Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot

Vice President Lyndon Johnson prepares to position himself as the Democratic Party’s leading pro–civil rights candidate, outflanking his rival Bobby Kennedy, who also faces other challenges.

Seven months earlier, on August 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her Los Angeles home. Although Monroe’s death was ruled an overdose, there are rumors that the Mafia might have murdered her, or that Bobby Kennedy, fearing the political fallout from Monroe’s obsession with his brother and possible revelation of their affair, was somehow involved.

Johnson feels himself drifting further and further from the center of power, which he craves. Johnson does not care much about civil rights as a moral issue, but he does see the political value of courting Black voters. The press begins to ask Bobby Kennedy about his political aspirations; the president’s brother remains very unpopular with the CIA.

Lee Harvey Oswald purchases a rifle and is fired from his job.

The CIA joins American military advisers on the ground in Vietnam and helps orchestrate terror tactics against North Vietnamese Communists. President Kennedy wants to get out of Vietnam, and he distrusts Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnam’s tyrannical president. Still, Kennedy does not want to abandon all of Vietnam to the Communists.

In Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald plots to kill Major General Ted Walker, a man with a national reputation for fanatical anti-Communism. Oswald believes he is striking a blow for Communists. From an alleyway outside Walker’s home, and from a distance of only 40 yards, Oswald aims his rifle, fires one shot at Walker’s head, and then flees the scene. The next morning, Oswald learns from the newspapers and radio that his shot missed Walker altogether. Oswald buries the rifle. A few weeks later, Oswald packs his pistol and tells Marina that he is going after Richard Nixon, another famous anti-Communist. Marina shoves Oswald into the bathroom and prevents him from leaving the home.

Jackie Kennedy announces that she is pregnant.

The Children’s Crusade, a march for civil rights organized and led by Martin Luther King Jr., begins at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. The marchers are all children and teenagers who have skipped school to march peacefully in place of their parents. That way, the adults would not have to face arrest and jeopardize their livelihoods. The situation in Birmingham has degenerated into a standoff between King and Eugene “Bull” Connor, the city’s 65-year-old public-safety commissioner, a fanatical segregationist and ardent racist. King has come to Birmingham to challenge the city’s segregationist ordinances and the policies of George Wallace, Alabama’s new arch-segregationist governor. As the children march and sing “We Shall Overcome,” Connor orders his men to turn the fire hoses on them before unleashing the German shepherd police dogs. Connor “watches with glee as the German shepherds lunge at the children,” for the commissioner “is a vicious good old boy whose beliefs are even more racist than those of Governor Wallace” (166). Pictures from Birmingham leave President Kennedy and much of the nation outraged.

Five days later, in the South Vietnamese city of Hue, thousands of Buddhists gather in protest of Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem’s tyrannical government. Diem’s forces fire into the crowd, killing nine people—a woman and eight children. Violence spreads over the next month, and Diem puts Hue under martial law. On June 11, 1963, a Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc lights himself on fire in an act of protest. An AP photograph of the self-immolation horrifies the world and convinces Kennedy that the US must find a way to disentangle itself from Diem.

Meanwhile, the British public learns that Secretary of War John Profumo had an affair with a woman who also slept with a Soviet official, forcing Profumo to resign. Kennedy follows these developments, well aware that his own indiscretions far exceed those of Profumo. Jackie organizes a surprise birthday party for the president, who now seems happiest when surrounded by his wife and children.