J.F.K.’s Health, Legacy Reexamined in Biography

Why another Kennedy book? That is the first sentence in Robert Dallek’s massive new biography of John F. Kennedy, and it’s a good question.

There have been hundreds of volumes written about the late president, who was assassinated nearly 40 years ago. Do we really need yet another deconstruction of the New Frontier, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and tales of Kennedy’s womanizing?

Dallek, whose “An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963” is due in bookstores this week, suggests that the time is ripe for a reevaluation of the man whose White House legacy continues to fascinate millions of Americans, but who served only 1,000 days in office.

Based on access to thousands of newly released documents, Dallek offers some provocative conclusions: Kennedy’s ailments were more serious than most realized, he says, but they did not diminish his performance in office. J.F.K.’s “reckless” philandering included a previously unknown fling with a 19-year-old White House intern, the historian adds, but it never compromised his ability to do his job.

Elsewhere, Dallek draws on White House documents and interviews to suggest that Kennedy was wary of getting bogged down in Southeast Asia and had actively considered removing U.S. troops from combat duty in Vietnam at the time of his death on Nov. 22, 1963. He also says the president was far more distrustful of U.S. military leaders and their willingness to consider the use of nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union than previous historians have acknowledged.

“This book may have the effect of restoring balance to Kennedy scholarship, compared to a lot of the criticisms we’ve heard in recent years,” said historian Max Holland, who is finishing a book about the Warren Commission, which investigated the president’s murder in Dallas. “It also brings us back full circle to the first major books on Kennedy, which focused on the lost promise of Kennedy. All these books try to project what he would or would not have done if he had served a second term.”

Even before publication, however, some of Dallek’s arguments have drawn criticism, mainly from some historians who say he has underestimated the effect of Kennedy’s illnesses on his ability to do his job. Others remain deeply skeptical that Kennedy was prepared to scale back U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Dallek, who wrote a critically praised two-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, made headlines last year when an excerpt of his new book, published in the Atlantic Monthly, documented the extent to which Kennedy was plagued by crippling ailments. In a scholarly coup, the 64-year-old historian had gained unprecedented access to J.F.K.’s medical records, which the Kennedy Library had kept under wraps for decades.

“Kennedy suffered from an array of problems, including colitis -- which is described today as irritable bowel syndrome -- Addison’s disease, which is a malfunctioning of the adrenal glands, prostatitis, urethritis and terrible back problems,” Dallek said in an interview from his Washington, D.C., home.

A key reason for many of these ailments, he suggests, is that Kennedy’s physicians prescribed heavy use of steroids beginning in 1937, long before doctors realized the risks they posed. On many days in the White House, Dallek notes, Kennedy’s schedule was a blur of private appointments, public events and intensive, behind-the-scenes medical care.

“An Unfinished Life” has drawn early critical praise from Publishers Weekly, which calls it a “riveting tour de force [that] will most assuredly become the benchmark J.F.K. biography for this generation.”

But historian Laurence Leamer, referring to his own research, noted that Kennedy used injections filled with amphetamines, and took issue with Dallek’s interpretation of the medical data. “It is absurd to suggest that his illnesses and amphetamine use had no impact on his presidency,” Leamer wrote earlier in the Boston Globe.

And Rick Shenkman, editor of the History News Network, a Washington state-based research organization, has raised questions about Dallek’s access to Kennedy’s medical records and why they were made available to him.

“There remains the uncomfortable suspicion that we are being had,” Shenkman wrote in an article on the HNN Web site. “By giving up the medical secrets about J.F.K. to a single scholar presumably inclined to put them in a positive light, the Kennedy family and their adjuncts leave the impression that we are once again being manipulated. The Camelot legacy, now half a century old, is still being burnished.”

Dallek responds that he was given full access to the material, with no conditions put on his historical interpretation. And, he added, “there was some discomfort on the part of some people in the Kennedy camp” when he revealed that the family had actively ordered a coverup of these sensitive medical records -- both during Kennedy’s lifetime and in the months after he was slain.

Before granting access to the papers, Dallek said, a Kennedy Library committee asked a physician to review the records. “What I was told was that he recommended the records be opened, because he thought it would make Kennedy look stoic and strong. I also just flatter myself by saying that they saw me as a serious scholar who was going to be evenhanded in dealing with them,” he said.

Dallek concludes that Kennedy was deeply dishonest in concealing his medical problems, but concedes that he may have had no choice. The candidate would have lost his 1960 bid for the presidency if these facts became known, “but he was making a strong bet that he could perform effectively as president,” the author said.

Dallek believes he won that bet, yet the evidence seems to be mixed. Shortly before delivering a Nov. 2, 1962, speech on the Soviet dismantling of missile bases in Cuba, for example, Kennedy took 10 milligrams of hydrocortisone and 10 grains of salt for a physical boost. The address was delivered without a hitch.

On another occasion, however, Dallek notes that Kennedy received an amphetamine injection before a 1962 Vienna summit session with Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev. The medication typically wore off an hour later, and the author questions whether Kennedy may have lost his “emotional and physical edge.”

Despite these revelations, “An Unfinished Life” presents a more respectful analysis of the Kennedy presidency than the critical tone of Seymour Hersh’s “The Dark Side of Camelot” and historian Thomas C. Reeves’ “A Question of Character.” At the same time, it is more skeptical of J.F.K.’s behavior than earlier, more reverential books by former White House aides Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Theodore C. Sorensen.

Historians generally give Kennedy above-average ratings, but almost never rank him among the greatest or near-great presidents.

“Yet in one poll after another, many Americans consider him one of the three best presidents we ever had, right up there with Abraham Lincoln,” Dallek said. “It undoubtedly has to do with the fact that he’s seen by so many as a martyr, a charismatic leader who was cut down in his prime.”

Dallek said he is under no illusion that his biography would be the last word on John F. Kennedy. Important new documents are likely to become available in future years, he noted, including private papers of Robert F. Kennedy, the president’s brother; a 500-page oral history by Jacqueline Kennedy, the president’s wife; health records from the president’s youth and some 90 hours of additional White House tapes recorded in 1962-63.

“I’m drawing on the wisdom of the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl, who described history as an argument without end,” Dallek said. “When it comes to Kennedy, there are many arguments to resolve.”