Why did/do the Kennedys remain silent?

[Dawn Meredith]

The same interests that groomed the Kennedy family, cleaned them up and presented them as this liberal wonderkin were also the very same people that pulled the plug. That engineered the assassination(s).

I'd call this essentially correct. It worked in small with Old Joe in the Roosevelt administration. I've suggested elsewhere that Old Joe's amenable corruption was the guarantor that his sons would be no serious obstruction to the mob, the Fed, the defense industry, and the biggest of big oil.

Bobby's campaign may have been an optimistic bucking of the system, or he may have gotten tidbits of false approval. But either way, Nixon was the logical successor to a crumbling LBJ. The escalated number of Rockefeller associates in Nixon's second admin. is one tip-off

I couldn't disagree more with this, terribly unfounded. Almost Chomskyian really.

Let us start with JFK. If you have not read RIchard Mahoney's JFK:Ordeal in Africa, then you have no real insight into how Kennedy developed his views on the Third World, and his consequent open challenges to the COld War orthodoxy of John Foster Dulles and Eisenhower. It wasn't that some Old Money group "cleaned them up" etc. When Kennedy went to Saigon in 1951, he ditched his French escorts and sought out the best American reporters and diplomats, sometimes knocking on their doors late at night. And then staying late to pick their brains as to the true circumstances of the French colonial state. When he got back, he then tried to make some speeches for Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign. But they were deemed as to radical and provocative. So Stevenson told him to stop it. Then when JFK got word about the Dulles/Nixon idea to use atomic weapons at Dein Bien Phu, he issued a press release and called it an act of lunacy. The Dulles brothers never forgot that. Neither did Nixon.

Recall, this is 1951-54. Before JFK has seriously thought about running for anything but senator.

Then, Kennedy made one of the great speeches of his career on the other French colonial ordeal: Algeria. This one was so remarkable that it garnered something like 104 editorial comments nationwide. Most of them negative. Its a wonderful speech to read even today. Its in the Nevins edited Strategy of Peace book.

Kennedy's ideas were his own. Developed on his own, with the confidence of a few select advisers and friends.

Kennedy never felt at home with the upper classes. In fact, he would joke about the airs they put on with his girlfriend Inga Arvad. This is why at college, he never joined any of those secret societies, instead hanging out with a bunch of more or less regular guys. Then when he went into the service, he got out of a plum intelligence assignment to go on those dangerous PT boats with a bunch of grunts. This is not what children of the rich and privileged usually do. The true upper classes, the Astors, the Cabots, they actually looked down on the Kennedys. Because 1.) They were nouveau riche compared to them and 2.) The Kennedys were Irish Catholics. This is one reason that when JFK defeated Lodge for senator, he waited all night for the concessionary phone call. It never came.

Kennedy was never a part of that Eastern Establishment crowd and he didn't like most of them, with a few exceptions like Robert Lovett. For instance, when he relieved Jock Whitney of his British ambassadorship he sent him a three line telegram: "Jock, Pack, Jack". He didn' t like the Rockefellers either. That is why on a trip to Venezuela, RFK told the people to nationalize their own oil. When they said that Davdi Rockefeller would send down the Marines, RFK replied: "The Kennedys eat the Rockefellers for breakfast."

So when JFK wanted to get something done, he would bypass his Cabinet and his advisers like Rostow and Rusk and work through one trusted agent of his : like RFK on the Missile Crisis and McNamara and Galbraith on the Vietnam withdrawal plan.

You have to be very careful in these waters. The Establishment has done all they could to cloud and camouflage who JFK was in the wake of his death. It reminds me of the scene in the movie Z, when the generals have a meeting after they have killed Montand, the Kennedy-like figure. One of them says, "Let's knock the halo off his head." Meaning of course, smear his legacy after they have had him murdered.

In addition to the Mahoney book, you have to read The Kennedy Tapes, which is JFK unfiltered through the Missile Crisis. After you do, you will see that he never one of them.

Jim: This is one of the most important posts I have ever seen. The changing of JFK is the only thing I did not agree with in JFKU. I remember JFK from the start. I was only 11 and in Canada, but he made a huge impression. His total lack of anything warlike or establishment was evident to this idealistic young Canadian girl. Your post explains a lot. I will share this with others.

Dawn

[Bernice Moore]

Mighty fine words there Jim, as said the best in quite some time..,,,thank you... b

Edited September 28, 2010 by Bernice Moore

[Guest Tom Scully]

Jim,

If you agree that JFK's close friends, circa 1960, were Lem Billings, Bill Walton, Charles Bartlett, and Ben Bradlee, and possibly another in his small 1953 wedding party, George Smathers, do you consider any of them as close advisors?

I've seen JFK's relationship with Smathers explained away as an association devoted to hunting women.

Jackie supposedly commented that she could not recall a weekend when Lem was not a house guest. Lem seems to have been

a genuine friend and a person of good character, compared to the rest.

I've tracked down Bill Walton's background; his father published Jacksonville, IL only newspaper and owned an appliance store, died suddenly at age 56 while Bill was a U of Wisconsin student. At age 33 in 1943, Bill said goodbye to his wife, several children, and his boss, Henry Luce, and traipsed off to cover the war in Europe with his type writer strapped to his parachute pack. He never really returned home after that and was divorced in 1947.

Charles Bartlett was everything you say JFK rejected, Yale secret society, close friend of Cord Meyer, Jr., owed his Pulitzer prize to a tip from Sen. Prescott Bush, and pushed GHW Bush to lobby Nixon for the UN Ambassador appointment. Bartlett grew up on Jupiter Island and was probably close with Sam Pryor, Jr., as well. Robert Lovett's background includes all of the names and places I just associated with Bartlett. Lovett was infatuated with a total war strategy to the point he was said to be an even greater advocate of massive air raids on civilian neighborhoods than Churchill was. Are you familiar with the Dugway proving ground mockups of German and Japanese residential buildings, designed with the intent to analyze the optimum ways to use household furniture and fabrics as accelerants in combination with bomb designs and choices.

