Killing Kennedy

5

MARCH 24, 1962

PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA

7:00 P.M.

John F. Kennedy is tired but alert. He is in the resort city of Palm Springs, standing on the patio of the Spanish-style home of show business legend Bing Crosby. But Crosby is not present this evening, having turned his comfortable house over to JFK and his entourage for the weekend. Kennedy watches as the party unfolds around the crowded pool on this warm spring evening. Sounds of laughter and splashing fill the night air. Beyond the pool, the president sees boulder-strewn mountains rising above the one-acre property, forming a stunning desert backdrop.

Yesterday, Kennedy gave a rousing speech to eighty-five thousand people at the University of California, Berkeley. He spoke of democracy and freedom, key themes throughout the cold war. He then flew south on Air Force One to Vandenberg Air Force Base, where he watched his first-ever missile launch. The slim white Atlas rocket blasted off without incident, proving that the United States was catching up in the space race, which was going strong, with the Soviet Union having just this week reached an agreement to share outer space research with America’s cold war adversaries.

Palm Springs, and Crosby’s secluded home, is the perfect weekend hideaway after the hectic West Coast trip. There was a brief bit of official business earlier in the day, when the president met with Dwight Eisenhower to discuss foreign policy. But now JFK can finally unwind with a cigar and a daiquiri or two.

But the president is not completely relaxed. He knows he has offended good friend and longtime supporter Frank Sinatra by canceling his plans to spend the weekend at Sinatra’s house and staying at the home of Crosby, a Republican, of all things—but the president will deal with that symbolism later. Tonight he just wants to have fun.

A lot of fun.

It’s Saturday, which normally means that Jackie and the children are spending the weekend at the Glen Ora estate. But the First Lady, as the whole world knows from the many media accounts, is halfway around the globe on an official visit to India and Pakistan. The success of her television special confirmed what her husband has known for years: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy is John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s number one political asset. He’s already making plans to leverage her popularity for his 1964 reelection campaign.

And while the president would be a fool to damage their marriage (and his career) by a brazen act of public infidelity, there are moments when this normally pragmatic man is helplessly self-destructive.

Such as now.

Among the guests at Bing Crosby’s estate is the most glamorous and perhaps the most troubled woman in Hollywood. JFK has cultivated a relationship with her for almost two years and is quite certain that tonight Marilyn Monroe is finally his for the taking.

The First Lady on a boat cruise on Lake Pichola in Rajasthan during her official visit to India and Pakistan in 1962. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

The president of the United States takes another pull on his cigar and steps into the bedroom. His wife is eight thousand miles away. He can do anything he wants tonight. Anything. And there’s absolutely no chance his wife will walk in on him.

* * *

“My wife had her first and last ride on an elephant!” JFK spontaneously informed the packed stadium at the University of California the day before. The crowd roared and laughed in approval.

That’s how JFK talks to America about his Jackie: as if they’re eavesdropping on a private conversation. People crave even the smallest intimate nugget of information about their marriage. The president’s keen political instincts tell him, though he never admits it aloud, that the Kennedys aren’t just the most glamorous couple in America—they’re the most glamorous couple in the entire world. The cool heat of their relationship is an inspiration to lovers everywhere.

The Kennedy children would often play in the Oval Office while the president attended to his official duties. (Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

And it’s true: the Kennedys do love each other. JFK is a doting father and husband who cherishes his family. He lets Caroline and John play in the Oval Office as he works, and the presidential bathtub is often filled with floating rubber ducks and pink pigs, because he knows they amuse baby John. He spends a few minutes in Jackie’s bedroom each morning before walking down to the office and likes it when his wife does the same for him each afternoon—waking him up from his nap, the two of them catching up on the news of the day as he gets dressed.

The president’s only complaint about his wife is that Jackie has a profound indifference to fiscal discipline. She spends more money on clothes than the U.S.government pays him to be president. (JFK’s net worth is more than $10 million. He dedicates his $100,000 presidential salary to charities such as the Boy Scouts and the United Negro College Fund.)

Yet there is an enormous contradiction in the Kennedys’ otherwise charmed marriage. The president’s voracious sexual appetite is the elephant that the president rides around on each and every day while pretending that it doesn’t exist.

There’s no way the First Lady can keep up. She’s raising a family, restoring the White House, and juggling a busy social calendar. Jackie would have to be superhuman to meet the president’s physical needs. Plus, he wouldn’t be satisfied with just one woman. The sheer volume of call girls, socialites, starlets, and stewardesses escorted into the White House whenever Jackie and the kids are away is beyond the realm of most men’s moral or physical capacities. It’s gotten to the point where the Secret Service no longer even checks the names and nationalities of all the women Dave Powers procures for the president.

