Robert Pierpoint Oral History Interview – JFK#1, 11/18/1982 Administrative Information
Creator: Robert Pierpoint Interviewer: Sheldon Stern Date of Interview: November 18, 1982 Length: 34 pages
Biographical Note Robert Pierpoint (1925-2011) was a White House Correspondent for CBS News from 1957 to 1980. This interview covers the Kennedy administration’s relationship with the press, news coverage of events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and the transition to the Johnson administration, among other topics.
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Transcript of Oral History Interview These electronic documents were created from transcripts available in the research room of the John F. Kennedy Library. The transcripts were scanned using optical character recognition and the resulting text files were proofread against the original transcripts. Some formatting changes were made. Page numbers are noted where they would have occurred at the bottoms of the pages of the original transcripts. If researchers have any concerns about accuracy, they are encouraged to visit the Library and consult the transcripts and the interview recordings.
Suggested Citation Robert Pierpoint, recorded interview by Sheldon Stern, November 18, 1982 (page number), John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
Robert Pierpoint– JFK #1 Table of Contents
Page Topic 1 Covering the last month of John F. Kennedy’s [JFK] 1960 campaign 2 JFK including reporters in his campaign 3 Impression of JFK 4 Seeing JFK after the election 5 Year-end meeting with JFK 6 Difference in covering the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations 7 Ambiance of press conferences 8 JFK’s relationships with reporters 9 Routine as a White House correspondent 11 Access to JFK 12 Access during crises 13 JFK’s trips to Berlin and Paris 14 Bay of Pigs 15 Dinner with Robert F. Kennedy [RFK] 16 Ed Reischauer’s appointment as Ambassador to Japan 17 Relationships with the White House staff 18 Interviewing McGeorge Bundy about the Cuban Missile Crisis 19 J. Edgar Hoover 20 JFK’s personal relationships with the White House staff 21 Death of Patrick Kennedy 22 Impression of Jacqueline Kennedy 23 Coverage of JFK’s personal life 25 Treatment of the press after JFK’s assassination 27 Lyndon B. Johnson’s [LBJ] accessibility to the press 28 LBJ’s relationships with JFK and RFK 29 LBJ’s and RFK’s lack of agreement on the Vietnam War 30 JFK’s views on Vietnam 31 JFK’s and RFK’s relationship 33 JFK’s legacy
Oral History Interview
with
ROBERT PIERPOINT
by Sheldon Stern
November 18, 1982
for the Oral History Project of the John F. Kennedy Library
STERN: I thought we could begin with the possibility that, while you were working covering the Eisenhower [President Dwight D. Eisenhower] White House in '57 to '60, if you had any contacts at all with JFK while he was in the senate or observations of him or whatever.
PIERPOINT: Basically no. I can't recall that I had any personal contact or relationship with Senator Kennedy until the campaign, and then I was taken off the White House at my own request to cover him during the last few weeks of the campaign. I think I covered him for about two weeks during the final month of the campaign and then stayed off the White House and went down to Palm Beach. And, in fact, I left the Eisenhower White House, for all intents and purposes, during the last month of the campaign and was with him at that time. But, before that, no.
STERN: Okay. Did you cover any of the primaries? Any of the pre-conventions?
PIERPOINT: No, I did not. I stayed with Eisenhower all during that period.
I STERN: And you were not at Los Angeles either.
PIERPOINT: No, I was not.
STERN: Okay. So let's pick it up then with the period in which you covered him during the campaign. Where did you first hook on with the Kennedy campaign?
PIERPOINT: My recollection is that I joined the campaign in New York when I notified Pierre Salinger that I was coming aboard. And, rather quickly thereafter--! would say that it was probably the next day--1 was put on the Caroline. And I think Pierre had known me and perhaps, to some extent, some of the others, and so I was put on the Caroline and spent then alternate flights now and then. But the first real contact was when Pierre introduced me to the senator, and I went along on several of the flights and chatted with him at various times and observed him during that campaign and, of course, reported on him for about two weeks then.
STERN: What was your impression at the time of your first meeting? Did you think that, well, the impression of him a) personally and b) how did you perceive they felt the campaign was going?
PIERPOINT: I got the initial impression that they were quite confident, that they felt that they were doing well, as I did, as a matter of fact, and that they were very smart. I thought that it was a pretty smart maneuver for the press secretary to put me in immediately with the candidate so that I had some personal contact with him. And the candidate himself was extremely impressive in a very smart political way. That is, he was very friendly to me. He and one or two others aboard would ask our opinions about what was going on: How did we do in that speech? What did you think about it? Almost including us, which politicians, if they're smart, like to do as if we were a member of the campaign.
STERN: That can be a little uncomfortable.
PIERPOINT: Well, if you're smart, you realize what they're doing, and you are a little uncomfortable. And you try to keep your distance, but I can remember specifically, one day we were on the Caroline~ a couple of my colleagues and myself, and the senator came out of the back. I think we were flying ac.ross the country; it was a long trip. The senator came out and said he wanted to talk to us about some of the people that he'd been thinking about if he won the election, that he might want to put into positions. And, of course, this is somewhat flattering and also somewhat interesting. So he asked me specifically, or he asked us, and, as it happened, I knew both of the individuals he asked about. He asked about Ted Clifton [Gen. Ted Clifton], and, as it happened, Ted had been a very strong friend of a number of CBS [Columbia Broadcast System] correspondents during World War II. And I knew Ted belatedly, but I'd gotten acquainted with him, and I think Ted was quite a fan of CBS, and so I felt a natural affinity to him and him to me. And I strongly recommended Ted. I said he was
2 certainly one of the best public relations people I'd ever seen in the military, and I'd had a fair amount of experience in the military because I'd covered the war in Korea. So I gave Ted very high marks and, of course, several months later was pleased to see that Ted actually became a military aide. Then the other person that he asked specifically about that I can remember was Lincoln White. Now Linc White was the spokesman for the State Department at that time, and, once in a while, I used to have to go over to State to cover foreign affairs. We did more swing reporting then than we do now. We had a smaller staff So I knew Linc not as well as I knew Ted. I think that the senator was quite interested in knowing about Linc White's politics and whether we perceived him as a Republican or a Democrat. And I had gotten the impression that Linc was fairly conservative and probably was a Republican. And, while I liked him very much, I had to try to give an honest evaluation to the senator's question. And my recollection is that I indicated that he was probably a Republican. I don't know now that that is true. He may have been a conservative Catholic, but I had the feeling that he was a Republican, and that's what I. . .. And I told the senator that I thought he was an excellent public servant, which I did. Linc did not get any particular job in the Kennedy administration. I think he became the ambassador to Australia or something like that. In fact it wasn't that high, it was general counsel in Melbourne. But Ted Clifton did. Well, that kind of approach by the senator was a very smart one in that it. . . . First of all, let's say that it was entirely politically innocent, which I don't believe. At least he did get some feel about people that he might be able to use from people who had had experience with them. We had no reason not to be fairly straightforward. We had no axe to grind. Bobby [Robert F. Kennedy] did very much the same thing at a much later stage when I and several other friends of mine, colleagues of mine, had dinner with Bobby, and he asked us for suggestions for people to go into the new administration. And I actually gave him, indirectly later I gave him the name of Ed Reischauer [Edwin 0 . Reischauer] .
STERN: Oh, really.
PIERPOINT: But that's another story. I think also that the senator was playing the game of making us feel that we were big people and very helpful to him. I was impressed, I think, by his friendliness, his openness, his youth. I had been used to covering a president in Dwight Eisenhower who was, well, let's say, at least thirty years older than myself And here was a fellow who was only about ten years older. And he seemed a little more like one of the guys, and that was a pleasant experience. And in the way he treated not only the reporters but the members of the staff and the crew, very informally. I remember him coming out one time in his shorts and walking down the aisle of the airplane, which startled me but. didn't seem to surprise anybody else on the plane. So the general atmosphere, on the first few occasions that I got to meet him and began to know him, was very pleasant for a young reporter. Shall we stop?
STERN: Okay. And you were talking about those first contacts. Were you at Hyannis at the time of the election itself?
PIERPOINT: No, I was not. I was dispatched, as a matter of fact, to cover Vice President Nixon's [Richard M. Nixon] campaign headquarters at the time of the election.
3 STERN: Do you have any interesting anecdotes about that? Waiting for him to come down or . .. .
PIERPOINT: I want to know something first. And that is ... .
STERN: I thought you were with the Nixon campaign ....
PIERPOINT: I wasn't with the campaign. I was just assigned then, that night, since Eisenhower wasn't running, and they said that he wasn't going to say anything at the White House, so they asked me to go up to Nixon campaign headquarters and be ready to do something from there.
STERN: This was in Washington or in California?
PIERPOINT: Yes, in Washington. There was a Washington campaign headquarters, and they had a big party planned and all that. So I just went there. But I don't recall that I even got on the air, to tell the truth. I stayed most of the night, and, then when it appeared clear to me that Kennedy had won and that there wasn't going to be any reaction where I was, I left. So, really on election night I wasn't much involved.
STERN: Okay. Now when was the first time you saw then President-Elect Kennedy?
PIERPOINT: Immediately after the election. I think it was about the second day after the election, I was at the White House, and I got a call from my bosses saying: "Please get ready to go to Palm Beach. He's flying down, and you're to go down and meet him and cover him down there," which I then did. And I was down at Palm Beach and flying back and forth with him, as a matter of fact. I recall at Thanksgiving we came back and then we went down and then, what happened? I guess Mrs. Kennedy [Jacqueline B. Kennedy] had a miscarriage. Was that it? Something happened, and we had to fly back all of a sudden. He flew back on. . . .
STERN: No, she didn't have a miscarriage. That's when the baby was born. John [John F. Kennedy, Jr.] was born.
PIERPOINT: Oh, all right. I'm sorry. That's when John was born. That's right. Just as soon_ as we landed down in Palm Beach, he got a phone call at the hanger, and he walked in the hanger and took the phone call and then came back and got on the press plane, and we flew back to Washington for him to go to the hospital and see his son. But I was with Kennedy then, for that whole period up until the Inauguration.
STERN: Okay, now that's very significant. Do you ever have a chance to talk with him about what his expectation was for his administration or about people he was going to put in it or. . . .
4 PIERPOINT: A little bit, but not a great deal. I'm trying to remember whether we had, and, as I recall, we did have a year-end session with him. A group of reporters sat around on a background session with him, and I was in on that.
