I would like to begin by stating that this work has come from strange origins. It all began, you see, when I was checking my account one day and discovered that my very next post would be the 666th one on this website. A devilish number, too unholy to be wasted on some random topic, in my sinful opinion. So I decided to wait a little while, bid my time to think of something worthy of those infamous triple digits.
The next step in the creation of this story was when I checked my calendar recently this month. I noticed that the anniversary, the 60th one in fact, of the assassination of the presidential king of the American Camelot himself, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was coming up soon at an extraordinary pace. So, upon realizing this, Satan’s area code from before and this new tidbit of information mixed together to inspire some ideas in me. And those ideas proved to be interesting enough in my personal opinion to desire to include them in a story. As I was and still am at the current moment doubtful in my abilities to handle a fully-fledged alternate history timeline, I decided to do a TLIAW instead.
Even with all of those ideas bouncing around my skull, I still wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted the premise to be at first aside from having JFK’s assassination and some workings of the devil's influence in it. For a while, I actually contemplated including some supernatural elements in it, in some sort of analog horror alternate history a la The Monument Mythos. I wasn’t confident in my ability to write horror though, so I decided to stay a bit more grounded in my ideas and save those specific ones for another time. And that, my dear readers, is when inspiration struck. Inspiration, in the form of rereading @Enigma-Conundrum and @Vidal 's All Along the Watchtower, a dystopian tale on how the survival of a Kennedy brother, in this case Robert, ended up damning all of America to a darkest of potential existences.
I decided to do something similar to that premise. The survival of a Kennedy, and how it leads to a rather... interesting state of affairs for both America and the rest of the world. I decided that there, there would be the premise. JFK survives Lee Harvey Oswald's attempt on his life, wins reelection, and things start getting interesting for everyone. Probably not as interesting as All Along the Watchtower, but hopefully just as interesting, if you catch my drift.
This is my first TLIAW, and for my coauthor, the talented @theothresh, his second TLIAW. We are hoping that those reading this joint work of ours will find it if not exactly plausible then at the very least entertaining to read. Heavens forbid that anything we write is a slog to get through after all. That is a writer's greatest potential sin!
I would like to credit Enigma-Conundrum and Vidal for their loveley TLIAW's which have provided such entertaining reads and good inspiration for me, and I also would like to thank @Oliveia, who not only has written excellent TLIAWs that have provided inspiration for me as well, but for listening to and answering my questions, hearing out my ideas, and also helping me find my coauthor, the terrific theothresh, who has shown great work on his first TLIAW, and whose success as helped inspire me to begin this one. I know he will write just as well on this one.
Happy New Year Everyone! Sorry for the silence, a thing called "finals" and "life" got in the way! Have no fear however, for AFWoG will have its first chapter posted in January! When in January, you may ask? Uhhh... that's classified informationDeep Throat didn't tell me when The government spook beside me has a gun to my head That's classified information. Plus, it'll be better if it's a surprise. So yeah, congratulations for making it through this year you guys, let's have even more fun making it through the next one!
Don't let it be forgot that once there was a spot For one brief shining moment That was known as Camelot
In the years since his time in office, and especially after his death, historians have called John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s time in America’s most highest office “The Camelot Era”. This wasn’t for no reason at all, no siree. The association of JFK’s White House with the mythical Arthurian realm and all that it had to offer began shortly after he narrowly cheated death once again on an ordinary day in Dallas in 1963. The story goes that while he was recovering, the president was asked by reporters at his bedside what he was anticipating to do most once he was out of the hospital, at which point he responded with that iconic JFK wit in that iconic New England accent of his “I am hoping to attend the closest showing of Camelot, and if that is not possible, Mrs. Kennedy’s bedroom.”
A humorous anecdote, although whether it actually happened or not is debated by scholars and historians alike up to the present day. Regardless of whether it was true or not, it certainly made an impact, with sales of tickets to the Broadway musical receiving a dramatic spike in the aftermath of the assassination attempt and alleged interview, culminating in the attendance of the president himself at a showing in Washington D.C. in 1964. “Camelot Fever” had come to America, and many people recognized their president as their very own King Arthur. Future historians though would note that John F. Kennedy was not only the Arthur of his court, but the Lancelot, and for very good reason.
After recovering from his wounds and leaving the hospital, Jack Kennedy came back to high approval ratings and a nation eager to see what their leader would do next. The first thing he did was to support a planned bill to strengthen gun control in the country, which, fair, it would’ve been weird if he hadn’t done so after all. All it would’ve took to plunge all of America into mourning was some pinko fuck with a rifle. Said pinko fuck ended up dying in a shootout at the Texas Theater though, but still, nobody was in the mood for more president-killing rifles waiting to land in the hands of the next lunatic with an agenda, most of all the president himself.
Aside from that though, most of Jack Kennedy’s time was spent preparing for the upcoming campaign trail. Even though he had the power of the sympathy vote and a successful first term behind him, Jack Kennedy wasn’t going to leave it up to chance, especially when his good friend and Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater was his opponent. He was eager to face off against his friendly rival, and Goldwater felt the same. Goldwater chose Walter Judd, a physician and former member of the House of Representatives known for his staunch support of Taiwan ever since his time as a medical missionary there in the 1930s, as his vice presidential candidate. Kennedy on the other hand ditched Lyndon Johnson after briefly considering retaining him. As his second term was intended to be more ambitious than the first, Kennedy decided that rather than collecting dust, Lyndon and Jumbo could be better put to use in the Senate fighting for all the bills and legislation he intended to pass.
The campaign for the American presidency in 1964 was an entertaining one, with there being a much more civilized air to it all. There was a refreshing lack of the negative attacks and dirty slander that was becoming more and more prevalent in the American political environment, in part because of the cordial relationship both candidates had with the other. Notably, Jack Kennedy personally vetoed a potential campaign advertisement involving a little girl plucking the petals off of a daisy getting abruptly vaporized by a nuclear explosion, calling it “beyond traumatizing” and angrily asking “What if John-John saw this?”
Holding a series of “Lincoln-Douglas style” debates around the country, both contenders for the Oval Office held their own admirably, although it was clear that as skilled as Goldwater was when he was at the podium, said skills were no match when faced with the charisma and charm that Jack Kennedy had honed to a fine point over the course of his entire life, both political and personal. By the time that it was all said and done, the history-making landslide on Election Day more than showed everyone who had ultimately won the Kennedy-Goldwater Debates.
Settling back down from the Election Day high, the Kennedy administration got back to work on ensuring that the New Frontier became a reality for all Americans. Work that would be rudely interrupted only ten days after Jack Kennedy’s second inauguration. An interruption caused by what was quickly becoming more than an annoying thorn in the backside of the administration.
An annoying little thorn in an annoying little country named South Vietnam.
From the Buddhist Crisis to President Ngo Dinh Diem and his family’s unwillingness to change their behavior to Diem’s own assassination, American attempts to gently nudge the country into some form of reasonable government had proven somewhat ineffective, to say the least. With the lethal removal of Diem from power courtesy of a CIA-backed coup, it was hoped by the White House that a more effective relationship could be had with the new military junta governing the anti-communist state.
These hopes were promptly disappointed when rogue general Nguyen Khanh seized power along with other disgruntled officers disillusioned by the junta’s sidelining of them. It was a bloodless thing, admirable in both its speed and efficiency. However, there was one person who managed to escape from the grasp of Khanh’s new authority, which would soon complicate things for just about everyone in not just South Vietnam, but America as well.
Nguyen Van Nhung was many things. A soldier. An assassin. An aide-de-camp. And now, most importantly of all, alive. It had been close, too damn close, but his gut had told him to get the hell out, and so he followed it. Followed it so damn hard he managed to actually survive. Because that’s what he was now. A survivor. And the thing about survivors nowadays, you see, is that they’re hated. They’re loose ends, waiting to be tied up before somebody pulled on them and the entire thing it was a part of became undone because of it.
If that traitorous uppity bastard Khanh had his way, Nhung probably would’ve been a footnote in the annals of Vietnamese history. All he would’ve been known for is shooting dead a nation’s-his nation’s- first president and his brother in the back of an APC. Better than nothing, but not good enough. Good Enough got men killed. So did Not Good Enough, but only one of them was the more admirable, more respectable choice you could make. Anything other than that was pitiful, scornful even.
That was what resulted in this mess happening, a bunch of fellow officers who felt that what they got was Not Good Enough and so decided to get what they wanted by force. Force. The only solution that’s been proven to work since forever. There weren’t any men who were Good Enough in the Viet Minh, and there sure as hell weren’t any men that were Good Enough in the ARVN. Opportunistic bastard backstabbers, they deserved more than just a measly little fucking demotion and reassignment to a tiny little village next to the Mekong Delta.
Yes, they deserved more than that, but he couldn’t give it to them. He couldn’t give it out to them like he did two brothers out of touch with reality with a pistol and a semi-automatic. No, that happy day was far off in the distance, demanding that effort be put in to get to it.
It was a damn good thing that he was a hard worker then.
He wasn’t always like this, cursing and spitting and fuming aloud by the side of a road, jeep still warm and the bullet holes in the back tattooed across what remained of the rear like a bitter parting kiss from a scorned lover. He was quiet. Polite. In control. It was their fault that he was this way now. Their damn fault for making him blow up.
He needed a smoke. Yes, that would do. They had broken his pipe, his favorite damn pipe, when they shot at him and bullet meant for him instead obliterated the bowl of the pipe into nothing but chunks and splinters of desecrated wood. He couldn’t wait any much longer though, he needed a smoke and he needed it goddamn now. A nice little cigarette, a boy and man’s best friend. Yes, he could already feel himself calming down now. It wasn’t a pipe, but it was an adequate alternative method of smoking tobacco. The hand in his pocket fumbled and probed and he could feel himself starting to burn even hotter as the seconds ticked by like minutes until he finally managed to feel and pull out with the relief of a desperate man a cardboard box of smokes that was miraculously unharmed. He never knew when the boss was in the mood for one but didn’t have a smoke onhand, and now Nhung thanked himself for his preparedness. He eagerly fished one out, sticking it into his mouth with a slight rush of giddiness at the upcoming relief.
