President Kennedy was furious with himself. The young U.S. commander in chief had just ended two days of meetings in Austria in June 1961 with the far more battle-tested Soviet premier. John F. Kennedy was departing the Soviet Embassy in Vienna, leaving photographers wondering why his smile had vanished, and got into his car with his spokesman, Pierre Salinger, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. As they headed toward the U.S. Embassy, the 44-year-old president pounded the shelf beneath the car window, irate over his performance with Nikita Khrushchev, the 67-year-old Communist leader.
Washington Post: ‘He just beat the hell out of me’ – when JFK met Khrushchev
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy are seen in front of the American embassy in Vienna, Austria, June 3, 1961.