Lovett was appointed by Secretary of War, Robert Patterson, to chair the committee that designed the CIA. He was the best friend of Trubee Davison. He married the daughter of Brown, who merged with Harriman into Brown, Harriman, and was a partner of Prescott Bush. It must have been a one-sided affection with JFK, because Lovett was part of the ex-Comm group that tried to bulldoze JFK into launching nuclear war in October, 1962. Lovett dispatched Forrestal who had come down to Lovett's Jupiter Island estate to see his wife, who was a guest of Lovett. Forrestal went directly from Lovett's to a bed in Bethesda and an exit out a window.

There is no need to review Ben Bradlee's background.

JFK was an unstable personality, and he and his advisors and security principals put him, for nearly his entire presidency, in a leased weekend white house in Middleburg, owned by the mother of a former OSS agent who happened to

be the close business associate of both Patrick Hoy and his nephew, Bill McCollough. Closely associated with this group were Kupcinet, Korshak, and Henry Crown and thus, TFX.

JFK had already been through and rejected a major CIA attempt to co-opt his authority, the failed attempt to force him to go "all in" to support the flimsy by design, Bay of Pigs "invasion". How could he believably be an unwitting victim of the assassinations of the ruling brothers in Saigon, after the Bay of Pigs experience?

So either he was co-opted in Saigon, which tends to make it look like he wasn't as wise late in the third year of his presidency as he had been in its first few months, or he knew about it and let it happened, or he approved it in advance. None of these scenarios flow with your opinions of who he was and what he stood for.

A president of the stature you seem to be elevating him to, should have been able to avoid being killed the way he was, especially with his brother serving as US Attorney General. The details gathered related to JFK's instability is the reason Hoover could not be removed, the way Dulles was.

The guy you described would not, I don't think, end up so suddenly dead at the hands of an LN swiftly killed by another LN, or a victim of a 47 year murder conspiracy, cover up. His curiousity, research, and principles, not to mention his brother watching his back, would have served him better than to end up as he did.

I don't think much of this contradicts your details, Jim. It just seems to me that all the points you touched on are more complicated than a reader of your post would be influenced to understand. Obama's presidency has rolled out so much like JFK's. Left leaning, reformers on the surface, surrounded by appointees much more oriented to the right, with a heavy emphasis on the military-industrial establishment.

The Rich & the Super Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today‎ - Page 173

by Ferdinand Lundberg, Peter Wilsher - Capitalists and financiers - 1968 - 504 pages

"Kennedy, even with no war providing an excuse for a coalition, awarded his chief Cabinet posts to Republicans from the camp of big wealth. ..."

[John Dolva]

A range of different takes on similar subjects, some diametrically opposed, many with various nuances. For me, it seems a synthesis will require more thinking (and reading).

I'm a bit more confused than when started which I think is good, some preconceptions have been shaken others supported or given different perspectives to consider, so for this I'm grateful to all.

I'd still like to delve deeper into the Kennedys' early background, even going back to their Irish origins. So far it seems they came from nowhere with a lot (relatively, see earlier post on comparative wealth across a near century), at least a lot of drive and early established connections and a divergent yet homogenous persona that survived and prospered while others fell. An important kind of flexibility that bespeaks a certain culture Certainly others did better, but people like the Kennedys, men and women, seem to me to have a special place in history that few attain. (The various similarities with Gracchus and his brother (rome) are (to me) interesting, as are the destinies of other persons of their times.)

Lots of food for thought and books to read.

[Don Jeffries]

This is a subject that has been raised a few times before on this forum. I've posted my thoughts about it, but basically I find the public silence of Kennedy family members about the assassinations, especially so many years removed from the events, to be totally inexplicable.

As I've noted previously, if they held their tongues out of fear for their loved ones, their strategy hasn't worked. RFK was killed. Ted's presidential chances were ruined at Chappaquidick, which I feel was his political assassination and certainly no "accident." JFK, Jr.'s plane "crashed." Other Kennedys died (David, Michael), whose deaths may have been unrelated, but they still were unnatural and untimely, and added to a tragedy that the Greeks would have found incomprehensible.

Caroline Kennedy, much like her mother, will anger at the very mention of her father's death, which took place nearly fifty years ago, when she was a small child with only vague and unformed memories of him. When David Talbot wrote his fine book "Brothers," he described being told that the topic of his brother's assassination was off limits when he scheduled an interview with Ted Kennedy. Think of that- who would demand that the subject of their brother's death not be mentioned during an interview, over forty years afterwards? That's totally ridiculous, but it exemplifies the Kennedy family's attitude towards a subject they ought to be very interested in.

I agree with Jim D. that there has been an ongoing effort, which gained steam in the 1970s with the emergence of Judith Campbell Exner in the headlines, to portray JFK as a reckless, immoral playboy who cared more about his own individual desires than anything else. This was also the beginning of an attempt to link JFK up to the mafia, when in reality his adminstration was the only one in history to actually try and act against them. Jim has done a good job in past articles in showing how empty these allegations are, and how they can all pretty much be traced back to the same few dubious sources.

No matter what court approved liberals like Alexander Cockburn and Noam Chomsky have to say about it, there is no question that JFK was different from most politicians of his time. He would never have permitted Viet Nam to become the divisive mess it became, and the record shows that he had already begun the process of withdrawing from there shortly before his death. He was the only president, since its inception, to attempt to curtail the CIA. He dared to oppose powerful forces from all over the political arena, both national and international; he blasted the steel industry and advocated an elimination of the oil depletion allowance and he clashed with Israeli leaders over their burgeoning nuclear program.

Those who attempt to minimize his political significance, and chant that he was just another Democrat, can only do so by ignoring solid historical proof and relying on tabloid-style sources. He WAS very different. Unlike almost all his peers, he was never a member of the CFR (at least not the national organization). Robert Morrow should like that. And no, he was not a Rhodes Scholar. I feel confident that he, like all the other Kennedys, remained uninvited to any yearly Bilderberg meetings.

