| From the Award-Winning Author of 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents |
Epilogue
Congressman Bruce Alger, who engineered the Dallas riot who cost Richard Nixon Texas, was
easily defeated for re-election in LBJ’s 1964 landslide.
Robert B. Anderson, Ike’s choice for president in 1960, supported Lyndon Johnson in 1964. In
March 1987, Anderson pled guilty to income tax evasion from income received from the
Unification Church and to operating an illegal offshore bank in the British West Indies. Alcoholic
and disbarred, Anderson served a month at Allenwood federal prison camp and five years
probation. Anderson died of cancer of the esophagus in Manhattan on August 14, 1989. He was
79.
Inga Arvad, JFK’s wartime mistress, married 55-year old cowboy star Tim McCoy in February
1947. Less than seven months later she gave birth. Twenty years later she told her son Ronald, “I
don’t know who your father was for sure. . . . I really don’t know if it was Jack or Tim. I don’t
know.” Arvad, 60, died of cancer at her Nogales, Arizona ranch on December 12, 1973.
John M. Bailey died at after a two-year battle with throat cancer on April 10, 1975. He was 70.
Monsignor John S. Kennedy delivered the eulogy.
Bobby Baker found himself under Department of Justice investigation when RFK became
Attorney General—some said Bobby’s ultimate target was Johnson himself. Baker resigned as
Secretary to the Senate Majority in October 1963. In January 1967 he was found guilty of seven
counts of theft, fraud, and income tax evasions. Sentenced to three years in Lewisburg Federal
Prison (a fellow inmate was Jimmy Hoffa), Baker served sixteen months.
Lem Billings died of a heart attack at his Manhattan home on May 28, 1981. He was 65.
Chester Bowles never became Secretary of State and soon wore out his welcome as JFK’s
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He fared no better with LBJ who sent him back to
India as our ambassador to New Delhi. There he first exhibited signs of Parkinson’s Disease. He
died from that disease and a stroke died on May 25, 1985 at his sprawling Essex, Connecticut
home. He was 85.
Joan Braden’s marriage became the focus of her husband’s 1975 book Eight Is Enough and the
subsequent ABC-TV series. Far less wholesome was her own memoir, Just Enough Rope, which
revealed a JFK-attitude toward monogamy. Joan Braden died of a heart attack suffered at an
Alexandria delicatessen on August 30, 1999. She was 77.
Ben Bradlee’s sister-in-law, Mary Meyer became one of JFK’s many affairs. After Bradlee
published Conversations with Kennedy in 1975, Jackie Kennedy, finding it a violation of personal
confidences, never again spoke with him. Reporters at Bradlee’s Washington Post cracked the
Watergate story and forced Richard Nixon from office.
David Brinkley received one vote for vice president at the 1972 Republican National
Convention, which was more support than he felt he had at NBC after Tom Brokaw arrived. He
left the network in 1981, to join ABC. Brinkley died at his Houston home on June 11, 2003. He
was 82.
Edmund G. “Pat” Brown defeated Richard Nixon for the governorship by almost 300,000 votes
in 1962 but lost by nearly a million votes to Ronald Reagan in 1966. In 1974 his son Edmund G.
“Jerry” Brown, a.k.a “Governor Moonbeam.” Pat Brown died of a heart attack at his Beverly Hills
home on February 16, 1996. He was 90.
A Catholic not only became President of the United States, but with the elevation of Lyndon
Johnson to the vice-presidency and the death of Sam Rayburn, Catholics (Mike Mansfield and
John McCormick, respectively) also became Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House.
Nobody seemed to notice.
Dr. Eugene J. Cohen – JFK’s endocrinologist, Asked in 1966 “for a secret historical record” Dr.
Cohen finally admitted that JFK had Addison’s Disease. Dr. Cohen died at his home on July 16,
1999. He was 87.
Murray M. Chotiner was Richard Nixon’s original choice to head the Republican National
Committee when Nixon finally became President in 1969, but opposition to Chotiner was too
intense, and Nixon never acted on the idea. Instead, Chotiner eventually became a White House
special counsel under H. R. Haldeman. During the 1972 campaign he engaged two reporters (one
was Lucianne Goldberg) to spy on the McGovern camp. Chotiner died in Washington on January
30, 1974 from the effects of an auto accident. The accident occurred directly behind Teddy
Kennedy’s McLean, Virginia home. Teddy, who did not know Chotiner was involved, called for
the ambulance. Chotiner was 64.
John B. Connally became Richard Nixon’s Secretary of the Treasury in 1971. Acquitted of
bribery charges in 1975, he ran for President as a Republican in 1980, spending $11 million to
secure one delegate. He filed for bankruptcy in 1988. Connolly died of pulmonary fibrosis in
Houston on June 15, 1993. He was 76.
Paul Corbin, RFK’s darkly mysterious campaign operative, was appointed special assistant to the
national Democratic Chairman in 1964, triggering outrage from J. Edgar Hoover regarding Corbin’
s former Communist Party ties. Nonetheless, he not only survived he leveled charges of graft
against his long-time rival Kenny O’Donnell. He later worked in Bobby’s 1964 Senate campaign
(courtesy of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation), operated Nashville’s Country Music Wax
Museum, and became a Washington political consultant. Corbin died of cancer at his Alexandria
home on January 2, 1990. He was 75.
Prof. Archibald Cox became JFK’s Solicitor General. In May 1973 Attorney General Eliot
Richardson named Cox as Watergate Special Prosecutor. Cox’s October 1973 firing touched off
the “Saturday Night Massacre” and accelerated Richard Nixon’s departure from the White House.
He served as President of Common Cause from 1980 to 1992. Cox died at his Brooksville, Maine
home of natural causes on May 29, 2004. He was 92.
Walter Cronkite became the first news anchor to broadcast news of JFK’s assassination. LBJ
after Cronkite said Vietnam was unwinnable. "If I've lost Walter Cronkite, I've lost the country."
Forced out in March 1981—age 65.
Richard Cardinal Cushing gave Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis a pass (“Why can’t she marry
whoever she wants?”) when she married divorced shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968. The
Vatican was not amused. Cushing died at his Boston home on November 2, 1970.
Lar Daly lost numerous elections after 1960, the last being in March 1978, when, dying from lung
disease, he polled a remarkable 74,739 votes against incumbent United States Senator Charles
Percy (his sixth loss for the U.S. Senate), but not before having sold his Uncle Sam suit for
“economic circumstances.” Daly, age 66, died of lung disease at the Little Company of Mary
Hospital at Evergreen Park, Illinois that April 18. Seventy five persons attended his funeral.
Mayor Richard J. Daley won election to six four years as mayor of Chicago, becoming the bête-
noir of liberal Democrats following his handling of protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention.
George McGovern’s forces barred the Daley slate from 1972’s convention. On December 20,
1976 Daley, complaining of chest pains, suffered a fatal heart attack at his physician’s office. He
was 74.
Alicia Darr obtained a Mexican divorce from Edmund Purdom in 1961, promptly becoming the
sixth wife of Singer Sewing Machine heir Alfred Corning Clark, She was 32. He was 45 and
dropped dead thirteen days later. In 1963 J. Edgar Hoover let Robert Kennedy know that he
knew about a $500,000 payment to Darr.
Sammy Davis, Jr. and May Britt married on November 13, 1960, five days after the election.
Frank Sinatra was best man; Peter Lawford attended. JFK found Mr. & Mrs. Davis’s presence at
his inaugural embarrassing and disinvited them—Bobby argued otherwise. The Davis-Britt
marriage collapsed in 1968, the same year Davis endorsed Robert Kennedy for President. In 1972
he endorsed Richard Nixon, appeared at that year’s Republican Convention. Davis died of throat
cancer at his Los Angeles home on May 16, 1990. He was 64.
William L. Dawson was insincerely “offered” the Postmaster Generalship by JFK, basically on
condition that he refuse it. He remained in Congress, despite increasing accusations of corruption
and links to gambling interests. Dawson died of pneumonia in Chicago on November 9, 1970. He
was 84.
Janet Des Rosiers, Joseph’s P. Kennedy’s mistress and Jack Kennedy’s flight attendant,
became a secretary in the White House and secretary to the ambassador to France. In the 1990s,
after reviewing the text of a biography of her former lover, she wrote, “I’m mad at myself for giving
myself to this man.”
