Ask Not? Geez... I'm Almost Afraid to Ask

[Robert Morrow]

5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Paul,

This thread isn't about me.  It's about mainstream media coverage of JFK.

The correct question is, "Why is the Daily Mail posting this now?

These are highly scurrilous front-page stories about JFK (and RFK) in a major international newspaper.

One of their JFK stories today is about RFK's alleged affair with Jackie, while JFK was still alive... 🙄

Inside Jackie Kennedy's years-long affair with JFK's married brother Bobby | Daily Mail Online

It looks like another mainstream media smear campaign against the Kennedy family-- character assassination, if you will.

 

 

Were Jackie Kennedy and Robert Kennedy having an affair, certainly after the JFK assassination, and probably before? Extremely likely.

Is this significant? Absolutely, just look how compromised it made Robert Kennedy in the wake of the JFK assassination as he sought to bring justice to JFK's killers. RFK's enemies had quite a weapon to use against him.

I have always wondered WHY both Robert and Jackie Kennedy remained so publicly SILENT about their true thinking that an elite domestic political conspiracy murdered John Kennedy. After all, they sent an emissary (personal friend William Walton) to Russia in December, 1963, to tell the Russians that the Kennedys were convinced that JFK had been murdered by a high level domestic plot. They also told the Russians that the selection of Lyndon Johnson as Vice President had been a grievous mistake.

So why did they not tell the American people that? I think we have the answer now. #1 They were in fear for their lives, pretty much knowing that there had been a coup d'etat and they were powerless to change that or fight or find the murderers of JFK.

#2, and it is a big one, Robert Kennedy was afraid that if he made too much, or any, waves publicly about the conspiracy to murder John Kennedy that it would inevitably lead to public revelations about the love/sex affair he was having with Jackie Kennedy post JFK assassiation.

One thing this book "Bobby and Jackie" underscores is how much Jackie Kennedy was in love with Robert Kennedy. I get the feeling she would do anything for Robert, including running through a brick wall. They had a very intense, very close relationship ... including some torrid sex as they basically fell into each other's arms in their post JFK assassination grief. 

 http://www.amazon.com/Bobby-Jackie-C-David-Heymann/dp/1416556249 

 [David Heymann, Bobby and Jackie: a Love Story, pp. 117-118]:

 "Over lunch that afternoon, Smathers asked Bobby why he’d aborted his personal investigation into his brother’s assassination.

“Because every time I pump the FBI or CIA for information,” RFK responded, “I end up with a death threat in the mail. So does Teddy. I don’t care about my own life, but I do care about my brother’s. My using the CIA in conjunction with the Mafia to go after Castro may have led to Jack’s death. One in the family is enough.”

 

For his part, Smathers supported the theory that there had been a conspiratorial plot between organized crime and the CIA, or, more accurately, a renegade faction of the CIA. Smathers had little faith in the findings of the Warren Commission. “Gerald Ford, the future president, was an FBI mole,” said Smathers. “He was on the commission but reported back to J. Edgar Hoover.” Despite the FBI director’s disdain for the Kennedys, Smathers firmly believed that it was the CIA - and not the FBI – that had worked with the syndicate to assassinate Kennedy. “In 1957 JFK and I spent a few days in Havanna,” continued Smathers. While there, they were introduced to crime figures Meyer Lansky and Santos Trafficante, both of whom controlled Cuba’s hotels, casinos, and nightclubs, creating an exhuberant after-hours atmosphere. “Trafficante set us up in a hotel suite with several choice ladies of the night. Only later did I realize how stupid we’d been. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that we’d been filmed through a one-way guest-room mirror. The opportunity for blackmail, particularly after Jack became president, pointed to the foolishness of our little adventure. Jack could never resist temptation. His name cropped up in 1963 in connection with the so-called Profumo debacle, in which an international vice ring nearly brought down the British government. He’d been linked to one of the women involved in the case. Had he lived, Jack would’ve been dragged through the mud. And there was the matter of Mary Pinchot Meyer, his last mistress, who was murdered in 1964 while walking along the towpath in Georgetown. Had he been alive, that case also would have come back to haunt Jack.”

