them to Dallas.
It appears as though something has happened in the motorcade route. Something, I repeat,
has happened in the motorcade route.
Larry O'Brien was in the motorcade behind the presidential limousine.
As we moved on, the crowds became larger and they became extremely enthusiastic. And it
was a roar, it was a den as we turned into downtown Dallas and headed around this corner.
When the first shot rang out, I had an immediate reaction.
Radio reporters didn't yet know the horrible truth that Jacqueline Kennedy witnessed in
that tragic, terrifying ride. Governor Connolly shot once in the back, President Kennedy hit
in the shoulder, then several seconds later a bullet tore into the president's head. Jacqueline
had panicked. She was splattered with her husband's blood. She knew he was dead.
It probably was a half hour after we knew the president was dead before we allowed the
announcement to be made to the world because we refused to believe it.
President Kennedy has been assassinated. It's official now. The president is dead.
The president's funeral elevated Jacqueline Kennedy from the station of First Lady to
that of a saint. While the nation wept, she remained composed and dignified with her two
children by her side. At one point, here on the steps of St. Matthew's Cathedral, she
leaned over and whispered to her son John John, she said, you can salute daddy now and
say goodbye.
You can never get over little John John. Wave and say. That's the saddest thing I think
I ever saw.
Salute?
That's right. Salute. And so on. So that, you know, that to me epitomized this whole
sad and horrible occasion.
She now was the nation's young widow. When Jacqueline did finally decide to remarry,
shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, many Kennedy supporters were not happy.
I would naturally prefer to see her always with a halo around her head and sitting up
above everybody and being rather sort of like a nun, I guess.
I can only tell you that I'm quite sure it wasn't for money. I think that perhaps Jackie
was lonely. I think I know that she knew that there would never be another Jack.
I guess only Jacqueline Onassis could tell you what her real motives were. But she felt
that she needed money to maintain her lifestyle. And so she went after it and she got it.
Soon it became clear that Jacqueline and Aristotle Onassis were not happy together. He was
planning on divorcing her reportedly. Then a month before his death, Onassis called
Jack Anderson for help.
It was an astonishing conversation. He was complaining about her spending. He said that
he gave her a $30,000 monthly allowance. That on top of that, that she would walk through
a town with his credit cards and even without his credit cards, just the benefit of his
name, running up bills everywhere. That one of the things that she did was buy fancy new
clothes. That she had enough clothes to outfit a store. And he says, and I never see her
in anything but jeans. Basically wanted me to expose his wife.
Why would he want to have you publicize his wife's spending habits?
I heard later that he was planning on a divorce. That he was getting ready for a divorce. But
he certainly didn't mention that at the time. He just said, I want you to look into her
background. I want you to investigate into her spending. I want you to investigate, find
out what she's doing with all this money and write a story. And his secretary cooperated.
Other people in his office cooperated. And with that kind of cooperation, we were able
to track it down. We were able to discover that Jackie was indeed buying up huge amounts
of clothing. She would turn around and resell them. She had a contact down in New York.
And she would take the clothes that she bought around the world to this contact, it was the
finest of clothing, resell them to this contact and apparently put the money in her own bank
account. At least Onassis never saw any of it.
Are you familiar at all with what she was left with following Jack's death?
I'm not familiar with how much she was left. I know that Jack Kennedy's financial affairs
were very shrewdly managed and were handled by some people who understood finance. And
I'm quite sure that they didn't give her what she was expecting. Just exactly how much it
was, I didn't know. It was certainly my impression that that was one of the reasons that she
set her cap for Onassis. In fact, Onassis told us, and it was a whale of a story that we
were able to break, that she demanded a pre-marital contract. And I think the $30,000 a month
was guaranteed in the contract. In other words, he bought her.
If time does heal old wounds, then Jacqueline has had 25 years of convalescence. She now
has a job as an editor at Doubleday in New York.
She's always been involved in the world of communication. She starred off, as you remember,
as a photographer and a good writer for the Washington papers and so forth. And I think
it's something that's remained with her. And I think she would, I can't imagine her not
doing something.
Now her children are grown and Caroline is about to have a child. That means Jacqueline
is about to become a grandmother.
I would guess not unlike anybody becoming a grandmother. Great pride and a little bit
of astonishment that the world has fled by so quickly, but I would think enormous pride.
Any happiness that she can achieve and the peace and tranquility that she can have as
life has unfolded, she's entitled to. She earned it. She deserves it.
And we'll be back after this with the loves Elvis Presley left behind.
Cybill Shepherd now admits.
And the starless who reveal that they too had romantic flings with the late and great Elvis
Presley. The latest is Cybill Shepherd who tells June's Vanity Fair she too fell to Elvis's
charms, though not his drug problem. She dumped him. Just as Priscilla dumped him, other Elvis
loves were Linda Thompson and Ginger Alden and some big names like Natalie Wood and Anne
Margaret. They have a common theme as our Steve Dunleavy reports Heartbreak.
