Newman exposes the Halpern/Bissell treachery

[James DiEugenio]

Joe Kennedy had to go through six different inquiries when he was assigned to different offices for the government by FDR and Truman in the thirties, forties and fifties.

This came to about 800 pages of investigations.  

It began right after FDR repealed Prohibition.

In none of those pages did anyone say anything about Joe Kennedy's illegal bootlegging.  800 pages and zilch.

So when did this accusation first occur? 

In a newspaper report in the fall of 1960.  Now anyone who knows anything about politics and the media could see what happened here due to the timing. Because of what was going to be a very close presidential race, someone in Nixon's camp got this BS story into the press on the eve of the election.  Based on the W Virginia primary.  But in all the inquiries done on W. Virginia, and the two best books researched on it by people who were there, there was no Mob influence in it.  Bobby Kennedy just ran a very good race, plus he brought in a lot of money, especially toward the end which helped fund the state wide infomercial which Teddy White said was the best such political program he had ever seen. There were 4 different inquiries into that one. None revealed anything improper. Even Goldwater came up empty.  The thing about Kennedy in Canada was also researched in the book Last Call,  one of the best books on the subject.  That was a different Kennedy. (Burton Hersh's book was so poorly sourced and so sensationalistic, I could not read it.)

I am sorry, but I am not going to accept the word of some mobster talking to Peter Maas.  I mean come on. Talk about an agenda. These guys despised the Kennedys because of their all out war on the Mob, I mean the tales they will tell.  One has them looking through a one way mirror as JFK was cavorting with two hookers in Havana before the revolution. Please.  If anyone has seen the pictures of the girls that JFK went out with before his wedding, that is just ridiculous. 

Last Call put this issue to rest. And the author did it in a rigorous and systematic way. And he worked for the NY Times so its not hagiography.

As per Nasaw, at one time during this era, Joe Kennedy was running two studios at once!  And he was granted stock options in both.  He then went ahead and got into film distribution himself. In one year, he released 51 films, a movie per week. Distribution is where the big money is since you are cut in from the first dollar. Joe Kennedy made so much money in films that this is what he used to buy the Sears tower, at that time, probably the most expensive piece of real estate in Chicago. 

In my research I always think its important to find the origin of something.  When did it first appear, and is there a pattern one can discern? And who are the sources relied upon? After Gore Vidal had his dust up with Bobby Kennedy, that was it.  I mean Gore Vidal actually was promoting that piece of crud Double Cross. Which among other pieces of BS said the Mob owned Marilyn Monroe's contract. If you have been reading Don McGovern over at K and K--who knows more about this than anyone--that is more utter horse dung.  But this is how badly these mobsters want to somehow insinuate themselves in the Kennedy family. In order to somehow neutralize RFK's holy war against their criminality.  And this includes fake gangsters like Gianni Russo, who came up with some real science fiction, used by the now exposed Mark Shaw.

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Brancato]

4 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Why would anyone making that kind of money legitimately, risk making much less illegally? 

Because the Volstead Act soon devolved into a joke, and - as in the War on Drugs - prosecutions were selective.  Those prosecuted tended to be from among the class of immigrant descendants that the Act was meant to protect the WASP teetotal populace from.

And no one believed it would last, just like a spectacular trading development on the Street.

I really don't see bootlegging as beyond Joe Kennedy's moral compass.

 

I don’t see it as beyond his moral compass either, but bringing liquor into Massachusetts by boat during prohibition needn’t be proof of longstanding ties to organized crime. I’d have to have more to go on than Costello’s statements. 

[David Andrews]

We love the Kennedys so much, they just have to be victims, and represent essential goodness, and always be minimally culpable and therefore excusable.  Because that is how we see ourselves.

[Paul Brancato]

10 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

We love the Kennedys so much, they just have to be victims, and represent essential goodness, and always be minimally culpable and therefore excusable.  Because that is how we see ourselves.

I see them as evolving flawed human beings who raised themselves up and created a short lived rather idealistic dynasty. 

[James DiEugenio]

Its not that at all David.

Its the enemies they made and the tactics they used in order to politically assassinate the Kennedys many years later.

This created an industry.  And the MSM got behind it.  The mantra was: well if you don't believe these things then somehow you are protecting the Kennedys.  When it was clear that no one in any powerful position was doing any such thing.  It has all been one sided and it reached its apogee with Hersh and Double Cross which got great exposure.  When in fact, they were both hatchet jobs. John did a nice job exposing Hersh in his latest.  

[David Andrews]

Well, I've posed this question here before: If the Kennedys were like the Corleones, and took their enemies out first, would we love them more, or less?

I did, though it has perhaps gone unread, post this investigation of alternatives to the Joe-the-bootlegger myth.  Worth a complete read:

https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/joseph-kennedy-and-the-new-york-underworld-during-prohibition

 

[Chuck Schwartz]

I believe JFK was very different from his father, just as many sons are different than their fathers.  JFK gave his life for his country, in my opinion. Also, in my opinion, JFK was a martyr.

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks for that David.