 

RFK, long his brother’s bagman, almost certainly knew of the meeting in pre-Castro Cuba between Jack and Trafficante, as well as all the rest of JFK’s sordid dealings. Ultimately, according to Smathers, Bobby’s decision to discontinue his investigation into his brother’s assassination probably had less to do with the Mafia and more to do with his and Jackie Kennedy’s madcap affair following Jack’s death.

 “At least, that’s what Ted Kennedy told me,” noted Smathers. “One of Bobby’s fears was that somebody would eventually leak information on the affair to the press. Too many people were in on the secret. Exposure in the media would have ruined any chance Bobby might have had of following in Jack’s presidential footsteps. Frankly, between the CIA and Bobby’s interlude with Jackie, it’s a wonder that none of it had already been exposed in the press.”"

 [David Heymann, Bobby and Jackie: a Love Story, pp. 117-118]

 More on the RFK/Jackie Love affair; Notes from Bobby and Jackie by C. David Heymann:

 p. Vii “Thereafter nearly every biographer of Bobby or Jackie, including volumes by Edward Klein, Christopher Anderson, Sarah Bradford, and Peter Evans, capitalized on my research and reported on the Bobby-Jackie affair, in certain instances adding new details to those already known.”

p. 8 Jack Valenti describes Bobby Kennedy as a man possessed as he entered Air Force One on 11/22/63 as he rushed to Jackie’s side. RFK ignored everyone else and rushed by them.

p.14 Jackie invites her future boyfriend Ari Onassis to the White House during the JFK mourning period.

p. 15-16 RFK and Jackie visit JFK’s grave at midnight at Arlington. They were holding hands.

p. 22 Hoovers bulging files on JFK’s wildly promiscuous life

p. 22 JFK was blatantly having sex with other women on his honeymoon. JFK collecting names and phone numbers. Then JFK picks up one of the better looking women. “They emerged twenty minutes later, looking flushed and spent.”

p. 23 1956 JFK and 3 friends with Scandanavian ladies on ship in Mediterranean. Meanwhile Jackie is back home going through a miscarriage. Bobby was there to comfort her and bury the baby.

p. 25 Bill Walton details Jackie’s affair with actor William Holden. She was doing it out of revenge to get even with JFK.

p. 25 Langdon Marvin admits JFK used to send him as an advance man on the 1960 campaign trail to line up women for Kennedy.

p.26 Pamela Turnure dating Kennedy since 1958. She is later placed as press secretary to Jackie.

p. 27 JFK’s orgies in the White House; naked swimming pool parties. Secret Service Marty Venker said JFK “could be screwing a woman in the basement of the White House one minute, and the next minute he’d be playing family man with his wife and kids – or he’d be in the Oval Office discussing strategy with the prime minister of England.”

p. 27 Marty Venker describes Jackie as “world’s greatest masochist.”

p. 28 Susan Sklover was hired as a physical therapist for JFK; only then did she find out it involved providing him sexual services. Said JFK would just lie on his back while she did all the activity …She quit after 6 weeks and was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement and given $5,000.

p. 31 Truman Capote called relationship of Jackie and JFK going into White House as an “utter farce.” Says Jackie constantly turned to RFK for advice and support. “He served as her Rock of Gibraltar.”

p. 31 Peter Jay Sharp – went into a Carlyle suite in 1962 found all 3 Kennedy brothers with a different woman, Bobby laying on floor, Ted with his girl in the bathroom.

p. 33 “Why can’t Jack be more like Bobby?” – Jackie to Pierre Salinger

p. 34 Jackie and JFK have a physical scuffle on the White House staircase at the reception of 11/20/63. It looked like Jackie had grabbed a clump of his hair. Apparently, JFK had been with Mary Meyer that afternoon.

p. 42 Post JFK assassination, Jackie mental collapse, very depressed, would only see Bobby.

p. 48 William Manchester – Jackie drinking heavily in her grief. Jackie’s manic mood swings.

p. 50 RFK obsessed with secretly investigating JFK’s death. “He could talk about little else.” – Ken O’Donnell.

p. 52 Bobby spending more time with Jackie’s family than his own.