Lighting up the cigarette and inhaling, Nguyen Van Nhung closed his eyes and imagined that right in front of him was the shivering, bruised and fearful face of a certain Nguyen Khanh. Yes, that would be his goal for today. Damn the politicians and the communists and the nation for now. They would always still be around to deal with at a later time. Politics, communists, and Vietnam were eternal.
But Ngueyn Khanh wouldn’t be.
Nguyen Van Nhung found himself smiling at that thought.
Then he blew the smoke out right in front of him, where it blew away into the warm January night.
The overthrow of Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Council Duong Van Minh by the disgruntled general Nguyen Khanh had gone without a hitch, save for the absence of the corpse of Minh’s aide-de-camp and bodyguard, Nguyen Van Nhung. A soft-spoken yet sadistic person, Nhung had under the orders of his superior personally executed up to 50 people, including the former president Diem and his brother Nhu. He was not a man to be toyed with, and so it only made sense for Khanh to order his liquidation, lest he come for revenge against him.
Unfortunately for Khanh, Nhung would manage to escape from the troops coming to apprehend him, and disappeared from Saigon altogether. An unfortunate outcome, but Khanh had much better things to do at the moment, like sharing the spoils of power, or convincing the Americans that yes he was a leader worthy of their precious and very valuable foreign aid. The Kennedy administration were understandably a bit wary about this change in governments, and the look of a military coup didn’t really help the public image of South Vietnam, but hey, this Khanh fellow was the only guy available to do the job of keeping Vietnam as an anti-communist bulwark afloat, so he got his foreign aid.
Now that things in Vietnam had quieted down, Jack Kennedy got to work on the most pressing issues of the day. He had always intended to make his second term in office even more successful compared to his first one, and his recent brush with death only intensified that desire to be a successful president.
The Kennedy administration set a national record for the amount of legislation proposed by the president during its second term, and most historians agree that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was one of the most important ones among them. It was also a law that was bitterly fought over, with filibusters, proposed compromises, and other sorts of drama to turn Capitol Hill into the battlefield of a second American Civil War if not in looks than in spirit certainly. Blood (Strom Thurmond tried to outdo his previous filibuster record of 24 hours and 18 minutes but had to stop at the 20 hour mark when he choked on a throat lozenge and had to be dragged kicking and swinging to the hospital to get it removed.), sweat (One newspaper cartoon portrayed an exhausted congressman and his equally exhausted teenage son in high school football gear coming home in the dead of night at the same time while the wife is hosing them down on the front lawn, stating that she won’t be having them stink up the house.), and plenty of tears (Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater’s friendship was severely tested during this time, as the latter’s refusal to support the CRA more than tested the ambitious former’s patience.) were shed as the combatants struggled for what felt like the soul of America.
The struggle wasn’t only in the halls of Congress though. The Freedom Summer of 1964 was an intense one, as civil rights activists traveled to Mississippi to register as many African American voters as possible in the state. Resistance against their actions by the state government, local authorities, and civilian groups up to and including the Ku Klux Klan was fierce and ultimately deadly. The disappearance and eventual discovery of the bodies of three activists murdered by members of the KKK and local police and sheriff departments caused outrage. Outrage which helped bring attention to not only the civil rights movement but the Civil Rights Act which was still being fought over. Said publicity would prove to be beneficial to both of them by turning public opinion in their favors.
Eventually, after the tireless work of new Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson managed to wrangle together enough votes, and to the tears of joy wept by MLK to the begrudging respect of Malcolm X to the celebrations of liberals all across America, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, also known as just simply “The Kennedy Act”, was signed on the Fourth of July of that year. Cleverly using like an Irish boxer a one-two punch combination of a milestone law passing and a day of patriotism, Jack Kennedy declared in a speech on the front lawn of the White House that America was “moving in many different and individual steps as one towards a greater, brighter, and more equal future.” It was clear to all that the New Frontier hadn’t even begun. It had only just started that day. And as the presidential family watched the fireworks display go off in the night sky, their glare just a bit more brighter and hopeful than last year, it seemed that for a brief moment, America’s Camelot had found itself its storybook ending.
Of course, life isn’t always a fairy tale, and you don’t just simply put an end to racism or communism with a simple “The End” like the Brothers Grimm did to the villains in their books.
While the brighter half of America rejoiced and patted itself on the back for a job well done, the darker half instead seethed. George Wallace decried Jack Kennedy as a Northern tyrant, kicking the Neo-Confederate and Lost Cause rhetoric up a notch at the same time that Strom Thurmond howled not a Rebel yell but something akin to it in fury as he began doing an impressive impression of a human flamethrower, setting his audience alight with the fires of hate and rage.
Barry Goldwater merely sighed and shook his head disapprovingly.
But while future troubles were being sown in America, they were also being sown overseas in Vietnam, albeit much more violently. The generals Lam Van Phat and Duong Van Duc had been dismissed from their positions of Interior Ministry and IV Corps commander respectively, in part due to outcry from Buddhist activists accusing Khanh of accommodating too many Catholic pro-Diem officers in positions of leadership. Disgruntled by this, the pair launched a coup of their own with some unexpected assistance.
Nguyen Van Nhung hadn’t been idle while he was underground. He had been plotting his vengeance, and in order to achieve said vengeance, he needed to find some friends in higher places than him who would be willing to help out. Luckily for Nhung, he found some individuals who were alike with him in their interests. There was Pham Ngoc Thao, former overseer of the failed Strategic Hamlet Program under Diem, and Do Mau, one of the three deputy prime ministers that Khanh’s government had, who possessed a skilled political mind. Both had become disgruntled with the current state of affairs for one reason or another, and when an opportunity came, the unlikely trio took it.
Initially listless and almost aimless aside from orders to occupy important positions in Saigon, the triumvirate of Thao, Nhung, and Mau energized it, and with this newfound speed and aggression. Republic of Vietnam Air Force chief Nguyen Cao Ky was wounded and taken into custody after Tan Son Nhut Air Base was assaulted even after threats of a “massacre” if the rebels made any moves against it. Khanh was found to be nowhere in his office, as he had escaped and fled to the resort town of Da Lat. There, American officials encouraged him to return to Saigon and reassert himself as the leader of Vietnam. Initially reluctant, Khanh eventually agreed, and was soon on his way back to the capital city.
Then a rebel A-1 Skyraider shot his plane down.
Now without a leader, the loyalists soon collapsed, and the rebels began to make gains, albeit not without resistance due to popular fears of a return to Diem’s authoritarian pro-Catholic policies. The Americans, more than tired of the coups and unwilling to go through the trouble of finding a possible strongman to prop up, eventually gave in to reality and recognized the rebels as the legitimate government of South Vietnam. Standing triumphant, Thao, Nhung, and Mau sidelined the other generals, creating a ruling triumvirate which promised to be more vigilant, more patriotic, and more anti-communist than the previous governments.
Jack Kennedy, a devoted student of history, uneasily noted that practically every political triumvirate in history fell apart into infighting and civil war, and prayed that this one would be the exception.
That wasn’t the only thing Jack Kennedy was praying for though. He was praying that the rest of his agenda would pass through Congress. Things before hadn’t been smooth sailing by any means, but the resistance he was facing now from George Wallace’s boys and Barry’s friends on the daily was starting to get on his nerves. At first it was things like infrastructure, public housing, and other, more minor bills and such. But then it became fiercer, health insurance and social security and even the space program were duels where hot verbal lead were fired out in shots and volleys. Hell, even Dick Nixon seemed to have quit kicking about in New York City to begin criticizing the Kennedy administration or, God forbid, begin preparing for 1968.
But overall, even though some of his momentum had been sapped, Jack Kennedy was still popular among most Americans. He was still their King Arthur, the good sovereign dispensing justice and wealth to his people. Of course, there were naysayers, there would always be naysayers, but most white liberal Americans wanted to believe that the civil rights issue had been finally resolved. They didn’t want to hear about how the botched assassination attempt against Malcolm X had descended into a massacre. They didn’t want to understand what “jihad” meant when an angry X declared it over and over again against the Nation of Islam. They didn’t want to hear about “Bloody Sunday” and how the streets of Selma ran red with the blood of civil rights activists. They didn’t want to hear about any of that disturbing unrest happening after what was supposed to be the end of racism in America.
But hear it they did, and bit by bit, as the followers became uncertain, the first cracks in Camelot began to appear.
And then, like a recurring illness, Vietnam acted out again. The situation had for whatever reason deteriorated. The Viet Cong had either become an extremely professional force or the ARVN had decided to make lobotomies part of their officer’s training regiment. Roaming government militias and death squads sponsored by Nhung patrolled the jungles and city streets. Infighting had only gotten worse, and American officials present in the country reported back that American advisors weren’t enough. American troops would have to be present in order to restore some form of stability to South Vietnam.
This was a nightmare for Kennedy. He had, rather optimistically, hoped to withdraw American troops from Southeast Asia. He had defended such ambitions in several recent public speeches, and with the warming of relations with the Soviets and Khruschev he had even been bold enough to state that the Cold War could be ended to the mutual victory of not just the United States and the Soviet Union, but to humanity as a whole. To then backtrack on that position and send American boys to an unstable jungle country with communist guerillas behind every tree or blade of grass would be very harmful to his image and administration, to say the least.
But soon, as the news came pouring in that American advisors were getting sent back home in body bags, if there was even a body for the bag, and fighting on the outskirt of provincial capitals by Viet Cong guerillas was happening, both more frequently, there were more and more demands by Republicans, hawkish Democrats, and plain old anti-communists for the president to do something, or else the dominoes would start falling one by one before they even knew it. There were even some calling Jack Kennedy soft on communism, much to his anger.