STERN: And that's before he was inaugurated?
PIERPOINT: I think that's correct. Now my memory is not that great right now because we had a couple of those sessions down at Palm Beach in subsequent years. So I'm not absolutely sure, and I really wouldn't be very helpful in it because I just don't remember anything much of what he said. I remember one thing very vividly which is a story that I have told in the past. We were told by Pierre at one briefing that the senator was going to have a garden party, and it would be held a couple of days later, and we would be invited along with our families, our wives at least. So I didn't have my wife down there at the time. She had just given birth to our fourth child, and she was taking care of the baby, and I suddenly decided that she'd better come down because it would be a nice social occasion. So she did, and, the afternoon of the garden party, a friend of mine, Chuck Roberts [Charles Roberts]of Newsweek, and I decided that we would play tennis on the tennis courts. And they'd told us to bring our tennis outfits and our bathing suits. So the two wives, Chuck's wife and my wife, were sitting, watching us play tennis, and all of a sudden out came the senator. He looked gorgeous; he had a nice tan, and he had on a pair of white linen trousers, and he had one of those ascots, red tie on, and he walked out. So we interrupted our tennis game and walked over and shook hands with him. And then I said, "Senator, I'd like to have you meet my wife." And he said, "How do you do Mrs. . . . Haven't we met before?" and gave her that marvelous double whammy with bright blue eyes, and she was relatively sophisticated and was just absolutely stunned and overcome and stammered and was embarrassed and didn't know what to say. And later she said it was the oldest line in the world, but she still didn't have an answer for him. Because he, as you know I'm sure, was an extremely attractive man to women and especially when he wanted to tum it on. And at that garden party he turned it on for everybody there, and he strolled around the huge mansion there by the ocean and entertained us and was friendly and open and pleasant, and it was just a very, very nice experience. I don't recall that we talked a lot of politics, but almost every time we were with him on a social occasion we did talk some politics. My problem is in recalling exactly what subjects we would discuss. I don't have the feeling that we talked much about personnel, and he did a lot of that personnel work when we'd come back to Georgetown, and we'd stand outside in the freezing cold in December and January, and he would hold the meetings inside his house. And I think maybe most of what we talked about was issues and what he thought ought to be done and what kind of legislation he was planning on proposing and that kind of thing. But it was in a rather superficial way because these were almost entirely social occasions.
STERN: Do you recall other people that you might have seen down there?
PIERPOINT: You mean others on the staff?
5 STERN: Or other people coming down to speak to him possibly about positions in the administration.
PIERPOINT: Well, rio I don't. And I'll tell you why. He was in one place, and we were in another. And we did not stay outside his mansion and stake him out the way they do today as much. We had our briefings with Salinger, and he would tell us who's coming in and what the senator is doing today, that kind of thing. But I don't recall that we talked to too many people except members of his staff. I remember Kenny O'Donnell [Kenneth P. O'Donnell] was around, of course, and Ted Sorensen [Theodore C. Sorensen] and Bobby to some extent, and we talked to them on occasion. Particularly we'd see them socially because they were not necessarily staying at the mansion. And, of course, Pierre and his staff
STERN: How about the inauguration, did you attend it or cover it? Or was it a hard distinction to make?
PIERPOINT: No, I covered it. In fact I have a very vivid visual memory of that particular inauguration because I had to go in fairly early in the morning, and, as you know, there had been a tremendous snowstorm the night before. And I had gotten home before the snowstorm got too bad, and I didn't know how it really seriously was downtown. And I went down Rock Creek Park, and this was some time around between six and seven in the morning that I was driving down through Rock Creek Park. As I got into the park, I suddenly realized that I could still maneuver through the ice and the snow. There were cars all pointing in my direction. And what I found out was that they were abandoned cars, cars that had been left as people just couldn't navigate the night before. So I have this ghostly memory of driving, weaving back and forth between empty cars, going down Rock Creek Parkway against the on-coming traffic of the night before. And I finally got up to the hill, and I covered the event. As I recollect, I was working for radio, and we were in a booth built up opposite the inauguration stand itself And, of course, I'll never forget the problems that Robert Frost had in reading his poem because of the sunlight and the fact that the podium caught fire. And John Kennedy, all through it all, just seemed to be perfectly at ease, and he didn't seem to be bothered by any of it and, of course, delivered what most of us agree was a very, very impressive inauguration speech.
STERN: Okay. Now let's move on to the beginning of the administration. How did the job of covering the White House change with Kennedy and Salinger, etc., as opposed to covering the Eisenhower White House? And what immediate differences did it bring?
PIERPOINT: I suppose that the most important difference from my standpoint was the inauguration of live television for news conferences. I had, on one occasion before the inauguration, been flying back from Palm Beach, as I recall, and Pierre came up and sat down and said, "I want to talk to you." And it turned out he wanted me to talk about the idea oflive television coverage. Now, up until that time, the Eisenhower administration had never allowed live coverage of any news conference. Haggerty [James Haggerty] had slowly but
6 surely expanded the rules on the news conference, so that toward the end we were filming everything that was said and radio-taping it and, with very, very few exceptions, being allowed to use it all if we wanted to. But Haggerty still reserved the right to stop or edit or censor, whatever word you want to use, anything that he felt he wanted to do for national security or any other reason. I only recall having him exercising that privilege once or twice, but he was still not willing to allow Ike to go live for news conferences. So Pierre was coming up with a new idea in a sense, but one that we invented or had long hoped for. So I felt that it was a really important breakthrough. I gave him my best encouragement, but I also told him that this was a subject that I was really not competent to discuss on any high level, that this was a matter for management, that I certainly favored it and that I would do everything I could to help expedite it, but that he had to talk to the bureau chief in our Washington bureau and to the other network people--it was above a reporter's prerogative--which he did. And then, of course, very early in the administration, they started the live news conferences. I think it was a tremendous change and a very important breakthrough both for us and for the president.
STERN: Could you talk a bit about what your perception of the ambiance, let's say, of those press conferences? I know, for example, down in the museum at the Library we have a little clip of press conferences, and it's amazing, even to this day, people who don't even remember them find them so impressive. And, of course, people who do remember them are even more impressed.
PIERPOINT: I always enjoyed one thing. A press conference for a reporter who covers the White House is a high point of the week's work or the month's work. And, especially if you' re in broadcast journalism and even more especially if it's live, you are under enormous pressure. The network wants you to be recognized. The network wants you to ask an intelligent question that will get an intelligent answer. And, above all, it wants you and the president to make news. And, of course, you're exposed to God and everybody, as is the president. But he is carefully prepared and in theory so are we. But, nevertheless, the pressure is on. And, in the beginning, I think the live news conferences were . ... The first few, I think, probably the reporters were more ill at ease than was the president. He recognized right away that it was his kind of medium, and he, from almost the beginning, was in total control. I only recall one time when he kind oflost his temper, lost his cool, and that was when ... . My recollection is Sarah McClendon released a couple of names of people that. . . .
STERN: That's on the clip.
PIERPOINT: That's right. He was upset about that because he thought that it smeared them. And, of course, he was mad at the steel industry once and let that show. But, by and large, what I found fascinating about the Kennedy news conferences was that they were a pleasure to go into. You knew that he enjoyed them, and therefore it made it easier on the reporters. You knew that he was used to the give and take. You knew that he, from his family background, had been under fire from his brothers and sisters and his father and all of his father's friends. When they'd sit down to dinner, they'd have give and take, and so he didn't mind
7 a tough question. He kind of enjoyed the challenge, and that became clear right away in the news conferences. And what happened was that, time after time, when we would ask what we thought were really tough, intelligent, hard-hitting questions, he would immediately come back with a quip, which would make everybody laugh, and the whole atmosphere would change, and everybody would be kind of on his side even though they didn't want to be. He was very good at that. Many times, after the news conference was over, I'd come out, and I'd think: Gee, that was really fun. And then I would also have a second thought which was: What did I learn? And then I'd realize that I only learned as much as he really wanted me to know.
STERN: Now that leads to my next question because to some people who I've spoken to, including his analysts who covered the conferences, sometimes said that they had the feeling that he managed the mood through those conferences in a very subtle way, that he did it to, in a sense, manipulation by candor.
PIERPOINT: Well, I think all politicians, if they're good at their job, manage the mood, and especially they do it when they're in front of reporters. I mean that's the name of the game. In that sense I think, yes, he managed the mood. I don't think that that's quite a fair way to put it. I tried to put it in the other context, that he was always in . control. He knew what he wanted to say. He knew how to say it so that he could do it in a way that would make us accept it with good humor, with a lack of nasty combativeness. Some presidents get angry, and they show it. Richard Nixon and I had a .... But Kennedy, I guess you'd say he managed the news conference, and, in that sense, I think it's true. But I don't think that that's a criticism. In my book that's what I expect politicians to do. And he did it well, and he did it in a pleasant way, so that, even when he was putting down the reporter, he and the reporter were kind of laughing at each other. Kennedy had this marvelous quality of being able to laugh at himself, and therefore a reporter would be drawn into the same kind of atmosphere. And many times the news conferences were not as productive as somehow I had hoped when I went into the room. But they were almost always fascinating.
STERN: Let's look at this from a number of points of view. You mention in your book that unlike Ike who did not. ... Ike avoided relationships with the press people but that Kennedy covered everything. I think, in a sense, that's part of the same process we were talking about with the . . ..
PIERPOINT: That's right. And also, you know, Kennedy felt comfortable with reporters, and therefore reporters felt comfortable with him. Some politicians, well, you don't know whether to look down on them or up to them. Most of them you look down on. With Kennedy it was more of an even give and take. He knew what our job was. We knew what his job was, and, while we didn't always agree with him, we respected each other. And I think that very brief time that he spent as a reporter himself covering the San Francisco conference, the peace conference, and a few other assignments that he had, gave him an understanding of what we were trying to do and why we were trying to do it that fit us into the system that most politicians can only talk about and only pay lip service to. They will say, "Sure,
8 I believe in a free press, and I understand the importance of a fourth estate." But basically they still are a little skeptical and doubtful that a free press is really all that necessary. I don't think you could say that John Kennedy was doubtful or skeptical about it. Sometimes the free press hurt him, and there was that one occasion when he went against the principles of the free press, in my view, when he asked .... After the Bay at Pigs fiasco, when he gave that speech and he asked if we'd pull our punches in effect. But, by and large, he of the six presidents . ...
STERN: A presidents could never get away with it.