p. 56 Jackie tries to get Marlon Brando in bed … or maybe she did not because Brando was too drunk.

p. 57 Jackie tells Truman Capote that her sister Lee wants to have sex with Bobby.

p. 58 Chuck Spalding talking about RFK and Jackie canoodling. Holding hands, whispering in ears, Bobby on vacation with Jackie NOT his wife Ethel who gave him 11 kids. Chuck Spalding: “There was definitely something between them…You had to be dumb, deaf and blind not to sense it.”

p. 60 “I wish you were an amoeba, so you could multiply and there would be two or more of you.” Jackie to Bobby.

p. 60 Gore Vidal “I suspect that the one person Jackie ever loved … was Bobby. There was always something oddly intimate in her voice when she mentioned him to me.”

p. 61 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. describes Bobby and Jackie disappearing below deck on the yacht Sequoia: “I have no idea what transpired between them, but when they returned, they looked as chummy as a pair of Cheshire cats.”

p. 61 Red Fay “Bobby was with her all the time.”

p. 63 Bobby tries to have sex with Joan Braden.

p. 65 RFK and Jackie at party … Bobby “hovered around Jackie like he owned her.” “electricity” between them.

p. 65 Susan Pollock “affair was an open secret.”

p. 67-68 “Bobby and Jackie practically flaunted their mutual affection, hugging and kissing on the beach and walking arm in arm into a local restaurant for dinner.”

p. 70 Bobby’s chauffeur Jim Fitzgerald describes regular overnight stays at Jackie’s, come out the next day “with a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eyes.”

p.70 Dave Powers – RFK spends lots of his time with Caroline and John John.

p. 73 RFK affair with Natalie Fell Cushing

p. 74 Jackie’s affair with architect John Carl Warnecke

p. 75 Coates Redmon: “ I’m 99% sure they were involved … they could have had a mad, morbid attraction to each other, and how this initial attachment continued to grow.”

p. 76 Ted tries to kiss Ethel …”Ethel pushed him away and said, ‘We’ll have none of that Bobby and Jackie stuff in this house.’” Katherine the maid heard this and told it to laundress Mary De Grace.

p. 77 Frankin Roosevelt, Jr. “Everybody knew about the affair …The two of them carried on like a pair of lovesick teenagers… I suspect Bobby would have liked to dump Ethel and marry Jackie.”

p. 77 Merribelle Moore – Ethel called her home all the time complaining about the Bobby/Jackie affair.

p. 78 Richard Burton encouraging Bobby and Jackie to get married!

p. 81 Mary Harrington – RFK and Barbara Marx had affair.

p. 82 then Bobby has affair with Mary Harrington!

p. 83 Mary Harrington spots Bobby and Jackie sunbathing “As they began to kiss he placed one hand on her breast and the other inside of her bikini bottom. After a minute or so, she stood up, wrapped a towel around her breasts and shoulders, and walked toward the house. Bobby followed. I was shocked. It was clear that Bobby was sleeping with his sister-in-law.”

p. 83 RFK replaces JFK as the “dad” of his kids.

p. 84 Renee Lutten aide to Dr. Henry Lax – Jackie spoke of her affair w/RFK with her confidant Dr. Henry Lax.

p. 86 Ari Onassis has sex with Jackie.

p. 87 Audrey Zauderer – “Absolutely!” there was an affair.

p. 87 Maud Shaw – Bobby and Jackie “making no secret of their dalliance”

p. 87-88 Bernard Hayworth – Bobby and Jackie on the beach – “He began massaging her back and kissing her neck. I felt like an intruder, so I stood up to leave, and that’s when he saw me. He froze and so did I. After what seemed an eternity, he started massaging Jackie again.”

p. 88 Mort Downey, Jr. RFK affair with Kim Novak, in the bed while a hotel fire alarm goes off.

p. 89 RFK has affair with Claudine Longet to get even with Jackie seeing Ari Onassis

p. 90 RFK dating 19 year old Candice Bergen

p. 92 RFK and Polly Bissell, clad only in bathing suits, ride off on a Harley. 5/25/65. Go to a wooded area to have sex. Police report of a couple copulating in public – no arrests.