The Kennedys have never been trusted by those who truly run our world. Joe Kennedy, Sr. has been unfairly maligned in the press, again from some of those same dubious sources. The old man made many powerful enemies- FDR and Churchill chief among them. He paid more dearly, in a tragic sense, than any character invented by Shakespeare. FOUR of his children died seperate, unnatural deaths. That's a statistic that must defy any actuarial odds in existence. He has been unjustly accused of causing his daughter Rosemary's problems, when in reality he tried a brand new, very expensive procedure in a desperate attempt to "cure" her mental "slowness." We all know what happened, but there is no doubt his heart was in the right place. His children would all testify that he was a loving, doting father whose top priority was his family. The old credo that there "there's a great crime behind every great fortune" may well apply to the Kennedys, but in my view they have a far cleaner and honorable record than any other upper crust clan I can think of.

JFK's death remains very significant, because he was attempting real reform and that all changed on November 22, 1963. His family members should be speaking out at this point. They have nothing left to fear- how many more Kennedys can they kill? It would be nice to see at least one of them be a real profile in courage.

[William Kelly]

From my Bugliosi review, part 8, on Lovett vs. Dulles and JFK's decision to fire him:

http://www.ctka.net/...i_8_review.html

"What is extraordinary about what Dulles did with the CIA is that it was too much for even certain elements of the Eastern Establishment i.e. the very people who Dulles worked with and for. In 1956, David Bruce and Robert Lovett composed the Bruce-Lovett Report on the CIA for President Eisenhower. That report is almost nowhere to be found today. But Seamus Coogan pointed out to me that Arthur Schlesinger saw it among Robert Kennedy's papers and used it for his biography, Robert Kennedy and His Times. (pgs. 474-78) RFK had access to it during his service on the board of inquiry into the Bay of Pigs debacle. Bruce and Lovett had served on the forerunner of what came to be known as the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board: a group of private citizens meant to monitor American intelligence activities abroad. Eisenhower appointed this board in 1956. When they got a look at what Dulles had done with the CIA, they were shocked. I stress the following point: these two were scions of the Eastern Establishment. Bruce was a friend of Dulles who married into the Mellon family in 1926, served in the OSS, and was ambassador to France prior to writing this report. Lovett was Skull and Bones at Yale, became a lifelong partner at Brown Brothers Harriman, served with McCloy under Henry Stimson in the War Department, was Under Secretary of State under George Marshall, and became Defense Secretary in 1950. They were not leftist critics of American foreign policy reading William Appleman Williams at night. And what they wrote demolishes writers like Max Holland who maintain that the CIA was under executive control.

Lovett told the Cuban board of inquiry that "Bruce was very much disturbed" by the CIA's actions. "He approached it from the standpoint of 'what right have we to go barging into other countries, buying newspapers and handing money to opposition parties or supporting a candidate for this, that or the other office.' He felt this was an outrageous interference with friendly countries ..." (ibid pgs. 474-75) The report perfectly captures Dulles' cavalier, unfeeling attitude about sending young men of privilege abroad to engage in adventures with a blank check in hand. Bruce went as far as to deride Dulles' actions as irresponsible "King Making". All the while ignoring what the CIA was really supposed to do: collect, collate, and evaluate the best intelligence possible. (ibid p. 475) They further scored the system Dulles installed which rewarded success and ignored failure, with no system of justification or control. As long as a covert action was deemed as frustrating the Russians or keeping a country pro-western, it was given the go-ahead. Approval was almost always a "pro-forma" matter, done over lunch by a small inner group. The result was that, "no one, other than those in the CIA immediately concerned with their day to day operation, has any detailed knowledge of what is going on." This meant that the CIA's covert action arm exerted unilateral influences on American foreign policy. And at times, not even the US ambassador in country knew about it beforehand. (ibid) The writers believed that what had happened "could not possibly have [been] foreseen" in the legislation of 1947 and 1948. And they blamed lack of oversight as being "responsible in a great measure for stirring up the turmoil and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today." (ibid)

The report also pointed out that the way Dulles organized the CIA allowed covert action programs to consume 80% of the budget. (ibid, p. 476) Further, the National Security Council (NSC), exercised little or no control over covert action. The CIA's Directorate of Plans "is operating for the most part on an autonomous and free-wheeling basis in highly critical areas." (ibid) At times this was truly lamentable since "the operations being carried out by the Deputy Director of Plans are sometimes in direct conflict with the normal operations being carried out by the Department of State." (ibid) Schlesinger adds that a perfect example of this was the CIA coup attempt against Sukarno in Indonesia the year after the report. John Allison, the ambassador, opposed the coup attempt. So Allen had his brother at State remove Allison. The new ambassador was kept largely in the dark about the CIA plans. The coup failed, greatly alienating Sukarno from the USA. Lovett and Bruce – and Joseph Kennedy who was also on the advisory board – continued to press their case against Dulles until they left. In their last report they wrote that 'the CIA's concentration on political, psychological, and related covert action activities have tended to detract substantially from the execution of [a] primary intelligence-gathering mission. We suggest, accordingly, that there should be a total reassessment of our covert action policies." (ibid, p. 477)

Lovett told the Cuban board that, "I have never felt that the Congress of the United States ever intended to give the United States Intelligence Agency authority to conduct operations all over the earth." (ibid) Lovett's report and testimony held great sway with the Kennedys. In fact, Joseph Kennedy was so impressed by working with Lovett that he urged JFK to offer him a top job in his Cabinet. After his Bay of Pigs testimony, President Kennedy called Lovett in for a private meeting. He told the president that the CIA was "badly organized, dangerously amateurish and excessively costly." It had to be re-organized, which wasn't possible with Eisenhower as president and Dulles as Director. (ibid p. 478)

There can be little doubt that Lovett's testimony and his relationship with Kennedy's father helped convince JFK to fire Allen Dulles. How important was it? Lovett's influence was so profound that after JFK fired Dulles, Robert Kennedy was determined to find out if any other relative of Dulles was still at the State Department. When he found out that Allen's sister Eleanor worked there, he ordered Dean Rusk to fire her. Because "he didn't want any more of the Dulles family around." (Mosley, p. 473)

DON: Re: the Kennedys, I think there's a good chance of RFK, Jr. being persuaded to at least come out in favor of releasing the remaining sealed records of the assassination.