More than one federal agent believes the situation is dangerous. The number of women who have access to the president is, of course, a security breach that could bring down the presidency, whether through blackmail or even, say, covert assassination via hypodermic injection. It is a topic of discussion among the Secret Service. But its job is to protect the president, not lecture him. The agents turn a blind eye to his behavior, and some even provide cover for him. Being a member of the White House detail means being married to the job, and the fifty to eighty hours of overtime every month can increase a Secret Service agent’s paycheck by more than $1,000 a year. An agent would be a fool to give that up for the sake of a morality lesson.

The White House press corps also looks the other way. The president’s private life is none of their business, or that of the public’s. White House reporters know that the president cherishes loyalty and will cut them off from full access if he doesn’t get it. Not a word about suspected infidelities is printed or broadcast. In fact, the Washington bureau chief for Newsweek, Ben Bradlee, a very close friend of the president’s, will forever claim to know nothing about JFK’s philandering.

Meanwhile, the president is having sex with Bradlee’s sister-in-law.

Sometimes the objects of Kennedy’s flirtations actually work in the White House, as in the case of Jackie’s secretary, Pamela Turnure, and Evelyn Lincoln’s assistant, Priscilla Wear. This makes the president’s courting easier from a logistical and security standpoint, but brings about its own unique dangers.

For instance, the president is quite fond of the occasional afternoon swim with the two twentysomething secretaries Priscilla Wear and Jill Cowen—nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle by the Secret Service. A Secret Service agent is always positioned outside the door to make sure no one enters.

But one day the First Lady appeared at the pool door, eager to go for a swim. This had never before happened. The panic-stricken agent barred the door and tried to explain to Jackie that she was not allowed to use the pool of the very White House she was so lovingly restoring.

Inside, JFK heard the commotion, quickly pulled on his robe, and fled the pool just before he could be caught. Agents would later recall that his large wet footprints and the smaller prints of his female swim partners left a very clear trail, which Jackie did not see, having left in a huff.

* * *

Even as one part of the president’s brain strategizes clever ways to deal with Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, and Charles de Gaulle, another part strategizes ways to have as much sex as he wants without Jackie walking in on him. And as Kennedy gets more and more comfortable in the White House, his affairs get more and more outrageous.

“We got to the point where we’d say, ‘What else is new?’” one member of the Kennedy Secret Service detail later remembered. “There were women everywhere. Very often, depending on what shift you were on, you’d either see them going up, or you’d see them coming out in the morning. People were vacuuming and the ushers were around. There were several of them that were regular visitors. Not when Jackie was there, however.”

When Kennedy goes more than a few days without extramarital sex, he becomes a different man—so much so that the Secret Service breathes a sigh of relief whenever Jackie takes the kids away for the weekend. “When she was there, it was no fun,” a longtime agent would later admit. “He just had headaches. You’d really see him droop because he wasn’t getting laid. He was like a rooster getting hit with a water hose.”

Sex is John Kennedy’s Achilles’ heel. Why in the world does he do this to Jackie? And what is he doing to the nation in the process?

* * *

Just a few short weeks after being named attorney general, Bobby Kennedy received a special file from J. Edgar Hoover, the pug-nosed and Machiavellian head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the file was evidence about the president’s extramarital affairs. It turns out that while the newspapers were looking the other way, the FBI had been tracking JFK’s liaisons since the late 1940s, because he was seeing a woman thought to be a spy for Nazi Germany. The file is Hoover’s idea of job security. He wants everybody to know the FBI will never be diminished—and that there’s nothing illicit going on in America that he doesn’t know about. For reasons of national security, not even the president of the United States is above the scrutiny of the FBI.

In early 1962, as President Kennedy’s visit to Palm Springs is being planned, a Justice Department investigation into organized crime reveals that singer Frank Sinatra is deeply involved with the Mafia. This is trouble for the Kennedys—Americans know that Sinatra not only supports the president but is also a close personal friend. And if that isn’t enough to compromise the attorney general and the president of the United States, their sister Patricia’s husband, movie actor Peter Lawford, is a member of Sinatra’s famous Rat Pack.