Jack Kennedy was reluctant to send any American boys to die in a conflict, but pressure from the public, the Republicans, and even his own party, along with his own personal doctrine of containment, led to him making the decision to send troops to Vietnam.
It was a decision which many would mark as the beginning of the end for Camelot.
American ground troops first landed onto the shores of Vietnam in mid-1965. They were patriotic, enthusiastic even, about bringing the fight right to the communists. Whether or not they remembered what happened the last time John Fitzgerald Kennedy tried to bloody the nose of some communists in a jungle country back in 1961 is unknown. The man himself remembered though, which he tried to forget through some initial optimism and assurances from his generals that the might and pride of the American military would mop up what the South Vietnamese couldn’t.
And for a moment, things did seem to be getting better in Vietnam. At least, if you measured the progress of a war by if you killed more of the enemy’s guys than they did yours. In reality, American generals were dismayed to discover that their supposed allies were more focused on bringing the other down a peg, often through using their own men as goons with which to fight their workplace rivalries through to the bitter end. Sometimes, they could even be openly hostile towards the Americans, especially if they tried to get involved and straighten them out. CIA men in the country didn’t have it any easier, with the Vietnamese intelligence services being shadier than usual around their men, being very secretive with what info they had, and the info the CIA ended up receiving being outdated, mistranslated, or just flat out bad.
If President Kennedy had come to Vietnam expecting an easy war, he was instead severely disappointed. Seeing that the military and CIA were being fuckups as usual, Jack Kennedy instead turned his attention back to more peaceful items on his agenda. He had just signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had been yet another vicious fight to get passed. Now with another big piece of legislation out of the way, he decided to try and counter his recent entry into a war with a prevention of one. More specifically, of nuclear war. It would be undoubtedly very popular, and would definitely help the Democrats in the midterms. And Khruschev was receptive to the idea, which was good to hear.
As Jack Kennedy flew over to Vienna to begin talks about setting a limit to the amount of nuclear weapons and what kinds of said weapons would be targeted in said treaty, things were slowly but surely going downhill in Vietnam. Why and how was anyone’s guess, although the military brass and troops on the ground had a couple of good ones. American patrols who relied on South Vietnamese intel tended to get lost and wiped out in ambushes by the Viet Cong. Corruption in South Vietnam and especially the ARVN was monumental, with one recorded instance of a battalion’s commanding officer selling the grenades of his men to the Viet Cong, who promptly used them against a patrol of Americans that very same day.
The most damning piece of evidence though was yet to be discovered. In August of 1966, troops of the Americal Division and their commanding officer Colin Powell discovered copies of classified South Vietnamese documents on the bodies of Viet Cong officers they had managed to capture. Shortly after turning in the papers as evidence, a South Vietnamese intelligence officer on the base was interrupted trying to destroy them with a lighter.
The officers, both Viet Cong and the rogue South Vietnamese intelligence official, were immediately dragged away for interrogation. At first the Americans suspected that it was a simple case of corruption par for the course in the ARVN, or a mole in the VC being caught in the act. But as more and more time passed, it became clear to the interrogators that they had stumbled onto something bigger than anybody could have ever imagined. As quickly and as secretly as possible the information they discovered was forwarded to the CIA, who began to follow the trail of papers, money, and blood like a bloodhound on the hunt.
All this sniffing and digging and investigating tipped off some people who very much desired to keep their secrets, well, secret. But try as they might, their efforts to stonewall the investigation or cover everything up only increased the suspicions of the damned stubborn Americans that something was up. It was only a matter of time until the truth was revealed. That is, unless something necessary, something extreme, was done…
The Halloween of 1966 in Saigon began as most eventful days did, in that they were very normal. There was a large number of US military personnel enjoying their leave in the city, eager to share the wonders of trick-or-treating with the children of the city, the candy being provided by military and civilian organizations in an attempt to foster better relations with the Vietnamese people. Overall, there were high expectations that this would be an enjoyable day of R & R for everyone in the city.
It was not to be.
It began with the movement of South Vietnamese soldiers. At first it was one jeep, then two, then three, and then it wasn’t just jeeps but trucks, armored cars, and even light tanks. To a populace who had been through several military coups by now, the Vietnamese civilians could recognize the signs, although they had no idea who was overthrowing who at the moment. The American soldiers on the other hand, while alarmed by the amount of men in uniform clogging the streets with their vehicles screaming for those on the road to get out of the way, were not as familiar with the sight of a coup in the first stages of being executed.
Then shots rang out, and in mere seconds all became a panicked hell as civilians rushed for cover, trampling those who were unfortunate enough to fall, and sending American boys scrambling not just for cover but for any weapons they could find. Before long the entire city became consumed in urban warfare more chaotic and confused than any before or after it. ARVN units began to fire on each other, their officers screaming into their radios trying to figure out what the hell was going on or getting shot in the back by their own subordinates.
If it was hell for the Vietnamese civilians, then it was arguably even worse for the Americans who simply hoped to pass out or eat some candy that night. Isolated G.I.s tried to evade or fight their way back to friendly lines as either individuals or groups. Makeshift platoons tried to make their way through a city eating itself alive, unsure on if their South Vietnamese allies were trustworthy or not. The sun eventually set on a city that felt as hot as one. Many Americans came back from the dark, illuminated by a dozen searchlights and fires in the distance. Many did not.
As Saigon bled, Jack Kennedy’s blood ran too. Not through wounds, like the former, but instead in his veins, made young again through the rage of one who forgets how old they really are in their anger. Vietnam had been an annoyance time and time again, and as the city boiled over, so too did he. “What the hell happened over there?!?”, raged a voice from Vienna on one end, to the shaken silence from Saigon on the other.
Nguyen Van Nhung would inform Jack Kennedy though, although not personally. Instead, in a press conference on November 3rd, the new leader of South Vietnam would shock the world with a revelation straight out of a spy thriller.
Pham Ngoc Thao was many things. He was a skilled organizer, bar the whole fiasco that was the Strategic Hamlet program. He was an active player in the game of politics. He was a Catholic, a Vietnamese nationalist, and in the words of one American journalist, “one of the most remarkable Vietnamese around”. Indeed, so strong was his personality that American officials took the time to promote his name back at home in the news, his being more attractive than the notorious sadist that was Nhung or the conspiratorial Do Mau, who was already contemplating retiring from politics altogether by this point.
He was also a communist sleeper agent and infiltrator.
Having been shielded from suspicion due to his Catholic background and family connections, Thao had first managed to sabotage the Strategic Hamlet program through advancing it at an unsustainable speed,, before slithering his way into an even greater position of power through collaborating with Nhung and Mau. As the chief of the ARVN’s intelligence wing, he became perhaps one of the most successful double agents in espionage history, inviting all manner of corruption and disloyalty into the military and state, along with increasing his own personal political power as well.
All that power didn’t help him in the end though. The attempted coup was already a rushed job, the last resort of last resorts due to how irrational, how desperate, and how antithetical it was to the standard method of operation up until that point. Nguyen Cao Ky was allowed to redeem himself by leading a squadron of planes to personally bomb Thao’s headquarters, and the man himself was found by Nhung’s death squads while cleaning up the opposition, alive but pinned underneath a damaged jeep. He was too injured to finish himself off, although he didn’t have to wait long until his discoverers and their boss did him a favor and did it themselves.
Depending on who you are, it was either fortunate or unfortunate that Thao had grown arrogant enough to store evidence of his treachery in the heart of the country he was secretly undermining, and that it had managed to survive the bombing with only minor damage and nothing more.
While Nhung jeered as he spat on his former triumvirate member’s ruined boots, the rest of the body hanging from a French-style Saigon streetlamp, across the Pacific Ocean a different nation was descending into chaos. Vietnam had already been proving itself more and more of a self-inflicted burden on the American people, so when the revelation that America itself had not only supported and praised a communist agent as one of the three main leaders of that damned country, but that through said support more than American boys had died from the moment their boy’s boots hit the ground to a bloody Halloween night at the hands of their so-called allies, the effects were immediate.
After the shock had worn off and was replaced with furious outrage, Americans began to eat each other alive. The Republicans, to nobody’s surprise, began to launch volley after volley of attacks against the administration. How could the president let this happen, they asked. This is what happens when you let a Democrat manage a foreign war, so they said. A sort of mini-Red Scare began as fears that there could be a communist infiltrator as high up in the ranks of government as Thao was caused paranoia and the numbers of John Birch Society members to increase noticeably. The Democrats began to tear itself apart into pro-war and anti-war factions, with members like Scoop Jackson for the former and George McGovern for the latter castigating each other on the Senate floor for either bloodthirstiness or cowardice, much to the glee of the elephants in the room.
Anti-war protests began to reach new heights as seemingly everyone, especially the youth, began to turn on their former idol. The most radical ones in particular began to wave Viet Cong flags, with Marxist students putting up portraits of Thao next to those of Che Guevara and Malcolm X in their bedrooms. Opposing them were pro-war counter-protests, but even though they were all for getting back at the Vietnamese communists and more, it didn’t mean they were for Kennedy. Far from it actually. They blamed the president for this mess, arguing that his mishandling of the situation in Vietnam led to America getting caught off-guard and as a result backstabbed by an enemy pretending to be an ally. In his most impressive political feat yet, Jack Kennedy had managed to unite Democrats and Republicans, warhawks and peaceniks, pro-war and anti-war protestors, capitalists and Marxists alike, on one thing: Hating Jack Kennedy.
