American tabloid

11:28-11:40: BJ amp; JFK.

JFK: Hi.

BJ: Jesus.

JFK: Hardly, but thanks anyway.

BJ: How about, hello, Mr. President?

JFK: How about, hello, Jack?

BJ: Hello, Jack.

JFK: What’s your name?

BJ: Barb Jahelka.

JFK: You don’t look like a Jahelka.

BJ: It’s Lindscott, actually. I work with my exhusband, so I kept my married name.

JFK: Is Lindscott Irish?

BJ: It’s an Anglo-German bastardization.

JFK: The Irish are all bastards. Bastards, cranks and drunks.

BJ: Can I quote you?

JFK: After I’m re-elected. Put it in the portable John F. Kennedy, next to ‘Ask not what your country can do for you.’

BJ: Can I ask you a question?

JFK: Sure.

BJ: Is being President of the United States the biggest fucking blast on earth?

JFK (sustained laughter): It truly is. Your supporting cast of characters is worth the price of admission alone.

BJ: For instance?

JFK: That rube Lyndon Johnson. Charles de Gaulle, who’s had a poker up his ass since the year 1910. That closet fairy J. Edgar Hoover. These crazy Cuban exiles my brother’s been dealing with, 80% of whom are lowlife scum. Harold Macmillan, who defines the word-

MU2: Excuse me, Mr. President.

JFK: Yes?

MU1: You have a call.

JFK: Tell them I’m busy.

MU2: It’s Governor Brown.

JFK: Tell him I’ll call him back.

MU1: Yes, Sir.

JFK: So, Barb, did you vote for me?

BJ: I was on tour, so I didn’t get the chance to vote.

JFK: You could have cast an absentee ballot.

BJ: It slipped my mind.

JFK: What’s more important, the Twist or my career?

BJ: The Twist.

JFK (sustained laughter): Excuse my naivete. When you ask a silly question.

BJ: It was more like ask a candid question, get a candid answer.

JFK: That’s true. You know, my brother thinks you’re overqualified for this party.

BJ: He acts like he’s slumming himself.

JFK: That’s perceptive.

BJ: Your brother never won a dime at poker.

JFK: Which is one of his strengths. Now, what happens when this silly dance craze of yours wears itself out?

BJ: I’ll have saved enough money to set my sister up in a Bob’s Big Boy franchise in Tunnel City, Wisconsin.

JFK: I carried Wisconsin.

BJ: I know. My sister voted for you.

JFK: What about your parents?

BJ: My father’s dead. My mother hates Catholics, so she voted for Nixon.

JFK: A split vote isn’t too bad. That’s a lovely mink, by the way.

BJ: I borrowed It from Peter.

JFK: Then it’s one of the six thousand furs my father bought my sisters.

BJ: I read about your father’s stroke. It made me sad.

JFK: Don’t be. He’s too evil to die. And by the way, do you travel with that revue Peter told me about?

BJ: Constantly. In fact, I’m leaving for an East Coast swing on the 27th.

JFK: Would you leave your itinerary with the White House switchboard? I thought we might have dinner if our schedules permit.

BJ: I’d like that. And I will call.

JFK: Please. And take the mink with you. You do things for it that my sister never could.

BJ: I couldn’t.

JFK: I insist. Really, she won’t miss it.

BJ: All right, then.

JFK: I don’t normally raid people’s closets, but I want you to have it.

BJ: Thank you, Jack.

JFK: My pleasure. And regretfully, I have to make some phone calls.

BJ: Until next time, then.

JFK: Yes. That’s the way to look at it.

MU1: Mr. President?

JFK: Hold on, I’m coming.

11:41-12:03: silence. (Wave noise indicates that BJ has remained on the beach deck.)

12:03-12:09: garbled voices and hi-fi noise. (Obvious departures throughout.)

12:10: BJ amp; LS leave the party. Live tape feed olose: 12:11 a.m., February 20, 1962.

DOCUMENT INSERT: 3/4/62. Carlyle Hotel bedroom microphone transcript. Transcribed by: Fred Turentine. Tape/written copies to: P. Bondurant, W. Littell.

BJ phoned the listening post to say she was meeting the target “for dinner.” She was instructed to double open amp; shut the bedroom door to activate the mike. Active feed from 8:09 p.m. on. Initial log: BJ-Barb Jahelka. JFK-John F. Kennedy.

8:09-8:20: sexual activity. (See tape transcript. High sound quality. Voices discernable.)

8:21-8:33: conversation.

JFK: Oh, God.

BJ: Hmmm.

JFK: Slide over a little. I want to take some pressure off my back.

BJ: How’s that?

JFK: Better.

BJ: Want a back rub?

JFK: No. There’s nothing you can do that you haven’t done already.

BJ: Thanks. And I’m glad you called me.

JFK: What did I get you out of?

BJ: Two shows at the Rumpus Room in Passaic, New Jersey.

JFK: Oh, God.

BJ: Ask me a question.

JFK: All right. Where’s that mink coat I gave you?

BJ: My ex-husband sold it.

JFK: You let him do that?

BJ: It’s a game we play.

JFK: What do you mean?

BJ: He knows I’m going to leave him soon. I’m in debt to him, so he takes these little advantages whenever he finds them.

JFK: It’s a large debt, then?

BJ: Very large.

JFK: You’ve got my interest. Tell me more.

BJ: It’s just grief from Tunnel City, Wisconsin, circa 1948.

JFK: I like Wisconsin.

BJ: I know. You carried it.

JFK (laughing): You’re droll. Ask me a question.

BJ: Who’s the biggest fuckhead in American politics?

JFK (laughing): That closet queen J. Edgar Hoover, who’ll be retiring on January 1, 1965.

BJ: I hadn’t heard anything about that.

JFK: You will.