p. 96 Sir Cecil Beaton – Jackie “in much love” with Bobby

p. 99 Bobby and Jackie sitting very close at a bar

p. 100 C. Douglas Dillon – walked in on Bobby and Jackie kissing in the back yard

p. 101 Carl Killingsworth – no photos of JFK in Jackie’s apartment; only a large framed photo of Robert Kennedy

p. 106 Jackie either steals or accidentally takes gold cigarette lighter.

p. 111 Jackie tells Angier Biddle Duke that she is involved with 2 men who she values and respects.

p. 112 RFK and Onassis both send Jackie flowers on her return home from a trip

p.113 Pierre Salinger calls Bobby “Jackie’s current lover”

p. 113 Chuck Spalding “Bobby and Jackie were extremely close.”

p. 114 Truman Capote recalls Lee Radziwell’s daily updates on the Bobby/Jackie Kennedy affair… “Bobby was addicted to sex and got it where and whenever it was offered to him.”

p. 114 Eunice Shriver to Ethel Kennedy – “Well, what are you going to do about it – Bobby’s spending an awful lot of time with the ‘widder.’” Ethel gave no response at all.

p. 115 Johnny Meyer – key aide to Onassis – Onassis was disturbed about the RFK/Jackie affair.

p. 115 Meyer present for this. Onassis: “Your boyfriend’s a little xxxxx.” Jackie: “That doesn’t describe him anatomically.”

p. 117-118 Ted Kennedy tells George Smather about RFK/Jackie affair and says that is one big reason why Robert Kennedy did not aggressively publicly pursue the investigation of his brother’s death.

p. 118 Larry Rivers talks about affair.

p. 120 Roy Cohn (a homosexual who died of AIDS and expert in sexual blackmail) said that RFK and Rudolph Nureyev were having an affair. [Note from Robert Morrow – I doubt this…]

p. 120 Sam Murphy doorman saw RFK for Jackie in 1966 – saw RFK come by about 3 times/week usually for overnights. Aristotle Onassis very rarely and usually with lots of gifts for the kids.

p. 121 Kenneth McKnight walked into RFK’s office in July, 1966. – “I peeked in and there, on a sofa, sat Bobby Kennedy, and straddling his lap, her arms around his neck, was Jackie Kennedy. When they saw me they engaged and stood.”

p. 122 RFK tells McKnight that he saw and heard nothing “If I hadn’t agreed … I honestly believe he would’ve murdered then and there.”

p. 123 RFK’s affair with Margo Cohen

p. 125 Jackie affair with Charles Adams

p. 126 Dave Powers – RFK on trip, has staff send letters to Ethel, while RFK calls Jackie 3 times per day.

p. 128 RFK buys Jackie a $12,000 jade Buddha decanter. Says send $10,000 invoice to Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation.

p. 129 Ethel Kennedy household abuzz with talk of Jackie/RFK affair.

p. 131 Truman Capote – “Never mind that Madame Queen [Jackie] was sleeping with her very married brother-in-law [Bobby] and concomitantly with none other than Aristotle Onassis, and that both were paying big money for her service.”

p. 133 April 1967 London trip. Bobby and Jackie were sharing same hotel suite.

p. 135 Ken O’Donnell talks about RFK/Jackie affair.

p. 139 Jackie tells RFK to run for Senate. She was the trusted advisor who RFK trusted the most even for political advice. Jack Newfield – heard from MANY people that RFK/Jackie were lovers. “I heard many times from many people that they were lovers. I couldn’t tell. But I could see that they were extremely committed to each other.”

 

Edited June 16 by Robert Morrow

[Kirk Gallaway]

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Not quite right, Kirk.   

The Daily Mail is a right-wing tabloid that often features slanted, derogatory stories about liberals, including Americans.

It's like a cross between Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and David Pecker's National Enquirer.

So, money isn't necessarily their main motive in running these lurid Callahan stories about JFK, Jackie, and RFK.  (Unless, of course, they're getting paid by someone to defame the Kennedy family.)

IMO, there's something political going on with these derogatory, lead JFK stories.

