John F Kennedy is the wealthiest president in American history. His private income, before taxes, is estimated at about five hundred thousand a year. On his forty-fifth birthday, his personal fortune goes up an estimated $2.5 million, in 1962, when he receives another fourth of his share in three trust funds established by his father for his children. As President, JFK usually rises at 8:00 AM, and each day he enjoys a hot bath, a midday swim in the White House pool that sometimes lasts an hour (Joseph znnedy commissions artist Banard Lamotte to paint a ninety-seven-foot mural around the pool), directs exercises in the gymnasium, and a nap or private time with Jackie that lasts at least an hour. Evenings are usually private and very often feature small dinners with friends that might be followed by a film. AQOC.
In Washington, Admiral Arthur Radford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, arrives early for an F Street Club luncheon being given for Eisenhower after the inauguration. Watching JFK deliver his speech on television, Radford notices that, although JFK is standing without coat or hat in frigid weather, heavy beads of perspiration are rolling down his forehead. “He’s all hopped up!” calls out General Howard Snyder, the retiring White House physician. Privy to FBI and Secret Service information, Snyder tells Radford that JFK is “prescribed a shot of cortisone every morning to keep him in good operating condition.
Obviously this morning he was given two because of the unusual rigors he must endure, and the brow sweating is the result of the extra dose.” Snyder adds that people dependent on cortisone move from a high to a low when the medicine’s effect wears off:
“I hate to think of what might happen to the country if Kennedy is required at three A.M. to make a decision affecting the national security.”
After the ceremonies the new president and his wife, the Lyndon Johnsons, and members of the cabinet go into the Capitol for a luncheon given by the joint congressional inaugural committee. Joseph and Rose Kennedy head for the Mayflower Hotel and a lavish luncheon for the Kennedys, Fitzgeralds, Bouviers, Lees, and Auchinclosses.
Vice President Richard Nixon, forced to surrender his official car and driver at midnight, goes for one last ride through the nation’s capital. He takes a walk through the empty Capitol building. He is struck by the thought that “this was not the end, that someday I would be back here. I walked as fast as I could back to the car.”
During the inauguration, Cecil Stoughton, using his own initiative, works his way up to a good spot on the inaugural stand and manages to make a photo of John F Kennedy. General Clifton is impressed with Stoughton’s photos and shows them to JFK, who is also impressed. Clifton suggests to JFK that it might be a good idea to have this photographer available to the White House. Prior to this time, there has never been an “in-house” photographer specifically assigned to the President (POTP).
The night of JFK’s inauguration, John F Kennedy attends a ball at the Statler-Hilton. JFK slips out of the presidential box and goes upstairs to a private party given by Frank Sinatra. Angie Dickinson is there, along with actresses Janet Leigh and Kim Novak. (AQOC) Peter Lawford arranges a lineup of six Hollywood starlets to entertain the new President. JFK chooses two.
“This menage a trois brought his first day in office to a resounding close,” Lawford says later. When John F Kennedy returns to the ball he has a copy of the Washington Post under his arm, as if he has just stepped outside to buy a newspaper. Kenny O’Donnell later recalls, “His knowing wife gave him a rather chilly look.”
John F Kennedy finally attends the largest ball of the evening at the Armory. The president and first lady give the impression of being close and happy.
In January 21, 1961 Khrushchev, as a good-will gesture to the newly inaugurated JFK, releases Bruce Olmstead and John McKone (two pilots shot down by the Russians) from their cells in the Lubyanka prison, where they have been held by the KGB for seven months. Besides Francis Gary Powers, these two men will be the only American fliers to get out of Moscow’s infamous Lubyanka prison alive.
January 22, 1961 Beginning today, calls begin between Judith Campbell and the White House. Seventy calls will be logged in during the next two months. Campbell is also seeing Chicago mafioso Sam Giancana on a regular basis.
January 25, 1961 The CIA’s William Harvey meets with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb.
Harvey says “I’ve been asked to form this group to assassinate people and I need to know what you can do for me.” The two men specifically discuss Castro, Lumumba and Trujillo as potential targets. Harvey’s notes of the meeting show that he and Gottlieb talk of assassination as a “last resort” and as “a confession of weakness.”
January 26, 1961 Deputy Chief of the Secret Service, Russell Daniel, retires from the number-two position after a thirty-two-year career. “Maybe it’s time for me to retire. Maybe I’m getting old and soft.”
January 28, 1961 Oswald’s mother arrives in Washington, via train from Dallas, and calls the White House in an effort to get information about her son, Lee. She is granted an immediate interview with Eugene Boster, White House Soviet Affairs officer. Although she has not heard from her son in more than a year, Mrs. Oswald quotes Boster as saying, “Oh yes, Mrs. Oswald, I’m familiar with the case.” She is promised action.
First John F Kennedy White House meeting on Vietnam: CIP approved, links U.S. aid to SVN reforms; JFK decides to replace Ambassador Burbrow with Lansdale. JFK orders the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review the military aspects of an American-supported invasion. He also authorizes continued U-2 flights over Cuba and the continuation of the CIA operations already underway. Also in a meeting today -- six days after moving into the White House JFK and his National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy receive the first general instruction on Project Pluto from the Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces and the CIA. But the Kennedy team will only become fully aware of Operation Pluto at the end of February.
An Italian magazine publishes comments by Alicia Purdom, wife of British actor Edmund Purdom. She claims that in 1951, before either of them was married, she and JFK had had an affair. Had Joseph Kennedy not stepped in to end it, they would have been married. This story is not picked up in the American press. J. Edgar Hoover promplty informs Robert Kennedy. Allegations reach Hoover that the affair involved a pregnancy and that the Kennedy family had paid a vast sum of money to hush the matter up. As an FBI agent at headquarters, Gordon Liddy sees files on JFK. From mid-1961, while on a headquarters assignment that includes research on politicians, Liddy peruses numerous 5” x 7” cards packed with file references to JFK’s past and present. “There was a lot,” he recalls. “It grew while I was there, and kept growing.”
Lyndon Johnson writes a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture supporting Billy Sol Estes’ practices with respect to his cotton land allotments. Estes in in the middle of a federal fraud scandal - by building grain warehouses and buying up federal cotton allotments to grow cotton on submerged lands. Johnson’s letter eventually becomes the impetus for an Agriculture Department investigation involving both estes and Johnson.
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