But I wanted to take off on Jimmy D's introduction to Robert Lovett and his position on the Board of Directors of Freeport Sulpher with Rocky and Admiral Arleigh Burke, by calling attention to Lisa's important article in Probe.

http://www.realhisto...eeport-cuba.htm

Robert Lovett, the man who gave us MacNamara, Rusk and the Bundys.

I would also like to read the Bruce/Lovett report.

Is there a bounty out for that?

BK

Edited September 28, 2010 by William Kelly

[Terry Mauro]

This is a subject that has been raised a few times before on this forum. I've posted my thoughts about it, but basically I find the public silence of Kennedy family members about the assassinations, especially so many years removed from the events, to be totally inexplicable.

As I've noted previously, if they held their tongues out of fear for their loved ones, their strategy hasn't worked. RFK was killed. Ted's presidential chances were ruined at Chappaquidick, which I feel was his political assassination and certainly no "accident." JFK, Jr.'s plane "crashed." Other Kennedys died (David, Michael), whose deaths may have been unrelated, but they still were unnatural and untimely, and added to a tragedy that the Greeks would have found incomprehensible.

Caroline Kennedy, much like her mother, will anger at the very mention of her father's death, which took place nearly fifty years ago, when she was a small child with only vague and unformed memories of him. When David Talbot wrote his fine book "Brothers," he described being told that the topic of his brother's assassination was off limits when he scheduled an interview with Ted Kennedy. Think of that- who would demand that the subject of their brother's death not be mentioned during an interview, over forty years afterwards? That's totally ridiculous, but it exemplifies the Kennedy family's attitude towards a subject they ought to be very interested in.

I agree with Jim D. that there has been an ongoing effort, which gained steam in the 1970s with the emergence of Judith Campbell Exner in the headlines, to portray JFK as a reckless, immoral playboy who cared more about his own individual desires than anything else. This was also the beginning of an attempt to link JFK up to the mafia, when in reality his adminstration was the only one in history to actually try and act against them. Jim has done a good job in past articles in showing how empty these allegations are, and how they can all pretty much be traced back to the same few dubious sources.

No matter what court approved liberals like Alexander Cockburn and Noam Chomsky have to say about it, there is no question that JFK was different from most politicians of his time. He would never have permitted Viet Nam to become the divisive mess it became, and the record shows that he had already begun the process of withdrawing from there shortly before his death. He was the only president, since its inception, to attempt to curtail the CIA. He dared to oppose powerful forces from all over the political arena, both national and international; he blasted the steel industry and advocated an elimination of the oil depletion allowance and he clashed with Israeli leaders over their burgeoning nuclear program.

Those who attempt to minimize his political significance, and chant that he was just another Democrat, can only do so by ignoring solid historical proof and relying on tabloid-style sources. He WAS very different. Unlike almost all his peers, he was never a member of the CFR (at least not the national organization). Robert Morrow should like that. And no, he was not a Rhodes Scholar. I feel confident that he, like all the other Kennedys, remained uninvited to any yearly Bilderberg meetings.

The Kennedys have never been trusted by those who truly run our world. Joe Kennedy, Sr. has been unfairly maligned in the press, again from some of those same dubious sources. The old man made many powerful enemies- FDR and Churchill chief among them. He paid more dearly, in a tragic sense, than any character invented by Shakespeare. FOUR of his children died seperate, unnatural deaths. That's a statistic that must defy any actuarial odds in existence. He has been unjustly accused of causing his daughter Rosemary's problems, when in reality he tried a brand new, very expensive procedure in a desperate attempt to "cure" her mental "slowness." We all know what happened, but there is no doubt his heart was in the right place. His children would all testify that he was a loving, doting father whose top priority was his family. The old credo that there "there's a great crime behind every great fortune" may well apply to the Kennedys, but in my view they have a far cleaner and honorable record than any other upper crust clan I can think of.

JFK's death remains very significant, because he was attempting real reform and that all changed on November 22, 1963. His family members should be speaking out at this point. They have nothing left to fear- how many more Kennedys can they kill? It would be nice to see at least one of them be a real profile in courage.

Joe Kennedy Sr. has been unfairly maligned? That's hardly the truth. In fact the real truth about Joe Kennedy Sr. is much worse than media/historians have portrayed over the years. He was pro Nazi , and was a personal friend of Herman Goering.

I find it quite lawful that Maria Schriver went and married herself a "Nazi". Arnold Schwarzenegger who was installed as Governor by the Rothchilds, Warren Buffet and Schultz, in what can be described as a coup de tat against Governor Gray Davis. The Kennedy family helped pull off that 2003 coup de tat. Old man Joe Kennedy would have been proud.

From Dope, Inc.

Nevertheless, when Joe Kennedy went to Harvard he was snubbed and ridiculed by his Brahmin classmates, who never missed a chance to remind him of his family's seedy history. Joseph bitterly referred time and again to his rejection by the exclusive "final clubs," Harvard's most desired status symbol. (6) After World War I, Kennedy was employed by Galen Stone, a partner in the prestigious Hayden, Stone and Co., a Boston Hat street investment house with ties to the Rothschilds.

While there, he made his first contacts with the British aristocracy. Kennedy got wind that one of Hayden, Stone's clients, the British company of Robertson-Cole Pictures, was in the throes of a credit squeeze. The ambitious Irishman went to London to seek the purchase of the company's U.S. distribution affiliate, the Film Booking Company. He was turned down flat. Within a month, however, Lord Inverforth arrived in Boston to take Kennedy up on the offer.

