American Experience

Historian Michael Beschloss on Kennedy's Private Life

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One of the fascinating things about Kennedy is you see this very cautious, self protective, public leader coexisting in the same body as a President who took private risks. One risk was that, from all the evidence we have, Kennedy was involved with a number of women whose backgrounds he did not know, who were not checked out by the Secret Service or another government organization. What that meant was that his presidency was vulnerable to blackmail by one of his enemies, perhaps someone from the Mafia, perhaps someone from an Eastern Bloc intelligence service. This was not a risk that he should have taken.

Kennedy's womanizing, I believe, did not interfere with his leadership but it was a ticking time bomb throughout that presidency because if ever one of these women was used by a hostile organization to blackmail the President, it could have brought everything crashing down.

Kennedy felt that a leader's public life and private life were two separate compartments that had no serious connection. Once at a White House small dinner someone brought up the subject of Lenin's love life. He got an icy stare from Kennedy at the head of the table. He did not feel that was something that was fit to be discussed. He thought that the risks he took in his private life were not likely ever to be in danger of doing something to destroy his public life.

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