Jimmy “Professor Backwards” Edmondson was robbed, abducted and murdered—and his 25-
year old housekeeper raped—on January 29, 1976 at his College Park, Georgia home. He was 65.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, bitter that JFK’s election was “the repudiation of everything I've done for
eight years,” retired to his Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, farmhouse, writing his memoirs, avoiding
taking sides in the battle for the 1964 GOP presidential nomination, and endorsing Richard Nixon
in October 1968 as “better than any other political figure than I have seen or heard” for the
presidency. In December 1968 Ike’s grandson, David Eisenhower, married Richard Nixon’s
younger daughter, Julie. Eisenhower died peacefully at Washington’s Walter Read General
Hospital on March 28, 1969. He was 78.
Mamie Dowd Eisenhower died in her sleep at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center on
November 1, 1979. She was 82.
Judith Campbell Exner continued her affair with JFK and claims to have become pregnant by
him, a pregnancy that ended with a JFK-suggested abortion. Exner revealed their affair with JFK
to the U. S. Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, the same year she married professional golfer
Dan Exner. In 1977 she published her tell-all memoirs Judith Exner: My Story, later expanded her
account to include tales of being a JFK conduit to the mob. She died of breast cancer in a Duarte,
California hospital on September 2, 1999. She was 65.
John D. Erhlichman became Richard Nixon’s chief White House domestic advisor. A key player
in the Watergate Scandal, in 1975 he was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and
perjury and served time in federal prison. Erhlichman died from diabetes at his Atlanta home on
February 14, 1999. He was 73.
Paul B. Fay, usher at JFK’s wedding, became JFK’s beard on inauguration night (as JFK
allegedly pursued actress Angie Dickinson) and his Acting Secretary of the Navy in 1963. He
published his memoirs of JFK, The Pleasure of His Company in 1966. Bobby and Jackie Kennedy
pressured him into excising 2,000 words from it. Jackie refused a $3,000 Fay contribution to the
Kennedy Memorial Library.
Robert H. Finch was elected California Lt. Governor in 1966. In 1969 Richard Nixon appointed
him Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, but was soon eased out of Nixon’s inner circle—
thus sparing him any involvement in Watergate. He died of a heart attack at his Pasadena home on
October 10, 1995. He was just a day shy of his 70th birthday.
John Kenneth Galbraith became United States ambassador to India in 1961. He died at a
Cambridge, Massachusetts hospital on April 26, 2006. He was 97.
Sam “Momo” Giancana, scheduled to testify before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee
regarding his involvement in plots to assassinate Fidel Castro was, on June 19, 1975, shot seven
times through the head in a basement kitchen of his Oak Park, Illinois home. He was 67. His
murder was never solved
Barry M. Goldwater ran for President against Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and was crushed,
winning but six states, but laying the basis for the conservative takeover of the Republican Party.
He won re-election to the Senate in 1968. Two days after Goldwater advised Richard Nixon to
resign, Nixon did so. Goldwater, suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, died of natural causes in
Pasadena Valley, Arizona on May 29, 1998. He was 89.
Richard N. Goodwin went on to work in the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses (he coined the
phrase “Great Society”), before jumping ship in 1965. In 1968’s turbulent presidential race, he
wrote first for insurgent Eugene McCarthy, then for Bobby Kennedy—then after RFK’s
assassination—for “Clean Gene” once more. It was his last hurrah politically, from then on he
pursued writing—as well former LBJ aide Doris Kearns, whom he married in December 1975.
H. R. “Bob” Haldeman became Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff. Deeply implicated
in Watergate and other Nixon era dirty tricks, he served 18 months in the federal Lompoc
Correctional Facility. Upon release, Haldeman returned to the business world and eventually
owned Eight Sizzler Family Steak Houses. Unlike John Erhlichman, he remained a Nixon loyalist.
Haldeman died of abdominal cancer at his Santa Barbara home on November 12, 1993. He was
67.
Leonard W. Hall, Nixon’s 1960 campaign manager, managed Barry Goldwater’s presidential
campaign in 1964 and George Romney’s in 1968, serving as Nelson Rockefeller’s convention
floor manager after Romney dropped out. “I’ve got nothing against Dick,” he explained regarding
why he was still not supporting Nixon, “but he seems to start out fast and lose ground.” Hall died in
Glen Cove, New York on June 2, 1979. He was 78.
Don Hewitt went on to create 60 Minutes in 1968. He retired from CBC News in 2001 at age 81.
J. Edgar Hoover died on May 2, 1972. He was 77 and still director of the FBI.
Howard Hughes, despite—or, perhaps, because of his eccentricities, continued his dealings with
Richard Nixon and his intermediaries. In 1987, Watergate conspirator Jeb Stuart Magruder
revealed that the primary purpose of the break-in at Democratic National Chairman Larry O’Brien’
s Watergate office was “the cash [$100,000] that had been supposedly given to [Nixon friend]
Bebe Rebozo and spent later by the President possibly.” Hughes died on April 5, 1976. He was
70.
Hubert H. Humphrey became Lyndon Johnson’s running mate in 1964 and narrowly lost the
presidency to 1968. He won election to the United States Senate in 1970, replacing Eugene
McCarthy. He died of cancer at his Waverly, Minnesota home on January 13, 1978. He was 66.
Dr. Arnold A. Hutschnecker issued a study in 1970 recommending the testing of seven and eight
years old for violent tendencies and their subsequent incarceration in “camps.” When Gerald Ford
became president, reports floated that Hutschnecker had treated him. Ford vehemently denied it.
At Pat Nixon’s funeral, Hutschnecker held his patient’s hand. Hutschnecker died at his Sherman,
Connecticut home on December 28, 2000. He was 102.
Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson died on September 1, 1983 of an aortic aneurysm
following a press conference on the shooting down of Korean Air Flight 007. He was ***.
Max “Dr. Feelgood” Jacobson – JFK’s amphetamine-injecting physician resumed treating Jack
Kennedy—and Jackie—when the Kennedys reached the White House, even accompanying them
to Europe in 1961, when JFK conferred with DeGaulle and Khrushchev. Bobby Kennedy,
concerned about Jacobson’s treatments, sent samples of Jacobson’s concoctions to the FBI lab
for testing—unfortunately, however, not for amphetamines. Jacobson lost his license in 1975, after
at least one of his patients died from amphetamine poisoning.
Lady Bird Johnson remained active in conservation and literacy efforts until suffering a stroke in
2002. She died at her Austin home of natural causes on July 11, 2007. She was 94.
Lyndon Baines Johnson was going to be dumped from the ticket in 1964. He died of a heart
attack at his Johnson City, Texas ranch on January 22, 1973. He was reaching for his phone.
Johnson was 64.
Edward M. “Teddy” Kennedy won elected to the United States Senate in 1962, saw his
presidential ambitions virtually extinguished in July 1969 by the Chappaquiddick incident and the
death of Mary Jo Kopechne, and ran, nonetheless, unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1980.
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy married billionaire Aristotle Onassis in 1968. When he died in
1975, she never remarried, though she maintained a close relationship with Maurice Templesman.,
a Belgian-American diamond merchant and investor who managed her considerable fortune. She
worked at Doubleday, distinguished herself at various New York City preservation issues, most
notably that of Grand Central Station, never granted interviews, and never commented regarded
her life with the Kennedys. She died at her Fifth Avenue apartment of cancer of the lymphatic
system on May 19, 1994. She was 64.
Joseph Patrick Kennedy never fully recovered from his stroke, residing in seclusion either at
Palm Beach or Hyannis Port. After suffering a series of heart attacks Kennedy died at his Hyannis
Port home on November 18, 1969. He was 81.
Robert F. Kennedy, on Joe Kennedy’s orders, became Attorney General of the United States.
He chafed under Lyndon Johnson’s White House leadership, won election to the United States
Senate from New York in 1964 and, following Eugene McCarthy’s lead, sought the presidency in
1968. On June 6, 1968 after defeating McCarthy in the California, he was assassinated by
Palestinian immigrant Sirhan B. Sirhan at Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel. He was 42.
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy survived her husband, four children, and two grandchildren. A 1984
stroke left her wheelchair bound. She died of pneumonia at her white, clapboard Hyannis Port
home on January 22, 1995. She was 104.
Rosemary Kennedy, JFK’s lobotomized sister, remained at St. Coletta’s School until her death
on January 7, 2005. She was 86 and the first of the Kennedy siblings to die a natural death. “I will
never forgive Joe for that awful operation he had performed on Rosemary. It is the only thing I
have ever felt bitter towards him about.”
Otto Kerner, Richard Daley candidate for governor in 1960, went to jail in 1974 for official
corruption after the woman who bribed him listed her bribe on federal income tax forms as a
business expense. Kerner died of cancer in Chicago on May 9, 1976.