I viewed him as my sweetheart and the person that I loved and you know we had our problems
and we had our joys in life.
And the next thing I know he's on the phone to my mother saying, Miss Alden I want to
marry your daughter.
To quote him he used to say I'm an intensely lonely person at heart.
It was his first big hit and it almost became a blueprint for the years that would make
Presley the centre of female adulation. But it was an adulation that couldn't stop the
loneliness that haunted him. David Stanley, his stepbrother, explains.
I think Elvis was the loneliest person I ever met in my life. He was a man money, fortune,
fame, power, prestige, one of the most powerful individuals of the 20th century. I mean the
guy could walk into the president's office anytime he wanted to. I mean the guy was strong.
He had all those things but he was lacking love.
Elvis had a countless stream of lovers but something, somehow they always left him with
an emptiness. But the love that counted the most was for his mother, Gladys. They had a
strong, almost obsessive bond. DJ Fontana, Elvis's drummer, describes that relationship.
He was on the road and he'd stop sometimes, two or three times a day and call her. Wherever
he was I said what are we going to do now? I had to call my mama and see how she's doing.
When his mother died on August 14, 1958, Elvis was inconsolable. He would break into tears
at the mere mention of her name. Elvis went into the army and while he was stationed in
Germany he met Priscilla Ballou. She was just a precious 14 years old. They fell in love
but Elvis continued to date legions of women including actresses Natalie Wood and Yvonne
Lyme who he met on the set of Loving You. Finally on May 1, 1967, Elvis and the beautiful
Priscilla were married in Las Vegas in a storybook wedding. Nine months later they had a daughter,
Lisa. After the birth of their daughter, Elvis's attitude to Priscilla changed. He put her on
a pedestal treating her more like a big sister than a gorgeous wife. Priscilla recounts sadly
in her book Elvis and Me. My physical and emotional needs were unfulfilled. There had
always been rumours of Elvis's relationships with Hollywood starlets, particularly the
women he worked with like Hope Lang in Wild in the Country. Priscilla however was sure
of one relationship. Are you sure you're a mechanic? Sure I'm a mechanic. That was with
Ann Margaret in Viva Las Vegas. Priscilla found notes in their house from the actress. Elvis's
affairs and her loneliness drove Priscilla to the brink. She shocked the world when she
left the king for a karate instructor, Mike Stone. When Priscilla left him, it hurt him.
His ego was probably shot more than anything else because she left for some two bit karate
instructor. You know, here's this guy making all this money and this guy doing nothing.
So it shattered his ego but at the same time he failed in his marriage. He failed in love,
you know. After the breakup Elvis saw many women including actress Sybil Shepherd. At
the same time he began to date Linda Thompson, a former Miss Tennessee who wound up living
with him at Graceland longer than anyone else. We had a very consummate relationship. I sometimes
felt like his mother. I sometimes felt like his sister. Sometimes felt like his best friend
was sometimes his lover. But more and more the relationship became custodial as Elvis
went on a binge of self destruction. Eight months before he died I did make the choice
to leave. I didn't want to stay around and watch the person that I had loved more than
I had loved my own life kill himself and I knew that that is ultimately what was going
to happen. Finally in one last desperate attempt to find the love that would stop the pain
of the loneliness Elvis met 20 year old Ginger Alden. So I went into his room and we were
sitting there and he really started to talk to me. It was really interesting. He was kind
of talking about himself and one thing really stood out in my mind. I remember he said I'm
not that street out there. You cut me, I bleed. Elvis bought Ginger a $60,000 engagement ring.
They were to be married Christmas Day 1977 but it was not to be. The last moment that
you saw Elvis Presley alive. Tell us about that. He was getting up to go into the bathroom
and he turned around and gave a soft little wave to me. Ginger found him in the bathroom
dead. The autopsy revealed that Elvis's body contained 11 different kinds of drugs. But
it didn't reveal what his friends knew was the most fatal flaw. A broken heart. And we'll
be back with more of a current affair after this. A spy who came in from the court. Almost
not to be believed. But now we find out that nearly 18 years ago the king Elvis Presley
met the president Richard Nixon and it was an extraordinary meeting complete with 28
pictures that are now being sold by the federal government. Not for fun but for profit. And
what took place at that meeting is even more bizarre. Elvis, who it is now known was one
of the country's big drug abusers, was given a badge in effect making him a narc agent.
