Dish by Jeannette Walls Page B

wrote it up, but
Washington Post
editors killed her story. The only stories they would publish were so relentlessly flattering that some of her competitors scolded her for doting on the First Lady.
    When the Kennedys couldn’t count on the loyalty of journalists, they regularly resorted to the tactics they had used against Mike Wallace.
    At times, however, they did more than merely apply pressure to reporters’ publishers. In June 1963, for example, the New York
Journal-American
ran a story by Don Frasca and James Horan saying that one of the “biggest names in American politics” had an affair with Suzy Chang, the British model and actress. People in political and media circles knew that the unnamed politician was John Kennedy; writers Frasca and Horan also told colleagues that they had proof he had had group sex with a nineteen-year-old London call girl named Marie Novotny and two other prostitutes. After the article appeared, Robert Kennedy told executives at the
Journal
that they could expect to be hit with an antitrust suit—which, as Attorney General, was under his jurisdiction—if the paper printed any more stories that could embarrass the President. The editors told their reporters to back off.
    Anyone who tried to expose such heavy-handed tactics was also punished. While
Look
was preparing a story on Kennedy’s manipulation of the press, Robert Kennedy and two burly associates showed up unannounced at editor William Arthur’s office. “They sought to suppress the article by making a series of threats,” according to journalist Herman Klurfield who for years worked as Walter Winchell’s ghostwriter. The editor went ahead with the article, but after it appeared, anyone who cooperated with the story was denied access to the White House.
    Then there was the peculiar fate of Igor Cassini. When Kennedy took office, Igor Cassini was one of the nation’s best-read gossip columnists, with an estimated audience of 20 million. He wrote for the Hearst newspapers under the pseudonym Cholly Knickerbocker, which he took from the famed Maury Paul after Paul died in 1942. Cassini had long been close to the Kennedys. His wife, Charlene, had grown up near the Kennedy’s Palm Beach house. He was Jackie Kennedy’s favorite gossip columnist, his brother, Oleg Cassini, was Jackie’s dress designer, and both brothers were friends with patriarch Joe Kennedy. * When Kennedy waselected, Cassini was at the top of his profession and, he thought, invincible. “The world was my oyster,” he said. He had hired a diligent young assistant from Texas named Liz Smith, who often wrote much of his column. He opened an exclusive night spot, Le Club, the Jet Setters version of the Stork Club. * He had his own TV show on NBC, and hired as an assistant, a woman who was dating his friend, Roy Cohn. Her name was Barbara Walters.
    Oleg was trusted by the Kennedys for his discretion and devotion. Igor, however, wasn’t discreet. “My dilemma was that private lives were my stock in trade,” Igor said. The President constantly complained to Oleg about what his “damned brother” had written. “He’s basically a newspaperman,” Kennedy fumed. “He can’t keep a secret.”
    “It was my problem,” Cassini later wrote. “I wrote about my friends and crowd. I always wrote everything I knew. It got me into trouble.” His trouble with the First Family began in September 1962, when he wrote a revealing article for
Good Housekeeping,
“How the Kennedy Marriage Has Fared.” Although the article ostensibly praised Jack and Jackie’s devotion to each other, it also included some details that at the time were quite shocking, including tidbits about how lonely Jackie was during John’s frequent absences, how Jackie didn’t mix well with the Kennedy clan, and how her sisters-in-law teased and called her “The Queen”—mimicking her breathy, little-girl voice. It also reported a rumor—which Igor later said had been told to him as fact by