Read Online Joseph E. Persico by Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR, World War II Espionage - Free Book Online Page A

described a moment, if believed, surely unique in the screening of potential ambassadors. “Father said to him, ‘Joe, would you mind stepping back a bit, by the fireplace perhaps, so I can get a good look at you?’ Puzzled, Kennedy did so. Then father said, ‘Joe, would you mind taking your pants down?’ I was as surprised as Joe was. We couldn’t believe our ears. Joe asked father if he’d said what he thought he’d said, and father said he had indeed. I guess it was the power of the presidency, because Joe Kennedy undid his suspenders and dropped his pants and stood there in his shorts, looking silly and embarrassed. Father said, ‘Someone who saw you in a bathing suit once told me something I now know to be true. Joe, just look at your legs. You are just about the most bowlegged man I have ever seen. Don’t you know that the ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s has to go through an induction ceremony in which he wears knee britches and silk stockings? Can you imagine how you’ll look? When photos of our new ambassador appear all over the world we’ll be a laughingstock. You’re just not right for the job, Joe.’” “All you had to say was something was impossible for Joe to want it,” Jimmy recalled. Kennedy then asked, if he could persuade the British to allow him to wear a cutaway coat and striped pants to the ceremony, would the President then appoint him? The relentless Kennedy won the protocol point with Britain and the ambassadorial appointment from FDR.
    The President may have had an ulterior motive. Joe Kennedy had proved something of a misguided missile in Washington. The right wing saw him as a renegade, a businessman who attacked his own kind. The left painted him as a man who could be troublesome for labor. Within the administration, he was counted a power-hungry publicity hound, a harsh critic of the administration when it suited him, and a man whose business dealings might not stand up to close scrutiny. Henry Morgenthau met with the President shortly before Kennedy’s appointment became official and recorded in his diary a presidential display that astonished him. “I have made arrangements to have Joe Kennedy watched hourly,” FDR said, “and the first time he opens his mouth and criticizes me, I will fire him.” He repeated several times, Morgenthau remembered, “Kennedy is too dangerous to have around here.” Thus the bootstraps Irishman, snubbed while a student at Harvard, still socially banging on society’s door, attained the most prestigious American appointment in international diplomacy.
    Kennedy turned out to be a smash choice from the moment of his arrival in 1938 at the palatial thirty-six-room embassy residence on Grosvenor Square. The British public embraced Kennedy, his appealing wife, Rose, and brood of nine handsome children. The luck of the Irish held as the ambassador scored a hole in one on his first round of golf at the Stoke Poges course in Buckinghamshire. Joe Kennedy’s London life appeared charmed.
    He may have been a favorite of the British people, but Joe Kennedy was not popular in government circles. Early in 1939 he angered FDR by attempting to consort with Nazis. Helmuth Wohlthat, an economic advisor to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, wanted to meet with Kennedy to consider an American gold loan to Germany. Kennedy’s request to see the man was instantly turned down by a horrified FDR. Unabashed, Kennedy repeated the request, and again the President refused. Kennedy then, in direct contradiction of FDR’s orders, allowed Wohlthat to come see him in London. Learning of the ambassador’s insubordination, Roosevelt put a stop to any further encounters.
    In December, after the war had begun, Kennedy returned temporarily to Washington, where he delivered to the President his blunt opinion of Churchill. The then First Lord of the Admiralty, he told FDR, was