Here's our Krista Bradford. 1970 marked the end of an era. A time when the hippie movement
was fading out of the limelight and political upheaval was about to step in. But one thing
remained constant through all the troubled times. The popularity of rock legend Elvis
Presley. What few people know is that his influence and clout transcended music and
spilled into the Oval Office. In 1970 Presley sent a rambling adolescent letter to President
Richard Nixon requesting a meeting. The president agreed to a meeting in December. At that
meeting Presley asked to become a federal agent at large or sort of spokesperson for
the anti-drug movement. Presley felt his influence with the youth movement and fans of all ages
could curb the drug culture. Presley had a fascination with guns and badges and some
say this request was just another addition to his already extensive collection of law
enforcement paraphernalia. Nixon may have met with Presley because of his star status.
In the end the president awarded the king a federal badge as a narcotics agent. These
rare photos of the Nixon-Presley meeting were released this month by the National Archives.
The final irony, Elvis Presley's death was caused by a drug overdose. With us now are
two people who were at that meeting at the White House in 1970. Bud Kroh, who is now
an attorney in Seattle, was one of the president's assistants and Jerry Schilling was one of
Elvis Presley's assistants. First of all Jerry Schilling, why did Elvis really want that
badge? Well Elvis was a very intelligent man. He was aware of what was going on in the world
contrary to what most of the public may be aware of Elvis. He read everything politically
that was going on. He cared about his country and I must say in contrast to the intro of
this show where it said in 1970 Elvis was one of the most, one of the drug abusers in
this country. Elvis had a prescribed medication problem that only happened a couple of years
prior to his death. When he met President Nixon he was no more on any medication than
you and I are at this moment. Alright but he was very taken by this meeting. Bud Kroh,
in fact you wrote about it in a memorandum for the president's file and it almost startled
you that Elvis Presley went over and hugged the president. Well that was at the end of
the meeting, Maury, after we had had our discussion and Elvis had told the president how much
he wanted to help him in his anti-drug program. He had brought some of the badges that he's
collected from different police departments around the country and the meeting went extremely
well. We thought it would be very helpful to have someone of Mr. Presley's stature be
able to speak out against narcotics problems in the country and at the end of the meeting
I think in a show of gratitude and it was a quite emotional moment Elvis went over and
hugged the president. I was startled when I saw that. Have you ever seen that done before
to the president? No sir. He's not exactly a fellow who was huggable was he? Well I mean
I don't think I can answer that but I think Elvis at that point felt that that was the
appropriate thing to do, that he'd reached some sense of understanding with the president
as to what he could do and I should tell you that the credential that he was given was
an honorary badge. He was not really given the badge of an undercover narcotics agent.
I think that as Jerry Schilling would attest that Elvis is probably the last person in
the world you'd want to go undercover on behalf of the government. Did the president ever
enlist his help after that? Well there was some follow-up communication with some of
Elvis's people by people on my staff but there was no further personal contact between the
president and Elvis after that meeting that I know of. All right Jerry did he like to
collect badges and this was just one for his collection? Well he liked to collect badges
but I think this was the most important one. This was the top badge as far as he was concerned
because this one in his mind was recognized around the world. Let me ask you this I have
a copy of the letter that he wrote to the White House asking for this appointment I mean
it's oh it is quite extraordinary. Here's the first line, dear Mr. President first I would
like to introduce myself I am Elvis Presley and admire you and have great respect for
your office. I mean is it because the president had never heard of Elvis Presley Bud? Well
I think he wanted to make sure that the president would know who he was obviously I mean president
Nixon did know who Elvis Presley was. He readily agreed to a meeting in a matter of two hours
from the time the idea was proposed to him by Bob Holliman and Dwight Chapin and this
was part of the administration's program to try to reach out through people who could
communicate with young people and could communicate with folks that neither the president nor
others in the administration would be able to do. As I understand it didn't the head
of the DEA later say Elvis went to get a badge from him and he said no I can't give you one
and they had to go to the White House to get one? Well that's right what happened was that
the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs had apparently turned Elvis down when he made
an earlier request during the meeting just the way this happened Presley turned to the
president and he said Mr. President can you get me a badge of the Bureau of Narcotics
and Dangerous Drugs? The president turned to me and he said well Bud can we get him
a badge and I said do you want to get him a badge and he said well yes I said yes sir
we can get him a badge. Alright and Jerry he was very taken the hugging was very real
for Elvis because I understand there was one report where he almost had kind of a tear
in his eye. Well again being a patriotic person that Elvis was here's a poor a man who came
up from a very poor background who this country and coming to the White House like that coming
to the White House and also don't forget Elvis never took a street drug in his life. Alright
Elvis unfortunately wasn't the Betty Ford time and it meant a lot to him and he did
have a sincere worry about the drug culture at the time in the 70s. Right we have to break
off thank you both very much gentlemen Jerry Schilling. Thank you very much. Nice to talk
to both of you. We'll be back after this.