JFK Impeached

First Brother: Conspiracy Theorist

David Talbot, the founder and former editor of Salon magazine, has a new book hitting the stores, Brothers, about the relationship  between John and Robert Kennedy. In it, Talbot makes clear something we have used as a bedrock assumption to Winter of Our Discontent: The Impeachment and Trial of John F. Kennedy. Namely, Robert never for a minute believed in the Warren Commission and from Day One was looking into all the possible conspirators who would want to kill his brother.

Of course, in our book, RFK doesn't look alone because he still has JFK to help him. In our telling, it's the Kennedy brothers who realize that they came "this close" to Jack Kennedy being murdered in Dallas. They set out to find out who's responsible, to punish them and, simultaneously, to keep all the secrets of the Kennedy Administration still secret. It turns out that task is simply too much to ask. All the activities and investigations take on a momentum of their own. Eventually, while searching for killers, the question must be asked and answered: Who would want to kill the popular President Kennedy and why?

CHAPTER 3: DAMAGE CONTROL (Part 3)

    “Look at this.”  Duncan plopped a copy of the Post on Lefkowitz’s desk.  They read the competition.  They just hoped the competition bothered to read the Ledger.  “Latest Gallup poll says Kennedy’s approval rating is eighty-seven percent.”          

    “That’s Galluping approval, all right,” Lefkowitz agreed.          

    Duncan sent him a reproachful stare.  “I don’t think Jesus had an eighty-seven percent approval rating.”

    “They killed Jesus a long time ago,” Lefkowitz said.  “Nobody’s tried to blow his head off lately.  And Kennedy’s like a pig in clover right now.  What did Churchill say?”  He grabbed a Bartlett’s and found out what Churchill said:  “‘Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.’”

Kennedy's Next Speech

• In reality, President John F. Kennedy was scheduled to deliver a speech at the Dallas Trade Mart on the day he was assassinated, November 22, 1963. In our novel's timeline, the speaking engagement would also have been canceled based on what happened at Dealey Plaza. This is the speech the White House was prepared to make on the subject of national security. In Winter of Our Discontent: The Impeachment and Trial of John F. Kennedy, a version of this speech would still have been delivered by JFK, but it would have been tempered by the "near-miss" in Dallas. Here is the text of that final, undelivered speech.

I am honored to have this invitation to address the annual meeting of the Dallas Citizens Council, joined by the members of the Dallas Assembly -- and pleased to have this opportunity to salute the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest. It is fitting that these two symbols of Dallas progress are united in the sponsorship of this meeting. For they represent the best qualities, I am told, of leadership and learning in this city -- and leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. The advancement of learning depends on community leadership for financial political support, and the products of that learning, in turn, are essential to the leadership's hopes for continued progress and prosperity. It is not a coincidence that those communities possessing the best in research and graduate facilities -- from MIT to Cal Tech -- tend to attract new and growing industries. I congratulate those of you here in Dallas who have recognized these basic facts through the creation of the unique and forward-looking Graduate Research Center.

This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level. It is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason -- or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.