JFK Doodles Reveal Mystery Wrapped In Riddle Inside Enigma

September 20, 2006 01:31 PM

From Benjamin Harrison's subversive Eraserhead vs. Homestar Runner scribbles to Ronald Reagan's cartoon world of pretend cowboys and sinister Chinamen, presidential doodles are an exciting new area of historical study for people who use an unread hardcover of Clinton's "My Life" as an end table. Why piss away your career like Douglas Brinkley when you can learn everything about a prez from his notebook art and maybe a glance at his Wikipedia entry?

For example, a look at newly unveiled doodles by John F. Kennedy reveals a vast conspiracy involving his assassins and September 11, 2001:

Events long after his death give one doodle an unintended chill: A small circle with the numbers "9-11" contained within. Just to the lower left on the page, the word "conspiracy" is underlined.

At his final Cabinet meeting before his assassination, he scribbled the word "poverty." A weird example of JFK doodlery and yet another conspiracy, after the jump.

In 2004, the John F. Kennedy Library revealed a new collection of "declassified" scribblings, including one that made JFK researcher Maura Porter gasp in horror:

On Sept. 25, 1963, as President Kennedy hopscotched across western states aboard Air Force One before landing for the night in Jackson Hole, Wyo., he took a fresh piece of stationery and scribbled a note just below the presidential seal. He scrawled "Report action in Texas" or "Request action in Texas." Below that, he wrote "John Connolly," then the Texas governor. Fierce infighting among Democrats in Texas would spur Kennedy to visit that state two months later. He was shot in Dallas on Nov. 22 during that trip.

Dude! And did you hear he had a secretary named Lincoln? And Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy?!

Finally, can you guess what was on Kennedy's mind the day he made this cubist word poem?Presidents doodle while in office [AP]