BJ: I get it. You have to be re-elected first.

JFK: You’re learning. Now, tell me more about Tunnel City, Wisconsin, in 1948.

BJ: Not now.

JFK: Why?

BJ: I’m tantalizing you, so we can prolong this thing of ours.

JFK (laughing): You know men.

BJ: Yes, I do.

JFK: Who taught you? Initially, I mean.

BJ: The entire adolescent male population of Tunnel City, Wisconsin. Don’t look so shocked. The total number of boys was eleven.

JFK: Go on.

BJ: No.

JFK: Why?

BJ: Two seconds after we made love you looked at your watch. I’m thinking that the way to keep you in bed is to string out my autobiography.

JFK (laughing): You can contribute to my memoirs. You can say John F. Kennedy wooed women with room service club sandwiches and quickies.

BJ: It was a great club sandwich.

JFK (laughing): You’re droll and cruel.

BJ: Ask me a question.

JFK: No. You ask me one.

BJ: Tell me about Bobby.

JFK: Why?

BJ: He seemed suspicious of me at Peter’s party.

JFK: He’s suspicious in general, because he’s crawling around in the legal gutter with Jimmy Hoffa and the Mafia, and it’s starting to get to him. It’s some sort of occupational policeman’s disease that he’s developed. One day it’s Jimmy Hoffa and land fraud in Florida. The next day it’s deporting Carlos Marcello. Now it’s Hoffa and the Test Fleet taxi case in Tennessee, and don’t ask me what it means, because I’m not a lawyer and don’t share Bobby’s need to pursue and eradate.

BJ: He’s tougher than you, isn’t he?

JFK: Yes, he is. And as I told a girl several years ago, he’s truly passionate and generous.

BJ: You’re looking at your watch again.

JFK: I have to go. I’m due at the U.N.

BJ: Good luck, then.

JFK: I won’t need it. The General Assembly is nothing but fuckheads. Let’s do this again, Barb. I had fun.

BJ: So did I. And thanks for the club sandwich.

JFK (laughing): There’s more where that came from.

Single door slam deactivates mike. Transcript close: 8:34 p.m., March 3rd, 1962.

DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/9/62. Carlyle Hotel bedroom microphone transcript. Transcribed by: Fred Turentine. Tape/written copies to: P. Bondurant, W. Littell.

BJ phoned the listening post at 4:20 p.m. She said she was meeting the target “for dinner” at 5:30. Active feed from 6:12 p.m. on. Initial log: BJ-Barb Jahelka. JFK-John F. Kennedy.

6:13-6:25: sexual activity. (See tape transcript. High sound quality. Voices discernable.)

6:14-6:32: conversation.

BJ: Oh, God.

JFK: Last time I said that.

BJ: This time was better.

JFK (laughing): I thought so, too. But I thought the club sandwich lacked pizzazz.

BJ: Ask me a question.

JFK: What happened in Tunnel City, Wisconsin, In 1948?

BJ: I’m amazed that you remembered.

JFK: It’s only been a month or so.

BJ: I know. But it was just a casual comment that I made.

JFK: It was a provocative one, though.

BJ: Thanks.

JFK: Barb.

BJ: All right. On May 9, I jilted Billy Kreuger. Billy got together with Tom McCandless, Fritzie Schott and Johnny Coates. They decided to teach me a lesson. I was out of town, though. My parents took me to a church fellowship convention in Racine. My sister Margaret stayed at home. She was rebellious, and she hadn’t figured out that church conventions were good places to meet boys.

JFK: Keep going.

BJ: To be continued.

JFK: Oh, God. I hate unresolved mysteries.

BJ: Next time.

JFK: How do you know there’ll be a next time?

BJ (laughing): I know what kind of interest I’m capable of sustaining.

JFK: You’re good, Barb. You’re damn good.

BJ: I want to see if it’s possible to know a man in one hour, once-a-month increments.

JFK: You’ll never make an untoward demand of me, will you?

BJ: No. I will not.

JFK: God bless you.

BJ: Do you believe in God?

JFK: Only for public appearances. Now, ask me a question.

BJ: Do you have somebody who finds women for you?

JFK (laughing): Not really. Kemper Boyd’s probably the closest thing, but he makes me a tad uncomfortable, so I haven’t really used him since the Inauguration.

BJ: Who’s Kemper Boyd?

JFK: He’s a Justice Department lawyer. You’d like him. He’s wildly good-looking and rather dangerous.

BJ: Are you jealous of him? Is that why he makes you uncomfortable?

JFK: He makes me uncomfortable because his one great regret is that he’s not a Kennedy, which is quite a tough regret to respect. He’s been dealing with some of those lowlife exiles for Bobby’s Study Group, and I think in some ways he’s no better than they are. He just went to Yale Law School, latched onto me and proved himself useful.

BJ: Pimps ingratiate themselves with authority. God, look at Peter.

JFK: Kemper’s no Peter Lawford, I’ll say that for him. Peter’s got no soul to sell, and Kemper sold his at a pretty steep price and didn’t even know it.

BJ: How so?

JFK: I can’t go into details, but he threw over the woman he was engaged to to curry favor with me and my family. You see, he came from money, but his father lost it all and killed himself. He’s living out some unsavory fantasy with me, and once you recognize it, the man becomes hard to take.

BJ: Let’s talk about something else.

JFK: How about Tunnel City, Wisconsin, in 1948?

BJ: To be continued.

JFK: Shit.

BJ: I like cliffhangers.

JFK: I don’t. I hated movie serials when I was a boy.

BJ: You should install a wall clock here. That way, you won’t have to sneak looks at your watch.

JFK: You’re droll. Hand me my trousers, would you?

BJ: Here.

Single door slam deactivates mike. Transcript close: 6:33 p.m., April 8, 1962.