The greatest was Khrushchev's retreat in the Cuba missile crisis, though some argue that Kennedy had emboldened Khrushchev by mishandling their )R Vienna meeting and the Bay of Pigs. I did not report, as I might have found a way to do, that the Secret Service was pimping for the president.

Then-journalistic practice overlooked private lives of public people unless behavior damaged public performance. She returned to simper, 'He wants me,' and left with the agent. I recall the night a Secret Service agent pulled aside the reporter I was chatting with at a Washington reception. JFK propositioned on a whim, and was rarely rebuffed. Marilyn Monroe, not long before she died, became a problem by boasting of her affair with the president and claiming that her ministrations made his back feel better. Women flopped in front of him by the score, courtesans and actresses and the wives of acquaintances. Reporters were entranced, and some forgot every principle of journalism in the glow from the prince. Although he and Bobby Kennedy were infuriated by unfavorable reporting, they had few occasions to complain. JFK's facade of vigor when he was in agony was remarkably courageous. JFK and his men lied routinely for convenience and image as well as policy.The president was insensitive and arrogant - though unlike brother Bobby, he did not shriek at offending bureaucrats - even by standards allowing that nice guys rarely become president. Reeves' description is hardly puffery, yet the portrait he actually paints is even less attractive. He was a man of soaring charm who believed that one-on-one he would always prevail - a notion that betrayed him when he first confronted the premier of the Soviet Union.' Khrushchev of course overwhelmed Kennedy, and mistakenly judged him to be a wimp, during their 1961 meeting in Vienna. He was also very impatient, addicted excitement, living his life as if it were a race against boredom. He was intelligent, detached, curious, candid if not always honest, and he was careless and dangerously disorganized. 'The man at the center was a gifted professional politician reacting to events he often neither foresaw nor understood, handling some well, others badly, but always ready with plausible explanations.

President kennedy profile of power