After all, Lord Rothermere could, doubtless, make similar money publishing lurid stories about the sex lives of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

Why not a series of lurid, front-page feature articles about Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, Epstein Island, and Melania's nude photos?

The Stormy Daniels news is contemporary.

JFK's sex life ended more than 60 years ago.

Egads!, see what you've unleashed on the Kennedy name from Robert!     heh heh

Their target audience is lower to middle class British women!

That's not going to the move the needle here in the U.S.!

The tabloids have been doing this to the Kennedys for 60 years!

And they still are the most enduring family name in American politics! Though they might be running out of chances!

I've watched people decry this on this forum a thousand times!

After decades of it, I've developed a counter opinion.

It's not even clear among the people who buy those tabloids  that the net effect is that it only adds mystique!

And among the people who see the headlines at the checkout counter and would never buy it, I know it adds mystique!

 

W. So, money isn't necessarily their main motive in running these lurid Callahan stories about JFK, Jackie, and RFK. 

Never underestimate the desire of people who have plenty of money to want, yet more money! It works, so why not?

[Ron Bulman]

Geez is right W.  This was in the toilet from the start, at the Daily Mail.  Whom I read a few years back was a conduit for CIA propaganda.  I go away 3-4 hours and it has devolved to this.  Scurrilous is appropriate for the titles.  Robert further advanced it.  Mark did the right thing by moving it.  

[W. Niederhut]

58 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Geez is right W.  This was in the toilet from the start, at the Daily Mail.  Whom I read a few years back was a conduit for CIA propaganda.  I go away 3-4 hours and it has devolved to this.  Scurrilous is appropriate for the titles.  Robert further advanced it.  Mark did the right thing by moving it.  

Yeah, Ron, "scurrilous" is the word.

I only started this thread because I was truly surprised to see a major newspaper, the Daily Mail, publishing these lead, front-page articles about JFK, Jackie, and RFK this week.

I suspect that the timing of this 60 year-old "news" coverage, and the book, Ask Not, have something to with RFK, Jr.'s 2024 presidential candidacy, but I may be mistaken.

[Robert Morrow]

12 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Geez is right W.  This was in the toilet from the start, at the Daily Mail.  Whom I read a few years back was a conduit for CIA propaganda.  I go away 3-4 hours and it has devolved to this.  Scurrilous is appropriate for the titles.  Robert further advanced it.  Mark did the right thing by moving it.  

Well when you live your life in the gutter which JFK did - when you demand that people provide you two prostitutes at a time for your sexual benefit - as JFK did on many occasions (see Mrs. William King Harvey and journalist Lawrence Wright whose father was asked to be JFK's pimp and also see what former Sen. George Smathers says below), when you commit "character suicide" almost daily, when you are hopped up on amphetamine from "Dr. Feelgood" Max Jacobson, then people are going to talk about it 60+ years later.

Then if you are Robert Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy and you have sex with each other in an adulterous relationship, people are going to talk about 60 years year. That one was of the big reasons RFK was so silent on the JFK assassination in the mid 1960s, why he did not rock the boat, he did not want to invite further scrutiny into what he was doing with Jackie.

As for Ted Kennedy: cocaine, alcohol abuse and rampant unhinged adultery were his lifelong calling cards. I recommend The Senator: My Ten Years with Ted Kennedy by his former aide Richard Burke, a book that is a great takedown on Ted Kennedy's life of personal derangement. https://www.amazon.com/Senator-Ten-Years-Ted-Kennedy/dp/0312304668  One time Teddy went to South America and rented a whole whorehouse for him and his friends (as detailed in FBI documents).

In the book The Dark Side of Camelot, Seymour Hersh interviewed a Washington D.C. picture framer who JFK used to picture frame his dirty sex orgy photos to. That just shows the arrogance, recklessness and sex addiction of John F. Kennedy, who LBJ once said of "I've had more women by accident than [Kennedy] has had on purpose.

The Smoking Gun website has a great web page devoted to "JFK: Tales from the Darkside."