PIERPOINT: Of course not. No. He couldn't. In fact he didn't get away with it either. He asked for it, and nobody jumped on him. I mean everybody felt a little sorry for him and took it easy on him. But nobody went along with him. But, of the six presidents that I have covered, Kennedy had far and away the best rapport with the press because I think he understood us, having been one of us.
STERN: What's striking to me, for example, in your book on page 93, to be very specific, you have that scale for rating various presidents. For example on the categories of candor and informative value, candor and information, Nixon and Kennedy rank as equal on the scale. On combativeness Kennedy is only one point ahead of Nixon, and the only place where there was a distinct difference was on wit where the totals were almost, the difference between them 29.3 points where five out of six of the ? was on wit.
PIERPOINT: But, you see, Kennedy's candor was similar to Nixon's but in a different way. Neither one of them was very candid. I don't think Kennedy ever really gave us or very seldom gave us the answers that we were looking for. But he was clever in handling the non-answers. Whereas Nixon would just very obviously not answer the question. Of the presidents that I've covered, well, none of them was terribly candid, but I would say that Jimmy Carter [James Earl Carter] was the candid or more candid than any of the others because he did try to answer the questions. Kennedy was very, very smart in not answering by giving you a quip or a witty bit of humor instead of an answer. And that's why I didn't give him very good marks for candor.
STERN: I was struck by that. I thought that was fascinating. This is a more complicated question. Many of the people who read the transcripts of? are undergraduate college students. One of the questions that they are most often interested in--1 know this because I often teach them--is, when they read an oral history done by an assistant secretary of state or a journalist or whatever, they say, "What does that person do on a daily basis? What is the routine?" And I thought I'd ask you this, as a White House correspondent in the Kennedy administration, if you could talk about a typical day. Exactly what was the routine like?
PIERPOINT: I'll try to make it as short as possible. First of all, as you suggest, there is no typical day per se, but there is a routine that you fall into, and it's true for almost
9 all of the presidents that I've covered. The White House correspondent gets from the White House very early in the morning, either the night before or first thing in the morning, gets the schedules for the president. And he begins to think in terms of what is going to be the story for the day. Now, in radio and television, radio you do several stories during the day; television you usually only concentrate on one. This, in a period like the Kennedy era, when there was really only one White House correspondent for CBS news, it was somewhat schizophrenic. You had to be thinking about several stories for radio and then trying to concentrate on the big one for television for the evening news. But you tried to keep up with what were the most important national and international stories of the day, and of course that started out--1 guess I got a little ahead of myself here--that started out by reading the morning newspapers, usually the Post [Washington Post] and the Times [New York Times], and listening to the morning news on radio or watching on television, so you have an idea of what's going on in the world. You get to the White House, and you try to relate what's going on in the world to what's going to happen at the White House during that day. And those of us in broadcasting are more instant history than even the newspaper people, so you almost have to have a quality of instantaneous news the minute you get on the air, which means that I want to look at those appointments with the president and decide which of the appointments may produce something that is going to help me get on the air with a story. If it's related to the business of a chancellor of West Germany or whether it's related to a call on the president by a committee of the senate or. ... If it isn't related to today's news it's not going to do me much good. Still I have to see and listen to and watch whatever I can of the president. Now normally a president will appear two or three times during the day in front of cameras, microphones, and reporters. It may only be for 30 seconds in the oval office, it may be for a brief ceremony in the Rose Garden, or it may be for a speech somewhere in town or even out of town. And, on those occasions, no matter how important everything else is to you, you've got to be there. You've got to watch what he says and he does because I always felt that it was part of my duty to get a look at the president as often as possible. Physically, emotionally, mentally, I wanted to be sure what he was doing, what he was thinking, how he looked. If possible, you tried to talk to him briefly during those occasions in the day when you'd see him, but that's pretty rare. There have developed, in recent years, this system of throwing questions at him from afar and hoping your microphone will pick up on the answer. I never felt that that was a very useful form ofjournalism. But, once in a while, you could talk with the president or his aides who were around, and that's always very valuable. Whatever the story of the day is, they all have some input, and if you can chat with them briefly while you're standing in the Oval Office for a photographic ceremony, even that may give you a clue for a piece of your story for the day. And then the most normal and important activity of the day is the daily briefing. Now in the early days and including into the Kennedy era, we had two briefings a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, by the press secretary primarily, although it could be members of the cabinet who would brief you on legislation or on the issues of the day, if they were brought in as guests of the White House.
STERN: Didn't Salinger try to cut that back to only one?
PIERPOINT: For a while he did, and, of course, he did cut them back to one while we were out
10 of town. But that is also normal. They have only one a day. I thought that that came later, but it may be that Pierre cut it back to one a day. But I think he went back to two. In any case the briefings by the press secretary obviously opens up the opportunity for the administration to make any announcements that it wants, to put out any stories that it wants out. And then it gives us the opportunity to raise any issue that we want to raise. And, obviously, very often the press secretary is not going to answer your questions, but you can raise any questions you want. And sometimes when a press secretary doesn't answer, it could be as important as what he does say. And then after the briefing comes the hardest part of the day when you go on the telephone, and you start phoning around, and you try to find out basically the other side of the story that the White House is propagating at the moment. By and large, I would say that I agree with the concept that there is an adversarial relationship between press and presidents or press and press secretaries or press and politicians. Politicians always want to put out for the best side of a story or the best side of legislation. They tend to make themselves, their president look good, and those around them do the same. And that means the press secretary is going to answer the questions that make his boss look good and not answer the ones that may be embarrassing. So you have to spend a lot of time trying to get the other side of all of these issues. "How much is the new program going to cost?" "Well, we have no estimate." Well, maybe the other party, political party, does. Maybe there's somebody on the Hill who has an estimate of the cost, and maybe the cost benefit is not going to be very good and therefore the White House wants to cover that up. And you call experts within the government who will talk to you; that's where you use your sources. So a great part of a White House correspondent's day is spent on the telephone, phoning around, trying to get all of the facts possible and all of the viewpoints possible on the given story of the day. And then the easiest part, basically, is putting the story together at the end of the day when I get. ... Once I get all of the facts and all of the research, I can put a radio or television story t_ogether in a half hour, if I have to, or even less.
STERN: What about access in the Kennedy years compared to Ike and what came later .. .. Was it relatively hard, or was it easy to get through? Did you, for example, ever use Evelyn Lincoln? A lot of people have felt that, if they used Evelyn Lincoln, she was very good.
PIERPOINT: I cannot say that I did use Evelyn. I guess maybe once or twice Evelyn might have helped me, but by and large the access is better than in the Eisenhower years because John Kennedy was accessible, and he did like to talk to us, but not necessarily when he was in the White House. I mean, you didn't call the Oval Office very often and say, "Hey, I'd like to talk to the president about this." It was mainly when we were outside Washington that you had access to the president and of course the news conferences. But, the other thing is, in the White House the access is quite open. You could talk to Ted Sorensen, or you could talk to Kenny O'Donnell or, even on occasion Mac Bundy [McGeorge Bundy], although Bundy was not very accessible, at least to me most of the time he was there. But people like that. ... Pierre did not try to act as a guard at the gate post. His idea was: Well, if you want to know about the legislation that's going up on public schools, you ought to talk to Ted Sorensen. He can tell you. Or, if you want to find out what they feel about the whole problem of
11 the war on poverty, Ted or Kenny O'Donnell can brief you better than I can. Unlike the Haggerty regime, where Jim tried to make sure that everything went through him and that he would be most of the contact and then he would get back to you on the answers, in the Kennedy administration it was much more open. The access to the president is not ever as good as reporters would like it because the president simply has so much to do, but the access to the people around him is excellent.
STERN: What about during the, around a crisis like the Bay at Pigs or when the Berlin Wall was going up or even in the Cuban Missile Crisis. At times like that it must have been very different.
PIERPOINT: At crisis times there was a wall of secrecy that pretty well surrounded everybody involved, and it was very tough to get through. In fact, normally the White House, and I don't care what administration it is, at a point of crisis, the White House almost closes down as a place of access to reporters, and most of the information we get comes from other places: the Defense Department, the State Department, and the Hill. It's very hard to penetrate the White House during a period of crisis, primarily because the people you want to talk to are all tied up and partly because they're all tight-lipped and don't want to talk to reporters. And the Kennedy White House was very good at not talking to reporters when it didn't want to talk to them, as I'm sure you're aware since we discussed it in the Kennedy missile crisis [a previous discussion]. But they were very tight during that period, and it was very hard for those of us, even those who were closest to the White House coverage, to find out what really the crisis was about.
STERN: I'm sure you remember the flap that poor Arthur Sylvester over in Defense ?
PIERPOINT: ? Sure. I don't know.
STERN: And he was a former journalist.
PIERPOINT: That's right. I have kind of mixed emotions about that whole situation myself I think there are times when the administration, the Kennedy administration, has the right not to tell anybody anything in the outside world, but I think that those times are very, very rare. And I really don't think they ever have a right to lie.
STERN: Did you accompany the president on any of the foreign trips?
PIERPOINT: Oh, yes, Latin America. I accompanied him on all of his foreign trips except the one to Vienna. That was the first one.
STERN: The one where he met Khrushchev [Nikita Khrushchev].
PIERPOINT: As it happened, right after the inauguration I was taken off the White House
12 assignment for a period of about three or four months and was sent to the Hill, and George Herman was assigned to the White House. He didn't like the Hill in his time being in the White House, and I didn't like the Hill, so we just traded. And so the one trip I did not make was that one to Vienna. I made, as far as I can recall, every other foreign trip: to Latin America and to Europe and most of the domestic trips as well. And, of course, on the trips we had some closer access, better access to the president. So, whenever a president's out of the Oval Office is when you have an opportunity to see him really in action and even to talk to him. On Air Force One we used to talk to him on occasions, and when he was on vacation, of course, we had quite a bit of chance to talk with him. And most of those occasions he liked to talk politics and substance, and here ? not to be that. [Laughter]
STERN: Do you have any particular recollections or anecdotes from the Berlin trip when he said, "I'm a Berliner."
PIERPOINT: We!J, I just have this enormous recollection of being. . . . I was inside that hall, I think it's the city hall, when he made the speech, and I was up on the level with him. I can't recall whether I was a pool person or whether it was just that the press room gave us a look out over that crowd. And I was standing there behind the president when he delivered those last lines, and, even though my German was rudimentary at best, I could understand what he was saying. And, of course, the crowd just erupted with this enormously enthusiastic response, and immediately you knew that that was an historic moment. I'd never really seen any better spontaneous reaction to a speaker anywhere I've ever covered presidents or any other politician than that moment in Berlin.