Clennon King moved to Africa, went to San Quentin in 1966, changed his name to Lenin
Lamumba Abdullah, served four years, ran for governor of Georgia, and, on the eve of the 1976
election, attempted to integrate Jimmy Carter’s Plains Baptist Church, was convicted of vote
buying, and, in 1999, ran for the house seat vacated by newt Gingrich. King died of prostate
cancer on February 12, 2000. He was 79. His niece, Oona, was then serving as a member of the
British House of Commons.
Herbert G. Klein – Nixon’s press secretary became Editor-in-Chief of the Copley Newspapers.
Senator William F. Knowland, Nixon’s earliest rival for the 1960 nomination, returned to the
family business, publishing the Oakland Tribune. On February 23, 1974, near to his Monte Rio,
California summer home, Knowland, $900,000 in personal debt, blew his brains out with a .32
caliber automatic pistol. He was 65.
Arthur Krock finally realized he had been used by the Kennedys and in November 1961 painfully
wrote to Kennedy’s representatives to be taken off the Kennedy Christmas list to receive a case of
Haig & Haig. He died in Washington of natural causes on April 12, 1974. He was 87.
Lady May Lawford penned a memoir delicately titled Bitch!: The Autobiography of Lady
Lawford. She died at Monterey Park, California convalescent home on January 23, 1972. She
was 83—and remained a subject of her Queen.
Peter Lawford divorced Pat Kennedy in 1966 but re-married three times (once to the daughter of
twenty-something daughter of comedian Dan Rowan). Lawford entered the Betty Ford Clinic for
drug and alcohol rehabilitation in early 1984. Lawford died in Los Angeles on December 24,
1984. He was 61. None of the Rat Pack attended his funeral at Westwood Village Mortuary. In
May 1988, his funeral expenses still unpaid, Westwood authorities dug up his remains and handed
them over to the family.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. served as JFK’s ambassador to South Vietnam, LBJ’s ambassador to
West Germany, and Richard Nixon’s chief delegate to the Paris Peace Talks and Special Envoy to
the Vatican. In 1964 he won the New Hampshire Republican primary on a write-in vote. Lodge
died after a long illness at his Beverly, Massachusetts home on February 27, 1985. He was 82.
Eugene J. McCarthy challenged LBJ for the 1968 Democratic nomination, similarly failed to
secure the Democratic nomination in 1972, and pursued quixotic third-party presidential bids in
1976 and 1988. He died at a Washington retirement center of Parkinson’s Disease on December
10, 2005. He was 89.
James M. McInerney, the Kennedy family operative who discovered the Nixon-Hughes loan
died, in Washington on October 8, 1963,a car going 70 miles per hour ran a red light and crashed
into his vehicle. He was 58.
Albert Maltz couldn’t write the screenplay The Execution of Private Slovik for Democrat
Frank Sinatra could for Two Mules for Sister Sara for Republican Clint Eastwood. He died from
complications resulting from shingles in Los Angeles on April 26, 1985. He was 76. In 1997 the
Writers Guild restored his screenwriting credits for such films as The Robe and The Defiant Ones.
Sig Mickelson was canned as head of CBS News in December 1960, replaced by Richard S.
Salant. In 1975, much as Murrow became head of the USIA, Mickelson became President of
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He died in San Diego on March 24, 2000. He was 86.
The “Missile Gap,” indeed, never existed, though JFK still referenced it as late as March 1961.
Indeed, his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara admitted it to the press as early as February 6
that year though he soon had to publicly backtrack.
Wayne Morse was one of only to two United States senators to vote against LBJ’s Golf of
Tonkin resolution. He lost his Senate seat in 1968 and, in 1972, lost a bid to re-enter the Senate
against incumbent Mark Hatfield, who had nominated Richard Nixon on in 1976. He tried again in
1974, but died that July 22. He was 73.
Edward R. Murrow swallowed his antipathy to the Kennedys to become the $21,000-a-year
head of JFK’s United States Information Agency (USIA), America’s overseas propaganda arm.
Wasted by spreading lung cancer, he resigned in 1964, and died at his 280-acre Pawling, New
York farm on April 27, 1965. He was 57.
F. Donald Nixon became, in 1970, vice president for community and industry for the Marriott
Corporation. He died from cancer in Whittier, California on June 27, 1987. He was 73.
Patricia Nixon, in increasingly poor health, disappeared from public view after leaving the White
House. She died of lung cancer at her Park Ridge, New Jersey home on June 22, 1993. She was
81.
Richard Milhous Nixon, in a surprising reasonably successful effort at resurrecting himself, once
more, issued numerous memoirs (“History will be very kind to me, because I intend to write it,” he
once quoted Winston Churchill) and books on politics and foreign policy. After suffering a stroke
at his New Jersey home, Nixon died at a Manhattan hospital on April 22, 1994. He was 81.
Bill Moyers became the Peace Corps’ first associate director of public affairs, then served in a
variety of roles for Lyndon Johnson, including press secretary, finally breaking with Johnson and
leaving the administration. Since 1971 he has worked in broadcasting, primarily for PBS but also
for CBS, NBC, and MSNBC.
Lawrence F. O’Brien directed LBJ’s 1964 and Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 presidential campaigns
(as well as working as Johnson’s Postmaster General). As Democratic National Chairman, he
served as primary target for the Watergate break-in. He served as Commissioner of the National
Basketball Association from 1975 through 1984 and later as President of the National Basketball
Hall of Fame in his Springfield, Massachusetts hometown. O’Brien died from cancer in Manhattan
on September 28, 1990. He was 73.
Kenneth P. O’Donnell faced charges of massive graft made by fellow Democratic operative Paul
Corbin and passed on to JFK by reporter and longtime JFK friend Charles Bartlett just before his
assassination. O’Donnell, nonetheless, managed RFK’s 1968 presidential bid and was present—as
he was with JFK—when RFK was shot. Twice—without Kennedy family approval—he
unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor of Massachusetts. In 1970, he
wrote in Life magazine, that his chief, JFK, had chosen LBJ for the vice-presidency because he
feared he could not “live with Lyndon Johnson as the leader of a small Senate majority.” O’
Donnell, an alcoholic, died in Boston on September 9, 1977. His family refused to release details.
He was 53.
George Berham Parr, who gave Lyndon his 78-vote landslide in 1948, facing prison for perjury
and tax evasion, blew his brains out in a pasture near Alice, Texas on April 1, 1975. He was 74.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale officiated at the December 1968 wedding of Richard Nixon’s
daughter to Dwight Eisenhower’s grandson David. Peale, 95, died of a stroke at his Pawling, New
York home at December 23, 1993.
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. did become chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee
in 1961. Better still, the RFK Justice Department dropped income tax evasion charges against him.
Excluded from the House in March 1967 on charges of nepotism and junketeering, he returned in
June 1969 but was defeated for re-nomination in 1970. Stricken in the Bahamas, he died at a
Miami hospital on April 4, 1972. He was 63.
David F. Powers, with Kenny O’Donnell, helped plan JFK’s route through Dallas on November
22, 1963, and for months afterward was wracked by headaches as he recalled the sight of a bullet
smashing into the base of his friend’s skull. He served as curator of the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library from 1965 through 1994, taking time out for RFK’s 1968 presidential effort.
Powers died of cardiac arrest in Arlington, Massachusetts on March, 27, 1998. He was 85.
Francis Gary Powers was released in a 1962 spy-swap with the Soviet Union. He died on
August 1, 1977 when the Bell Jet Ranger helicopter he piloted for Los Angeles TV station KNBC
malfunctioned and crashed onto an Encino Little League field. Powers was 47.
PT-109 rested 1,300 hundred feet below the surface of the Pacific until located in July 2002 in
Blackett Straight in the Solomon Islands by Dr. Robert Barrett, who, in 1985, had discovered the
wreck of the Titanic, and, in 1989, the Bismark.
Ronald Reagan finally became a Republican, energized national conservatives in 1964 with his
televised “A Time for Choosing” speech for Barry Goldwater in 1964, defeated Pat Brown for
Governor of California in 1966 and briefly challenged Richard Nixon for the 1968 presidential nod
before winning the presidency in 1980 and 1984.
Jackie Robinson supported Nelson Rockefeller’s 1964 and 1968 (he was by then Rocky’s
community relations director) presidential bids. When Nixon won the GOP nod, Robinson resigned
from Rockefeller’s staff and endorsed Hubert Humphrey. In declining health from diabetes (he lost
the sight of one eye) and heart disease, and despondent from the 1971 death of his 24-year old,
drug-addicted son from an auto accident, Robinson died in Stamford, Connecticut on October 24,
1972. He was 53.
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller lost the Republican presidential nomination to Barry Goldwater in
1964 and to Richard Nixon in 1968. He resigned the governorship of New York in December
1973, and, in December 1974, was named vice-president by President Gerald Ford. The 70-year
old Rockefeller died of a heart attack at his 13 West 54th Street townhouse on January 26, 1979,
under suspicious circumstances in the company of 26-year old $60,000-a-year aide Megan R.