Hoover of the FBI and LBJ's FBI henchman were highly aware of the reckless, disgusting and compromised behavior or Sen. John Kennedy in 1959: https://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/naked-picture-senator-kennedy?page=0 JFK would leave NUDE PICTURES of himself and his mistresses just sitting on his desk in his office in U.S. Senate. That source who saw that was James Dowd of the Justice Department.

You better believe Hoover and DeLoach would be sharing ALL of this material with JFK-hater Lyndon Baines Johnson!

I wonder what Lyndon Johnson would do with all this sex derangement material on John Kennedy? So much to work with! LBJ would use it to clobber JFK over the head and FORCE HIM TO TAKE LBJ AS VICE PRESIDENT all the while LBJ was scheming to murder JFK just as soon as the first available opportunity came. (Nevermind that LBJ was a sexual degenerate of the first degree. I remember in 2015 Donald Trump (!) attacking Bill Clinton over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein!)

In the 1960 campaign someone broke into JFK's doctor's office looking for proof of his Addison's Disease. Who would this have been? Richard Nixon's people. Nope. It occurred during the Democ ratic primary so a very reasonable assumption is IT WAS LYNDON JOHNSON'S PEOPLE.

Sen. George Smathers, who chased many girls with JFK, summed up JFK very well when he said as detailed in a book:

QUOTE

According to Smathers, “No one was off limits to Jack – not your wife, your mother, your sister.” During their Senate days, Kennedy and Smathers shared a pied-a-terre where they could carry on discreet affairs. Once, when Smathers was called away to the Senate, leaving Kennedy with both of their dates, he returned to find the ambitious senator chasing both girls around the apartment. Having two girls at once was one of Kennedy’s favorite pastimes,” Smathers said. 

George Smathers said that “just in terms of the time he spent with a woman, he was a lousy lover. He went in more for the quantity than quality.”

UNQUOTE

[Irving Wallace, Amy Wallace, David Wallechinsky, Sylvia Wallace, The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People, p. 362]

Gossip columnist Liz Smith, from Texas and close to the LBJ people, on how Johnson's people would keep a dossier of sexual indiscretions on John Kennedy

 Author Gail Collins quoting gossip columnist Liz Smith:

           "One of Johnson's assistants and I went all through high school and college together, " Smith says. "He told me the most incredible stories. Johnson's people kept dossiers on Kennedy. They'd interview the hotel maids. The maid would be there making a bed, and Kennedy would come in and give her a boff." One of Smith's friends told her that the president had taken her up to his office while she was still wearing her elaborate ball gown. "She was lying there with her dress over her head," Smith recounted. "She looked up and he was standing there at his desk, reading some papers and zipping his fly. He just left her lying there."

 [Gail Collins, Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics, p. 176]

Liz Smith grew up with inner circle LBJ aide Horace Busby who told her that LBJ operatives had done some heavy spying on the illicit sex life of John Kennedy. Her friend Busby told Liz this sometime during the LBJ Administration.

 QUOTE

 During the LBJ years, Helen decided she wanted an in-depth piece about the two girls in the White House – Lynda Bird and Luci Baines Johnson. I cheerfully rang my lifelong schoolmate, Horace Busby, aide to the president, sure I would get everything I needed. It seems to me I am always meeting or knowing people at the top, people who are so important, they are virtually useless to me as source and subjects.

Horace had started kindergarten with me at E.M. Daggett in Fort Worth. We had gone on together through grade school, high school and the U of T. Horace whispered on the phone, “Don’t call me here again, I’ll call you.” When he did he said he couldn’t help me, as LBJ would have his scalp. But, he added, he wanted to see me and soon asked me to dine with him in New York.

I was in my cute boots and miniskirted phase and I was looking forward to dinner with a presidential aide at someplace like “21.” Horace phoned again. “We have to eat at the hotel!” Disappointed, I still tarted myself up and kept the date. After all, dinner in the St. Regis wasn’t bad. But when I arrived he ordered me up to his room. “I can’t leave the room. I am on stakeout on the president’s orders. But damn, why didn’t you get here sooner. I was just on the phone to him. If only he’d called to find me with a girl in my room!”