Making the matter more delicate is a brand-new file from Hoover delivered to Bobby just a few weeks before the Palm Springs trip. This one indicates that the president of the United States is having sex with a consort of Sam Giancana, not only one of the most notorious mobsters in the country, but also at the top of the list of Mafia kingpins whom Bobby Kennedy is trying to bring down. The woman’s name is Judith Campbell, and Hoover is describing her as a major security risk. Unbeknownst to Patricia Kennedy Lawford, her husband owes that affiliation to her family heritage. Sinatra has long wanted to be closer to the throne of power. Once he realized that the Kennedys were on the verge of becoming the most powerful family in America, he allowed Lawford into his inner circle. In addition, it was Patricia Kennedy Lawford who bankrolled the script for Oceans 11, assuming her husband would costar with Sinatra. But Dean Martin was given the role instead. Sinatra treats Peter Lawford like a hanger-on, suspecting that Patricia Kennedy Lawford, like most people outside the Hollywood bubble, will do almost anything to bask in the reflected glow of movie stars’ fame.

And Sinatra is correct. Despite numerous snubs, the Lawfords remain keen to be part of the Rat Pack “vibe.”

Thus, the woman who extended Sinatra’s invitation for JFK to stay in his Palm Springs home on his visit to the city is none other than Patricia Kennedy Lawford.

After reading Hoover’s Sinatra file, Bobby Kennedy tells the president to stay somewhere else in Palm Springs. Bobby doesn’t care that this slight might sever a long-standing political relationship with Sinatra, who not only campaigned extensively on behalf of Kennedy in 1960, but also worked overtime to coordinate the inaugural gala.

The truth is that Bobby has no choice. Sinatra has had repeated contact with ten of the biggest names in organized crime. The FBI reports detail not only the times and dates when the singer is phoning Mafia heads from home, but also reveal that the mobsters are dialing his private number. “The nature of Sinatra’s work may, on occasion, bring him into contact with underworld figures,” reads the report. “But this does not account for his friendship and/or financial involvement with people such as Joe and Rocco Fischetti, cousins of Al Capone, Paul Emilio D’Amato, John Formosa and Sam Giancana—all of whom are on the list of racketeers.”

The FBI has been keeping files on Sinatra since the late 1940s, chronicling his associations with other famous gangsters such as Lucky Luciano and Mickey Cohen. As early as February 1947 there were reports that he had vacationed in Havana with Luciano and his bodyguards, and that the trio were seen together at “the race track, the gambling casino, and at private parties.” What made these sightings so extraordinary was that Luciano had recently been paroled from prison and deported to Sicily. Such a high-profile appearance in Havana was his way of thumbing his nose at U.S. law enforcement.

President Kennedy was once close friends with Frank Sinatra, shown here in California. (AFP/Getty Images)

The list of alleged associations goes on and on. Bobby’s true surprise about Sinatra, however, is not that the singer is connected with the Mafia. Rather, it’s that the FBI has evidence linking the Kennedy White House with organized crime through the singer. In fact, Hoover has years of files documenting the close relationship between Sinatra, the Kennedys, and high-profile members of the Mafia such as Giancana—who wears a sapphire pinkie ring given to him by none other than Frank Sinatra. The most damning bits of the report state that Giancana frequently visits Sinatra’s Palm Springs estate. Agents also found a number of calls from Giancana’s good friend Judith Campbell to Evelyn Lincoln, the president’s secretary, suggesting a clear link between the Kennedy White House and organized crime.

Frank Sinatra and John Kennedy have shared many laughs, many drinks, and, as the FBI suggests, a woman or two. In a separate investigation in February 1960, the FBI observed JFK at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas with the Rat Pack and noted that “show girls from all over town were running in and out of the Senator’s suite.” Sinatra and the Rat Pack sang the national anthem to open the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Sinatra has visited the Kennedys’ family estate at Hyannis Port and once startled guests by performing an impromptu concert at the living room piano. Sinatra even reworded his 1959 hit song “High Hopes” to make it an anthem for the Kennedy campaign.

There are also rumors that the Kennedys used the Mafia to help influence voters during the 1960 election.

The file is just a warning: Hoover is letting Bobby know that the connection between the Kennedys and organized crime is on the verge of becoming widespread public knowledge. And only Hoover can stop that.

Despite their significant history, JFK listens to Bobby and cuts Sinatra off in an instant. They’re done. The singer has become a snare that could potentially entangle Kennedy and bring him down—and no friendship is worth the presidency. Ruthless might be a word commonly associated with Bobby, but now and again the president can be just as cold-blooded.