Marshack. His 64-page will forgave the $45,000 lent to purchase her 25 West 54th Street one-
bedroom apartment.
Edward A. “Ted” Rogers, Nixon’s hapless television advisor, had trouble finding work after the
1960, branded as the man who engineered perhaps the single most disastrous appearance in
television history. Finally, Len Hall wrote a personal letter to Rogers, verifying that it wasn’t Rogers’
s fault—it was Nixon’s. He wrote a novel, Face to Face, strangely enough about a flawed
candidate in a presidential debate, bought two radio stations and never worked for Richard Nixon
again. Rogers died in Sarasota on March 13, 2003. He was 82.
Norma Jean Rojas, who stabbed her husband in an argument over watching JFK on TV,
received a sentence of five years to life.
Eleanor Roosevelt really did want JFK to appoint Adlai Stevenson Secretary of State and when
Kennedy failed to do so, her attitudes toward him reverted more to form, so much so that she
pointedly refused his invitation to take a place on the platform at his inaugural. Mrs. Roosevelt died
after a six week illness (anemia which worsened into tuberculosis) at her 55 East 74th Street home
on November 7, 1962—the same day Richard Nixon informed the press they would have him “to
kick around anymore.” The only non-family member allowed to see her during her illness was Adlai
Stevenson. She was 78.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. had hoped to become JFK's Secretary of the Navy, but Robert
McNamara dismissed him as a “drunk and a womanizer.” Instead, Kennedy, remembering his
service in the West Virginia primary, appointed Roosevelt to the Appalachian Regional
Commission and as Undersecretary of Commerce. He ran unsuccessfully—some said as a third-
party spoiler—for Governor of New York in 1966. FDR, Jr. died on August 17, 1988, in
Poughkeepsie, New York. He was 74.
James H. Rowe, Jr. managed Hubert Humphrey’s ill-fated 1968 campaign, nearly pulling off a
come-from-behind repeat of the 1948 Truman victory. He died at his Washington home on June
17, 1984 after a long illness. He was 75.
Mort Sahl’s career nose-dived following JFK’s election. “It was all right when I was making
jokes about the other guys,” he revealed, “but when I started on the Kennedys, the liberals tried to
destroy me. I went from earnings of $600,000 in 1962 to $19,000 in 1963.”
Pierre Salinger served briefly as a United States Senator from California in 1964, losing that
November to Republican George Murphy. He assisted in RFK’s 1968 presidential bid and later
became Paris and later European bureau chief for ABC News. His reputation suffered a
devastating blow when he claimed inside information that turned out to be spurious, regarding the
downing of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 over Long Island. He permanently moved to France
after the election of George W. Bush. Salinger died in LeThor, France on October 16, 2004. He
was 79.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. became part of the Kennedy White, resigning when Lyndon Johnson
assumed the presidency. Often denounced as “a Kennedy courtier,” he, nonetheless, turned won
the National Book Award for his 1989 portrait of Robert Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and His
Times. suffered a heart attack at a lower Manhattan restaurant and died on February 28, 2007. He
was 89.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s daughter Maria (five years and two days old on Election Day 1960)
became an NBC News correspondent and, in 2003, First Lady of California, when her husband,
actor and Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, became governor of that state.
R. Sargent Shriver nearly became the vice-presidency candidate in both 1964 and 1968—but
found his ambitions thwarted by Kennedy family members. He served as George McGovern’s
1972 running mate, after McGovern dropped the star-crossed Senator Thomas F. Eagleton—like
Shriver, also a Catholic—from the ticket. Shriver sought the presidency himself in 1976 but
attracted little support. His only daughter, Maria, married actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1986,
later becoming First Lady of California. Shriver now suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease.
Frank Sinatra oversaw Jack Kennedy’s spectacular inaugural gala but, as his mob ties became
increasingly noticeable and embarrassing, found himself never invited to Kennedy White House—
and particularly steamed when JFK spurned his invitation to be his Palm springs house guest in
favor of staying with old rival (and Republican) Bing Crosby. Richard Nixon, however, invited
Sinatra to sing The House I Live In and wept supported Reagan in 1980. Sinatra died at Los
Angeles’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on May 14 1982. He was 82.
Senator George A. Smathers served in the Senate until 1968, later selling his Key Biscayne
home to Richard Nixon. Smathers died of a stroke in Indian Creek Village, Florida on January 20,
2007. He was 93.
Howard K. Smith, moderator of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, left CBS for ABC. He died on
February 15, 2002. He was 87.
Stephen E. Smith oversaw the $300 million Kennedy family financial empire following Joe
Kennedy’s incapacitation and managed RFK’s 1968 White House bid. Smith died of cancer at his
Manhattan home on August 19, 1990. “There wouldn’t have a Camelot without Steve Smith,”
mourned Teddy Kennedy. Smith was 62.
Theodore C. Sorensen opened up JFK’s medical records to historian Robert Dallek.
Charles F. “Chuck” Spalding, the friend who recommended Dr. Max Jacobson to JFK,
remarried twice, each time to wealthy women. He died of myeloma, a form of cancer, at his
Hillsborough, California home on December 28, 1999. He was 81.
Francis Cardinal Spellman died from the effects of a massive stroke at Manhattan’s St. Vincent’
s Hospital on December 2, 1967. He was 78.
Adlai E. Stevenson was sorely disappointed not to be named Secretary of State. Instead,
Stevenson served as John Kennedy’s Ambassador to the United Nations, most notably during with
Cuba Missile Crisis of 1962 and less notably (thanks to misinformation fed him from Washington)
during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Stevenson died unexpectedly from a heart attack while strolling on a
London street on July 14, 1965. He was 65.
Charles L. Sullivan, Constitution Party of Texas nominee, after running again for Mississippi
governor in 1963, captured the lieutenant governorship in 1967.
Stuart Symington retired from the United States Senate in 1977. He died in his sleep at his New
Canaan, Connecticut home on December 14, 1988. He was 87.
Dr. Janet G. Travell remained White House physician until 1965. Like Dr. Cohen, she also
finally admitted JFK suffered from Addison’s Disease. Dr. Travell died at Northampton,
Massachusetts on August 1, 1997. She was 95. Two separate obituaries of her ran in The New
York Times. Neither mentioned Addison’s Disease.
Harry S Truman died in Kansas City on December 26, 1972. He was 88.
Pamela Turnure became First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s press secretary.
Jack Valenti married LBJ’s personal secretary in 1962—and Lyndon gave the bride away. After
JFK’s assassination, Valenti joined Johnson’s White House staff ("I sleep each night a little better,
a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president."). He became President of the
Motion Picture Alliance of America in 1966, oversaw creation of the film industry’s rating system,
retiring in 2004. Valenti died on April 26, 2007 at his Washington home from the complications of
a stroke. He was 85.
Gore Vidal, somewhat tipsy, in November 1961, to steady himself, placed his on Jackie Kennedy’
s bare shoulder. Robert Kennedy objected. They had words (as Vidal had with Lem Billings and
JFK himself), and Vidal was never invited back to the White House and in 1964 enlisted in the anti-
RFK “Democrats for Keating.”
Bill Walton, painter, politician, and journalist, became chairman of the U. S. Commission on Fine
Arts (which actually oversaw much more than fine arts; in that capacity he oversaw construction on
the District of Columbia’s Metro) and increasingly served as Jackie Kennedy’s confidant. He
worked on RFK’s 1964 and 1968 campaigns before returning to writing. He was found dead at
his New York City loft on December 18, 1994. He was 85.
Theodore H. White won the Pulitzer Prize for The Making of the President, going on to issue
1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976 versions of that volume. Working on his autobiography at his
Manhattan townhouse in 1986, White suffered a massive stroke, dying six days later, on May 9,
1986. He was 71.
John Wayne supported Richard Nixon for President in 1968 and 1972, addressing the 1968
Republican Convention. He died from cancer of the lower abdomen at UCLA Medical Center on
June 11, 1979. He was 72. Before he died, Congress voted the Duke its Medal of Honor. Its
previous recipient was Robert F. Kennedy.
Harris Wofford helped found the Peace Corps, served as president of two colleges, and was
appointed to the United States Senate from Pennsylvania in 1991.