Through a subsequent merger With Ideal Films Ltd. Kennedy founded what was described at the time as the "first genuinely reciprocal exchange of production and distribution facilities between British and American companies." (7) Kennedy's joint ventures with the British soon produced RKO studios, ushering in British financial and cultural domination of Hollywood.

Kennedy's film ventures were also noteworthy for another reason. Lord Inverforth later showed up during World War II working closely with British Secret Intelligence Services chief William Stephenson ("Intrepid"). (8) The Robertson-Cole deal was Kennedy's first contact with Britain's aristocratic high command.

In 1929, Kennedy joined with Blair and Co., a firm operated by Elisha Walker, later of Kuhn, Loeb, and Jacques Monnet, to bid for control of A. P. Giannini's Transamerican Co., the controlling company for the Bank of America. The attempt failed, but Kennedy gained another invaluable contact. Jacques Monnet had come to North America to represent his family's liquor business, Monnet et Cie., in dealings with the Hudson's Bay Company.

In the period that Kennedy was working with Blair and Co., Monnet was traveling to Shanghai on a financial mission for the League of Nations. Since the delegation came on the invitation of notorious opium dealer T.V. Soong, and given Monnet's associations with the Hudson's Bay, it is likely that more was on the agenda than the financing of Chinese railroads.

Papa Joe also had business liaisons with the seamier side of the illegal distribution market. During his own bootlegging days in Prohibition, Kennedy entered into a coalition with Newark's Reinfeld Syndicate, which it will be recalled was 50 percent owned by the Bronfman gang. Joe retained his business dealings with the syndicate thugs all the way until 1946. At that time, in preparation for the launching of his sons' political careers, Joe sold his liquor company, Somerset Importers Ltd., for $8 million to the "Renfield Importers" — a revised version of the Reinfeld Syndicate. (9)

As the end of Prohibition approached, Kennedy again turned to London where Winston Churchill personally approved the grant to Joe of the British distillers' franchise for the American market. Through Kennedy's Somerset Importers Ltd. and Renfield Importers, Kennedy marketed Dewar's scotch, Gordon's gin, Ron Rico rum, and Haig and Haig. (10)

But as Papa Joe made clear early in the game, he was not in it for the money. His goal was to build a political dynasty, and his wife produced nine children in succession to get it going. Churchill's nod of approval and the cash flow accompanying it signaled that the British were ready to take advantage of Joe Kennedy's political ambitions.

[Terry Mauro]

Don Jeffries quote:

agree with Jim D. that there has been an ongoing effort, which gained steam in the 1970s with the emergence of Judith Campbell Exner in the headlines, to portray JFK as a reckless, immoral playboy who cared more about his own individual desires than anything else. This was also the beginning of an attempt to link JFK up to the mafia, when in reality his adminstration was the only one in history to actually try and act against them. Jim has done a good job in past articles in showing how empty these allegations are, and how they can all pretty much be traced back to the same few dubious sources.

Don, you're wrong again.

A look at the ensuing careers of the Kennedy crime fighters underlines the point.

Henry Peterson of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Division joined Max Jacobs's Emprise Corporation, a money-laundering outfit examined in Section 4.

His boss William Hundley and Robert Peloquin of the Criminal Division left Justice, formed their own law firm, and now sit on the board of International Intelligence (Intertel), Meyer Lansky's crime clearinghouse (see Section 3).

Stanley Mills, head of the Kennedy Anti-Trust Division, became general counsel for Max Jacobs's Sportsystems.

William O. Bittman, prosecutor for the Justice Department against Hoffa, joined the board of Sportsystems.

Daniel Holloman and Thomas Kennedy of the Organized Crime Division joined the same board.

Horace Webb of the department's Public Informational Services Division is the public relations man for Sportsystems.

Thomas J. Mekeon, member of the Organized Crime Strike Force in Detroit, is assistant general counsel and vice-president of Intertel.

[Terry Mauro]

The Kennedys have always believed that a domestic conspiracy murdered JFK and probably/possibly RFK, too. RFK and Jackie, using a trusted back channel source, told the Russians that in Dec. 1963. Btw, the Russians have always believed it was LYNDON JOHNSON who murdered John Kennedy as their released intelligence files say. Read the super book Brothers by David Talbott to learn the details on this. It proves without a doubt that RFK believed it was a domestic conspiracy that murdered his brother JFK.

RFK knew it was a domestic conspiracy that murdered JFK. He kept silent on this and lied and pretended to support the Warren Commission. RFK was thinking about his future political career and did not want to be savaged by the CIA Operation Mockingbird assets in the MSM.

After RFK was assassinated, the rest of the Kennedy family was too INTIMIDATED to speak out about the conspiracy that most of them believed in, that murdered JFK and RFK.

James Douglas, author of JFK and the Unspeakable, says that a prominent Kennedy supports his book and what he is doing, except that this Kennedy does not want to be visible today doing that, even 47 years.

In my opinion, the Kennedys need to get off their butts and start supporting people who are getting out the truth on the JFK assassination. I do think there is some COWARDICE on the Kennedys' part, after 2 of the alpha males of their family were slaughtered.

The Kennedy's care too much about what the MSM media LIARS have to say about the JFK assassination.

The Kennedy's care too much what the MSM media LIARS have to say about the assassination?

Well seeing how many Kennedy's are a part of MSM, that's pretty funny too.

Maria Schriver, who worked for years for NBC. The same NBC tv that butchered Jim Garrison attempt to bring John Kennedy's killers to justice. This was done by NBC through Bobby and Edward Kennedy's close political fix it man Walter Sheridan.

Then you have the late Tony Radziwill and his wife both working for NBC and ABC prime time documentary programs.

Then you have friends and political allies like the Cuomo family, with high profile jobs on national TV.