* * *

Bobby phones Peter Lawford to break the news that the president will not be staying with Sinatra. Lawford owes his career to Sinatra. He fears the man and is reluctant to make the call to Sinatra canceling the presidential weekend.

So JFK himself gets on the phone to Lawford. “As President, I just can’t stay at Sinatra’s and sleep in the same bed that Sam Giancana or some other hood slept in,” he tells his brother-in-law. Kennedy then demands two favors. The first is to find him someplace else to rendezvous with Monroe during his weekend in Palm Springs. The second is to buck up and break the news to Frank.

Peter Lawford has no choice but to make the calls. Chris Dumphy, a Florida Republican, connects Lawford with Bing Crosby, solving Lawford’s first problem. The president’s womanizing is an open secret. Crosby, who is out of town, suspects what might go on at his house, but he doesn’t care. He’s worked in Hollywood long enough to know that infidelity is as common as sunrise.

Delivering the news to Sinatra is not so simple.

The forty-six-year-old singer has been anticipating this visit for months. He has purchased extra land next to his property and built cottages for the Secret Service. He has installed special state-of-the-art phone lines. A gold plaque has been hung in the bedroom the president will use, forever commemorating the night when “John F. Kennedy Slept Here.” Pictures of JFK are hung all over the main house. A flagpole is erected so that the presidential standard can fly over the compound. And most important, Sinatra has built a special new cement landing pad for the president’s helicopter. Sinatra is giddy about the visit. So giddy, in fact, that it doesn’t even bother him that the president will be rendezvous-ing with Sinatra’s former girlfriend, Marilyn Monroe.

The truth is, the Kennedys are somewhat embarrassed that Sinatra believes his home will become the western White House. It’s not that the Kennedy clan doesn’t like Sinatra—although Jackie can’t stand him—but they prefer to keep the flamboyant singer at arm’s length.

Finally, Lawford breaks the news by phone. Sinatra listens, but only for as long as it takes to realize that he is being cast out of the president’s circle of friends. The singer slams down the receiver and hurls the phone to the floor. “Do you want to know where he’s staying?” Sinatra screams to his valet. “Bing Crosby’s house. That’s where. And he’s a Republican!”

Sinatra will never forget this slight. He calls Bobby Kennedy every name in the book, then phones Lawford back and cuts him off from his inner circle. He races around his house and tears Kennedy photos from the walls, then finds a sledgehammer and storms outside to single-handedly destroy the concrete helipad.

* * *

John Kennedy stands just outside a back door watching the crowd drifting in and out of Bing Crosby’s home. Secret Service agents hover at the edges of the lawn and in the shadows of the palm trees and shrubbery ringing the grounds. Marilyn Monroe is already by the president’s side. There is an intimacy in their movements that leaves no doubt they will be sleeping together tonight.

Monroe has been drinking. A lot. Or so it appears.

The thirty-five-year-old movie star is not a stupid woman, although she often plays that role both on- and offscreen. “I thought you were dumb,” her character in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is told. “I can be smart when it’s important,” she replies, “but most men don’t like it.”

It is a line that Norma Jean Baker herself suggested. After spending much of her youth in foster homes, she began modeling in her teens and landed a movie contract in 1946, changing her name to Marilyn Monroe. Born a brunette, she dyed her hair and began cultivating the “dumb blonde” persona that became her calling card. Her career path led her to a number of high-profile performances in movies such as How to Marry a Millionaire, The Seven Year Itch, and Some Like It Hot. She has been married and divorced three times, and has developed a reputation for abusing alcohol and prescription drugs. Substance abuse is slowly destroying her career. But she is still voluptuous, vivacious, and clever enough in her lucid moments that her true intelligence reveals itself.

Kennedy first met Monroe at a dinner party in the 1950s. Their relationship ramped up on July 15, 1960, the night he accepted the Democratic nomination for president. The two flirted that night, much to the dismay of Kennedy’s staff, who were immediately concerned the pair would be caught having an affair during the campaign. Patricia Kennedy Lawford went so far as to pull Marilyn aside and warn her not to have sex with her brother.

But that was almost two years ago—and ironically, it was Patricia who invited Marilyn and JFK to a dinner party at her New York home in late February 1962. Marilyn marched in late, as was her custom. She’d been drinking sherry. Her dress was a small beads-and-sequins affair. “It was the tightest goddam dress I ever saw on a woman,” the legendary show business manager Milt Ebbins would later remember of Monroe’s pre-party preparations—specifically of pulling the dress on over Monroe’s head: “We couldn’t get it past her hips. Of course, typical of Marilyn, she wasn’t wearing any underwear either. So there I was, on my knees in front of her … pulling down this dress with all my might, trying to get it [down] past her big ass.”