Congressman Bruce Alger, who engineered the Dallas riot who cost Richard Nixon Texas, was
easily defeated for re-election in LBJ’s 1964 landslide.
Robert B. Anderson, Ike’s choice for president in 1960, supported Lyndon Johnson in 1964. In
March 1987, Anderson pled guilty to income tax evasion from income received from the
Unification Church and to operating an illegal offshore bank in the British West Indies. Alcoholic
and disbarred, Anderson served a month at Allenwood federal prison camp and five years
probation. Anderson died of cancer of the esophagus in Manhattan on August 14, 1989. He was
79.
Inga Arvad, JFK’s wartime mistress, married 55-year old cowboy star Tim McCoy in February
1947. Less than seven months later she gave birth. Twenty years later she told her son Ronald, “I
don’t know who your father was for sure. . . . I really don’t know if it was Jack or Tim. I don’t
know.” Arvad, 60, died of cancer at her Nogales, Arizona ranch on December 12, 1973.
John M. Bailey died at after a two-year battle with throat cancer on April 10, 1975. He was 70.
Monsignor John S. Kennedy delivered the eulogy.
Bobby Baker found himself under Department of Justice investigation when RFK became
Attorney General—some said Bobby’s ultimate target was Johnson himself. Baker resigned as
Secretary to the Senate Majority in October 1963. In January 1967 he was found guilty of seven
counts of theft, fraud, and income tax evasions. Sentenced to three years in Lewisburg Federal
Prison (a fellow inmate was Jimmy Hoffa), Baker served sixteen months.
Lem Billings died of a heart attack at his Manhattan home on May 28, 1981. He was 65.
Chester Bowles never became Secretary of State and soon wore out his welcome as JFK’s
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He fared no better with LBJ who sent him back to
India as our ambassador to New Delhi. There he first exhibited signs of Parkinson’s Disease. He
died from that disease and a stroke died on May 25, 1985 at his sprawling Essex, Connecticut
home. He was 85.
Joan Braden’s marriage became the focus of her husband’s 1975 book Eight Is Enough and the
subsequent ABC-TV series. Far less wholesome was her own memoir, Just Enough Rope, which
revealed a JFK-attitude toward monogamy. Joan Braden died of a heart attack suffered at an
Alexandria delicatessen on August 30, 1999. She was 77.
Ben Bradlee’s sister-in-law, Mary Meyer became one of JFK’s many affairs. After Bradlee
published Conversations with Kennedy in 1975, Jackie Kennedy, finding it a violation of personal
confidences, never again spoke with him. Reporters at Bradlee’s Washington Post cracked the
Watergate story and forced Richard Nixon from office.
David Brinkley received one vote for vice president at the 1972 Republican National
Convention, which was more support than he felt he had at NBC after Tom Brokaw arrived. He
left the network in 1981, to join ABC. Brinkley died at his Houston home on June 11, 2003. He
was 82.
Edmund G. “Pat” Brown defeated Richard Nixon for the governorship by almost 300,000 votes
in 1962 but lost by nearly a million votes to Ronald Reagan in 1966. In 1974 his son Edmund G.
“Jerry” Brown, a.k.a “Governor Moonbeam.” Pat Brown died of a heart attack at his Beverly Hills
home on February 16, 1996. He was 90.
A Catholic not only became President of the United States, but with the elevation of Lyndon
Johnson to the vice-presidency and the death of Sam Rayburn, Catholics (Mike Mansfield and
John McCormick, respectively) also became Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House.
Nobody seemed to notice.
Dr. Eugene J. Cohen – JFK’s endocrinologist, Asked in 1966 “for a secret historical record” Dr.
Cohen finally admitted that JFK had Addison’s Disease. Dr. Cohen died at his home on July 16,
1999. He was 87.
Murray M. Chotiner was Richard Nixon’s original choice to head the Republican National
Committee when Nixon finally became President in 1969, but opposition to Chotiner was too
intense, and Nixon never acted on the idea. Instead, Chotiner eventually became a White House
special counsel under H. R. Haldeman. During the 1972 campaign he engaged two reporters (one
was Lucianne Goldberg) to spy on the McGovern camp. Chotiner died in Washington on January
30, 1974 from the effects of an auto accident. The accident occurred directly behind Teddy
Kennedy’s McLean, Virginia home. Teddy, who did not know Chotiner was involved, called for
the ambulance. Chotiner was 64.
John B. Connally became Richard Nixon’s Secretary of the Treasury in 1971. Acquitted of
bribery charges in 1975, he ran for President as a Republican in 1980, spending $11 million to
secure one delegate. He filed for bankruptcy in 1988. Connolly died of pulmonary fibrosis in
Houston on June 15, 1993. He was 76.
Paul Corbin, RFK’s darkly mysterious campaign operative, was appointed special assistant to the
national Democratic Chairman in 1964, triggering outrage from J. Edgar Hoover regarding Corbin’
s former Communist Party ties. Nonetheless, he not only survived he leveled charges of graft
against his long-time rival Kenny O’Donnell. He later worked in Bobby’s 1964 Senate campaign
(courtesy of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation), operated Nashville’s Country Music Wax
Museum, and became a Washington political consultant. Corbin died of cancer at his Alexandria
home on January 2, 1990. He was 75.
Prof. Archibald Cox became JFK’s Solicitor General. In May 1973 Attorney General Eliot
Richardson named Cox as Watergate Special Prosecutor. Cox’s October 1973 firing touched off
the “Saturday Night Massacre” and accelerated Richard Nixon’s departure from the White House.
He served as President of Common Cause from 1980 to 1992. Cox died at his Brooksville, Maine
home of natural causes on May 29, 2004. He was 92.
Walter Cronkite became the first news anchor to broadcast news of JFK’s assassination. LBJ
after Cronkite said Vietnam was unwinnable. "If I've lost Walter Cronkite, I've lost the country."
Forced out in March 1981—age 65.
Richard Cardinal Cushing gave Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis a pass (“Why can’t she marry
whoever she wants?”) when she married divorced shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968. The
Vatican was not amused. Cushing died at his Boston home on November 2, 1970.
Lar Daly lost numerous elections after 1960, the last being in March 1978, when, dying from lung
disease, he polled a remarkable 74,739 votes against incumbent United States Senator Charles
Percy (his sixth loss for the U.S. Senate), but not before having sold his Uncle Sam suit for
“economic circumstances.” Daly, age 66, died of lung disease at the Little Company of Mary
Hospital at Evergreen Park, Illinois that April 18. Seventy five persons attended his funeral.
Mayor Richard J. Daley won election to six four years as mayor of Chicago, becoming the bête-
noir of liberal Democrats following his handling of protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention.
George McGovern’s forces barred the Daley slate from 1972’s convention. On December 20,
1976 Daley, complaining of chest pains, suffered a fatal heart attack at his physician’s office. He
was 74.
Alicia Darr obtained a Mexican divorce from Edmund Purdom in 1961, promptly becoming the
sixth wife of Singer Sewing Machine heir Alfred Corning Clark, She was 32. He was 45 and
dropped dead thirteen days later. In 1963 J. Edgar Hoover let Robert Kennedy know that he
knew about a $500,000 payment to Darr.
Sammy Davis, Jr. and May Britt married on November 13, 1960, five days after the election.
Frank Sinatra was best man; Peter Lawford attended. JFK found Mr. & Mrs. Davis’s presence at
his inaugural embarrassing and disinvited them—Bobby argued otherwise. The Davis-Britt
marriage collapsed in 1968, the same year Davis endorsed Robert Kennedy for President. In 1972
he endorsed Richard Nixon, appeared at that year’s Republican Convention. Davis died of throat
cancer at his Los Angeles home on May 16, 1990. He was 64.
William L. Dawson was insincerely “offered” the Postmaster Generalship by JFK, basically on
condition that he refuse it. He remained in Congress, despite increasing accusations of corruption
and links to gambling interests. Dawson died of pneumonia in Chicago on November 9, 1970. He
was 84.
Janet Des Rosiers, Joseph’s P. Kennedy’s mistress and Jack Kennedy’s flight attendant,
became a secretary in the White House and secretary to the ambassador to France. In the 1990s,
after reviewing the text of a biography of her former lover, she wrote, “I’m mad at myself for giving
myself to this man.”