Jack Kennedy was aware of this, how could he not see the group protestors outside of the White House that seemed to grow larger and larger in size as the days went by? It was stressful, seeing what felt like the whole nation turning on him. And stress was the last thing his body needed. Jack Kennedy was getting older, and he didn’t like it. His health, already a laundry list of afflictions, medications, conditions, and illnesses, began to worsen. The results of the 1966 midterms, where a wave of Republicans both old (Richard Nixon was more than happy to reclaim his old senatorial seat at the Democrats and therefore Jack Kennedy’s expense.) and new (Former major general and right-wing activist Edwin Walker became a Texan senator, much to the ire of the president, who had been a target of Walker’s political attacks in the past.) didn’t help matters either As if he was the Fisher King of Arthurian lore, the nation began to decline alongside Jack Kennedy’s health.
If 1966 was the year Camelot’s decline began to accelerate, then 1967 was the year that the walls finally came crashing down. It started first with Vietnam, as most things bad usually did by now. As disastrous as the Halloween coup attempt last year was for the morale of both the soldiers over there and the civilians back at home, America was in too deep to get out now. Even though Kennedy distrusted his military advisors now, they managed to convince him that the best option was to try and fight until a favorable position could be achieved in future negotiations. So more troops were sent to Vietnam, and so the protests continued, along with the outrage from the anti-war Democrats.
It didn’t matter that soon, thanks to American military and numerical superiority, the fighting began to stabilize in America’s favor. It didn’t matter that the kill to death ratios favored the marines in green more than the guerilla in black. No, none of that mattered when the chant of “Hey! Hey! JFK! How many kids did you kill today?” was the hip new thing to say among the hippies. None of the piles of dead Viet Cong and “Viet Cong”, slaughtered with a ferocity only those avenging their fallen comrades could possess, mattered when Walter Cronkite gave his opinion on national television in so many words that the war could not be won, with negotiation the only realistic outcome. None of the bombs dropped in the aerial onslaught that was Operation Rolling Thunder mattered when Nguyen van Nhung, new dictator of South Vietnam, purged Do Mau and any potential communists with a brutality that was enough to rouse condemnation from members of the UN. And none of the victories listed in his daily reports mattered when Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson screamed at him for “sacrificing American progress and American boys all for some goddamn war in some goddamned jungle!”, all but announcing his intention to run in 1968 as an antiwar Democrat.
No, None of it mattered at all now…
And yet there was still worse to come. There were two things which would’ve been the downfall of Jack Kennedy. Said things were his affairs and, more seriously, his personal health.Even though he and Jackie grew closer and developed a much stronger relationship after the events in Dallas, the president still couldn’t resist “getting to know” different ladies from time to time. His health though was a much more serious matter. A sickly boy, his youthful and athletic appearance as an adult belied a constant struggle with everything from Addison’s disease to high cholesterol. While his health was in fairly good shape at the start of his second term, the more his fortunes declined, the more he himself began to degrade. By September of 1967, the effects of prolonged stress and trying to manage both a country and a war had clearly taken their toll. Graying hairs, gray eye bags, and graying daily mood chipped away at a president who had been elected for precisely the opposite of these things.
On September 6th, Jack Kennedy abruptly collapsed during a daily meeting. The presidential physician was rushed to his side, where after being helped up and given some water, a checkup diagnosed him with an extreme case of fatigue and moderate weight loss. Initially satisfied with the diagnosis, the president collapsed again only three days later. Soon enough, he was forced into recovery, although he did not take it sitting down. Which was ironic, as he was confined to a wheelchair during said period of recovery.
Jack Kennedy, even while stuck in a wheelchair, still possessed a keen political mind, and he knew that if news broke out that the president was confined to a wheelchair, it would be a public relations disaster. So he decided that to the outside world, things were normal inside of the White House. Of course, that meant canceling most public appearances altogether, but it was a small price to pay for keeping the administration afloat. And so, for one week, and then two, because Kennedy’s health was refusing to cooperate, the White House was unusually tightlipped about where the president was. The American public knew he wasn’t dead, as he had been on several recent broadcasts from the White House to talk about this piece of legislation and that, which was to most people enough for them to carry on their day satisfied they still had a leader, even if he was an unpopular one.
Richard Nixon is not most people.
Having returned to the Senate, he had become one of Jack Kennedy’s most fiercest critics. It felt good to be able to speak most of his mind about how he felt about the man who he felt stole the 1960 presidential election from him. However, during his time in exile, he had become more… “tricky” than usual. And when “Tricky Dick” Nixon smelt something fishy going on within the White House, well, he didn’t need that much prodding to get back at “Saucy Jack” Kennedy.
Now, Jack Kennedy’s personal medical records were secret, stored under a false name. There had already been one burglary in their location they were kept in, but the false name tripped up the intruders, so they left empty-handed. Whether or not Richard Nixon was behind this attempted burglary is unknown. However, these medical records had been lost, a casualty of bureaucratic mismanagement. And with the president’s recent health complications, it only made sense to remake the entire thing from scratch, only updated with more recent information.
Now, Richard Nixon knew some folks, and those folks themselves knew some people who knew how to get shit done. And soon enough, Tricky Dick held in his hands the ultimate weapon against his old foe. But he wasn’t just satisfied with one political bomb, no. He wanted more. So he had his dig again, only deeper, and in doing so he uncovered not one but two more priceless weapons to use against Kennedy.
FDR was a cripple. It was true, and it was known. He rolled around in a wheelchair, although the man was shrewd enough to not appear in public using it, or bring any attention to his disabilities. Throughout it all though, he remained popular. He was admirable for being a cripple, because in a time of struggles, it showed that he struggled through life too.
Jack Kennedy was also a cripple, although it was temporary. The difference was though that nobody outside of the White House knew that Jack Kennedy was a cripple. Jack Kennedy was a coward, so he lied to the American public because he couldn’t bear to be seen as a cripple. Or so the logic went.
Mimi didn’t work at the White House anymore. She used to be an intern. Or so the gossip went. She couldn’t type a damn or really do anything at all. But Jack Kennedy seemed to be fond of her. It took time, but then Dick Nixon’s boys found one Mimi Alford. She was married by then, but there were enough dots that Tricky Dick’s boys could form a picture of what went on during her time in the White House.
On December 19th, the Washington Post published a double bombshell issue. The impact of it was immediate. Richard Nixon was the first to lead the charge, attacking “Lying Jack Kennedy” for “lying to everyone in America’s face.” Catholic groups across the nation made vocal their disapproval of the first Catholic president’s adultery. Mimi Alford and her husband were soon besieged by journalists eager to see her side of the story. And Jack Kennedy? Well, he was obviously furious at what had occurred, enough so that in a fit of rage he suffered a heart attack.
When Jack Kennedy woke back up several days later, it was to a situation straight out of his worst nightmares. Although his heart’s attempt on his life bought him some small measure of sympathy, the American people were still angry with him for Vietnam, the lying, and the philandering. The Christmas that year was to say the least not a happy one for the White House.
January 1st of 1968 to January 20th of 1969 are considered the closing chapters of America’s Camelot. However, bruised and beaten as he was by recent scandals, and facing rumors of a possible movement of impeachment, Jack Kennedy earned the admiration of future generations by fighting as hard as he could to get anything done. Faced with what seemed to be a legacy in ruins, he instead, much to the despair of his doctors, threw himself into his work with greater fervor than before. It was a vicious struggle to get anything passed, and what did manage to make it through was watered down at best, mere shells of their former selves at worst.
Vietnam still existed, and American troops were still over there. Intent on trying to salvage what remained of the situation there, Jack Kennedy began the process of withdrawing American troops from Vietnam. Furthermore, he reached out several times to negotiate with the North Vietnamese, ending the bombing runs to show that he was serious about bringing an end to the fighting. These talks would last for several months, but as hard as he fought, Jack Kennedy could not secure an end to the war in Vietnam.
Greatly weakened by these peace talks, Jack Kennedy was now stuck in a wheelchair again, although it was doubtful whether or not he would get out of it. And yet still he fought on, using as much of his energy to depending on the day fight off attacks from his opponents both Republican or Democratic, defend his family from the rumors and journalists that tried to invade their daily lives (This would horribly backfire during one press conference where Kennedy, struggling through a bad day of stomach pains and painkillers, answered a question regarding his affair with Mimi Alford by responding “I did not, at any given time, engage in intimate relations with that woman.”), or simply getting up in the morning. It was a lame duck period, but Jack Kennedy didn’t seem to think so.
Jack Kennedy’s final triumph came on January 3, 1969, when the words he spoke at Rice University Stadium seven years ago came true before his very eyes on the television screen. It was a very bittersweet moment indeed, but to a weary Kennedy, if Vietnam was his greatest failure, than the first Moon landing was his greatest accomplishment.
Jack Kennedy didn’t attend his successor’s inauguration ceremony. Nobody knows why, although historians have speculated that it was due to a mixture of shame and bitterness, along with the desire to avoid having to reveal himself in a wheelchair at such a public occasion. Instead, he watched it from the inside of the White House, where he then met said successor, passing along a few words of wisdom in a way. Then, he left the White House with his family. Not for the last time, as he would be invited back by future presidents up until his death in 1979, far surpassing expectations concerning his ever-declining health, but it was the last meaningful time, at least to some historians.
The tales of Camelot are ones of whimsy and excitement, victory and glory, idealism and honor. But what everyone seems to forget, or more specifically, wishes to forget, is that at the end of it all, Camelot is a tragedy. And none wished to forget this more than Jack Kennedy.
Author's Note:
Hello there everyone, my apologies for the length, formatting, and time it took to release the first chapter. I promised that I would get it out in January, and I did. I again apologize if the writing, formatting, and other such details are amateur or unrefined, this is after all my first ever TLIAW, and I swore that I would keep my word and release it in January reception be damned. I will edit it soon so it will not only be easier to read, but more unique and engaging. Things like chunky blocks of text, misspellings, and such will be fixed, and there will I promise be an election wikibox made by theothresh included soon. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and I hope to make you all proud in the coming future chapters. -Laserfish
As an introduction to the timeline this ranks as one of the best, utilizing a selection of familiar faces to knock the established history juuuust enough off the beaten track so that by the end everything feels very different indeed. LBJ ranting about getting involved in a bungle in the jungle, Nixon ferreting out the liars in the White House (For his own purposes, naturally!) and John Birch Society starting to make it's way up the hill, it's all very exciting even as it does make you take a deep breath at the same time. I can also appreciate that there's clearly been A divergence before Kennedy surviving...who on earth is the unfortunate sap who (I presume) will be fed to the next Republican nominee given that LBJ is still Majority Leader? And GOD, Senator Edwin Walker is a grim bloody thought.