Ebbins was eventually successful with the dress, and JFK immediately gravitated to Monroe’s side as she sashayed into the party. A photographer attempted to take their picture, but the president quickly turned his back so they wouldn’t be photographed together. For good measure, the Secret Service demanded the film.

Before the night was over, JFK had casually invited Marilyn to meet him in Palm Springs on March 24. To close the deal, he confided that “Jackie won’t be there.”

* * *

Now Marilyn Monroe wears a loose robe as the party swirls at the Crosby estate. She is “calm and relaxed,” in the opinion of one partygoer.

The president is entranced by her wit and intellect and would be thrilled to add such a famous sex symbol to his list of conquests. He also finds her nurturing. After Kennedy complains of his chronic back pain, Monroe phones her friend Ralph Roberts, an actor and masseur knowledgeable about back issues. When she puts Kennedy on the phone, Roberts doesn’t know it’s the president he’s talking to, but he can’t help but think that the man on the other end sounds just like John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Roberts offers a quick diagnosis and hangs up after a few minutes, thinking to himself that Marilyn is once again up to no good.

In some ways, she can’t help herself. Monroe has been married to two very famous and powerful men—baseball player Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller—but JFK eclipses them by far. “Marilyn Monroe is a soldier,” she later tells her therapist, speaking in the third person. “Her commander-in-chief is the greatest and most powerful man in the world. The first duty of a soldier is to obey the commander-in-chief. He says do that, you do it.” The attorney general has caught her attention, as well. “It’s like the Navy—the president is the captain and Bobby is his executive officer,” she will tell her therapist. “Bobby would do anything for his country, and so would I. I will never embarrass him. As long as I have memory, I have John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

Yet despite her passion and beauty, Marilyn Monroe is damaged goods. Her three marriages aren’t socially acceptable in the Kennedys’ Catholic world, nor is her affair with Frank Sinatra. JFK knows that she broke up Arthur Miller’s previous marriage so that she could marry the playwright. More ominously, the president suspects that Monroe has visions of moving into the White House sometime soon. He has even made a point of telling her that she’s “not First Lady material.”

No, Marilyn is not going to replace Jackie, no matter what the movie star might believe during the two nights she spends with the president in Palm Springs. Marilyn gives JFK a chrome Ronson Adonis cigarette lighter as a gift to remind him of their special time together, although the president certainly needs no reminder of his time with the world’s leading sex symbol.

* * *

News of the Kennedy-Monroe liaison would be about as explosive as it gets. The question lingering in the minds of Kennedy’s Secret Service detail and the president’s close-knit Irish Mafia cronies is why the president continues to take such risks. Some believe it’s a carryover from the old days of the Kennedy heritage in Ireland, where the leader of a clan commonly had free rein to sleep with women outside of marriage. Until his recent stroke, the president’s father, Joseph Kennedy, behaved in just such a manner.

In addition, some believe that John Kennedy’s personal tragedies—the death of his brother and of his infant child, and his own brushes with death—have given him a fatalistic attitude. All the sex is his carpe diem way of living life to the utmost.

And then there is the issue of his chronic physical pain. John Kennedy’s appearance may be robust, but he suffers from a nervous stomach, back pain, and Addison’s disease. His physical activity is limited to walking, sailing, and the occasional nine holes of golf. He can barely ride a horse. And the Kennedy family’s legendary games of touch football don’t include him as much as they used to.

Sex is the president’s physical release of choice. He’s an adrenaline junkie, and his psyche requires illicit excitement. As he told a family friend, “The chase is more fun than the kill.”

* * *

“Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”

Two months after their weekend in Palm Springs, Marilyn Monroe stands before a dazzled crowd in New York’s Madison Square Garden, singing the traditional birthday song in the most salacious manner possible. Her skintight dress leaves little to the imagination, both front and back, even as her breathless words inspire a thousand questions. Marilyn, still stung by JFK’s blunt assessment that she is not First Lady material, is desperately trying to rekindle the Palm Springs nights of romance.

“Happy Birthday to you,” she purrs into the microphone.

The date is May 19, 1962, ten days before JFK’s actual birthday. Jackie, once again, is not in attendance, but she knows all about Marilyn. She’s not so much hurt as disgusted, correctly sensing that the president is taking advantage of an emotionally troubled woman who is easy prey for such a powerful man.