STERN: What about, for example, the trip to Paris, de Gaulle [Charles A. de Gaulle] ?
PIERPOINT: The thing that I remember from that. . . . I don't remember any really important anecdotes. I do remember that we were terribly involved with whose finger was going to be on the trigger. They were trying to work out a complicated defense arrangement so that you could fire a nuclear weapon from NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization], and everybody would be involved. And the details are a little vague to me now, but it was one of the most complex discussions, and we sat there in a briefing room Pierre Salinger and two or three other press secretaries at the end of this historic conference trying to understand how this thing was going to work, and I guess either I was very slow-witted or else the thing didn't make any sense because I can remember asking Pierre again and again, "Look, I still don't understand who is actually going to pull the trigger." And eventually that whole plan was scrapped. They just never could get it worked out. But that issue I recall, and then it seemed to me that that was also the occasion when Trujillo [Rafael Trujillo] was assassinated.
STERN: I thought it was 1960. Well, I must be wrong.
PIERPOINT: No, it was after Kennedy . ..
13 STERN: Oh, that's right.
PIERPOINT: ... came in, and I think it was while we were in Paris that Trujillo was assassinated because I think what happened was that Salinger let the word out that he knew Trujillo was dead before it hit the wire. And that was the first clue to us that somehow the United States, or some branch of the United States, had been involved, and later, it came out, that we had at least furnished the gun and some of our CIA (Central Intelligence Agency] people. The reason I remember this is that. . . . First of all Pierre got himself into trouble over having disclosed that he knew Trujillo was dead before we knew it. And then we came back from Paris, and Kennedy had on his staff a man [Sam Belk] that I knew on the NSC [National Security Council]. I went out with my family and some other friends to a Chinese restaurant, and while we were sitting in this restaurant, this NSC guy came in with a Chinese, and they sat down at a table about 25 or 30 feet away. And I told the Chinese waiter to bring me a fortune cookie, and I wrote a little note saying, "Your boys did a good job in the DR," meaning the Dominican Republic, and put it into the fortune cookie and told the Chinese waiter to go back in the kitchen and then come back out and hand it to this NSC guy. He was from the CIA, I think. So he did, and we, there were about ten or twelve of us at our table, and everybody there was in on the joke. And this NSC guy, he gripped the table, and he looked around the room. (Laughter] And, for the next 15 minutes while I tried to stay hidden, you could see him quickly glance around the room every once in a while, and finally we tried to outwait him. But he wasn't about to leave that restaurant until he'd seen everybody walk by. And I tried to sneak out, and then I hear this guy shout, "Bob Pierpoint, you did that!" And I was very sorry he'd seen me. But I do recall that that was in that Paris trip when the Trujillo assassination came out. I also recall, but I think it was not a personal recollection, how impressed General de Gaulle was by Jackie and her beauty and her grace and elegance and how Jack said something like, "I'm the fellow who came here with Jackie Kennedy." But I wasn't at the dinner.
STERN: When you were talking about the Trujillo assassination it came to me ? if you had any inkling at all of the covert operations that were going on against Cuba ? Was there any sense at all at the time that this was happening? And maybe even the opposite side of the coin of the question is, if you did know, what would you have done about it?
PIERPOINT: Well, that's more of a philosophical question which I began to discuss with you, but my basic attitude. . . . You know, we did know about the Bay at Pigs. I mean, I didn't, but CBS did.
[END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE ONE]
PIERPOINT: But I know now a lot of what was going on then, and it's really hard to separate what I suspected then from what I know now. I think that we all felt, because of what we knew Kennedy, and we knew what had happ·ened at the Bay at Pigs--1 mean everybody knew that, of course--that he is going to try to get even, in effect. I mean, the
14 Kennedys did have this quality of--what is it--don't get angry; get even. And I think that there was a feeling that somehow Mr. Castro [Fidel Castro] was in jeopardy, and that if Mr. Kennedy had his way he would get him. Now whether I ever knew of anything specific, I don't think I did. I think I would have reported it if I'd known anything. I don't think I ever came across any real information that would have led me to believe that they were doing anything, and it was just a gut feeling, like the gut feeling on the ? the public. I mean, there wasn't much doubt in my mind that, as soon as I heard that Trujillo had been assassinated, that, if we weren't behind it, we were certainly parallel to that. And if something had happened to Castro like that, I think I would have immediately made the same conclusion because it was an atmosphere then of feeling that the Kennedys were tough bastards on any enemy and particularly Bobby and that, if you were in their way and you were an enemy as they thought, particularly an enemy of the United States, they're going to get you, or they're certainly going to make a big effort to do so.
STERN: What about this pre-inaugural RFK. thing that you mentioned?
PIERPOINT: We, a number of us, had established a club in the late '50s, a kind of an informal club of people who got together once a month or so, reporters, and invited someone in for a brief background dinner session. There were a number of us in that group, Don Oberdorfer [Donald Oberdorfer , Jr.], now of the Washington Post, was in it. Charles Bailey was in it. David Wise, who's an author now, was in the group, and Tom Ross was in it, a group of young reporters who talked with people within the administration or people in politics. Someone suggested that we get--after the election of 1960--that we get Bobby in for a session. So Bobby came in. We had dinner at the Old Occidental Grill, upstairs in a private room, and I guess there were about ten of us plus Bobby there. And we had a very good session in which we talked about the possibilities of cabinet posts. And he ran down a list of the people that he thought were the leading candidates. There was a little bit of a misunderstanding, apparently, as to whether or not this was to be, I guess that he thought that it was to be off the record, and we thought it was to be on background because we all did stories on it. And he had half a dozen of the cabinet posts that we discussed. He had about three of them that later turned out to be the people and maybe three or four turned out to be other. For instance, I remember he was pretty strong on Fulbright [J. William Fulbright] as the secretary of State, and, of course, that turned out not to be the case because of Fulbright's votes on civil rights basically. I don't recall that Dean Rusk's name was ever even mentioned.
STERN: Was Stevenson [Adlai E. Stevenson] mentioned?
PIERPOINT: Yes, he was mentioned. He was discussed in some detail, but as a cabinet member. I don't think he was discussed as UN [United Nations] ambassador specifically. It's just that he would be in there somewhere. Udall [Stewart L. Udall] was mentioned. Bobby asked us about the idea of his taking a post in the cabinet, and I can remember I was very much opposed to it. I thought the idea of nepotism was something that we shouldn't have in this government and in this administration. I'd lived and worked abroad for ten years, and I'd seen a lot of nepotism in various countries, and I didn't like it. And I told him that
15 I though it would be a mistake, and obviously he listened very carefully [laughter] because he became the attorney general, but he did ask us about it that time.
STERN: Do you think his father had more influence than you?
PIERPOINT: Yes, a little bit more influence than I did . [Laughter] But it was a very interesting session in which he ran down some of the candidates and some of whom as I said got the jobs later. Then, at the end, he said, "Now, you know we've got over 2,000 posts to fill ." And he said, "We're open to suggestions. And, if you have some, please get in touch with us because we'd like to have them." And he was very, kind of gracious and flattering about it, which we all appreciated. So, a few weeks after that a friend of mine who had lived many, many years in Japan--his name was Jorgenson [?]--and he'd been fifty years in the Orient. And he called me one day, and he said, "You know, they're looking for an ambassador to Japan, and I have an idea." And I said, "Well, who is it?" And he said, "Well, Ed Reischauer." He said, "I think he'd be an ideal ambassador." And he said, "Is there any way that you could get his name to the people involved?" And I said, "You know, I hadn't thought about it, but I think he'd be terrific." I had known Ed because I lived in Tokyo and worked there, and he had married a colleague of mine. And so I said, "I think that's an excellent idea. I'll do what I can." So I called Don Wilson [Donald M. Wilson]. Don had known Ed too, not as well as I did, but he'd met him a few times. And Don was working on the staff that was setting up the new administration. And I said, "Don, Bobby has asked that we give you ideas, and I've got an idea for ambassador to Japan." And so I told him, and he said, "Gee, that's a good idea. Let me put it into the basket." I don't think I was the only one who had the idea. I have a feeling that there may have been others, but, when Ed came down from Harvard to be briefed on his new post, some friends of ours had a dinner party for him, he thanked me. He said, "I understand you were responsible for this." And I'm happy to take the credit. IfI was, it was probably one of the few wise things I've ever done.
STERN: It was not without, as I'm sure you know, not without complication.
PIERPOINT: Yes, I do know. And actually, you know, I think that Ed in the long run was perhaps not totally happy with the job after Kennedy was assassinated, and he was Johnson's [Lyndon B. Johnson] ambassador, and he had to justify the war in Vietnam. It went down hill for him, but he stayed on as a loyal public servant. But I don't think he was happy the last year or so. But I still think he was a terrific ambassador.
STERN: The very fact that he was married to a Japanese they saw as a disadvantage.
PIERPOINT: Well, that's kind of a state department typical. ... But what was the ad agency guy, the one who became the ambassador to India? Oh, Chester Bowles. Wasn't Bowles very strongly in favor of Reischauer being ambassador?
STERN: He was ultimately, yes.
16 PIERPOINT: But not necessarily ....
STERN: Well from the things I've seen, it didn't go smoothly, let's put it that way.
PIERPOINT: I really didn't know much of the inner workings about it. I just knew that his name was in the hopper, and then all of a sudden it came out the other end, and I did feel that there were people who felt that ? should not go back as a Washington ambassador. But I'm glad she did.
STERN: Okay, let's get on with some of the other .... What about, for example, the people around Kennedy like Ted Clifton, Sorensen, O'Donnell, Godfrey McHugh, all these people.. .. What kind of access did you have to them and your relationship? What were your relationships like with people like that?
