The hidden illness and the private life

Kennedy had Addison’s disease, a failure of the adrenal glands, diagnosed in 1947, and severe back trouble that led to a 1954 operation he barely survived. The historian Robert Dallek, who was allowed to see the medical records opened in 2002, described a president who took steroids, painkillers, antispasmodics and other drugs, sometimes many in a single day. [1][2]

In 1960 his campaign denied that he had Addison’s disease. The public image of a robust athlete playing touch football was carefully built. [1]

Dallek’s judgment, from the records, was that the drugs did not impair his decisions during the big crises. People who distrust official accounts note that this was hidden at the time; that is true, and it is the main documented deception in this file. [1]

The Senate’s Church Committee reported in 1975 that a “close friend” of President Kennedy was also a friend of the Chicago boss Sam Giancana and of the mobster John Roselli, the two men the CIA had recruited to try to kill Castro. The woman was later named as Judith Campbell, later Judith Campbell Exner. [1]

FBI wiretap work led J. Edgar Hoover to send the White House a memo about her contacts. White House telephone logs showed some 70 calls with her. On 22 March 1962 Hoover had a private lunch with the president; the last logged call between her and the White House came a few hours later. [1]

The committee could not establish whether Kennedy knew about the CIA–Mafia plots. It found the contacts, not a deal. Exner later gave varying accounts of what she carried or arranged, and those later accounts are not in the committee record. [1]

On 19 May 1962 Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” at a Democratic fundraiser at Madison Square Garden. It is one of the most famous performances in American political history, and it fed rumors of an affair. [1]

Time has reported that only one photograph is known of Kennedy and Monroe together, taken that night. Accounts of an affair rest on later testimony from people around them; there is no letter or record from either of them describing one. [2]

In 1997, a cache of papers said to show Kennedy paying Monroe for her silence surfaced and was briefly part of a major book project. Document experts found them to be forgeries, and they were dropped. [3]

Theories that the Kennedys had Monroe killed when she died in August 1962 have no support in any official record. This file does not rate a murder claim that has no evidence behind it beyond the timing.