[Paul Brancato]

The one negative and provable thing about Joe Kennedy was his attitude towards Jews, even if he did advocate establishing safe havens for Jews in Africa and other places so they could leave Germany.His isolationist views and his anti-semitism were not out of the mainstream at the time, and his children certainly didn’t inherit this attitude. 

[David Andrews]

For followers of the American fight against socialism, it should be noted that the Volstead Act was generations in the making.  During the 1870s, employers such as George Pullman (luxury rail cars), Philip D. Armour (meatpacking) and Marshall Field (of the department store and other Chicago enterprises) were concerned about the temper of the immigrant labor force.  Socialism, imported from the class struggles of the uniting and industrializing German states, was gaining revolutionary ground among workers from the mitteleuropan nations and Italy, causing labor demonstrations and strikes, and filling the middle US with foreign-language pamphlets and newspapers urging worker solidarity.  This is to oversimplify a complex history, but one of the capitalist bugbears was the European immigrants' fondness for alcohol.  They wasted the little money they earned for long hours of backbreaking work on wine, beer and liquor; surely this is what they wanted more of, which made them prey to agitators, and debilitated them as workers and citizens, just as did their retention of foreign customs and languages. 

The Volstead Act aimed to homogenize a population of Catholics and anarchists into a new model, Protestant-values society.  So, if looking for violators, why pick on genteel, always-ready-to-play-ball businessmen such as Joseph Kennedy (or promote in Canada investigation of profiteering enablers such as the Bronfmans), when there were gun-toting Lanskys, Capones, Lucianos, and their lesser ilk to pick off?

Many of the 19th-century antecedents of the Volstead Act are detailed in Paul Avrich's 1984 book, The Haymarket Tragedy.  The book is recently returned to print after a troubled publishing history in the Reagan 1980s, when the author was slandered as a comsymp and the book put out of print after its first paperback run:

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691006000/the-haymarket-tragedy

But we are far from our topic here.  Peace, out.  I need a drink.

Edited October 5, 2021 by David Andrews

[Ron Bulman]

10 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Joe Kennedy had to go through six different inquiries when he was assigned to different offices for the government by FDR and Truman in the thirties, forties and fifties.

This came to about 800 pages of investigations.  

It began right after FDR repealed Prohibition.

In none of those pages did anyone say anything about Joe Kennedy's illegal bootlegging.  800 pages and zilch.

So when did this accusation first occur? 

In a newspaper report in the fall of 1960.  Now anyone who knows anything about politics and the media could see what happened here due to the timing. Because of what was going to be a very close presidential race, someone in Nixon's camp got this BS story into the press on the eve of the election.  Based on the W Virginia primary.  But in all the inquiries done on W. Virginia, and the two best books researched on it by people who were there, there was no Mob influence in it.  Bobby Kennedy just ran a very good race, plus he brought in a lot of money, especially toward the end which helped fund the state wide infomercial which Teddy White said was the best such political program he had ever seen. There were 4 different inquiries into that one. None revealed anything improper. Even Goldwater came up empty.  The thing about Kennedy in Canada was also researched in the book Last Call,  one of the best books on the subject.  That was a different Kennedy. (Burton Hersh's book was so poorly sourced and so sensationalistic, I could not read it.)

I am sorry, but I am not going to accept the word of some mobster talking to Peter Maas.  I mean come on. Talk about an agenda. These guys despised the Kennedys because of their all out war on the Mob, I mean the tales they will tell.  One has them looking through a one way mirror as JFK was cavorting with two hookers in Havana before the revolution. Please.  If anyone has seen the pictures of the girls that JFK went out with before his wedding, that is just ridiculous. 

Last Call put this issue to rest. And the author did it in a rigorous and systematic way. And he worked for the NY Times so its not hagiography.

As per Nasaw, at one time during this era, Joe Kennedy was running two studios at once!  And he was granted stock options in both.  He then went ahead and got into film distribution himself. In one year, he released 51 films, a movie per week. Distribution is where the big money is since you are cut in from the first dollar. Joe Kennedy made so much money in films that this is what he used to buy the Sears tower, at that time, probably the most expensive piece of real estate in Chicago. 

In my research I always think its important to find the origin of something.  When did it first appear, and is there a pattern one can discern? And who are the sources relied upon? After Gore Vidal had his dust up with Bobby Kennedy, that was it.  I mean Gore Vidal actually was promoting that piece of crud Double Cross. Which among other pieces of BS said the Mob owned Marilyn Monroe's contract. If you have been reading Don McGovern over at K and K--who knows more about this than anyone--that is more utter horse dung.  But this is how badly these mobsters want to somehow insinuate themselves in the Kennedy family. In order to somehow neutralize RFK's holy war against their criminality.  And this includes fake gangsters like Gianni Russo, who came up with some real science fiction, used by the now exposed Mark Shaw.

 

Thank you for the clarification here Jim.  I'd read a little disputing the claims of Joe Kennedys  being a bootlegger, American Values made me question them more.  When I first read the name Burton Hersh I wondered, related to Sy Hersh?  Then my tin foil hat stared vibrating. 

[James DiEugenio]

Burton Hersh's book was just crud.

One of the very few books I could not read because it was both poorly written and just full of cheap sensationalism.

I really think someone got to him for that one.