Dr. Feelgood by Richard A. Lertzman & William J. Birnes

Author:Richard A. Lertzman & William J. Birnes [Birnes, Richard A. Lertzman and William J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781606712375
Amazon: 1606712373
Publisher: MJF
Published: 2014-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

The Vienna Summit

Just a few short months after his inauguration, the young President Kennedy, now firmly addicted to Jacobson’s medication, faced two tough tests: the Bay of Pigs invasion, which had been initiated under President Eisenhower, and the Vienna Summit with Nikita Khrushchev. The president knew that the Soviet premier would be looking to exploit any weakness and any vulnerability that he could. Kennedy had to be strong, vigorous, and resistant to any threats. JFK needed all the help he could get.

Given the president’s medical history and the efficacy of Max Jacobson’s treatments, not to take the doctor with him on the trip to meet with Soviet premier Khrushchev was unthinkable. However, Jacobson and his wife would not be traveling on Air Force One with the president, but rather on an Air France flight. There was too much risk of press scrutiny, the White House said, with the prying eyes of reporters wanting to know who was traveling with the presidential party on Air Force One on this all-important but very tough trip. Even though Kennedy felt prepared and had had many discussions with his secretary of state Dean Rusk about how Khrushchev might behave, the president was nevertheless nervous. And why shouldn’t he be? The Vienna Summit, which Kennedy had first proposed in February 1961, would be held in the shadow of the failed invasion of Cuba.

The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 17, 1961, was an unmitigated disaster, a miscalculation by the CIA that put the new president, who had green-lighted the operation, at a severe disadvantage when facing Khrushchev across a conference table. The plan was doomed from the start because, although the preparations for the invasion were supposedly put into motion in complete secrecy, the operation was quickly the topic of conversation among the Cuban exile community around Miami. It didn’t take long for Castro’s intelligence service to learn of the plan.

Khrushchev was publicly outraged, but secretly believed that the young president who had stumbled so badly could easily be pushed around. Thus, Kennedy, needing to be strong, had asked Jacobson to come along, hoping that what the doctor did for him in the debates would sustain him in his face-to-face meeting with an angry and brutal Soviet premier.

If Jacobson initially thought that this trip and the days leading up to it would go smoothly, he would be proven wrong. Not too long before he left the country, he and his friend Mike Samek came back to Jacobson’s office late one night to find that the place had been ransacked. Samek later described the scene of devastation: Vials of liquid had been overturned, furniture moved around, and confidential patient files strewn everywhere. It didn’t take Samek long to figure out what had happened. It was the KGB (the Russian Committee for State Security), he told Jacobson. The KGB, knowing that Kennedy was Max’s patient, was looking for information on the president’s physical and mental condition. They knew who Jacobson was, Samek said, and knew what drugs Kennedy was taking.

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