But of course, it's not nearly as interesting without the man himself at the centre and I have to commend you for giving Kennedy a fair warts and all portrayal here. It really is a well written tragedy given that my reaction to most of it was a grim "Oh goddamn Jack" rather than any disgust or whatever. Turning him into a Clinton-esque figure is really neat, I don't think I've seen it done like that before. You also did a good job of making it so that Jack's folly in Vietnam was not the same as LBJ's, trusting different people and having them screw him over in different ways is unique. I particularly liked what appeared to be something of a disintegrating relationship with Goldwater; much has been made of his friendship with Kennedy but I'd often wondered how it might have altered given Kennedy's obvious plan to do something or anything with civil rights.
Can't wait for the next one and I'm bracing myself for some dark times ahead.
Damn. Kennedy might be seen sort of like an OtL LBJ: a successive domestic president (Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts) but a failure in terms of foreign policy barring the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Did Medicaid/Medicare ever get passed? Or was Kennedy so consumed with other issues that he could never muscle the support for it?
The ‘60s ended on a bum note and if the economic crisis of the ‘70s still happens then it’ll be an entire generation growing up in social and political instability mixed with economic hardship. Camelot truly will be lost.
In another JFK TL, President Lincoln's Blue Skies in Camelot, it has been well done but to me it presents an overly idealistic view of how a Kennedy administration and the world after that would have progressed.
For A Fleeting Wisp of Glory, I like the cynical, realist view of how a JFK second term would be like for this story...
It is clear JFK had plans to withdraw from Vietnam, planning to withdraw troops after his re-election in 1965. However, that was based on the assumption that things were going well and things had not completely gone off the rails by November 1963.
Given how unstable the situation in South Vietnam was with junta/military infighting, rosy predictions of a withdrawal would likely be derailed if JFK lived. The truth was things went off the rails the moment Ngo Dinh Diem was couped and murdered. Why would the North Vietnamese take negotiations seriously when the South government was crumbling with each passing day? The violence and instability would have escalated anyway.
While JFK would have pushed through Civil Rights due to public support amidst events like Bloody Sunday in Alabama and the Mississippi civil rights murders (amidst all the claims only LBJ could do it), I don't think that JFK could keep his health condition or sexual escapades secret through a full 8 year presidency. His political enemies would be rubbing their hands with glee when they got their hands on such salacious material. He certainly would not be remembered fondly as per OTL
“I refer, first, to the need for a far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.”
In the years since his time in office, and especially after his death, historians have called John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s time in America’s most highest office “The Camelot Era”. This wasn’t for no reason at all, no siree. The association of JFK’s White House with the mythical Arthurian realm and all that it had to offer began shortly after he narrowly cheated death once again on an ordinary day in Dallas in 1963. The story goes that while he was recovering, the president was asked by reporters at his bedside what he was anticipating to do most once he was out of the hospital, at which point he responded with that iconic JFK wit in that iconic New England accent of his “I am hoping to attend the closest showing of Camelot, and if that is not possible, Mrs. Kennedy’s bedroom.”
A humorous anecdote, although whether it actually happened or not is debated by scholars and historians alike up to the present day. Regardless of whether it was true or not, it certainly made an impact, with sales of tickets to the Broadway musical receiving a dramatic spike in the aftermath of the assassination attempt and alleged interview, culminating in the attendance of the president himself at a showing in Washington D.C. in 1964. “Camelot Fever” had come to America, and many people recognized their president as their very own King Arthur. Future historians though would note that John F. Kennedy was not only the Arthur of his court, but the Lancelot, and for very good reason.
After recovering from his wounds and leaving the hospital, Jack Kennedy came back to high approval ratings and a nation eager to see what their leader would do next. The first thing he did was to support a planned bill to strengthen gun control in the country, which, fair, it would’ve been weird if he hadn’t done so after all. All it would’ve took to plunge all of America into mourning was some pinko fuck with a rifle. Said pinko fuck ended up dying in a shootout at the Texas Theater though, but still, nobody was in the mood for more president-killing rifles waiting to land in the hands of the next lunatic with an agenda, most of all the president himself.
Aside from that though, most of Jack Kennedy’s time was spent preparing for the upcoming campaign trail. Even though he had the power of the sympathy vote and a successful first term behind him, Jack Kennedy wasn’t going to leave it up to chance, especially when his good friend and Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater was his opponent. He was eager to face off against his friendly rival, and Goldwater felt the same. Goldwater chose Walter Judd, a physician and former member of the House of Representatives known for his staunch support of Taiwan ever since his time as a medical missionary there in the 1930s, as his vice presidential candidate. Kennedy on the other hand ditched Lyndon Johnson after briefly considering retaining him. As his second term was intended to be more ambitious than the first, Kennedy decided that rather than collecting dust, Lyndon and Jumbo could be better put to use in the Senate fighting for all the bills and legislation he intended to pass.
The campaign for the American presidency in 1964 was an entertaining one, with there being a much more civilized air to it all. There was a refreshing lack of the negative attacks and dirty slander that was becoming more and more prevalent in the American political environment, in part because of the cordial relationship both candidates had with the other. Notably, Jack Kennedy personally vetoed a potential campaign advertisement involving a little girl plucking the petals off of a daisy getting abruptly vaporized by a nuclear explosion, calling it “beyond traumatizing” and angrily asking “What if John-John saw this?”
Holding a series of “Lincoln-Douglas style” debates around the country, both contenders for the Oval Office held their own admirably, although it was clear that as skilled as Goldwater was when he was at the podium, said skills were no match when faced with the charisma and charm that Jack Kennedy had honed to a fine point over the course of his entire life, both political and personal. By the time that it was all said and done, the history-making landslide on Election Day more than showed everyone who had ultimately won the Kennedy-Goldwater Debates.
Settling back down from the Election Day high, the Kennedy administration got back to work on ensuring that the New Frontier became a reality for all Americans. Work that would be rudely interrupted only ten days after Jack Kennedy’s second inauguration. An interruption caused by what was quickly becoming more than an annoying thorn in the backside of the administration.
An annoying little thorn in an annoying little country named South Vietnam.
From the Buddhist Crisis to President Ngo Dinh Diem and his family’s unwillingness to change their behavior to Diem’s own assassination, American attempts to gently nudge the country into some form of reasonable government had proven somewhat ineffective, to say the least. With the lethal removal of Diem from power courtesy of a CIA-backed coup, it was hoped by the White House that a more effective relationship could be had with the new military junta governing the anti-communist state.
These hopes were promptly disappointed when rogue general Nguyen Khanh seized power along with other disgruntled officers disillusioned by the junta’s sidelining of them. It was a bloodless thing, admirable in both its speed and efficiency. However, there was one person who managed to escape from the grasp of Khanh’s new authority, which would soon complicate things for just about everyone in not just South Vietnam, but America as well.
Nguyen Van Nhung was many things. A soldier. An assassin. An aide-de-camp. And now, most importantly of all, alive. It had been close, too damn close, but his gut had told him to get the hell out, and so he followed it. Followed it so damn hard he managed to actually survive. Because that’s what he was now. A survivor. And the thing about survivors nowadays, you see, is that they’re hated. They’re loose ends, waiting to be tied up before somebody pulled on them and the entire thing it was a part of became undone because of it.
If that traitorous uppity bastard Khanh had his way, Nhung probably would’ve been a footnote in the annals of Vietnamese history. All he would’ve been known for is shooting dead a nation’s-his nation’s- first president and his brother in the back of an APC. Better than nothing, but not good enough. Good Enough got men killed. So did Not Good Enough, but only one of them was the more admirable, more respectable choice you could make. Anything other than that was pitiful, scornful even.
That was what resulted in this mess happening, a bunch of fellow officers who felt that what they got was Not Good Enough and so decided to get what they wanted by force. Force. The only solution that’s been proven to work since forever. There weren’t any men who were Good Enough in the Viet Minh, and there sure as hell weren’t any men that were Good Enough in the ARVN. Opportunistic bastard backstabbers, they deserved more than just a measly little fucking demotion and reassignment to a tiny little village next to the Mekong Delta.
Yes, they deserved more than that, but he couldn’t give it to them. He couldn’t give it out to them like he did two brothers out of touch with reality with a pistol and a semi-automatic. No, that happy day was far off in the distance, demanding that effort be put in to get to it.
It was a damn good thing that he was a hard worker then.
He wasn’t always like this, cursing and spitting and fuming aloud by the side of a road, jeep still warm and the bullet holes in the back tattooed across what remained of the rear like a bitter parting kiss from a scorned lover. He was quiet. Polite. In control. It was their fault that he was this way now. Their damn fault for making him blow up.
He needed a smoke. Yes, that would do. They had broken his pipe, his favorite damn pipe, when they shot at him and bullet meant for him instead obliterated the bowl of the pipe into nothing but chunks and splinters of desecrated wood. He couldn’t wait any much longer though, he needed a smoke and he needed it goddamn now. A nice little cigarette, a boy and man’s best friend. Yes, he could already feel himself calming down now. It wasn’t a pipe, but it was an adequate alternative method of smoking tobacco. The hand in his pocket fumbled and probed and he could feel himself starting to burn even hotter as the seconds ticked by like minutes until he finally managed to feel and pull out with the relief of a desperate man a cardboard box of smokes that was miraculously unharmed. He never knew when the boss was in the mood for one but didn’t have a smoke onhand, and now Nhung thanked himself for his preparedness. He eagerly fished one out, sticking it into his mouth with a slight rush of giddiness at the upcoming relief.
