Just Jackie by Edward Klein (trending books to read TXT) 📕

Onassis had first met Jackie at a dinner party in Georgetown in the 1950s, when Jack Kennedy was a senator. The Greek shipowner and the Senator’s shy wife only exchanged a few words. A year later, when Jack and Jackie were visiting Jack’s parents in the South of France, Onassis invited them aboard the Christina, which was docked in Monte Carlo, to meet Sir Winston Churchill.

“Churchill and Kennedy immediately flung themselves into a politically nostalgic conversation that revolved around some of the stories that JFK’s father had told him about his experiences as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s from 1937 to 1941,” wrote Frank Brady, an Onassis biographer. “… While the two men talked, Onassis gave Jackie a personal tour of the yacht.”

Jackie found the Christina vulgar. The dining-room walls were covered with murals of naked girls that had been painted by Vertez, a fashionable muralist of the 1930s. The china was bad and the flowers were overdone. Everywhere, there was tacky French reproduction furniture in the Napoleonic style.

“Mr. Onassis,” Jackie fibbed as she and Jack left the Christina, “I have fallen in love with your ship.”

Several years later, when Jackie was First Lady, she and Lee visited Greece, and Onassis was present at a cocktail party given in their honor. But Onassis spent most of his time talking to Lee—with whom he was by then sexually involved—and showed little romantic interest in Jackie.

The turning point came after the death of the infant Patrick Bouvier Kennedy. Lee informed Ari that her sister was in a deep depression. He suggested that Jackie come to Greece for a recuperative cruise.

“Tell Jack that Stas and I will chaperon you,” Lee told Jackie. “It will be perfectly proper and such fun. Oh, Jacks, you can’t imagine how terrific Ari’s yacht is, and he says we can go anywhere you want. It will do you so much good to get away for a while.”

Jackie was enthusiastic about the idea. She loved Greek history and mythology, and she saw the opportunity to visit legendary places that she had only read about. In her usual methodical way, she began making notes for the trip on a yellow legal pad: “October 2 arrive Athens by plane … Afternoon October 2 depart Athens for boat….”

But Jack Kennedy was dead set against her going.

“For Christ’s sake, Jackie, Onassis is an international pirate,” he said.

Kennedy had a vivid imagination, and nobody had to tell him what went on during these cruises. In his womanizing days before the White House, he had chartered yachts, and had sailed the Mediterranean with his “girling” companions. They had turned those boats into floating bordellos, ferrying women back and forth, and passing them around freely.

He doubted that things would be any different on board the Christina. After all, hadn’t Onassis flaunted his affair with Maria Callas? Nowadays, Kennedy might occasionally frolic in the White House swimming pool with a couple of young female assistants, but that was nothing compared to Onassis’s life as a sexual predator. Or, at least, that was how Kennedy imagined Onassis’s life to be.

Kennedy’s objections went beyond mere jealousy, however. He was worried about a political backlash when it became public knowledge that Jackie was cruising the Mediterranean in the lap of luxury with the notorious Onassis. Such a trip could not come at a worse time. In the summer of 1963, Kennedy was laying plans for his reelection campaign, and what he really feared about his wife’s proposed trip on the Christina was that he would be tarred by the brush of Aristotle Onassis.

He ordered the FBI to check into reports that Onassis was violating the American embargo against Cuba by shipping oil to Castro. And he reminded Jackie that during the Eisenhower Administration, Onassis had been indieted on criminal and civil charges of fraud in connection with United States surplus ships that he had acquired. The criminal charges were dropped, and Onassis settled the civil suit by paying a hefty fine. But the scandal continued to plague him for years, and he never quite lived down his reputation for being an amoral businessman who routinely skirted the law.

Nonetheless, Jackie insisted on going on the trip. And rather than fight her about it, Kennedy relented. But he was so concerned about the potential for negative publicity that he personally took charge of drafting a White House press release. The draft, which did everything possible to disassociate the trip from Onassis himself, said that the Christina had been “secured” by Prince Stanislas Radziwill from Onassis, and suggested that Jackie would be Stas’s guest, not Onassis’s.

“If asked, we should state that Onassis is not expected on the trip, at least not in the beginning,” Kennedy wrote.

In order to spare Jackie any embarrassment, Onassis told Lee that he would be more than willing to stay on shore. But when Lee conveyed this offer to her sister, Jackie said that she would not think of it.

“I could not accept his generous hospitality and then not let him come along,” Jackie explained to Lee.

For weeks Lee continued to act as a mediator between Ari and the Kennedys. To be helpful, Ari suggested to Lee that the White House issue a press release stating that his yacht had been “arranged” by Prince Radziwill, rather than “secured.”

“Mr. Onassis thought that ‘arranged’ was even vaguer,” Lee wrote Kennedy’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln. “Please check with the President.”

Finally everything was settled, and Jackie flew to Athens accompanied by Kennedy’s choice of chaperons—Undersecretary of Commerce Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. and his wife Susan. On October 4, 1963, Captain Costa Anastassiadis, the master of the Christina, set sail from the port of Piraeus and headed for the island of Lesbos.

The Christina, a converted 2,200-ton Canadian frigate, consumed thirty tons of fuel a day, and cost nearly a million dollars a year to run, including its insurance and crew of sixty. As usual when there were guests on board, the vessel