Jimmy “Professor Backwards” Edmondson was robbed, abducted and murdered—and his 25-
year old housekeeper raped—on January 29, 1976 at his College Park, Georgia home. He was 65.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, bitter that JFK’s election was “the repudiation of everything I've done for
eight years,” retired to his Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, farmhouse, writing his memoirs, avoiding
taking sides in the battle for the 1964 GOP presidential nomination, and endorsing Richard Nixon
in October 1968 as “better than any other political figure than I have seen or heard” for the
presidency. In December 1968 Ike’s grandson, David Eisenhower, married Richard Nixon’s
younger daughter, Julie. Eisenhower died peacefully at Washington’s Walter Read General
Hospital on March 28, 1969. He was 78.
Mamie Dowd Eisenhower died in her sleep at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center on
November 1, 1979. She was 82.
Judith Campbell Exner continued her affair with JFK and claims to have become pregnant by
him, a pregnancy that ended with a JFK-suggested abortion. Exner revealed their affair with JFK
to the U. S. Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, the same year she married professional golfer
Dan Exner. In 1977 she published her tell-all memoirs Judith Exner: My Story, later expanded her
account to include tales of being a JFK conduit to the mob. She died of breast cancer in a Duarte,
California hospital on September 2, 1999. She was 65.
John D. Erhlichman became Richard Nixon’s chief White House domestic advisor. A key player
in the Watergate Scandal, in 1975 he was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and
perjury and served time in federal prison. Erhlichman died from diabetes at his Atlanta home on
February 14, 1999. He was 73.
Paul B. Fay, usher at JFK’s wedding, became JFK’s beard on inauguration night (as JFK
allegedly pursued actress Angie Dickinson) and his Acting Secretary of the Navy in 1963. He
published his memoirs of JFK, The Pleasure of His Company in 1966. Bobby and Jackie Kennedy
pressured him into excising 2,000 words from it. Jackie refused a $3,000 Fay contribution to the
Kennedy Memorial Library.
Robert H. Finch was elected California Lt. Governor in 1966. In 1969 Richard Nixon appointed
him Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, but was soon eased out of Nixon’s inner circle—
thus sparing him any involvement in Watergate. He died of a heart attack at his Pasadena home on
October 10, 1995. He was just a day shy of his 70th birthday.
John Kenneth Galbraith became United States ambassador to India in 1961. He died at a
Cambridge, Massachusetts hospital on April 26, 2006. He was 97.
Sam “Momo” Giancana, scheduled to testify before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee
regarding his involvement in plots to assassinate Fidel Castro was, on June 19, 1975, shot seven
times through the head in a basement kitchen of his Oak Park, Illinois home. He was 67. His
murder was never solved
Barry M. Goldwater ran for President against Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and was crushed,
winning but six states, but laying the basis for the conservative takeover of the Republican Party.
He won re-election to the Senate in 1968. Two days after Goldwater advised Richard Nixon to
resign, Nixon did so. Goldwater, suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, died of natural causes in
Pasadena Valley, Arizona on May 29, 1998. He was 89.
Richard N. Goodwin went on to work in the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses (he coined the
phrase “Great Society”), before jumping ship in 1965. In 1968’s turbulent presidential race, he
wrote first for insurgent Eugene McCarthy, then for Bobby Kennedy—then after RFK’s
assassination—for “Clean Gene” once more. It was his last hurrah politically, from then on he
pursued writing—as well former LBJ aide Doris Kearns, whom he married in December 1975.
H. R. “Bob” Haldeman became Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff. Deeply implicated
in Watergate and other Nixon era dirty tricks, he served 18 months in the federal Lompoc
Correctional Facility. Upon release, Haldeman returned to the business world and eventually
owned Eight Sizzler Family Steak Houses. Unlike John Erhlichman, he remained a Nixon loyalist.
Haldeman died of abdominal cancer at his Santa Barbara home on November 12, 1993. He was
67.
Leonard W. Hall, Nixon’s 1960 campaign manager, managed Barry Goldwater’s presidential
campaign in 1964 and George Romney’s in 1968, serving as Nelson Rockefeller’s convention
floor manager after Romney dropped out. “I’ve got nothing against Dick,” he explained regarding
why he was still not supporting Nixon, “but he seems to start out fast and lose ground.” Hall died in
Glen Cove, New York on June 2, 1979. He was 78.
Don Hewitt went on to create 60 Minutes in 1968. He retired from CBC News in 2001 at age 81.
J. Edgar Hoover died on May 2, 1972. He was 77 and still director of the FBI.
Howard Hughes, despite—or, perhaps, because of his eccentricities, continued his dealings with
Richard Nixon and his intermediaries. In 1987, Watergate conspirator Jeb Stuart Magruder
revealed that the primary purpose of the break-in at Democratic National Chairman Larry O’Brien’
s Watergate office was “the cash [$100,000] that had been supposedly given to [Nixon friend]
Bebe Rebozo and spent later by the President possibly.” Hughes died on April 5, 1976. He was
70.
Hubert H. Humphrey became Lyndon Johnson’s running mate in 1964 and narrowly lost the
presidency to 1968. He won election to the United States Senate in 1970, replacing Eugene
McCarthy. He died of cancer at his Waverly, Minnesota home on January 13, 1978. He was 66.
Dr. Arnold A. Hutschnecker issued a study in 1970 recommending the testing of seven and eight
years old for violent tendencies and their subsequent incarceration in “camps.” When Gerald Ford
became president, reports floated that Hutschnecker had treated him. Ford vehemently denied it.
At Pat Nixon’s funeral, Hutschnecker held his patient’s hand. Hutschnecker died at his Sherman,
Connecticut home on December 28, 2000. He was 102.
Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson died on September 1, 1983 of an aortic aneurysm
following a press conference on the shooting down of Korean Air Flight 007. He was ***.
Max “Dr. Feelgood” Jacobson – JFK’s amphetamine-injecting physician resumed treating Jack
Kennedy—and Jackie—when the Kennedys reached the White House, even accompanying them
to Europe in 1961, when JFK conferred with DeGaulle and Khrushchev. Bobby Kennedy,
concerned about Jacobson’s treatments, sent samples of Jacobson’s concoctions to the FBI lab
for testing—unfortunately, however, not for amphetamines. Jacobson lost his license in 1975, after
at least one of his patients died from amphetamine poisoning.
Lady Bird Johnson remained active in conservation and literacy efforts until suffering a stroke in
2002. She died at her Austin home of natural causes on July 11, 2007. She was 94.
Lyndon Baines Johnson was going to be dumped from the ticket in 1964. He died of a heart
attack at his Johnson City, Texas ranch on January 22, 1973. He was reaching for his phone.
Johnson was 64.
Edward M. “Teddy” Kennedy won elected to the United States Senate in 1962, saw his
presidential ambitions virtually extinguished in July 1969 by the Chappaquiddick incident and the
death of Mary Jo Kopechne, and ran, nonetheless, unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1980.
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy married billionaire Aristotle Onassis in 1968. When he died in
1975, she never remarried, though she maintained a close relationship with Maurice Templesman.,
a Belgian-American diamond merchant and investor who managed her considerable fortune. She
worked at Doubleday, distinguished herself at various New York City preservation issues, most
notably that of Grand Central Station, never granted interviews, and never commented regarded
her life with the Kennedys. She died at her Fifth Avenue apartment of cancer of the lymphatic
system on May 19, 1994. She was 64.
Joseph Patrick Kennedy never fully recovered from his stroke, residing in seclusion either at
Palm Beach or Hyannis Port. After suffering a series of heart attacks Kennedy died at his Hyannis
Port home on November 18, 1969. He was 81.
Robert F. Kennedy, on Joe Kennedy’s orders, became Attorney General of the United States.
He chafed under Lyndon Johnson’s White House leadership, won election to the United States
Senate from New York in 1964 and, following Eugene McCarthy’s lead, sought the presidency in
1968. On June 6, 1968 after defeating McCarthy in the California, he was assassinated by
Palestinian immigrant Sirhan B. Sirhan at Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel. He was 42.
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy survived her husband, four children, and two grandchildren. A 1984
stroke left her wheelchair bound. She died of pneumonia at her white, clapboard Hyannis Port
home on January 22, 1995. She was 104.
Rosemary Kennedy, JFK’s lobotomized sister, remained at St. Coletta’s School until her death
on January 7, 2005. She was 86 and the first of the Kennedy siblings to die a natural death. “I will
never forgive Joe for that awful operation he had performed on Rosemary. It is the only thing I
have ever felt bitter towards him about.”
Otto Kerner, Richard Daley candidate for governor in 1960, went to jail in 1974 for official
corruption after the woman who bribed him listed her bribe on federal income tax forms as a
business expense. Kerner died of cancer in Chicago on May 9, 1976.