Lighting up the cigarette and inhaling, Nguyen Van Nhung closed his eyes and imagined that right in front of him was the shivering, bruised and fearful face of a certain Nguyen Khanh. Yes, that would be his goal for today. Damn the politicians and the communists and the nation for now. They would always still be around to deal with at a later time. Politics, communists, and Vietnam were eternal.
But Ngueyn Khanh wouldn’t be.
Nguyen Van Nhung found himself smiling at that thought.
Then he blew the smoke out right in front of him, where it blew away into the warm January night.
The overthrow of Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Council Duong Van Minh by the disgruntled general Nguyen Khanh had gone without a hitch, save for the absence of the corpse of Minh’s aide-de-camp and bodyguard, Nguyen Van Nhung. A soft-spoken yet sadistic person, Nhung had under the orders of his superior personally executed up to 50 people, including the former president Diem and his brother Nhu. He was not a man to be toyed with, and so it only made sense for Khanh to order his liquidation, lest he come for revenge against him.
Unfortunately for Khanh, Nhung would manage to escape from the troops coming to apprehend him, and disappeared from Saigon altogether. An unfortunate outcome, but Khanh had much better things to do at the moment, like sharing the spoils of power, or convincing the Americans that yes he was a leader worthy of their precious and very valuable foreign aid. The Kennedy administration were understandably a bit wary about this change in governments, and the look of a military coup didn’t really help the public image of South Vietnam, but hey, this Khanh fellow was the only guy available to do the job of keeping Vietnam as an anti-communist bulwark afloat, so he got his foreign aid.
Now that things in Vietnam had quieted down, Jack Kennedy got to work on the most pressing issues of the day. He had always intended to make his second term in office even more successful compared to his first one, and his recent brush with death only intensified that desire to be a successful president.
The Kennedy administration set a national record for the amount of legislation proposed by the president during its second term, and most historians agree that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was one of the most important ones among them. It was also a law that was bitterly fought over, with filibusters, proposed compromises, and other sorts of drama to turn Capitol Hill into the battlefield of a second American Civil War if not in looks than in spirit certainly. Blood (Strom Thurmond tried to outdo his previous filibuster record of 24 hours and 18 minutes but had to stop at the 20 hour mark when he choked on a throat lozenge and had to be dragged kicking and swinging to the hospital to get it removed.), sweat (One newspaper cartoon portrayed an exhausted congressman and his equally exhausted teenage son in high school football gear coming home in the dead of night at the same time while the wife is hosing them down on the front lawn, stating that she won’t be having them stink up the house.), and plenty of tears (Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater’s friendship was severely tested during this time, as the latter’s refusal to support the CRA more than tested the ambitious former’s patience.) were shed as the combatants struggled for what felt like the soul of America.
The struggle wasn’t only in the halls of Congress though. The Freedom Summer of 1964 was an intense one, as civil rights activists traveled to Mississippi to register as many African American voters as possible in the state. Resistance against their actions by the state government, local authorities, and civilian groups up to and including the Ku Klux Klan was fierce and ultimately deadly. The disappearance and eventual discovery of the bodies of three activists murdered by members of the KKK and local police and sheriff departments caused outrage. Outrage which helped bring attention to not only the civil rights movement but the Civil Rights Act which was still being fought over. Said publicity would prove to be beneficial to both of them by turning public opinion in their favors.
Eventually, after the tireless work of new Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson managed to wrangle together enough votes, and to the tears of joy wept by MLK to the begrudging respect of Malcolm X to the celebrations of liberals all across America, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, also known as just simply “The Kennedy Act”, was signed on the Fourth of July of that year. Cleverly using like an Irish boxer a one-two punch combination of a milestone law passing and a day of patriotism, Jack Kennedy declared in a speech on the front lawn of the White House that America was “moving in many different and individual steps as one towards a greater, brighter, and more equal future.” It was clear to all that the New Frontier hadn’t even begun. It had only just started that day. And as the presidential family watched the fireworks display go off in the night sky, their glare just a bit more brighter and hopeful than last year, it seemed that for a brief moment, America’s Camelot had found itself its storybook ending.
Of course, life isn’t always a fairy tale, and you don’t just simply put an end to racism or communism with a simple “The End” like the Brothers Grimm did to the villains in their books.
While the brighter half of America rejoiced and patted itself on the back for a job well done, the darker half instead seethed. George Wallace decried Jack Kennedy as a Northern tyrant, kicking the Neo-Confederate and Lost Cause rhetoric up a notch at the same time that Strom Thurmond howled not a Rebel yell but something akin to it in fury as he began doing an impressive impression of a human flamethrower, setting his audience alight with the fires of hate and rage.
Barry Goldwater merely sighed and shook his head disapprovingly.
But while future troubles were being sown in America, they were also being sown overseas in Vietnam, albeit much more violently. The generals Lam Van Phat and Duong Van Duc had been dismissed from their positions of Interior Ministry and IV Corps commander respectively, in part due to outcry from Buddhist activists accusing Khanh of accommodating too many Catholic pro-Diem officers in positions of leadership. Disgruntled by this, the pair launched a coup of their own with some unexpected assistance.
Nguyen Van Nhung hadn’t been idle while he was underground. He had been plotting his vengeance, and in order to achieve said vengeance, he needed to find some friends in higher places than him who would be willing to help out. Luckily for Nhung, he found some individuals who were alike with him in their interests. There was Pham Ngoc Thao, former overseer of the failed Strategic Hamlet Program under Diem, and Do Mau, one of the three deputy prime ministers that Khanh’s government had, who possessed a skilled political mind. Both had become disgruntled with the current state of affairs for one reason or another, and when an opportunity came, the unlikely trio took it.
Initially listless and almost aimless aside from orders to occupy important positions in Saigon, the triumvirate of Thao, Nhung, and Mau energized it, and with this newfound speed and aggression. Republic of Vietnam Air Force chief Nguyen Cao Ky was wounded and taken into custody after Tan Son Nhut Air Base was assaulted even after threats of a “massacre” if the rebels made any moves against it. Khanh was found to be nowhere in his office, as he had escaped and fled to the resort town of Da Lat. There, American officials encouraged him to return to Saigon and reassert himself as the leader of Vietnam. Initially reluctant, Khanh eventually agreed, and was soon on his way back to the capital city.
Then a rebel A-1 Skyraider shot his plane down.
Now without a leader, the loyalists soon collapsed, and the rebels began to make gains, albeit not without resistance due to popular fears of a return to Diem’s authoritarian pro-Catholic policies. The Americans, more than tired of the coups and unwilling to go through the trouble of finding a possible strongman to prop up, eventually gave in to reality and recognized the rebels as the legitimate government of South Vietnam. Standing triumphant, Thao, Nhung, and Mau sidelined the other generals, creating a ruling triumvirate which promised to be more vigilant, more patriotic, and more anti-communist than the previous governments.
Jack Kennedy, a devoted student of history, uneasily noted that practically every political triumvirate in history fell apart into infighting and civil war, and prayed that this one would be the exception.
That wasn’t the only thing Jack Kennedy was praying for though. He was praying that the rest of his agenda would pass through Congress. Things before hadn’t been smooth sailing by any means, but the resistance he was facing now from George Wallace’s boys and Barry’s friends on the daily was starting to get on his nerves. At first it was things like infrastructure, public housing, and other, more minor bills and such. But then it became fiercer, health insurance and social security and even the space program were duels where hot verbal lead were fired out in shots and volleys. Hell, even Dick Nixon seemed to have quit kicking about in New York City to begin criticizing the Kennedy administration or, God forbid, begin preparing for 1968.
But overall, even though some of his momentum had been sapped, Jack Kennedy was still popular among most Americans. He was still their King Arthur, the good sovereign dispensing justice and wealth to his people. Of course, there were naysayers, there would always be naysayers, but most white liberal Americans wanted to believe that the civil rights issue had been finally resolved. They didn’t want to hear about how the botched assassination attempt against Malcolm X had descended into a massacre. They didn’t want to understand what “jihad” meant when an angry X declared it over and over again against the Nation of Islam. They didn’t want to hear about “Bloody Sunday” and how the streets of Selma ran red with the blood of civil rights activists. They didn’t want to hear about any of that disturbing unrest happening after what was supposed to be the end of racism in America.
But hear it they did, and bit by bit, as the followers became uncertain, the first cracks in Camelot began to appear.
And then, like a recurring illness, Vietnam acted out again. The situation had for whatever reason deteriorated. The Viet Cong had either become an extremely professional force or the ARVN had decided to make lobotomies part of their officer’s training regiment. Roaming government militias and death squads sponsored by Nhung patrolled the jungles and city streets. Infighting had only gotten worse, and American officials present in the country reported back that American advisors weren’t enough. American troops would have to be present in order to restore some form of stability to South Vietnam.
This was a nightmare for Kennedy. He had, rather optimistically, hoped to withdraw American troops from Southeast Asia. He had defended such ambitions in several recent public speeches, and with the warming of relations with the Soviets and Khruschev he had even been bold enough to state that the Cold War could be ended to the mutual victory of not just the United States and the Soviet Union, but to humanity as a whole. To then backtrack on that position and send American boys to an unstable jungle country with communist guerillas behind every tree or blade of grass would be very harmful to his image and administration, to say the least.
But soon, as the news came pouring in that American advisors were getting sent back home in body bags, if there was even a body for the bag, and fighting on the outskirt of provincial capitals by Viet Cong guerillas was happening, both more frequently, there were more and more demands by Republicans, hawkish Democrats, and plain old anti-communists for the president to do something, or else the dominoes would start falling one by one before they even knew it. There were even some calling Jack Kennedy soft on communism, much to his anger.
Jack Kennedy was reluctant to send any American boys to die in a conflict, but pressure from the public, the Republicans, and even his own party, along with his own personal doctrine of containment, led to him making the decision to send troops to Vietnam.
