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Tuesday, November 12, 2019

PRESIDENT INTENDS TO MICROMANAGE THE 1964 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION

JFK MEETS WITH REELECTION TEAM

Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) On November 12, 1963, after a morning meeting on with senior advisers on the CIA's "anti-Castro campaign," JFK convened his re-election team in the Cabinet Room at the White House. 

According to Thurston Clarke, the meeting attended by the Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, and manager of the campaign, Stephen Smith, was the first formal meeting of JFK's reelection team.

Also attending were JFK assistants, Larry O'Brien and Ken O'Donnell, as well as speechwriter Ted Sorensen and DNC chairman, John Bailey among others.

Clarke notes that LBJ "had not been invited."  In fact, according to Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln's records, JFK and LBJ had met alone for only 75 minutes since the beginning of the year 1963.

JFK made it clear at this meeting, again according to Mr. Clarke, that...
"he intended to micromanage the Democratic convention," and that he wanted a "livelier convention" than the 1960 version.

SOURCE

"JFK'S LAST HUNDRED DAYS:  The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President," by Thurston Clarke, The Penguin Press, New York, 2013.




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