PIERPOINT: Basically it was quite good. Obviously, with Ted Clifton, it was especially good because I had known Ted before, and, as I said, he was kind of a CBS fan, and we at CBS had always liked him and looked on him as a friend. So I had good access to Ted. He was helpful to me. Ted Sorensen, I had a good relationship with. For some reason, I think we just hit it off We probably come from somewhat similar backgrounds. He's from Nebraska and I'm from southern California but also from such strong religious families and had become much more liberal in our approaches to life after coming from very strict backgrounds. So I liked Ted very much and thought he was helpful and useful to me when he could. Kenny O'Donnell was a little tougher for me. I didn't ever feel that I had the rapport with Kenny that some of the others had. I had a handicap, competitively, in that I'd come in late, and, you know, Sander V anocur had been kind of covering the Kennedys as a personal and political crusade almost, from the time when he decided that Jack Kennedy was going to be president of the United States. And so he had enormous entree with a lot of these people, particularly the family, the father, whom I didn't know, for example. And so competitively I had some problems, and I had to work harder, I think, than some of my colleagues who had known him. Hugh Sidey had known him when he was a senator; I really hadn't. And so I worked as much as I could through people like Ted Clifton and Ted Sorensen, or Walter Heller and found them to be very bright, very interesting people. There was a certain liveliness about the Kennedy administration coming in. Perhaps it was because it followed the old-guard Eisenhower group whom I had never felt much rapport with. And all of a sudden you had these bright, enthusiastic, hard-working young people who were going to change the world. And that fit in with some of my ideas of what ought to be done too, and so I found them usually quite easy to talk to and very interesting to talk to, filled with new ideas and very intelligent people. The only one I'd say I really had a problem with was Mac Bundy, and I could never really get him to return my phone calls. And I had a very funny experience. As you may know, he has a secretary now, who was his secretary then, named Alice Boyd. And Alice had worked in the Eisenhower administration in a somewhat similar job in the White House, so I knew Alice fairly well. She'd gone on some of the trips, and I'd gotten to know her. So I came back from a vacation after the Bay at Pigs to--I'm sorry, after the Cuban missile crisis in '62--to find that there was a story that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post,
17 saying that there was one weak link in the whole--this is not a quote, but this was the idea of the story--there was a weak link in the whole Kennedy administration approach to the solution of the Cuban missile crisis, and that was Adlai Stevenson.
STERN: Oh, of course, the Munich thing.
PIERPOINT: Yeah, and he wanted to play the Neville Chamberlain role.
STERN: ? and Alsop [Joseph Alsop] wrote .. . .
PIERPOINT: ? and Alsop, exactly. And they never in the story, in the article, they never said who it was had fingered Adlai Stevenson as the being the one who wanted to play the Munich ploy or the role of Neville Chamberlain. And that became a question of real interest in the news, so I had talked then to a lot of people on the evening news, and they said, "Do you think you could find out who that was that fingered Adlai Stevenson?" And I said, "Yeah, I think it's worth a try." So I did start making phone calls and talking to people and quickly narrowed down to one person which was McGeorge Bundy, for a number of reasons, partly because he had frequently talked to Alsop, and there are other reasons. Apparently he and Adlai Stevenson didn't get along too well. So I finally got enough evidence that I thought it was Bundy, but I decided to call him and let him tell me his side of the story and got Alice Boyd on the phone. And I said, "I'd like to talk to your boss." And she said, "Okay, fine Bob. 1'11 have him call you back." And I waited all one day, and he didn't call. And that afternoon, late that afternoon, Cronkite [Walter Cronkite] was on the phone, and he said, "I understand you've got this story fingering Stevenson, and the guy is Bundy." And I said, "That's right." He said, ''Well, can we do it?" And I said, "I've got a problem. I haven't been able to get to Bundy. And, I think in fairness I ought to get his view on this." And he said, "Well, I agree. Keep trying." So I must have called Alice the last hour before the show three times. She kept saying, "I'm sorry. He'll get back to you. He'll get back to you." And I said, "Alice, I need to talk to him." So, finally, Walter called at about a quarter to six and said, "Look, let's go with the story, if you're certain it was Bundy." I said, 'Tm certain, but I hate to do it without his view on it." He said, "No, let's go ahead." So I did the story that night, and the next morning, I came to the White House about 9:15, and there was a message waiting for me. It said, "Please call Alice Boyd." So I called Alice, and she said, "Bob, Mac"--Mr. Bundy--"is returning your call now." And I said, "Alice, I don't need to talk to him now. I already have done the story." She said, "Well, now he needs to talk to you." And I said, "Oh. Oh, I see. _Okay." So sh~ said,"Could you come in this afternoon at 2:30, and I said, "Sure, I'll be glad to." With some fear and trepidation, because he was a pretty tough, arrogant son-of-a-bitch in those days, I said, "Okay, I'll go in." And I went in fully prepared to defend my position and say that I knew damn well it was him. And I went down into the bowels there, in the National Security area. And he could not have been more cordial. He got up from behind his chair, and his eyes were sparkling, and it was, "Bob, nice to see you. Please sit down. Is there anything I can tell you about the Cuban missile crisis?" I was kind of stunned, and I said, "Well, yeah." I said, "I'd just like to ask you a number of questions." And so I said, "What was the most dangerous moment?" And I had always thought it was that
18 Wednesday, and he convinced me it was not. He said, "Wednesday was dangerous until the ship stopped dead in the water." But he said also, "Perhaps even more dangerous was that following Saturday when one of our planes was shot down, and it looked like we were going to have to go take out their missiles with our aircraft." Then we had a very nice chat. He went through the whole Cuban missile crisis from his standpoint, fascinating session, and Adlai Stevenson's name never came up.
STERN: Did you take that as confirmation?
PIERPOINT: I think so. Sure. And last month, when I was in New York, just parenthetically, I went in and did an hour long television interview with Mac Bundy on the Cuban missile crisis, and it was the longest TV interview I've ever done and one of the best. He was just excellent, and he was most helpful and most kind and courteous and answered every single question, including the Adlai Stevenson question which he did confirm.
STERN: He did?
PIERPOINT: Yeah.
STERN: Stevenson himself, I know, quoted Bobby.
PIERPOINT: Well, the way that Bundy confirmed it was that he said it was true that Adlai Stevenson was the one who wanted another alternative. . . . He kept saying, "What is the point of worrying about the missiles in Cuba when we already have missiles that can wipe us out from the Soviet Union? Let's just ignore them." Well, I can't really say that Mac admitted that he was the one that told Alsop.
STERN: You know, McNamara [Robert S. McNamara] said that too, that it doesn't make any difference, because it's just as bad. It doesn't matter where it comes from.
PIERPOINT: That's right. But the fact that Mac never denied my story of the night before, I kind of took it as pretty good confirmation. And I must say, Bundy has changed remarkably in these last twenty, twenty-five years. He's a different, and in my view, a much broader, deeper person than he was. You know, he and some of the others around Kennedy, but particularly Bundy--Rostow [Walter.W. Rostow] was another one, although he wasn't with Kennedy at the time--were arrogant. They thought they had all the answers, and, as we now know, they didn't. And I would have to say that one of my criticisms of the Kennedy administration would be that there was a certain degree of arrogance evident. Bobby was pretty arrogant sometimes too, and he wasn't willing to listen to much criticism. I never felt that the president himself was that way as much as some of the people around him. One other thing I want to point out, and this is my personal view. I fault the Kennedy people for one sad piece of history, and that is that they never got rid of J. Edgar Hoover. I am convinced that they knew that Hoover was subverting the law, that he was long overdue to be retired, that he was carrying
19 out personal vendettas against people that he didn't agree with politically, and that they were afraid of him. And I don't think that they should have been. I think that they should have gotten rid of him, and I think it would have spared us, historically spared us, some troubles that came later with Hoover.
STERN: Of course, I think other presidents were in the same position and probably, Johnson certainly was for the same reason.
PIERPOINT: Yeah, but the Kennedys could have done it in a way that, yeah, you're right about Johnson. He should have gotten rid of him too, but the Kennedys had the moxie. They had the guts, and they should have used it.
STERN: And, of course ironically, the very first thing he did was reappoint Hoover and ?
PIERPOINT: Yeah, right.
STERN: Disappointed a Jot of people. I was wondering, were you, as someone who was around the White House a lot in the Kennedy period, were you aware of what a number of people have talked about as this distinction between the official White House and the personal White House? In other words, the people who were his kind of buddies, the Dave Powers [David F. Powers] type of people, on the one hand. I mean the fact that, for example, Sorensen had apparently no connection to that social set. Was that very apparent? How did you react?
PIERPOINT: Yes, it was fairly apparent. He had people that he considered his personal friends, including even some reporters, Bradlee, Ben Bradlee [Benjamin C. Bradlee] and Charlie Bartlett [Charles L. Bartlett], for example. And I suppose, even to some extent, Vanocur, although I think he was probably closer to the old man than he was to Jack. But there was a distinction there between those who were his personal friends and those who were on his staff and of particular importance to him. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, by the way.
STERN: No, I'm just curious about what it was like if you had to adjust your operation, in other words, knowing that certain people had this kind of access, other people had a differentkind of access to the president, how it might affect your . . ..
PIERPOINT: Coverage, methods of coverage. I guess that what it did, if you wanted to know something about his personal predilections, what did he read, what time did he get up in the morning, what time did he go to bed last night, what was his favorite sports figure, you'd call up Dave Powers. If you wanted to know about his stand on church versus state in political issues, you could call up Ted Sorensen. Now Kenny O'Donnell, as I have said earlier, was one that I found real hard to penetrate and deal with. And I never knew quite where Kenny fitted into this. But, by and large, on the issues I dealt with the non-personal
20 people. And, of course, there are always times when you want to know little personal anecdotes for filling out your story. Then a Dave Powers or a Kenny O'Donnell could be very helpful. And then, of course, there was that other kind of world of the show business people which surprised me in a way. Maybe this reflects my own prejudices, but I, having been born and raised in southern California in a rather strict family, I always looked down on show business people as being superficial, more for show than for substance. And I was surprised at how taken the Kennedy family and even the president were by the show business type. Frank Sinatra, for example. The friendship with Frank Sinatra was something that surprised and rather worried me. I never much cared for Frank Sinatra. I think he's a great singer, but, beyond that, I wouldn't have touched him with a ten foot pole, unless I could have hit him with it. But here were the Kennedys practically making a national hero out of a Frank Sinatra, whom I had always considered a gang, mafia-type guy, and that spread across the board. I mean, here you had one of the sisters married to an actor, and I did not. . . . I guess what I'm really saying is that I disapproved of that side of the Kennedys and still do.
STERN: Of course, there were others who felt that. I know, for example, Laura Berkowitz in her interview, tried to warn Kennedy about people like Porfirio Ruberosa.
PIERPOINT: Yeah, and didn't get anywhere.
STERN: No.