The president never comes in contact with the seemingly tipsy Marilyn as he climbs to the lectern at Madison Square Garden. But he does favor her with a lupine gaze that one journalist will later remember as “quite a sight to behold, and if I ever saw an appreciation of feminine beauty in the eyes of a man, it was in John F. Kennedy’s at that moment.”

Marilyn Monroe has become so obsessed with JFK that she calls the White House constantly, but her singing performance falls on deaf ears. The president has moved on, putting as much distance between himself and Marilyn as he did between himself and Frank Sinatra.

“Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” Marilyn Monroe serenaded JFK at his birthday gala in 1962. (Getty Images)

Like Sinatra, Marilyn is a snare that could easily entangle Kennedy and bring down his presidency. This is where the pragmatist in JFK returns, overriding his libido. He is willing to take great personal risks to satisfy his sexual needs, but he does not gamble when it comes to remaining in power. Better to have Monroe and Sinatra and the Mafia as enemies whom he can view from a wary distance, rather than as friends who could drag him down.

At the lectern before the party faithful in New York City, the president adopts the chaste mien of an altar boy. “I can now retire from politics after having ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet and wholesome way,” the president speaks into the microphone, his wry delivery suggesting that he is above such sexual shenanigans.

But the president hasn’t given up on extramarital affairs. He is just beginning a new long-term relationship with a nineteen-year-old virgin whom he deflowers on Jackie’s bed.

* * *

The presidency is a daunting and lonely job. Moments like the Madison Square Garden party offer a welcome respite from the pressure. JFK basks in the birthday appreciation, which comes in the midst of a campaign rally that raises more than $1 million for the Democratic Party.

The president has no way of knowing that he will celebrate this special day just one more time.

* * *

In the faraway Soviet city of Minsk, Lee Harvey Oswald has finally cleared the tangle of red tape that has prevented him from returning home.

The plan now is for him, Marina, and five-week-old June Lee to take the train to the American embassy in Moscow to pick up their travel documents.

On May 18, Oswald is discharged from his job at the Gorizont (Horizon) Electronics Factory. Few are sad to see him go. The plant director thinks Oswald is careless and oversensitive and lacks initiative. Even Marina thinks her new husband is lazy and knows he resents taking orders.

The Oswalds arrive in Moscow on May 24, 1962, the same day that navy test pilot Scott Carpenter becomes the second American astronaut to orbit the earth. President Kennedy is quick to commend Carpenter for his courage and skill, even as he grapples with Congress over the issue of affordable nationwide health care.

On June 1 the Oswalds board a train from Moscow to Holland. Lee Harvey carries a promissory note from the U.S. embassy for $435.71 to help start his life anew in America. On June 2, as Secretary of the Navy John Connally wins a runoff to become the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas, the Oswalds’ train crosses the Soviet border at Brest. Two days later they board the SS Maasdam, bound for America, where they stay belowdecks most of the journey. Oswald is ashamed of Marina’s cheap dresses and doesn’t want her to be seen in public. He passes the time in their small cabin writing rants about his growing disillusionment with governmental power.

Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald with their daughter, June Lee, in 1962. (Getty Images)

The Maasdam docks in Hoboken, New Jersey—Frank Sinatra’s hometown—on June 13, 1962. The Oswalds pass through customs without incident and take a small room at New York City’s Times Square Hotel. The plan is to stay there until they can afford to fly to Texas, where Oswald’s brother Robert lives. There, Oswald can finally settle down and find work.

The next morning, in far-off Vietnam, South Vietnamese soldiers are flown aboard U.S. helicopters to combat a Communist stronghold, a move that forces President Kennedy to backpedal publicly on the issue of direct U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, a war that he believes is vital to stanching the worldwide spread of communism.

Meanwhile, thanks to a loan from his brother, Lee Harvey Oswald and his family fly to Dallas. The city simmers with a rage that mirrors Oswald’s ongoing personal unhappiness in many ways. The Deep South swung in President Kennedy’s favor during the election, but there are pockets of militant anger about Kennedy being the first Roman Catholic president, his desire to bring about racial equality, and what some perceive as his Communist tendencies.

This is the environment into which the Oswald family arrives. They land at a Dallas area airport called Love Field, where the president and First Lady will touch down aboard Air Force One in seventeen short months.

Oswald is unhappy that his return to the United States has not attracted widespread media attention—or any media attention, for that matter. But even as he fumes that the press is nowhere in sight, he has no idea that he is being secretly watched—by a very powerful concern.