But you're right not a peep from the MSM

Edited September 28, 2010 by Terry Mauro

[John Dolva]

Ok, my memory failed me, (Kennedy was not a Rhodes scholar), possibly from having skimmed over something like this :

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=AlM1V90kHQsC&pg=PA326&lpg=PA326&dq=jfk+rhodes+scholar&source=bl&ots=vcpt8tpE7C&sig=FEzuBE2_iU1Jd1eMQV3KM0v53yg&hl=en&ei=5w2iTK7rGIrEvQOoyKGWBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCQQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

[David Andrews]

To Jim DiEugenio: A short answer in lieu of more.

I have no problem separating JFK politically and philosophically from the machine that got him elected. I will be happy to research the books you recommend, and improve my discrimination.

But it was the point when the powers that got him elected decided to differentiate the man from the machine that caused his death. Heck - they trusted that machine because it was corrupt. It put Frank Sinatra to work getting mob backing for the West Virginia and Illinois vote.

JFK had to play within a corrupt system as much as necessary. Check the Grant Stockdale thread for JFK bemusedly throwing Stockdale's bribe-filled suitcase into a closet full of such suitcases - as reported by Stockdale himself, who "committed suicide" within days of the assassination.

JFK deserves a book that will accurately assess his vitures, compromises, and sins, and also the places where the actions of the Kennedy machine threaten the political legacy. Until then, we face the twin and erroneous extremes of hagiography and villainization, when neither will do.

I'm glad for what you posted and referred to in response to my post and Terry's (though we're not a team on this) - it helps reassess a legacy that has been obscured by coverup and the lies of conspirators.

Edited September 28, 2010 by David Andrews

[Guest Tom Scully]

Terry, Don, and Jim:

Don Jeffries quote:

agree with Jim D. that there has been an ongoing effort, which gained steam in the 1970s with the emergence of Judith Campbell Exner in the headlines, to portray JFK as a reckless, immoral playboy who cared more about his own individual desires than anything else. This was also the beginning of an attempt to link JFK up to the mafia, when in reality his adminstration was the only one in history to actually try and act against them. Jim has done a good job in past articles in showing how empty these allegations are, and how they can all pretty much be traced back to the same few dubious sources.

Don, you're wrong again.

A look at the ensuing careers of the Kennedy crime fighters underlines the point.

Henry Peterson of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Division joined Max Jacobs's Emprise Corporation, a money-laundering outfit examined in Section 4.

His boss William Hundley and Robert Peloquin of the Criminal Division left Justice, formed their own law firm, and now sit on the board of International Intelligence (Intertel), Meyer Lansky's crime clearinghouse (see Section 3).

Stanley Mills, head of the Kennedy Anti-Trust Division, became general counsel for Max Jacobs's Sportsystems.

William O. Bittman, prosecutor for the Justice Department against Hoffa, joined the board of Sportsystems.

Daniel Holloman and Thomas Kennedy of the Organized Crime Division joined the same board.

Horace Webb of the department's Public Informational Services Division is the public relations man for Sportsystems.

Thomas J. Mekeon, member of the Organized Crime Strike Force in Detroit, is assistant general counsel and vice-president of Intertel.

http://articles.latimes.com/1992-12-18/news/mn-2103_1_park-service/2

Yosemite Pact Given by U.S. to Stadium Firm

December 18, 1992|MAURA DOLAN, TIMES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER

(Page 2 of 3)

A predecessor of Delaware North, Emprise Corp., was convicted in Los Angeles federal court in 1972 of conspiracy to conceal an investment in the Las Vegas Frontier casino-hotel. According to the conviction, Emprise made fictitious loans to three reputed Mafia figures in an attempt to launder organized crime money through the hotel. The company paid a $10,000 fine.

In testimony before a House of Representatives committee that year, Arizona investigative reporter Don Bolles, who later was mysteriously murdered, said Emprise had a "continual association with organized crime figures over a 35-year period."

Emprise Corp, founded by the Jacobs family of Buffalo, N.Y., changed its name to Sportsystems Inc. in 1978 and later to Delaware North. The company's major subsidiary is Sportservice Inc. Jeremy Jacobs, Delaware North's current chairman, is the son of the late Louis Jacobs, who presided over Emprise.

A spokesman for the company said Thursday that the company welcomes scrutiny by Congress and environmental groups.

"We are not denying that a blemish is on the company's record in the past," said spokesman Maury Healy. "But no one working in the company today had anything to do with that."

He said Delaware has catered the last three presidential inaugural balls in Washington and the National Football League's Super Bowl. "It's just a tremendously wide-ranging company."

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22define+what+you+meant.+Robert+Kennedy+came+in+and+said%2C*%22&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

The Organized Crime Control Act, 1970: Historical Issues and ...

by AA Block - 1980 -

Reclaiming history: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy - Google Books Result

Vincent Bugliosi - 2007

Henry Peterson, a career prosecutor in the attorney general's office who serve

under RFK's predecessors (including Rogers) as well as RFK, and eventually headed the organized-crime section under Attorney General Ramsey Clark, 'Don't define it, do something about it....

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1873&dat=19770105&id=KLItAAAAIBAJ&sjid=asoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1191,1370177

Don posted the question asking what the odds were that Joe Kennedy would lose four of his children to untimely deaths. What are the odds, Don, that all of these details are only irrelevant coincidences? The bottomline is described in the first quote box. Bobby had to know that Albert Jenner was appointed to the WC to cover up.

...Bobby Kennedy was much smarter than I am, he was an expert on the subject of Jimmy Hoffa and the mob, and he knew almost everything I've presented in thsi post, yet he permitted the Chicago Syndicate to place its attorney on the WC, to determine that neither Oswald nor Ruby had discernible mob ties, and then remained publicly supportive of the WC's "findings", and seems to have persuaded his brother Teddy and his sister-in-law, Jackie to do likewise.

