The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

There was one small footnote to the Geneva agreement, and though it did not seem important at the time, in retrospect it would take on considerable significance. After the agreement had been reached, Kennedy assigned his own liaison man with Harriman, the young Wall Street lawyer Michael Forrestal, to brief Lyndon Johnson on the settlement. Johnson, of course, already knew of the accords, and Forrestal arrived to find that the meeting had been arranged so that Forrestal would get there about ten minutes after Johnson’s masseur had arrived. Forrestal began to discuss the accords, only to find himself blocked again and again by the masseur. Forrestal spoke, the masseur chopped, Forrestal spoke, the masseur rubbed. For ten minutes Forrestal tried to explain the agreement and found no way of getting Johnson’s attention; it was, Forrestal thought at the time, and even more so later, Johnson’s way of showing contempt for the Laotian accords.