjamin C. Bradlee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media

“What the hell do we need those for?”

FEBRUARY 12, 1963 / Jackie was back in circulation tonight at dinner, with Eve and Harry Labouisse and Nancy and Teddy White, whose book The Making of the President, 1960 had benefited enormously from his friendship with Kennedy and from Kennedy’s preoccupation with historians.

Cuba was much discussed again, with the president again talking about the 27,000 U.S. troops in Turkey. He seems almost to believe the case that Khrushchev can make for keeping 17,000 troops close to our borders, as long as we keep 27,000 troops on his borders. Labouisse talked quietly and intermittently about Greece, where he is the U.S. ambassador. He outlined problems he foresaw in connection with construction of a NATO missile range on the island of Crete. No matter who ran the base or built it, he said, the Americans were going to get blamed for it, and before he could even ask the president to intervene, JFK whipped out a pencil and a piece of paper, and said “What the hell do we need those missiles for, anyway?” He was obviously writing a note to himself. He relished Labouisse’s report of getting a copy of the recent Kennedy interview with network correspondents, having it translated and distributed to Greek theaters. The prime minister’s wife had apparently asked for a copy of it and shown it to a group of women … and all the time Kennedy nodded delightedly.

There was discussion of David Schoenbrun’s problems. Schoenbrun was part of the original team of radio and TV foreign correspondents put together by Edward R. Murrow for CBS. Schoenbrun had come close to owning Paris as a journalist when Labouisse and I were in the embassy there in the mid-fifties, but he had run into a lot of trouble since being named Washington bureau chief of CBS in January, 1962, to succeed Howard K. Smith. Anyone who knows David loves and admires him, first, then launches into a series of anecdotes about how difficult and self-important he can be, Labouisse and I ran through a few of our favorite Schoenbrun stories, and Kennedy said he saw how difficult he could be, but said that Schoenbrun had seemed to him to be articulate and intelligent on the few occasions their paths had crossed.

Stuart Symington’s name came up, with all agreeing what a nice guy he is. Kennedy repeated what he has often said … that he felt that if he had been stopped at the Los Angeles convention, the delegates would have eventually picked Symington.

Kennedy brought up Richard Nixon’s name, and said without vindictiveness that he felt the country was lucky that Nixon had not been president during the Cuban missile crisis.

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