Clennon King moved to Africa, went to San Quentin in 1966, changed his name to Lenin
Lamumba Abdullah, served four years, ran for governor of Georgia, and, on the eve of the 1976
election, attempted to integrate Jimmy Carter’s Plains Baptist Church, was convicted of vote
buying, and, in 1999, ran for the house seat vacated by newt Gingrich. King died of prostate
cancer on February 12, 2000. He was 79. His niece, Oona, was then serving as a member of the
British House of Commons.
Herbert G. Klein – Nixon’s press secretary became Editor-in-Chief of the Copley Newspapers.
Senator William F. Knowland, Nixon’s earliest rival for the 1960 nomination, returned to the
family business, publishing the Oakland Tribune. On February 23, 1974, near to his Monte Rio,
California summer home, Knowland, $900,000 in personal debt, blew his brains out with a .32
caliber automatic pistol. He was 65.
Arthur Krock finally realized he had been used by the Kennedys and in November 1961 painfully
wrote to Kennedy’s representatives to be taken off the Kennedy Christmas list to receive a case of
Haig & Haig. He died in Washington of natural causes on April 12, 1974. He was 87.
Lady May Lawford penned a memoir delicately titled Bitch!: The Autobiography of Lady
Lawford. She died at Monterey Park, California convalescent home on January 23, 1972. She
was 83—and remained a subject of her Queen.
Peter Lawford divorced Pat Kennedy in 1966 but re-married three times (once to the daughter of
twenty-something daughter of comedian Dan Rowan). Lawford entered the Betty Ford Clinic for
drug and alcohol rehabilitation in early 1984. Lawford died in Los Angeles on December 24,
1984. He was 61. None of the Rat Pack attended his funeral at Westwood Village Mortuary. In
May 1988, his funeral expenses still unpaid, Westwood authorities dug up his remains and handed
them over to the family.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. served as JFK’s ambassador to South Vietnam, LBJ’s ambassador to
West Germany, and Richard Nixon’s chief delegate to the Paris Peace Talks and Special Envoy to
the Vatican. In 1964 he won the New Hampshire Republican primary on a write-in vote. Lodge
died after a long illness at his Beverly, Massachusetts home on February 27, 1985. He was 82.
Eugene J. McCarthy challenged LBJ for the 1968 Democratic nomination, similarly failed to
secure the Democratic nomination in 1972, and pursued quixotic third-party presidential bids in
1976 and 1988. He died at a Washington retirement center of Parkinson’s Disease on December
10, 2005. He was 89.
James M. McInerney, the Kennedy family operative who discovered the Nixon-Hughes loan
died, in Washington on October 8, 1963,a car going 70 miles per hour ran a red light and crashed
into his vehicle. He was 58.
Albert Maltz couldn’t write the screenplay The Execution of Private Slovik for Democrat
Frank Sinatra could for Two Mules for Sister Sara for Republican Clint Eastwood. He died from
complications resulting from shingles in Los Angeles on April 26, 1985. He was 76. In 1997 the
Writers Guild restored his screenwriting credits for such films as The Robe and The Defiant Ones.
Sig Mickelson was canned as head of CBS News in December 1960, replaced by Richard S.
Salant. In 1975, much as Murrow became head of the USIA, Mickelson became President of
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He died in San Diego on March 24, 2000. He was 86.
The “Missile Gap,” indeed, never existed, though JFK still referenced it as late as March 1961.
Indeed, his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara admitted it to the press as early as February 6
that year though he soon had to publicly backtrack.
Wayne Morse was one of only to two United States senators to vote against LBJ’s Golf of
Tonkin resolution. He lost his Senate seat in 1968 and, in 1972, lost a bid to re-enter the Senate
against incumbent Mark Hatfield, who had nominated Richard Nixon on in 1976. He tried again in
1974, but died that July 22. He was 73.
Edward R. Murrow swallowed his antipathy to the Kennedys to become the $21,000-a-year
head of JFK’s United States Information Agency (USIA), America’s overseas propaganda arm.
Wasted by spreading lung cancer, he resigned in 1964, and died at his 280-acre Pawling, New
York farm on April 27, 1965. He was 57.
F. Donald Nixon became, in 1970, vice president for community and industry for the Marriott
Corporation. He died from cancer in Whittier, California on June 27, 1987. He was 73.
Patricia Nixon, in increasingly poor health, disappeared from public view after leaving the White
House. She died of lung cancer at her Park Ridge, New Jersey home on June 22, 1993. She was
81.
Richard Milhous Nixon, in a surprising reasonably successful effort at resurrecting himself, once
more, issued numerous memoirs (“History will be very kind to me, because I intend to write it,” he
once quoted Winston Churchill) and books on politics and foreign policy. After suffering a stroke
at his New Jersey home, Nixon died at a Manhattan hospital on April 22, 1994. He was 81.
Bill Moyers became the Peace Corps’ first associate director of public affairs, then served in a
variety of roles for Lyndon Johnson, including press secretary, finally breaking with Johnson and
leaving the administration. Since 1971 he has worked in broadcasting, primarily for PBS but also
for CBS, NBC, and MSNBC.
Lawrence F. O’Brien directed LBJ’s 1964 and Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 presidential campaigns
(as well as working as Johnson’s Postmaster General). As Democratic National Chairman, he
served as primary target for the Watergate break-in. He served as Commissioner of the National
Basketball Association from 1975 through 1984 and later as President of the National Basketball
Hall of Fame in his Springfield, Massachusetts hometown. O’Brien died from cancer in Manhattan
on September 28, 1990. He was 73.
Kenneth P. O’Donnell faced charges of massive graft made by fellow Democratic operative Paul
Corbin and passed on to JFK by reporter and longtime JFK friend Charles Bartlett just before his
assassination. O’Donnell, nonetheless, managed RFK’s 1968 presidential bid and was present—as
he was with JFK—when RFK was shot. Twice—without Kennedy family approval—he
unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor of Massachusetts. In 1970, he
wrote in Life magazine, that his chief, JFK, had chosen LBJ for the vice-presidency because he
feared he could not “live with Lyndon Johnson as the leader of a small Senate majority.” O’
Donnell, an alcoholic, died in Boston on September 9, 1977. His family refused to release details.
He was 53.
George Berham Parr, who gave Lyndon his 78-vote landslide in 1948, facing prison for perjury
and tax evasion, blew his brains out in a pasture near Alice, Texas on April 1, 1975. He was 74.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale officiated at the December 1968 wedding of Richard Nixon’s
daughter to Dwight Eisenhower’s grandson David. Peale, 95, died of a stroke at his Pawling, New
York home at December 23, 1993.
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. did become chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee
in 1961. Better still, the RFK Justice Department dropped income tax evasion charges against him.
Excluded from the House in March 1967 on charges of nepotism and junketeering, he returned in
June 1969 but was defeated for re-nomination in 1970. Stricken in the Bahamas, he died at a
Miami hospital on April 4, 1972. He was 63.
David F. Powers, with Kenny O’Donnell, helped plan JFK’s route through Dallas on November
22, 1963, and for months afterward was wracked by headaches as he recalled the sight of a bullet
smashing into the base of his friend’s skull. He served as curator of the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library from 1965 through 1994, taking time out for RFK’s 1968 presidential effort.
Powers died of cardiac arrest in Arlington, Massachusetts on March, 27, 1998. He was 85.
Francis Gary Powers was released in a 1962 spy-swap with the Soviet Union. He died on
August 1, 1977 when the Bell Jet Ranger helicopter he piloted for Los Angeles TV station KNBC
malfunctioned and crashed onto an Encino Little League field. Powers was 47.
PT-109 rested 1,300 hundred feet below the surface of the Pacific until located in July 2002 in
Blackett Straight in the Solomon Islands by Dr. Robert Barrett, who, in 1985, had discovered the
wreck of the Titanic, and, in 1989, the Bismark.
Ronald Reagan finally became a Republican, energized national conservatives in 1964 with his
televised “A Time for Choosing” speech for Barry Goldwater in 1964, defeated Pat Brown for
Governor of California in 1966 and briefly challenged Richard Nixon for the 1968 presidential nod
before winning the presidency in 1980 and 1984.
Jackie Robinson supported Nelson Rockefeller’s 1964 and 1968 (he was by then Rocky’s
community relations director) presidential bids. When Nixon won the GOP nod, Robinson resigned
from Rockefeller’s staff and endorsed Hubert Humphrey. In declining health from diabetes (he lost
the sight of one eye) and heart disease, and despondent from the 1971 death of his 24-year old,
drug-addicted son from an auto accident, Robinson died in Stamford, Connecticut on October 24,
1972. He was 53.
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller lost the Republican presidential nomination to Barry Goldwater in
1964 and to Richard Nixon in 1968. He resigned the governorship of New York in December
1973, and, in December 1974, was named vice-president by President Gerald Ford. The 70-year
old Rockefeller died of a heart attack at his 13 West 54th Street townhouse on January 26, 1979,
under suspicious circumstances in the company of 26-year old $60,000-a-year aide Megan R.