It was a decision which many would mark as the beginning of the end for Camelot.
American ground troops first landed onto the shores of Vietnam in mid-1965. They were patriotic, enthusiastic even, about bringing the fight right to the communists. Whether or not they remembered what happened the last time John Fitzgerald Kennedy tried to bloody the nose of some communists in a jungle country back in 1961 is unknown. The man himself remembered though, which he tried to forget through some initial optimism and assurances from his generals that the might and pride of the American military would mop up what the South Vietnamese couldn’t.
And for a moment, things did seem to be getting better in Vietnam. At least, if you measured the progress of a war by if you killed more of the enemy’s guys than they did yours. In reality, American generals were dismayed to discover that their supposed allies were more focused on bringing the other down a peg, often through using their own men as goons with which to fight their workplace rivalries through to the bitter end. Sometimes, they could even be openly hostile towards the Americans, especially if they tried to get involved and straighten them out. CIA men in the country didn’t have it any easier, with the Vietnamese intelligence services being shadier than usual around their men, being very secretive with what info they had, and the info the CIA ended up receiving being outdated, mistranslated, or just flat out bad.
If President Kennedy had come to Vietnam expecting an easy war, he was instead severely disappointed. Seeing that the military and CIA were being fuckups as usual, Jack Kennedy instead turned his attention back to more peaceful items on his agenda. He had just signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had been yet another vicious fight to get passed. Now with another big piece of legislation out of the way, he decided to try and counter his recent entry into a war with a prevention of one. More specifically, of nuclear war. It would be undoubtedly very popular, and would definitely help the Democrats in the midterms. And Khruschev was receptive to the idea, which was good to hear.
As Jack Kennedy flew over to Vienna to begin talks about setting a limit to the amount of nuclear weapons and what kinds of said weapons would be targeted in said treaty, things were slowly but surely going downhill in Vietnam. Why and how was anyone’s guess, although the military brass and troops on the ground had a couple of good ones. American patrols who relied on South Vietnamese intel tended to get lost and wiped out in ambushes by the Viet Cong. Corruption in South Vietnam and especially the ARVN was monumental, with one recorded instance of a battalion’s commanding officer selling the grenades of his men to the Viet Cong, who promptly used them against a patrol of Americans that very same day.
The most damning piece of evidence though was yet to be discovered. In August of 1966, troops of the Americal Division and their commanding officer Colin Powell discovered copies of classified South Vietnamese documents on the bodies of Viet Cong officers they had managed to capture. Shortly after turning in the papers as evidence, a South Vietnamese intelligence officer on the base was interrupted trying to destroy them with a lighter.
The officers, both Viet Cong and the rogue South Vietnamese intelligence official, were immediately dragged away for interrogation. At first the Americans suspected that it was a simple case of corruption par for the course in the ARVN, or a mole in the VC being caught in the act. But as more and more time passed, it became clear to the interrogators that they had stumbled onto something bigger than anybody could have ever imagined. As quickly and as secretly as possible the information they discovered was forwarded to the CIA, who began to follow the trail of papers, money, and blood like a bloodhound on the hunt.
All this sniffing and digging and investigating tipped off some people who very much desired to keep their secrets, well, secret. But try as they might, their efforts to stonewall the investigation or cover everything up only increased the suspicions of the damned stubborn Americans that something was up. It was only a matter of time until the truth was revealed. That is, unless something necessary, something extreme, was done…
The Halloween of 1966 in Saigon began as most eventful days did, in that they were very normal. There was a large number of US military personnel enjoying their leave in the city, eager to share the wonders of trick-or-treating with the children of the city, the candy being provided by military and civilian organizations in an attempt to foster better relations with the Vietnamese people. Overall, there were high expectations that this would be an enjoyable day of R & R for everyone in the city.
It was not to be.
It began with the movement of South Vietnamese soldiers. At first it was one jeep, then two, then three, and then it wasn’t just jeeps but trucks, armored cars, and even light tanks. To a populace who had been through several military coups by now, the Vietnamese civilians could recognize the signs, although they had no idea who was overthrowing who at the moment. The American soldiers on the other hand, while alarmed by the amount of men in uniform clogging the streets with their vehicles screaming for those on the road to get out of the way, were not as familiar with the sight of a coup in the first stages of being executed.
Then shots rang out, and in mere seconds all became a panicked hell as civilians rushed for cover, trampling those who were unfortunate enough to fall, and sending American boys scrambling not just for cover but for any weapons they could find. Before long the entire city became consumed in urban warfare more chaotic and confused than any before or after it. ARVN units began to fire on each other, their officers screaming into their radios trying to figure out what the hell was going on or getting shot in the back by their own subordinates.
If it was hell for the Vietnamese civilians, then it was arguably even worse for the Americans who simply hoped to pass out or eat some candy that night. Isolated G.I.s tried to evade or fight their way back to friendly lines as either individuals or groups. Makeshift platoons tried to make their way through a city eating itself alive, unsure on if their South Vietnamese allies were trustworthy or not. The sun eventually set on a city that felt as hot as one. Many Americans came back from the dark, illuminated by a dozen searchlights and fires in the distance. Many did not.
As Saigon bled, Jack Kennedy’s blood ran too. Not through wounds, like the former, but instead in his veins, made young again through the rage of one who forgets how old they really are in their anger. Vietnam had been an annoyance time and time again, and as the city boiled over, so too did he. “What the hell happened over there?!?”, raged a voice from Vienna on one end, to the shaken silence from Saigon on the other.
Nguyen Van Nhung would inform Jack Kennedy though, although not personally. Instead, in a press conference on November 3rd, the new leader of South Vietnam would shock the world with a revelation straight out of a spy thriller.
Pham Ngoc Thao was many things. He was a skilled organizer, bar the whole fiasco that was the Strategic Hamlet program. He was an active player in the game of politics. He was a Catholic, a Vietnamese nationalist, and in the words of one American journalist, “one of the most remarkable Vietnamese around”. Indeed, so strong was his personality that American officials took the time to promote his name back at home in the news, his being more attractive than the notorious sadist that was Nhung or the conspiratorial Do Mau, who was already contemplating retiring from politics altogether by this point.
He was also a communist sleeper agent and infiltrator.
Having been shielded from suspicion due to his Catholic background and family connections, Thao had first managed to sabotage the Strategic Hamlet program through advancing it at an unsustainable speed,, before slithering his way into an even greater position of power through collaborating with Nhung and Mau. As the chief of the ARVN’s intelligence wing, he became perhaps one of the most successful double agents in espionage history, inviting all manner of corruption and disloyalty into the military and state, along with increasing his own personal political power as well.
All that power didn’t help him in the end though. The attempted coup was already a rushed job, the last resort of last resorts due to how irrational, how desperate, and how antithetical it was to the standard method of operation up until that point. Nguyen Cao Ky was allowed to redeem himself by leading a squadron of planes to personally bomb Thao’s headquarters, and the man himself was found by Nhung’s death squads while cleaning up the opposition, alive but pinned underneath a damaged jeep. He was too injured to finish himself off, although he didn’t have to wait long until his discoverers and their boss did him a favor and did it themselves.
Depending on who you are, it was either fortunate or unfortunate that Thao had grown arrogant enough to store evidence of his treachery in the heart of the country he was secretly undermining, and that it had managed to survive the bombing with only minor damage and nothing more.
While Nhung jeered as he spat on his former triumvirate member’s ruined boots, the rest of the body hanging from a French-style Saigon streetlamp, across the Pacific Ocean a different nation was descending into chaos. Vietnam had already been proving itself more and more of a self-inflicted burden on the American people, so when the revelation that America itself had not only supported and praised a communist agent as one of the three main leaders of that damned country, but that through said support more than American boys had died from the moment their boy’s boots hit the ground to a bloody Halloween night at the hands of their so-called allies, the effects were immediate.
After the shock had worn off and was replaced with furious outrage, Americans began to eat each other alive. The Republicans, to nobody’s surprise, began to launch volley after volley of attacks against the administration. How could the president let this happen, they asked. This is what happens when you let a Democrat manage a foreign war, so they said. A sort of mini-Red Scare began as fears that there could be a communist infiltrator as high up in the ranks of government as Thao was caused paranoia and the numbers of John Birch Society members to increase noticeably. The Democrats began to tear itself apart into pro-war and anti-war factions, with members like Scoop Jackson for the former and George McGovern for the latter castigating each other on the Senate floor for either bloodthirstiness or cowardice, much to the glee of the elephants in the room.
Anti-war protests began to reach new heights as seemingly everyone, especially the youth, began to turn on their former idol. The most radical ones in particular began to wave Viet Cong flags, with Marxist students putting up portraits of Thao next to those of Che Guevara and Malcolm X in their bedrooms. Opposing them were pro-war counter-protests, but even though they were all for getting back at the Vietnamese communists and more, it didn’t mean they were for Kennedy. Far from it actually. They blamed the president for this mess, arguing that his mishandling of the situation in Vietnam led to America getting caught off-guard and as a result backstabbed by an enemy pretending to be an ally. In his most impressive political feat yet, Jack Kennedy had managed to unite Democrats and Republicans, warhawks and peaceniks, pro-war and anti-war protestors, capitalists and Marxists alike, on one thing: Hating Jack Kennedy.
Jack Kennedy was aware of this, how could he not see the group protestors outside of the White House that seemed to grow larger and larger in size as the days went by? It was stressful, seeing what felt like the whole nation turning on him. And stress was the last thing his body needed. Jack Kennedy was getting older, and he didn’t like it. His health, already a laundry list of afflictions, medications, conditions, and illnesses, began to worsen. The results of the 1966 midterms, where a wave of Republicans both old (Richard Nixon was more than happy to reclaim his old senatorial seat at the Democrats and therefore Jack Kennedy’s expense.) and new (Former major general and right-wing activist Edwin Walker became a Texan senator, much to the ire of the president, who had been a target of Walker’s political attacks in the past.) didn’t help matters either As if he was the Fisher King of Arthurian lore, the nation began to decline alongside Jack Kennedy’s health.