As we ordered room service and talked about old times, Horace told me a lot of gossip about the Johnsons and the Kennedys before them. It seems the job of LBJ aides was to keep a record of all the rumors and scandal that had accompanied Kennedy on the campaign trail. “We followed him. We would find maids in hotels and motels who claimed Jack just stepped up behind them as they were making the bed and then – well, you know.”

I asked, “Why did you need this kind of information?”

Horace said, “Oh well, we just had it, you know. We had to have it in case we ever needed it.” I felt disillusioned. Then I asked again why he was in the St. Regis.

He said, “There are others like me all around the world. We are each in different places known to the Vietnamese, hoping Ho Chi Minh will give us a peace feeler to end the war.”

I gasped. “But Horace, isn’t this top secret? Why would you tell this to me?”

He smiled. “Who would believe you.”

Who indeed.      

 QUOTE

 [Liz Smith, Natural Blonde: A Memoir, pp. 289-290]

 

 

 

 

Edited June 16 by Robert Morrow

[Robert Morrow]

11 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Yeah, Ron, "scurrilous" is the word.

I only started this thread because I was truly surprised to see a major newspaper, the Daily Mail, publishing these lead, front-page articles about JFK, Jackie, and RFK this week.

I suspect that the timing of this 60 year-old "news" coverage, and the book, Ask Not, have something to with RFK, Jr.'s 2024 presidential candidacy, but I may be mistaken.

"Scurrilous: making or spreading scandalous claims about someone with the intention of damaging their reputation."

Which, of course, does not equate to "a pack of lies," "disinformation," or even "misinformation."

JFK, RFK, Ted Kennedy, Joe Sr. the father certainly gave this author a Mount Everest of documented Kennedy sexual psychopathy to work with.

I merely think author Maureen Callahan, a NY Post reporter for 20 years before moving to the Daily Mail, simply wanted to MAKE MONEY. And there is nothing wrong with that at all.

Maureen Callahan - Wikipedia 

Edited June 16 by Robert Morrow

[Paul Brancato]

On 6/15/2024 at 6:12 PM, W. Niederhut said:

Smearing RFK, Jr.?

Well ain’t this grand? Robert Morrow sent out his email blurb on the same book and I responded by telling him to take me off his email list, to which I politely agreed. And here he is smearing Junior. I’ll tell you what, I find this far more offensive than Ben repeating his support for him. The book is a smear. Whether it’s part of some orchestrated campaign I don’t know, but when I asked what you thought, since you bought it up, you said maybe it’s to smear Junior. Passing it along, like Robert Morrow did and you as well, makes me wonder if your dual disdain for Junior clouds your judgements as to what is worthy of sharing. 

[W. Niederhut]

14 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Well ain’t this grand? Robert Morrow sent out his email blurb on the same book and I responded by telling him to take me off his email list, to which I politely agreed. And here he is smearing Junior. I’ll tell you what, I find this far more offensive than Ben repeating his support for him. The book is a smear. Whether it’s part of some orchestrated campaign I don’t know, but when I asked what you thought, since you bought it up, you said maybe it’s to smear Junior. Passing it along, like Robert Morrow did and you as well, makes me wonder if your dual disdain for Junior clouds your judgements as to what is worthy of sharing. 

Paul,

    In retrospect,  I regret ever starting this thread.

    I was surprised when I saw this series of scurrilous JFK headline news stories in the Daily Mail, and they seemed newsworthy for the JFK forum.

    The author, Maureen Callahan, apparently worked as a right-wing propagandist for Rupert Murdoch, for years, at the NY Post.

     So, this may simply be more of the usual anti-liberal yellow journalism in a right-wing rag.

Edited June 18 by W. Niederhut

[Paul Brancato]

8 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Paul,

    In retrospect,  I regret ever starting this thread.

    I was surprised when I saw this series of scurrilous JFK headline news stories in the Daily Mail, and they seemed newsworthy for the JFK forum.

    The author, Maureen Callahan, apparently worked as a right-wing propagandist for Rupert Murdoch, for years, at the NY Post.

     So, this may simply be more of the usual anti-liberal yellow journalism in a right-wing rag.

Very nice of you to say, sorry I was a bit rough.