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In ordinary times, such an article would not have caused much of a ripple. But in Washington last week, pundits stacked theory upon theory—and the cartoonists had not had such juicy fun in months. It was promptly and widely assumed that Kennedy himself had instigated the accusation, that the President was trying to sandbag Stevenson out of the U.N. That so much importance would be attached to a magazine article was in part an outgrowth of the somewhat bizarre and distorted atmosphere that prevails in Washington. No other Administration has so single-mindedly followed the proposition that "news is a weapon" (see PRESS). No other President has maintained such close personal contacts with newsmen. Aware of the Kennedy method of the indirect nudge, the planted hint, the push by newspaper column, students of the Administration follow the work of Kennedy's favorite columnists as faithfully as Kremlinologists plod through Pravda's prose. And of all Washington newsmen, Charlie Bartlett is closest to Kennedy.
Bartlett is the old pal who introduced Jack to Jackie, who ushered at their wedding, who regularly spends weekends with the Kennedys at Glen Ora. "The President is not a source of mine," insists Bartlett. But other Washington newsmen-doubting that those weekends are spent entirely talking about old times—look at Bartlett's work as a conscious or subconscious mirror of Kennedy thinking. "If anybody else had written that piece but Bartlett," says a White House aide, "nothing would have been said."
But Bartlett did write it. Other magazines and newspapers were preparing "inside" pieces, but it was the President who urged Bartlett to compose one on his own. He also issued instructions, as he had done for several but not all other newsmen, giving Bartlett access to the White House, CIA and State Department sources.
Small wonder, then, that the Post story stirred a storm. It arose only in part about the argument whether the Bartlett-Alsop charges were accurate—or whether, as Stevenson said angrily, they were "wrong in literally every detail." Far more important was the question of whether Kennedy was trying to use his pen pals to make it impossible for Stevenson to remain at the United Nations.
The pattern has appeared before. Hardly had Chester Bowles taken office as Under Secretary of State when the observation was printed—in Charlie Bartlett's column—that he was hardly the star of the New Frontier. A few months later, with claims of coincidence on all sides, Bowles was moved to a high-sounding job of lesser importance. Similarly, Foreign Aid Director Fowler Hamilton read repeatedly in the papers of his imminent departure from the Government. Partly to find out if the rumors were true, and hoping they weren't. Hamilton went to the White House, where his resignation was swiftly accepted.
It therefore seemed more than possible that Kennedy was using leakmanship in an effort to rid his Administration of Adlai Stevenson, twice the Democratic candidate for President, leader of his own large political following—and a man whose relationship with John Kennedy has long been uneasy.