PIERPOINT: The Kennedys seemed to have been mesmerized by people who were either glorious or notorious on the national and international scene, and I could not fully understand that. It may have been, to put its best light on it, when you're totally involved and immersed in politics as both Bobby and Jack were in those days, you had to have a recreational side that was entirely different. But I was always disappointed in how much attention they paid to the show business colony.
STERN: On the more personal side of JFK, you mentioned, for example, in your book that you were wishing, I think you used those words, at the time when the baby died in August of' 63 . . . . What was he like at a time like that? What was your general observation of his relationship with his wife at that time?
PIERPOINT: Well, let's not go into the general observations about his relationship with his wife in connection with the baby because I think, I'll talk about that, if you want to later, but let me say that that was a very moving and a very difficult time for all of us. We were up at Cape Cod. The baby started to come. We went into Boston, and it was a long, long night, and we found out very early on that there was a problem. And we knew there was a problem, and my recollection is that he tried to talk to us on one occasion during that night. I wish my memory were better. I'm sorry, but. . . . I'm trying to remember who also was the aid. It may have been Ted Clifton who kept coming out. I don't think it was Pierre. But, in any case, it was a long night in that hospital. When we got the word that the baby had died, it was very
21 early in the morning, something like four or five in the morning. I tried to get on the air, but there were practically no stations around to broadcast over. I think I did some broadcasting to the west coast. There were not very many of us reporters there at that time with him. And it was a very moving and very sad occasion, and I felt watching afterward, watching at the funeral, the burial, that he and his wife were very close at that time, that he deeply felt the loss of that second son. And the whole atmosphere of the staff and the family, everybody, was very, very saddened, as you could expect. And I think that probably he and Jackie were closer at that time than any, or appeared to be closer, than at any time before or since except on the day of the assassination. I was very, very struck by how she suddenly had decided to become the good political wife and wanted to do the right thing and was trying very hard and even managing to make it appear that she was enjoying this political jaunt.
STERN: I gather your feeling then was that she really wasn't enjoying it.
PIERPOINT: I never thought she did up until then. I thought she felt awkward and ill-at-ease. And, in fact, I thought for some time that they were estranged really. But then, after the baby died, the rest of that summer it seemed to me that things seemed to go better for them as a couple, and they seemed closer together. And the day of the assassination she really looked and acted like one who was very much in love with her husband and even in love with the fact that he's a politician, and she wants to be a good politician's wife. I mean suddenly she'd gotten into it which made, of course, the assassination even more poignant.
STERN: I was particularly interested in that little anecdote you had in your book about that time you went down to Palm Beach. You know, one day she was friendly and warm, and the next day she wasn't. How did you perceive there her role in the White House?
PIERPOINT: I think she's a very strange woman. I can't say that I understand Jacqueline Kennedy, and I don't think I ever have understood her. Of course, I haven't really seen that much of her, but. .. . Do you want me to tell that anecdote?
STERN: If you'd like to.
PIERPOINT: Because it kind of typifies the problem I've always had with her. She could be extremely pleasant and friendly at one point, and then briefly later she could be very cold. We were down in Palm Beach at one Christmas time, Christmas of '62. They invited all the family over for--all of the families, the press families--over for Christmas day afternoon drinks and Christmas tree viewing and present giving. And my wife had a babe [Marta Pierpoint] in arms almost exactly the same age as John-John [John F. Kennedy, Jr.], just a little older. So, when she came into the living room, she was carrying the baby, and Mrs. Kennedy, at that moment, came down the stairs into the living room and immediately spotted my wife carrying a baby and walked over and said, "Would you like to put the baby in the nursery with John-John?" And so we stood there and chatted, and she was extremely warm and friendly. And I left her and
22 my wife chatting while I went over to talk to the president. It was a very warm, pleasant occasion, a lot of kids there, and it was just the kind of thing that you would hope would be at Christmas day. And, in the very next day, I was invited back as a pool reporter to watch Kennedy when he was receiving the survivors from the Bay at Pigs who'd been ransomed and returned. And their leaders were up to call him to thank him--not for having been sent in the first place but having been rescued after the year in jail--and walked past Mrs. Kennedy and her sister, Lee Radziwill, as they were setting up a table in the patio. Hugh Sidey and I walked by, and I said, "Good morning, Mrs. Kennedy." She'd been so friendly the day before. She absolutely refused to recognize me, just looked right through me. We went into the living room. We saw this little ceremony there where the president appeared with the officers from the Cuban brigade. And then as we walked out, once again I had to come face-to-face with Mrs. Kennedy. They were setting up a table on the patio with orange juice and cookies and things like that, and, having been in Latin America with them, I realized that she spoke pretty good Spanish because she gave a speech in Spanish on one of our Latin American trips, and it was quite impressive. So, the president had been having trouble communicating with these Cubans who had been in jail and had forgotten their English, so I said to her, "Mrs. Kennedy, they could sure use you there because they don't seem to have anyone who speaks English in there as a translator." And she once again just absolutely ignored me, would not answer, just looked right through me. It was as if somehow the commoner had spoken to the queen, and I felt embarrassed as we walked out, and I said to Sidey, "What happened there?" And he said, "Well, you just got the treatment." And I said, "What do you mean, the treatment?" And he said, "Well, I never speak to that woman unless she speaks first because you never know what kind of a mood she's in." And after that I observed her a little more closely, and I have one friend, for instance, who acted as her escort for some months after Kennedy was assassinated, Fred Dutton [Frederick G. Dutton]. I told Fred about this, and Fred said the same thing, that he never knew what kind of a mood she was in, he never understood her, that sometimes she could be warm and friendly and sparkling, and the next minute she wouldn't even speak to you. And he, of course, knew her much better than I did. So I felt that she was a very strange woman and yet I must say that I give her a lot of credit for the way she handled his death. After the assassination I think she was very strong and very helpful to all of us.
STERN: The ethical question you raise in your book is obviously a very important one in terms of the things that you and obviously many others observed about the president's personal life. Do you feel, today, that it would be very different in terms of whether these things would remain quiet?
PIERPOINT: I don't think so, Sheldon. We have wrestled with that question since during the Kennedy era and since then. With almost every president, there is an issue of some kind that comes up. One president, for instance, was drinking heavily, and the question was: Should we publicize that? And the decision was: If he doesn't stop, yes. But he did because he was put on notice. The children of another president were smoking pot in the White House. Was that to be a story? I decided I wasn't going to get into it because I didn't want to be and don't want to be a gossip columnist. I mean, that's not why I went into this business.
23 STERN: Sometimes these things can cross over the line ....
PIERPOINT: They can. They can become ethical issues or matters of principle that are as important to the country. If, for instance, a president's on drugs, how destructive is that? How dangerous is it? Is he an alcoholic, because you want to have the feeling that a president can think clearly at all times. As you know, there was a question about whether Kennedy was on drugs that could be debilitating or emotionally or mentally disturbing. And these are very fine lines that you have to draw. But the sexual area is a little different. Let me give you two examples. You say: Would a president be treated differently today? Okay, I knew about John Kennedy's, some of his sexual endeavors outside of his marriage, and I didn't report it. And now it isn't really much news to anybody. And I had eyewitness information, so it didn't have to be second-hand. So people say to me now, "Would you have done the same thing with Richard Nixon?" The fact of the matter is that I think I would have. As much as I had problems with Nixon, I think that, if I had learned that he was having an affair on the side, and there were rumors of even homosexual affairs, which I didn't believe and don't believe, but there were rumors. I didn't look into them because I didn't want to. I didn't feel that it was a kind of story that I would report. I had two or three people claim to me that Richard Nixon had a homosexual relationship with one of his close friends. And, first of all, I didn't believe it, but, even ifl had, I don't think that that's pertinent to his presidency. Now, Jimmy Carter, there you have a real problem. If I had learned that Jimmy Carter was having an affair in the way that I knew that John Kennedy was, what would I have done? And the problem with Jimmy Carter was that he made a national issue out of his morals. Therefore I think it would have been a much tougher call not to have exposed Jimmy Carter in that kind of situation. I'm not sure but what I would have reported that because he himself made such a standard out of his morals and his ethical conduct. So it's not an easy question to answer, and, believe me, we struggle with it a lot more than I think the public knows.
STERN: Tom Wicker [Thomas G. Wicker], for example, is using sort of a standard of measurement in terms of the Kennedy issue and said that he would have reported the Campbell Exner [Judith Campbell Exner] thing because of who she was related to.
PIERPOINT: That's right.
STERN: That had implications beyond just the personal.
PIERPOINT: That's right. I agree with Tom. I would have felt the same way. In fact people have asked me, when I've said that I knew about some of John Kennedy's extramarital activity, did you know about the Judith Exner, and would you have reported that? And I said, "Well, that would have been pertinent to national affairs because there was a complicated relationship which could have impinged upon his presidency in a way that was important to all of us." That I would have reported, if I had known all of the facts. But the affairs that I knew about it seemed to me were private, personal and had no real relationship to his
24 presidency.
STERN: Without getting into the details on the trip to Dallas that you covered in your book, is there anything that you didn't put in the book, anything that you felt a little sensitive about, about the whole experience that you might want to get on the record which, I assure you, will remain closed. Were you, by the way, on the plane going back with them?
PIERPOINT: No, I stayed in Dallas. I'm just trying to recall exactly what appeared in the book because there are two or three things about the Dallas situation that I think are important to, from my standpoint. For one thing, when we went into Dallas, we were worried. This may be unfair to the people of Dallas and the people of Texas, but there is a climate of hatred against John Kennedy and against Lyndon Johnson in Dallas that was very disturbing. Stevenson and Johnson had both been insulted and, to some extent, mobbed when they were in Dallas in recent months before John Kennedy went into that city. And that morning when we ....
STERN: Johnson was in 1960 during the campaign.
