Episode 92 - With His Hands on The Wheel

We closed the last episode by looking at the emergence of Bob Dylan onto the Beat Scene in Greenwich Village in 1962, and we mentioned his song, Blowin’ in the Wind, where he asked some deeply troubling questions about what was going wrong in the world and said that the answer to them all is blowing in the wind.

Now Dylan has never confirmed nor denied that he was referring to marijuana in that song. But if he was, it was a pretty obscure reference because

less than 4 per cent of the US population had tried it at the time, and a vast majority of people had never even heard of it.

It’s known that a lot of the “Beatniks” were into it, including my sister who was attending a big university in a major US city, so it was probably starting to get around, although her private escapades were always kept top secret.

There was another drug, LSD, that was flying well under society’s radar screen as well, but there were two major differences between the two substances. While marijuana got you high, meaning it put you into of an elevated state of mind, LSD was a powerful psychedelic, capable of significantly altering your entire sense of reality. And, although the far less potent drug, marijuana, had been against the law since 1937, remarkably, LSD was still legal.

We’ll get into the effects of these substances on American culture more deeply as the story unfolds. For now, let’s go back to the period immediately following the Cuban Missile Crisis and take another look at President Kennedy.

 It seems clear that serving as the Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces during those harrowing thirteen days had a profound effect on him and most historians believe he started to seriously explore ways to reduce the tensions between America and the Soviet Union.

When the crisis began, Kennedy had authorized his brother Robert, the Attorney General and a key member of his cabinet, to set up a back channel of communications with the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin. JFK felt that it was imperative to have a reliable form of direct communication with Khrushchev.

According to released Russian documents, the Soviet premier’s son-in-law Alexei Adzhubei, met privately with the President to confirm that the Attorney General would be speaking on his authority. When he asked JFK if Bobby was his “number two” in Washington, JFK replied that he wasn’t just “No. 2, but 3, 4, 5 and 6.” The message was relayed to Khrushchev and the back channel was secured.

Once the crisis had been resolved, the two leaders set up a permanent, direct channel that became known as the “Hot Line.” Before it was officially completed in June of 1963, it could take as long as twelve hours for the two sides to communicate. Twelve hours is an obvious eternity in a world filled with massive atomic weaponry. Now, at least communications were on a much sounder footing.

In various public statements and speeches that followed, President Kennedy began expressing a stronger commitment to peace and the importance of finding diplomatic solutions to international conflicts. He emphasized the need for dialogue and negotiation to prevent the escalation of tensions. And he began to prioritize Civil Rights in Americas well.

Like most members of my generation, I had always felt a kind of personal connection to him. I don’t want to sound too shallow here, but along with all of his other accomplishments, he just seemed like the coolest guy in the world, and we all looked up to him. A commentator once put it this way. Nixon reminded us of who we were, and Kennedy of who we wish we were. It was for obvious reasons. He was young and handsome, came from a very wealthy and powerful family, had a beautiful wife who seemed like royalty, along with two adorable kids.

And on top of all this, his life played extremely well in the mass media, which was still in its earliest stages. The truth is that besides being president, he was also the most charismatic media superstar in the world. He would routinely hang out with the hottest entertainers in show business and everybody was totally enamored by him. At the top of the heap was Frank Sinatra and his pals, who were known as the “Rat Pack” and as the presidential campaign began in 1960, Sinatra changed its name to the “Jack Pack.”

 Supposedly Jack and Frank were very tight and obviously Frank ran with a huge circle of A-List celebrities. All the glitzy pieces of the political/entertainment puzzle formed a glamorous mosaic when Marilyn Monroe sang happy birthday to JFK at his 45^th birthday gala celebration in Madison Square Garden. Popular culture as basking in the high life, with John F. Kennedy at the very top.  So, again, I had always been pretty taken with him.

Looking back on it from a cultural perspective, an interesting side note is that Timothy Leary, the former Harvard professor who became a major counter-culture guru, claimed that JFK had been experimenting with LSD during this time as well.

According to Leary, at one point in mid-1962, a very impressive woman in her early forties came to visit him in his office at Harvard. She said she was an artist living in Georgetown and wanted to learn how to conduct LSD sessions. Apparently, a few of her female friends had a plan to turn some of the most powerful men in Washington on to LSD.

After a few meetings, she confided in Leary that she was having a serious affair with a very high-ranking member of the administration and he was interested in experimenting with the drug. Leary gave her detailed instructions on how to properly conduct sessions and things moved on from there. She began reporting her progress regularly to Leary and apparently things were going quite well. Along with the fact that this high-level member of the administration’s mind was expanding, their love affair was reaching extremely satisfying new heights.  

Now, it turns out that Leary’s friend was no ordinary woman. Her name was Mary Pinchot Meyer. She came from a wealthy family, had known JFK since they were teen-agers, and they had been neighbors together in Georgetown. She was also extremely well-connected in Washington. Her sister was married to Ben Bradlee, a major reporter for Newsweek and a close friend of JFK’s. who later became the Executive Editor of the Washington Post. So, you can imagine how well-connected she really was.

I’ll tell you in a future episode how Leary came to the conclusion that JFK was the high-ranking member of the administration in question. Obviously, Leary’s theory has never been proven and it never will be, as all the players, including Leary, are long since dead. The whole thing could have easily come from a false memory of his or even a hallucination.

But it never mattered to me whether it was true or not because my focus has always been on the growth of human consciousness, regardless of the catalyst. And there is no question that LSD played a significant role in the massive changes that were about to overcome society during the next few years.

Also, and again I don’t want to sound too shallow here, but the idea that JFK might have been experimenting with mind expansion only made him seem cooler to me. LSD was completely legal at the time, many members of the intelligentsia had tried it, and I found the idea to be intriguing.

Regardless of the reason, Kennedy was making major strides in the direction of establishing a framework for the reduction of tension and the establishment of peace, not just with the Soviet Union, but around the world as well.

On June 10,1963, he took it a step further by delivering one of the most important speeches of his presidency as he gave the Commencement Address at American University.

He set the tone at the beginning by saying, “I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.” Then he continued, “I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

He then shifted to the relationship between America and Russia saying, “both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race.” And then he made a major policy announcement calling for a test ban treaty and stating that the US would suspend nuclear atmospheric testing if Russian would agree.

And then he went on, “So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved…For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”

The speech, which represented a break from contentious rhetoric, was revolutionary for several reasons. First, it marked a real thaw in the cold war. Although he acknowledged the ideological differences between the two superpowers, he still stressed their common humanity, which transcended those differences. Moving away from the adversarial language that had characterized the cold war for so long, he sought to create an atmosphere more conducive to negotiations and détente.

And critically, from the standpoint of policy, it represented a true breakthrough, as he announced his intention to pursue a comprehensive test ban treaty with Russia. Importantly, the speech received positive response both at home and abroad, which helped set the stage for the major diplomatic initiatives that followed, including the signing of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August of 1963.

Today, it's hard to grasp how revolutionary his ideas as well as his actions were. From our modern perspective, his views were incredibly advanced for the times.

And when he talked about the commonality between the Americans and the Russians, saying that “we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal,” even though he was six years early, from his words, he almost sounded like a hippy who had just come back from Woodstock. Who knows - maybe Timothy Leary was right. Maybe he had been experimenting with consciousness expansion. But it really didn’t matter. What mattered was how he was steering the ship of state.

So, let’s end this episode by leaving things here for now. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.