Albert Jenner smelled almost as bad, in 1963, as Stanford Clinton did. The Pritzkers pushed Clinton away, while Earl Warren, Tom Clark, and Dean Acheson were

sponsoring Jenner to spearhead the most sensitve investigation in recent times, and the US Attorney General and dedicated mob opponent, all but held the

door for thsi corrupt, bi-partisan, mob influenced whitewash. Jenner's role in representing the man who controlled the company awarded the TFX contract, investigation of which had just been shut down in December of 1963, does not even need to be emphasized, for the WC Report to look like a mob tainted mess.

.

Why was the Kennedy reaction, to the compromised WC, considering what Bobby had to know, no reaction?

...Rozwell Gilpatric, JFK assistant secretary of defense implicated in the $6.8 billion TFX contract award to Crown's General Dynamics, was recommended to JFK by Bush Harriman partner and chair of the committee that designed the CIA, Robert Lovett.

According to this, Gilpatric helped Henry Crown unload Material Service Corp. onto General Dynamics, without noticing,, as Harry Booth did in his October, 1963 suit, that most of MSC's "holdings" and it's long time revenue stream had been appropriated from the people of Chicago, and then sometimes sold back to them, although they owned the assets sitting on top of the land leased to Crown's MSC...

...Since Clark only had two law clerks per term, he had to know that his former clerk, John Crown, had gone to work for Albert Jenner, and that Jenner was the Crown family's lawyer, yet Clark is put on the record vouching for Jenner's appointment to the Warren commission. Clark also has to know that Conrad Hilton had been lumped in with Crown in the same mob intelligence file, but he does nothing to stop Earl Warren from associating with Conrad Hilton in friendship, or to keep Warren's daughter, Virginia from traveling the world with Conrad Hilton for more than two years....

http://books.google.com/books?cd=1&id=...+#search_anchor

..I had never heard of either Crown. I started digging....I found Patrick Hoy and then the Torbitt document. Searching Hoy's background led to the Byfields and Kupcinet, and via Kupcinet and the Colitz brothers, Jack Ruby, which was related to the leasing of Glen Ora by JFK and Jackie, and finally, the marriage of McNamara to Byfield Jr's widow....

...I don't expect to often stumble upon revelations like Tom Clark selecting a Chicago Syndicate chieftain's son as his law clerk, especially when there is such a strong indication that Clark knew, because James Ragen told him so in 1946. or that Earl Warren's daughter was in Crown's inner circle by her close relationship with Conrad Hilton, and that these relationships tie neatly with the Torbitt description of Hoy's role in bringing Crown and Hilton close to Sidney Korshak.

Many more coincidences here, and the list is still growing. Ernie Byfield Jr.'s second wife ends up with McNamara, JFK ends up with a weekend white house owned by Byfield's mother, Byfield Jr.'s first wife has a sister married the B. Rionda Braga's first cousin, GHW Bush escorts Demohrenschildt's partner and step-nephew Edward G. Hooker's daughter down the aisle to marry Braga's son. Braga shares his CIA linked, right hand man, Michael JP Malone, with Bob Kleberg in time for Kleberg to fund the Vejana III. Braga and Malone have kenaf dealings with Joseph Dryer...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...70601197_5.html

...McNamara is survived by his second wife Diana, who he married in 2004....

....McNamara's marriage, at age 88, to the widow of Patrick Hoy's employer is the strangest coincidence (is it coincidence...?) related to my research into the JFK assassination, and incurious major media stenographers have never shown any interest...

Jim DiEugenio, you once wrote this admirable, accurate piece.:

http://www.ctka.net/pr197-left.html

The Left and the Death of Kennedy

...Yet you seem to believe that this doesn't tell us who the real JFK was. I recall you agreed with me that JFK ran as a candidate oriented much further to the right than his record would indicate, so bear in mind that he had arlready won the election when he followed so many of Lovett's "suggestions."

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=lovett+health+suggested+mcnamara&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=C3NX7ugWiTLaaJ5DezASoiailBQAAAKoEBU_QRv_C

A thousand days: John F. Kennedy in the White House - Google Books Result

Arthur Meier Schlesinger, David Sobel - 2005 - Biography & Autobiography - 370 pages

During his talk with Clifford in New York, Lovett had mentioned Robert S. McNamara, a Michigan business executive, just a year older than Kennedy, ...

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks%3A1&q=he+said+ruefully%2C+running+for+office%2C+and+he+did+not+know+any+lovett+rusk&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (Random House, 1972),

...The only ones he knew, he admitted, were politicians, and if this seemed a denigration of his own kind, it was not altogether displeasing to the older man. Politicians did need men to serve, to run the government.

The implication was obvious. Politicians could run Pennsylvania and Ohio, and if they could not run Chicago, they could at least deliver it. But could politicians run the world? What did they know about the Germans, the French,

He needed experts for that, and now he was summoning them.62 Kennedy first asked Lovett if he would be interested in serving as the secretary of state, defense, or treasury, but he gracefully declined for reasons of health. When talk then turned to possible people for these positions, Lovett named several.

Among them were Dean Rusk, president of the Rockefeller Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations;

Robert McNamara, president of the Ford Motor Company; and C. Douglas Dillon, head of the investment banking firm of Dillon, Read and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kennedy solicited names from other people, and there was intense lobbying for some of the candidates, but in the end there was general consensus around Rusk for Secretary of State, McNamara for Secretary of Defense and Dillon for...

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks%3A1&q=ex-comm+lovett+adlai&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Adlai Stevenson: his life and legacy

Porter McKeever - 1989 - 591 pages - Snippet view

He was promptly, bitterly, and, some say, insultingly attacked by Dillon, McCone, and Robert Lovett. These three, according to Ball, who was present, "violated the calm and objectivity we had tried to maintain in our ExComm meetings ...

I am dubious about the analysis portions of Jim Douglass's book because the author seems to lack objectivity because of his thinking and approach to his JFK research are so overwhelmingly flavored by his Roman Catholic beliefs and thus give JFK a benefit of the doubt to the point of removing all doubt as to JFK's true motives and competence.