PIERPOINT: Okay, all right. But Stevenson was only a short time before. And so you got the feeling that the situation in Dallas was not a healthy one. It was an unpleasant, uncomfortable situation. And then, when we went into town that morning, we got local papers on the bus, and one of the papers, I hesitate to say which one it was, but it was the Dallas Morning News, had a very nasty editorial, very virulently anti-Kennedy. And the whole general tone of that particular paper was as if Kennedy was the devil incarnate. And, as a result of that kind of thing, we were all concerned. I was nervous. I had talked to my colleagues about it; they were nervous. We were afraid of some kind of violent, anti-Kennedy demonstration. Therefore, when this terrible assassination took place, my first reaction was to blame it on the climate of Dallas. Now, in retrospect, that was probably wrong and unfair, and yet there is still in my mind some little feeling that, if the climate of the people of the leadership of the Dallas community had been somewhat less hostile, maybe the seed would not have been planted with Lee Harvey Oswald to carry out that deed. Maybe there was a contributing factor on the part of the leadership of Dallas, which was so anti-Kennedy, to this assassination. Now I, on that day and on subsequent days, I suggested that the climate in Dallas was terribly anti-Kennedy, and people there resented that, and I'm sure they still do. But I still believe that the climate could have had something to do with it. That's one point that I think is important to make. The second point, which is really basically a reporter's problem, and I guess maybe I put it in the book, I was very upset at the lack of cooperation of the doctors and nurses in that hospital at the time of the assassination. It was almost as if we the press were the enemy, that somehow we had had something to do with the assassination because, when I went to the hospital, and I got there very quickly after the motorcade did, after Kennedy's car did with the family and with the closest members of the party, the hospital doctors and nurses did everything they could to keep me away from the telephone. They would lock doors in my face. I rapped on windows, begging them to
25 open the .. ..
STERN: This wasn't directed specifically against you, was it?
PIERPOINT: No. No. I mean, I don't think any of them knew who I was except they knew I was a reporter. I had all my tags on, and they could tell I was a reporter. But they did not want to cooperate in any way. I don't really blame that on Dallas. I think that had nothing to do with Dallas. I think there is a climate in this country of fear of the press. And, at a time of crisis, that fear comes out, and that's a very worrisome thing. You know, we talk about a free press and the importance of it in our society, but, when it comes down to the nitty gritty, very often we're afraid of reporters. And I think that there's something wrong about that. Probably it's partly our own faults, but it's something that I think . . . . It came to me very strongly that particular day. Finally I got into a phone in the emergency ward of the hospital, which was the best place to be, only because a black woman in a white uniform, probably a nurse' s aid, said, "You're a reporter, aren't you?" And I said, "Yes." And she said, "You want to get to a phone." And I said, "I certainly do." And she said, "Come with me." And she led me through the police line and right into the emergency section of the hospital where the operation was taking place. Every other nurse and doctor in that hospital that I came up against refused to help me in any way.
STERN: I'm not trying to defend them, but one does have to recognize that, at that point, they didn't know what had happened. They didn't know who was responsible. It could have been a conspiracy that could have. . . . I mean, it was a chaotic situation.
PIERPOINT: But a reaction against the press in a chaotic situation or a crisis worries me as a member of the press. I don't know why it is, and I wish it didn't happen that way. I would like people to look on me as someone who is to be helped, as the black woman obviously did, rather than as all of the other establishment people inside the hospital looked on me somehow as a possible enemy.
STERN: Did you obseive at all any of the alleged conflict between the Johnson and Kennedy people in the immediate aftermath? Did you have a chance to see that?
PIERPOINT: No, I saw none of that. I've heard about it afterward, but I didn't see any indications of it at the time. My recollections are almost now visual recollections, you know, pictures of the various things that happened at the most dramatic moment. I was not dealing with the Johnson people. I really didn't know any of the Johnson people at that time. In my view, one of the, should I say, omissions of the Kennedy administration was that there didn't seem to be much connection between the Kennedys and the Johnsons in those days. I think the Kennedys could have used Johnson more intelligently than they did. As I say, I practically never even saw Lyndon Johnson in all of the time, the three years, that John Kennedy was in the White House. He was being sent on errands around the world and
26 not being conferred with very much, and he could have been much more useful, I think, to Kennedy than he was.
STERN: Well, I think you're absolutely right. And if you look, for example, at the relationship between Mondale [Walter Mondale] and Carter, you'll see what should be the model for the role of the vice president.
PIERPOINT: And, when you have a man who's as smart a politician as Lyndon Johnson was, you ought to be listening to him. I think there was a certain contempt for Lyndon Johnson which was probably misplaced.
STERN: There's no question about that, which was unfortunate for both.
PIERPOINT: That's right. From both standpoints. But that's why I say I really didn't know anybody on the Johnson staff at the time of the assassination.
STERN: How did the change, the sudden, dramatic change in presidents, affect your job? Did things change at the White House in any significant and immediate way?
PIERPOINT: Well, yes they did, and it didn't take long. I guess the biggest change was at the very top level when you had a man who had been, in a sense, under a bushel for three years, and a man of enormous energy and drive all of a sudden unleashed. And you got the feeling that, for good or for bad, here was a major force that was now going to make himself known on the scene, and there were going to be a lot of changes. Now, clearly in the first few weeks, everyone on the Kennedy staff that was particularly close to John Kennedy was in a state of shock. I mean, Pierre tried to stay on the job for a while, and it was pretty clear that he couldn't do it. He and Lyndon didn't get along, and, besides, the spirit had gone out of him, and the spirit had gone out of Kenny O'Donnell. And I think probably Ted Sorensen and Mac Bundy tried to carry on, but it was obvious that the president, the new president, was going to have his own team and that he, himself, was going to make an imprint on the press and on the national scene. And the most startling thing was the manner in which he became so immediately accessible, much more so than John Kennedy in a. . . . I mean, I would say that Lyndon Johnson was, far and away, the most accessible ....
[TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE]
PIERPOINT: Lyndon Johnson came on very strong after the assassination, and he was extremely accessible, almost annoyingly so. And that continued right up until the time he left office. I never knew, around the White House, but what I wouldn't run into Lyndon Johnson somewhere in a corridor, and he might ball me out for a story that I'd done that day or the night before. I knew that almost every time I got on Air Force One, I was going to have to listen to a lecture from Lyndon Johnson. I was invited up to his private quarters on occasions, and they were lectures by Lyndon Johnson. And it started right after the assassination.
27 The first time we went down to the ranch, which was for the Christmas holidays and New Year's. He had us over to the ranch, and he had news conferences. He came to our New Year's party, and, instead of a party, it turned into a press conference. And it was one of these things where Lyndon Johnson was constantly on us. He was constantly trying to massage us, or to persuade us, or to intimidate us. And, frankly, it was somewhat annoying. I mean, you never really want to say to the president, "Look, go away. I've had enough." But I wanted to do that frequently with Lyndon Johnson. It could be a problem. For instance, even during the height of the Vietnam War, when he was hiding from everybody else, he would put us on Air Force One, maybe twelve or fifteen of us, and we'd be flying down to Texas. All during lunch, he'd have lunch served while he was sitting with us, and he would be constantly lecturing us about the war primarily and about how right he was and how we were not with the team and all that. And it was a problem.
STERN: Did he ever say anything either to you or that you might have overheard or whatever in talking to other reporters about JFK and his relationship with JFK?
PIERPOINT: I would not be able to cite any specific instances of that, Sheldon. I have the impression, and it's only an impression, that, on one or two occasions, he made a nasty remark about the Kennedys.
STERN: The Kennedys.
PIERPOINT: Yeah, but it was never about the president. It was kind of like the family mafia that he disliked. I think it's in the book what Mrs. Johnson [Lady Bird Johnson] that one occasion when I was having lunch with him. She obviously, when he invited me up for a private lunch one time, she didn't know who I was. I'm.quite sure this was early in the administration. And she said to him at lunch, "Lyndon, this is the first time since we've been in the White House that there were more visitors than any time the Kennedys were here." And she smiled at him as if he was to be very pleased, and he was embarrassed because he knew that I would get the right impression from that. But that's the only specific thing, and that wasn't the president himself But I just got the feeling that he didn't care for the family.
STERN: What about Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson? What did he say, and that I know is a can of worms.
PIERPOINT: And, not only that, there was one occasion when there was no doubt whatever, and that was after, ifl could only remember the histories correctly. But stop me if I get the wrong occasion. Bobby had been to Europe, and he had said some things in Europe that had angered Johnson, and it was while he was a senator.
STERN: Bobby was a senator.
PIERPOINT: And, frankly, my problem is I can't remember exactly what it was that he said that had Lyndon so upse~. But, in any case, he came back, and Johnson called him to
28 the White House. And they went in, in the afternoon, into the oval office, and it was perfectly clear to all of us that Johnson was mad at him, and he was going to give him a dressing down. So they were in the oval office for perhaps an hour, an hour and fifteen minutes, and we were out in the lobby, waiting for them to come out. And all of a sudden they appeared in the lobby, and we crowded around. And Johnson, looking like a thunder cloud, said something like, "Well, we've had a talk, and everything's fine, and I'm sure glad that you came by, senator, to see me." And we said, "Well now, wait a minute, Mr. President. What did you talk about?" "Well, you can ask the senator about that." He turned and stormed back inside. And Bobby is left there looking quite unhappy .. ..
STERN: This was not the vice presidential thing, was it?
PIERPOINT: No, this was not that. We then said, "Well, senator. What happened here?" "And, oh, you know, we just had a talk." And he was very careful not to say anything critical of Johnson in the White House. And he wouldn't really answer the questions, except that it was perfectly clear from the non-answers on both sides that they'd had a real nasty discussion. And he walked out, kind of brushing off our questions and took off and went up to the Hill. And I took off to go and do a broadcast based on what I had, which was mainly intuition and impressions. In the meantime, he got back up on the Hill, and he really blasted Johnson and laid out what they had been . ...
STERN: Which was what? Do you remember?
PIERPOINT: Well, that's what I'm trying to remember.
STERN: It wasn't the war?
PIERPOINT: I was just going to say I think it had to do with the war in Vietnam, and he had issued some critical statements of the president while he was in Europe about the war, the conduct of the war, is my recollection, but I would really have to go back into my own notes to be sure of that.
STERN: One of Johnson's close associates told me once that he thought it was a mutual tragedy for the two of them, and they brought out the worst in each other.
PIERPOINT: Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. I think that's right.
STERN: They both had enormous capacity, but somehow they . ...
PIERPOINT: They never meshed.
STERN: It didn't work.
29 PIERPOINT: Yeah, they never meshed.
STERN: Which is too bad for both of them.