If 1966 was the year Camelot’s decline began to accelerate, then 1967 was the year that the walls finally came crashing down. It started first with Vietnam, as most things bad usually did by now. As disastrous as the Halloween coup attempt last year was for the morale of both the soldiers over there and the civilians back at home, America was in too deep to get out now. Even though Kennedy distrusted his military advisors now, they managed to convince him that the best option was to try and fight until a favorable position could be achieved in future negotiations. So more troops were sent to Vietnam, and so the protests continued, along with the outrage from the anti-war Democrats.
It didn’t matter that soon, thanks to American military and numerical superiority, the fighting began to stabilize in America’s favor. It didn’t matter that the kill to death ratios favored the marines in green more than the guerilla in black. No, none of that mattered when the chant of “Hey! Hey! JFK! How many kids did you kill today?” was the hip new thing to say among the hippies. None of the piles of dead Viet Cong and “Viet Cong”, slaughtered with a ferocity only those avenging their fallen comrades could possess, mattered when Walter Cronkite gave his opinion on national television in so many words that the war could not be won, with negotiation the only realistic outcome. None of the bombs dropped in the aerial onslaught that was Operation Rolling Thunder mattered when Nguyen van Nhung, new dictator of South Vietnam, purged Do Mau and any potential communists with a brutality that was enough to rouse condemnation from members of the UN. And none of the victories listed in his daily reports mattered when Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson screamed at him for “sacrificing American progress and American boys all for some goddamn war in some goddamned jungle!”, all but announcing his intention to run in 1968 as an antiwar Democrat.
No, None of it mattered at all now…
And yet there was still worse to come. There were two things which would’ve been the downfall of Jack Kennedy. Said things were his affairs and, more seriously, his personal health.Even though he and Jackie grew closer and developed a much stronger relationship after the events in Dallas, the president still couldn’t resist “getting to know” different ladies from time to time. His health though was a much more serious matter. A sickly boy, his youthful and athletic appearance as an adult belied a constant struggle with everything from Addison’s disease to high cholesterol. While his health was in fairly good shape at the start of his second term, the more his fortunes declined, the more he himself began to degrade. By September of 1967, the effects of prolonged stress and trying to manage both a country and a war had clearly taken their toll. Graying hairs, gray eye bags, and graying daily mood chipped away at a president who had been elected for precisely the opposite of these things.
On September 6th, Jack Kennedy abruptly collapsed during a daily meeting. The presidential physician was rushed to his side, where after being helped up and given some water, a checkup diagnosed him with an extreme case of fatigue and moderate weight loss. Initially satisfied with the diagnosis, the president collapsed again only three days later. Soon enough, he was forced into recovery, although he did not take it sitting down. Which was ironic, as he was confined to a wheelchair during said period of recovery.
Jack Kennedy, even while stuck in a wheelchair, still possessed a keen political mind, and he knew that if news broke out that the president was confined to a wheelchair, it would be a public relations disaster. So he decided that to the outside world, things were normal inside of the White House. Of course, that meant canceling most public appearances altogether, but it was a small price to pay for keeping the administration afloat. And so, for one week, and then two, because Kennedy’s health was refusing to cooperate, the White House was unusually tightlipped about where the president was. The American public knew he wasn’t dead, as he had been on several recent broadcasts from the White House to talk about this piece of legislation and that, which was to most people enough for them to carry on their day satisfied they still had a leader, even if he was an unpopular one.
Richard Nixon is not most people.
Having returned to the Senate, he had become one of Jack Kennedy’s most fiercest critics. It felt good to be able to speak most of his mind about how he felt about the man who he felt stole the 1960 presidential election from him. However, during his time in exile, he had become more… “tricky” than usual. And when “Tricky Dick” Nixon smelt something fishy going on within the White House, well, he didn’t need that much prodding to get back at “Saucy Jack” Kennedy.
Now, Jack Kennedy’s personal medical records were secret, stored under a false name. There had already been one burglary in their location they were kept in, but the false name tripped up the intruders, so they left empty-handed. Whether or not Richard Nixon was behind this attempted burglary is unknown. However, these medical records had been lost, a casualty of bureaucratic mismanagement. And with the president’s recent health complications, it only made sense to remake the entire thing from scratch, only updated with more recent information.
Now, Richard Nixon knew some folks, and those folks themselves knew some people who knew how to get shit done. And soon enough, Tricky Dick held in his hands the ultimate weapon against his old foe. But he wasn’t just satisfied with one political bomb, no. He wanted more. So he had his dig again, only deeper, and in doing so he uncovered not one but two more priceless weapons to use against Kennedy.
FDR was a cripple. It was true, and it was known. He rolled around in a wheelchair, although the man was shrewd enough to not appear in public using it, or bring any attention to his disabilities. Throughout it all though, he remained popular. He was admirable for being a cripple, because in a time of struggles, it showed that he struggled through life too.
Jack Kennedy was also a cripple, although it was temporary. The difference was though that nobody outside of the White House knew that Jack Kennedy was a cripple. Jack Kennedy was a coward, so he lied to the American public because he couldn’t bear to be seen as a cripple. Or so the logic went.
Mimi didn’t work at the White House anymore. She used to be an intern. Or so the gossip went. She couldn’t type a damn or really do anything at all. But Jack Kennedy seemed to be fond of her. It took time, but then Dick Nixon’s boys found one Mimi Alford. She was married by then, but there were enough dots that Tricky Dick’s boys could form a picture of what went on during her time in the White House.
On December 19th, the Washington Post published a double bombshell issue. The impact of it was immediate. Richard Nixon was the first to lead the charge, attacking “Lying Jack Kennedy” for “lying to everyone in America’s face.” Catholic groups across the nation made vocal their disapproval of the first Catholic president’s adultery. Mimi Alford and her husband were soon besieged by journalists eager to see her side of the story. And Jack Kennedy? Well, he was obviously furious at what had occurred, enough so that in a fit of rage he suffered a heart attack.
When Jack Kennedy woke back up several days later, it was to a situation straight out of his worst nightmares. Although his heart’s attempt on his life bought him some small measure of sympathy, the American people were still angry with him for Vietnam, the lying, and the philandering. Christmas that year was to say the least not a good one for the White House.
January 1st of 1968 to January 20th of 1969 are considered the closing chapters of America’s Camelot. However, bruised and beaten as he was by recent scandals, and facing rumors of a possible movement of impeachment, Jack Kennedy earned the admiration of future generations by fighting as hard as he could to get anything done. Faced with what seemed to be a legacy in ruins, he instead, much to the despair of his doctors, threw himself into his work with greater fervor than before. It was a vicious struggle to get anything passed, and what did manage to make it through was watered down at best, mere shells of their former selves at worst.
Vietnam still existed, and American troops were still over there. Intent on trying to salvage what remained of the situation there, Jack Kennedy began the process of withdrawing American troops from Vietnam. Furthermore, he reached out several times to negotiate with the North Vietnamese, ending the bombing runs to show that he was serious about bringing an end to the fighting. These talks would last for several months, but as hard as he fought, Jack Kennedy could not secure an end to the war in Vietnam.
Greatly weakened by these peace talks, Jack Kennedy was now stuck in a wheelchair again, although it was doubtful whether or not he would get out of it. And yet still he fought on, using as much of his energy to depending on the day fight off attacks from his opponents both Republican or Democratic, defend his family from the rumors and journalists that tried to invade their daily lives (This would horribly backfire during one press conference where Kennedy, struggling through a bad day of stomach pains and painkillers, answered a question regarding his affair with Mimi Alford by responding “I did not, at any given time, engage in intimate relations with that woman.”), or simply getting up in the morning. It was a lame duck period, but Jack Kennedy didn’t seem to think so.
Jack Kennedy’s final triumph came on January 3, 1969, when the words he spoke at Rice University Stadium seven years ago came true before his very eyes on the television screen. It was a bittersweet moment, but to a weary Kennedy, if Vietnam was his greatest failure, than the first Moon landing was his greatest accomplishment.
Jack Kennedy didn’t attend his successor’s inauguration ceremony. Nobody knows why, although historians have speculated that it was due to a mixture of shame and bitterness, along with the desire to avoid having to reveal himself in a wheelchair at such a public occasion. Instead, he watched it from the inside of the White House, where he then met said successor, passing along a few words of wisdom in a way. Then, he left the White House with his family. Not for the last time, as he would be invited back by future presidents up until his death in 1979, far surpassing expectations, but it was the last meaningful time, at least to some historians.
The tales of Camelot are ones of whimsy and excitement, victory and glory, idealism and honor. But what everyone seems to forget, or more specifically, wishes to forget, is that at the end of it all, Camelot is a tragedy. And none wished to forget it more than Jack Kennedy.
Author's Note:
Hello there everyone, my apologies for the length, formatting, and time it took to release the first chapter. I promised that I would get it out in January, and I did. I again apologize if the writing, formatting, and other such details are amateur or unrefined, this is after all my first ever TLIAW, and I swore that I would keep my word and release it in January reception be damned. I will edit it soon so it will not only be easier to read, but more unique and engaging. Things like chunky blocks of text, misspellings, and such will be fixed, and there will I promise be an election wikibox made by theothresh included soon. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and I hope to make you all proud in the coming future chapters. -Laserfish
For me, I think the only unrealistic 'way out there' part of this chapter is Lyndon Johnson helping JFK after being dumped from the ticket. Even if LBJ was guaranteed to be given his old Senate seat and Majority Leader position, he'd never live down the shame of getting sidelined and then ultimately dumped by Kennedy, and he'd show it, loudly,
Other then that, pretty great first chapter. Gonna be following it for now on.