I think you missed my core point, Jim, in comparing the early appointment decisions of the Obama presidency to the early ones of the JFK presidency. My point is that no matter how high your opinion, and Don's...about the motives and principles of JFK and RFK, I have to lean towards the conclusion that JFK, RFK, and Obama are similar in that they harbored no strong, core beliefs, they stood for nothing to the degree that ambition clouds their characters and commitment to anything near what you want to give JFK credit for. I'll admit though, they all talked the talk.

You have to give Terry credit for her argument that the record of Bobby the crime fighter, is dubious at best. The Bobby you think he was would never have permitted Henry Crown or Patrick Hoy to hold the security clearances they obviously held. Your Bobby would have exposed the flawed WC appointment of mob lawyer, Albert Jenner. Bobby was careful to keep his investigations of organized crime, well below this level, "high places," for the good of his political party, IMO.

http://dspace.wrlc.org/doc/bitstream/2041/50038/b18f07-1026zdisplay.pdf or

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=A8sqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=gc0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=840,5517179&dq=songbird+chicago+businessmen+househol&hl=en

October 26, 1963 By Drew Pearson

...I took the story back to Washington and Attorney General Clark authorized a dozen or so FBI men to check on

Ragen's facts. A couple of weeks later they reported that they were true. They also reported that control of the underworld reached into very high places. Some of the rulers of the underworld had become supposedly respected businessmen and politicians whose names were household words in Chicago. Some of them, it was stated, had reformed. Yet they still controlled the mob....

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ragen%20%22tom%20clark%22%20%22high%20places%22&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbs=bks:1&source=og&sa=N&tab=wp

Diaries, 1949-1959: Volume 1

Drew Pearson, Tyler Abell - 1974 - 592 pages - Snippet view

I sold the idea to Tom Clark, then Attorney General, and the FBI interviewed Ragen at great length. They brought back a multitude of tips, leads, and evidence. Tom Clark told me afterward that it led to very high places. ...

[David Andrews]

I am dubious about the analysis portions of Jim Douglass's book because the author seems to lack objectivity because of his thinking and approach to his JFK research are so overwhelmingly flavored by his Roman Catholic beliefs and thus give JFK a benefit of the doubt to the point of removing all doubt as to JFK's true motives and competence.

Indeed. Speaking as a non-denominational Christian who was raised Catholic - the religiosity is the flaw in Douglass's approach, though it seems to have fueled his drive to say much and accomplish much, too. We need something pitched between Douglass and Seymour Hersh to get at the man, Jack Kennedy.

Edited September 28, 2010 by David Andrews

[Terry Mauro]

Tom,

Is it quite amazing to look at the post government careers of these Kennedy Justice Department men. All the leading players went to work for high level organized crime outfits like INTERTEL and EMPRISE.

Not only that but I have always been taken aback by Edward Kennedy's love affair with Walter Sheridan. For years it was reported that Sheridan remained on the Kennedy family payroll.

How about Jack Caulfield the staff assistant to the President (Nixon) worrying about a Republican offset intelligence unit to match that of the Kennedy political machine called INTERTEL.

QUOTE:

In that same genesis description, Dean tells Nixon that Haldeman had directed him to put together, in the Fall of '71, an intelligence plan for the upcoming '72 campaign and that since he had no experience in such matters, he tasked me, then a member of his staff, with the preparation of a final draft document. "Operation Sandwedge" was a twelve page analysis/proposal of what would be required for structuring an accurate, intelligence-assessment capability, of not only the Democratic party's opposition's tactics but also to ensure that the then powerful anti-war movement did not destroy Nixon's public campaign, as had been done to Hubert Humphrey in 1968. It also anticipated facing a Democratic campaign effort that would utilize the astute services of a leading private investigative entity called Intertel, then headed by former officials of Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department. Intertel represented, in my opinion, the potential for both formidable and sophisticated intelligence opposition tactics in that upcoming election campaign.

http://www.watergate.com/ownwords/caulfield.asp

This INTERTEL operation against Nixon was the begining of Watergate. The Kennedy boys from INTERTEL are all over this Watergate operation from start to finish.

Take the case of Hale Boggs. Many buffs believe he was killed because of what he maight say regarding JFK conspiracy/ Warren Commission. Actually in 1972 he was the House Majority leader and would have in all likelyhood put the cabash on Watergate before it got off the ground. After his death , he was replaced by Kennedy lap dog Tip O' Neil. Good old Tip was all too accomodating when it came to investigating the Watergate scandal. Sending Richard Nixon down in a cold coup.

When the question is posed "is there a connection between Dallas and Watergate they should take a closer look at the political and financial machine behind the Kennedy family. They carried out both Dallas and Watergate.

Edited September 29, 2010 by Terry Mauro

[Terry Mauro]

To Jim DiEugenio: A short answer in lieu of more.

I have no problem separating JFK politically and philosophically from the machine that got him elected. I will be happy to research the books you recommend, and improve my discrimination.

But it was the point when the powers that got him elected decided to differentiate the man from the machine that caused his death. Heck - they trusted that machine because it was corrupt. It put Frank Sinatra to work getting mob backing for the West Virginia and Illinois vote.

JFK had to play within a corrupt system as much as necessary. Check the Grant Stockdale thread for JFK bemusedly throwing Stockdale's bribe-filled suitcase into a closet full of such suitcases - as reported by Stockdale himself, who "committed suicide" within days of the assassination.

JFK deserves a book that will accurately assess his vitures, compromises, and sins, and also the places where the actions of the Kennedy machine threaten the political legacy. Until then, we face the twin and erroneous extremes of hagiography and villainization, when neither will do.

I'm glad for what you posted and referred to in response to my post and Terry's (though we're not a team on this) - it helps reassess a legacy that has been obscured by coverup and the lies of conspirators.

Try reading Battling Wall Street 1994 by Professor Donald Gibson. JFK was a force to be reckoned with. He actual record as President is better than even his most ardent supporters would give him credit for. He was a menace, another FDR in the making.