PIERPOINT: It was. Of course, Johnson on the war, you see, got so far out into the muddy swamp, that he saw no way out except forward, and he saw no other vision ofthis, other than that it was an attempt to a) cut his balls off and b) subjugate the United States or embarrass the United States. So he had blinders on on that subject. And I think that Bobby had a much broader vision and was much more understanding of what was actually going on. And Johnson resented anybody who questioned his conduct of the war. I mean, I had a couple of discussions with him that really got nasty because he just would not listen to anything. Even questions that he didn't like, he would bitterly resent, you know, as if you were being unpatriotic to even ask him. And I think that was the issue that they were arguing that day. The thing I'm having trouble with is trying to figure what issue it was specifically, whether it was an increase in the number of troops, whether Bobby felt that we were getting in too deep. But I'm pretty sure it was the war.
STERN: On a related point, which is more speculative but, nevertheless I think fascinating. Had JFK lived, what's your gut sense of where he would have gone in Vietnam? I mean, you know the two sides: the Rusk side, on the one hand, or Schlesinger [Arthur M. Schlesinger], on the other.
PIERPOINT: Well, my view, and I've been asked this many times, and I've given a lot of thought to it. And my view is very strongly that he would not have committed himself to the extent that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon did, that he would have recognized and realizeq, fairly early on, that this was the wrong war and the wrong place at the wrong time, and he would have backed out. I simply do not believe he would have been foolish enough to have pursued a war that was unwinnable. I think he had a better understanding. . . . The basic problem, it seems to me, is that Johnson and his advisors could never put themselves in the other fellow's position. They could never understand the Ho Chi Minhs of this world or the little Vietnamese pedicab driver, who basically was anti-white man. And I think that John Kennedy would have come to understand that fairly quickly because he had lived and worked abroad, and he was able to see himself and us, that is the people of this country, in a more objective way. Having lived and worked abroad myself, I feel that it's invaluable in foreign relations to be able to suddenly get another look at yourself from outside yourself Kennedy, in the years that he lived in London, was able to see America and himself in the context of America in a way that I don't think Lyndon Johnson ever did. And, therefore, I think he would have understood what we were up against and have pulled out more quickly. In fact I don't think he would have gone much beyond what we did. I think he was probably beginning to wonder at the time, remember when he approved the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem?
STERN: There was even controversy about that as to whether we could actually prove that he did.
30 PIERPOINT: Well, I think he did. He certainly didn't strongly regret it. I think even at that time he was beginning to realize the complexities of this and that it wasn't the good guys against the bad guys. It just wasn't that simple. It wasn't even the communists against the capitalists, or whatever you want to call us. They had a whole element of colonialism in the white man versus the yellow man, to me was an element that totally escaped even, I think, the Kennedys initially and McGeorge Bundy and McNamara. I lived in Asia, and I know instinctively and intellectually, from having been in those colonies when they were being ruled by white people, that if you're an Asian somebody whose got blond hair, blue eyes, and white skin is your enemy until you prove him otherwise. And here we just took the place of the French. And I think that Kennedy would have recognized that a lot more quickly than Johnson did. I don't think Johnson recognized it at all, frankly. I think Nixon probably did more than most of the people in his administration, strangely enough. I think Kissinger [Henry Kissinger] was the biggest problem in the Nixon administration in not recognizing it. Kissinger has that Germanic mind which feels that everybody's going to be logical, and it's aIJ a chess game. You know, people don't react logically. They react emotionally.
STERN: Look, I've just got a couple of additional things, one of which is a complete shift in subject. Did you ever observe the nature of the relationship between Bobby and JFK? And were you ever impressed in any special way by the character of their, the way they communicated and the way they related. Was it something that was very striking to you or which you didn't pay any particular attention to?
PIERPOINT: Never having had a brother of my own, I was always intrigued by the give and take of the relationship. It was a good relationship, in fact better than I might have expected given the personalities of the two people involved. It was a competitive relationship in which there was clear respect and affection, and yet they were all so competitive that it was kind of fun to watch them interact. I found that a fascinating family symbiosis, I might say. I think that, you know, looking back on it, I told you earlier I thought it would be a bad mistake for John Kennedy to have made his brother attorney general. Well, I was totally wrong in the sense that Bobby had to be close to him someplace. Maybe he didn't have to be attorney general. Maybe he should have been general counsel at the White House or something of that nature, but I think it was extremely important to have had Bobby there. They had such a relationship that Bobby could question him, Bobby could argue with him, and yet, I think, Bobby in the long run respected Jack's, shall I say superior wisdom or at least he respected him as an older brother. So I think it was very important that Bobby be very close to him, and I think that we were lucky for those three years that we had two Kennedys instead ofjust one.
STERN: Because if you look, for example, at Navasky's [Victor S. Navasky] book about the Justice Department, you see that he did quite a job.
PIERPOINT: I think that's right. I think that Bobby would have been a good attorney general on his own. I mean, I don't think that you needed to have Jack Kennedy as president for him to have been a good attorney general. I think what he did and
31 what he tried to do, for instance in the organized crime area, was very, very useful.
STERN: Although having his brother in the White House, for example, was very helpful and ...
PIERPOINT: Reinforced him. Sure .
STERN: . . . particularly in relating to someone like Hoover who obviously tended to ignore him, if he were not the president's brother.
PIERPOINT: I am just reminded now of a story which may or may not be of particular interest, but I think maybe I ought to put it into the record and, from my standpoint. And you historians may get some use out oflooking into it from other standpoints. When Bobby was attorney general, I happened to have had a very close friend whose sister-in-law was Sukarno's [Achmed Sukarno] mistress. You may recall from history that Sukarno had a Pan American [Pan American Airlines] stewardess, well, he used to make deals with Pan Am to make sure that he rented their plane whenever he went abroad. There was one particular stewardess he always asked for, and she was his mistress. At that time, the administration was having considerable problem with Indonesia and with Sukarno. And I went to this friend of mine who worked for Bobby, only on a very low level. He worked for him as one of their district attorneys in Miami. But there was a little better relationship than that because this guy happens to be Chinese. He's a lawyer, and he would drive the motorcade of cars part of the time, and Bobby got to know him. And he was made a district attorney for the Kennedy administration. It was his sister-in-law who was Sukarno's mistress. And I told him one time that he should tell Bobby about this because they could use that, and he mulled it over, and eventually he sent a memo to the attorney general saying that his sister-in-law was Sukarno's mistress and that maybe they ought to try to use this in some way. He either put in the memo, or Bobby called and asked him about it, I don't know how, but, in any case, he found out that this suggestion had come from me, and Bobby was furious because, apparently, they had already known this. But they didn't think that anybody in the news media would have known it. And they had already decided that they were going to try to use this young woman as an agent on Sukarno. But it was now, in his view, all exposed because here was a reporter who knew about the whole thing. He almost fired my friend down in Miami because he blamed him for having leaked this to me when, in fact, it was really the other way around. I had known this young woman when she was a stewardess in Hong Kong years earlier, and I knew exactly what was going on and had no intention of using it as a story. I just thought, you know, maybe this is a useful idea for them, but Bobby was so angry at me and at this friend of mine that it made the suggestion that he threatened to fire him from the .. . . In fact he was going to bring him up here as a member of the special task force, and he decided against it and left him in Miami, left him on the job, left him there. But that whole. . . . Have you ever heard that story about Sukarno and this young woman before?
STERN: No.
32 PIERPOINT: I don't know who else might know about it to get the other side of the story, but .. ..
STERN: You never actually discussed it with RFK though, personally.
PIERPOINT: No. No. I mean, boy, as soon as I found out he was very upset about it. . . . He never said anything to me about it, and I never said anything to him about it. It may have been, also, fairly late in the relationship. That is, it may have been fairly late toward the assassination period. I can't place it in time. But I thought it was a hell of an idea. In fact, all it did was get my friend in terrible trouble with Bobby for a while.
STERN: Are there any other RFK anecdotes or things that you think might be valuable? Did you cover him in '68, for example, when he was running for. ...
PIERPOINT: No, I didn't. I was covering Lyndon at that time. No, you know, I was invited out to Hickory Hill a couple of times for those reporter parties that they used to have and very much enjoyed him, and I liked Bobby very much. I enjoyed .... You know, he was so combative, much more so than Jack. And I happen to like combativeness and competition, and I really admired him. I thought he was sometimes almost too combative. I mean, you know, I thought he was a little ruthless on his enemies sometimes. And I don't know what kind of a president he would have made, but I admired him. And, I guess you know, my problem is that I'm not as objective about either Jack or Bobby as I should have been because I liked them both.
STERN: Well, let me ask you one last question. And that is that, as you look back, and next week will be the nineteenth anniversary of the assassination, as you look back, has your evaluation, estimation, perspective on Kennedy changed? Do you think differently about him now than you did immediately after his presidency, or a year or two after his presidency? I mean, given the events of the last nineteen years, do you now think more of him, the same, less?
PIERPOINT: I would say that my perspective has not changed that much. I know that history has given us some revisions of opinions about him, but my opinions about Jack Kennedy were to be strongly enthusiastic at the time of the need for change. I felt that the country had coasted too long, .had stood still too long, that there were too many problems to be solved. And I had an enormous respect and admiration for his feeling that it was time to change and that he was going to try to orchestrate the changes. I don't think that he was in office long enough to have had his solutions tested. He had a Congress which, in the first two years, was resentful of this young upstart and was angry, in a way, that he would try to make changes over their heads. And that made it difficult for him, and I think that what he tried to do was not possible in four years of office. Ifl understood their strategy correctly, it was that in the first four years they would establish their course and outline their programs and try, in the period that he was in office in the first four years, to get the people behind them, so that they would eventually
33 get a Congress that would approve these programs, and that he would then be successful in carrying them out in the second four years of his administration. Now Lyndon Johnson, I think, was more successful, in a way, than even Jack could have been in getting some of those programs through the Congress, programs like Medicare and the anti-poverty program and the Peace Corps, getting the wheels in motion, partly because of the assassination. Obviously the Congress was more willing to go along with the Kennedy programs after Kennedy was dead than when he was alive, which is a terrible irony, but I think is true. And Johnson, if it hadn't been for the Vietnam War, I think would have carried out many of Kennedy' s programs, and I think that they would have been quite successful, and I think we're going to have to go back to them. I think we've been in a period of aberration where the country has been set back by. . . . The pendulum has swung to the right and to a more conservative approach. By and large, I think that Kennedy's programs were the right thing, perhaps not necessarily at the right time. But I still feel that the knowledge, the enthusiasm, the conscience that he brought to the presidency pushed us in the right direction, and I think we're going to have to find that direction again.
STERN: Anything you'd like to add?
PIERPOINT: No, I can't think of anything, Sheldon. I think I've pretty well said it.
STERN: Okay. Thank you.
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