Marshack. His 64-page will forgave the $45,000 lent to purchase her 25 West 54th Street one-
bedroom apartment.
Edward A. “Ted” Rogers, Nixon’s hapless television advisor, had trouble finding work after the
1960, branded as the man who engineered perhaps the single most disastrous appearance in
television history. Finally, Len Hall wrote a personal letter to Rogers, verifying that it wasn’t Rogers’
s fault—it was Nixon’s. He wrote a novel, Face to Face, strangely enough about a flawed
candidate in a presidential debate, bought two radio stations and never worked for Richard Nixon
again. Rogers died in Sarasota on March 13, 2003. He was 82.
Norma Jean Rojas, who stabbed her husband in an argument over watching JFK on TV,
received a sentence of five years to life.
Eleanor Roosevelt really did want JFK to appoint Adlai Stevenson Secretary of State and when
Kennedy failed to do so, her attitudes toward him reverted more to form, so much so that she
pointedly refused his invitation to take a place on the platform at his inaugural. Mrs. Roosevelt died
after a six week illness (anemia which worsened into tuberculosis) at her 55 East 74th Street home
on November 7, 1962—the same day Richard Nixon informed the press they would have him “to
kick around anymore.” The only non-family member allowed to see her during her illness was Adlai
Stevenson. She was 78.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. had hoped to become JFK's Secretary of the Navy, but Robert
McNamara dismissed him as a “drunk and a womanizer.” Instead, Kennedy, remembering his
service in the West Virginia primary, appointed Roosevelt to the Appalachian Regional
Commission and as Undersecretary of Commerce. He ran unsuccessfully—some said as a third-
party spoiler—for Governor of New York in 1966. FDR, Jr. died on August 17, 1988, in
Poughkeepsie, New York. He was 74.
James H. Rowe, Jr. managed Hubert Humphrey’s ill-fated 1968 campaign, nearly pulling off a
come-from-behind repeat of the 1948 Truman victory. He died at his Washington home on June
17, 1984 after a long illness. He was 75.
Mort Sahl’s career nose-dived following JFK’s election. “It was all right when I was making
jokes about the other guys,” he revealed, “but when I started on the Kennedys, the liberals tried to
destroy me. I went from earnings of $600,000 in 1962 to $19,000 in 1963.”
Pierre Salinger served briefly as a United States Senator from California in 1964, losing that
November to Republican George Murphy. He assisted in RFK’s 1968 presidential bid and later
became Paris and later European bureau chief for ABC News. His reputation suffered a
devastating blow when he claimed inside information that turned out to be spurious, regarding the
downing of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 over Long Island. He permanently moved to France
after the election of George W. Bush. Salinger died in LeThor, France on October 16, 2004. He
was 79.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. became part of the Kennedy White, resigning when Lyndon Johnson
assumed the presidency. Often denounced as “a Kennedy courtier,” he, nonetheless, turned won
the National Book Award for his 1989 portrait of Robert Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and His
Times. suffered a heart attack at a lower Manhattan restaurant and died on February 28, 2007. He
was 89.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s daughter Maria (five years and two days old on Election Day 1960)
became an NBC News correspondent and, in 2003, First Lady of California, when her husband,
actor and Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, became governor of that state.
R. Sargent Shriver nearly became the vice-presidency candidate in both 1964 and 1968—but
found his ambitions thwarted by Kennedy family members. He served as George McGovern’s
1972 running mate, after McGovern dropped the star-crossed Senator Thomas F. Eagleton—like
Shriver, also a Catholic—from the ticket. Shriver sought the presidency himself in 1976 but
attracted little support. His only daughter, Maria, married actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1986,
later becoming First Lady of California. Shriver now suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease.
Frank Sinatra oversaw Jack Kennedy’s spectacular inaugural gala but, as his mob ties became
increasingly noticeable and embarrassing, found himself never invited to Kennedy White House—
and particularly steamed when JFK spurned his invitation to be his Palm springs house guest in
favor of staying with old rival (and Republican) Bing Crosby. Richard Nixon, however, invited
Sinatra to sing The House I Live In and wept supported Reagan in 1980. Sinatra died at Los
Angeles’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on May 14 1982. He was 82.
Senator George A. Smathers served in the Senate until 1968, later selling his Key Biscayne
home to Richard Nixon. Smathers died of a stroke in Indian Creek Village, Florida on January 20,
2007. He was 93.
Howard K. Smith, moderator of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, left CBS for ABC. He died on
February 15, 2002. He was 87.
Stephen E. Smith oversaw the $300 million Kennedy family financial empire following Joe
Kennedy’s incapacitation and managed RFK’s 1968 White House bid. Smith died of cancer at his
Manhattan home on August 19, 1990. “There wouldn’t have a Camelot without Steve Smith,”
mourned Teddy Kennedy. Smith was 62.
Theodore C. Sorensen opened up JFK’s medical records to historian Robert Dallek.
Charles F. “Chuck” Spalding, the friend who recommended Dr. Max Jacobson to JFK,
remarried twice, each time to wealthy women. He died of myeloma, a form of cancer, at his
Hillsborough, California home on December 28, 1999. He was 81.
Francis Cardinal Spellman died from the effects of a massive stroke at Manhattan’s St. Vincent’
s Hospital on December 2, 1967. He was 78.
Adlai E. Stevenson was sorely disappointed not to be named Secretary of State. Instead,
Stevenson served as John Kennedy’s Ambassador to the United Nations, most notably during with
Cuba Missile Crisis of 1962 and less notably (thanks to misinformation fed him from Washington)
during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Stevenson died unexpectedly from a heart attack while strolling on a
London street on July 14, 1965. He was 65.
Charles L. Sullivan, Constitution Party of Texas nominee, after running again for Mississippi
governor in 1963, captured the lieutenant governorship in 1967.
Stuart Symington retired from the United States Senate in 1977. He died in his sleep at his New
Canaan, Connecticut home on December 14, 1988. He was 87.
Dr. Janet G. Travell remained White House physician until 1965. Like Dr. Cohen, she also
finally admitted JFK suffered from Addison’s Disease. Dr. Travell died at Northampton,
Massachusetts on August 1, 1997. She was 95. Two separate obituaries of her ran in The New
York Times. Neither mentioned Addison’s Disease.
Harry S Truman died in Kansas City on December 26, 1972. He was 88.
Pamela Turnure became First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s press secretary.
Jack Valenti married LBJ’s personal secretary in 1962—and Lyndon gave the bride away. After
JFK’s assassination, Valenti joined Johnson’s White House staff ("I sleep each night a little better,
a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president."). He became President of the
Motion Picture Alliance of America in 1966, oversaw creation of the film industry’s rating system,
retiring in 2004. Valenti died on April 26, 2007 at his Washington home from the complications of
a stroke. He was 85.
Gore Vidal, somewhat tipsy, in November 1961, to steady himself, placed his on Jackie Kennedy’
s bare shoulder. Robert Kennedy objected. They had words (as Vidal had with Lem Billings and
JFK himself), and Vidal was never invited back to the White House and in 1964 enlisted in the anti-
RFK “Democrats for Keating.”
Bill Walton, painter, politician, and journalist, became chairman of the U. S. Commission on Fine
Arts (which actually oversaw much more than fine arts; in that capacity he oversaw construction on
the District of Columbia’s Metro) and increasingly served as Jackie Kennedy’s confidant. He
worked on RFK’s 1964 and 1968 campaigns before returning to writing. He was found dead at
his New York City loft on December 18, 1994. He was 85.
Theodore H. White won the Pulitzer Prize for The Making of the President, going on to issue
1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976 versions of that volume. Working on his autobiography at his
Manhattan townhouse in 1986, White suffered a massive stroke, dying six days later, on May 9,
1986. He was 71.
John Wayne supported Richard Nixon for President in 1968 and 1972, addressing the 1968
Republican Convention. He died from cancer of the lower abdomen at UCLA Medical Center on
June 11, 1979. He was 72. Before he died, Congress voted the Duke its Medal of Honor. Its
previous recipient was Robert F. Kennedy.
Harris Wofford helped found the Peace Corps, served as president of two colleges, and was
appointed to the United States Senate from Pennsylvania in 1991.
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