New book 'Ask Not' attacks Kennedy family misogyny

[David Andrews]

Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan

As reviewed today in The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/08/ask-not-the-kennedys-and-the-women-they-destroyed-maureen-callahan-review

The press, I notice, is pleased to smack its lips: "As a senator, JFK tried out his priapic power by impregnating a 15-year-old babysitter and positioning an aide beneath his desk to ******* him while he multitasked in his office. As president, he ushered White House secretaries upstairs after work for brief, brusque sessions of ********** and rewarded them with a post-****** snack of cheese puffs..."  It gets ugly-worse.

Edited Monday at 05:37 PM by David Andrews

[Robert Morrow]

On 7/8/2024 at 12:23 PM, David Andrews said:

Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan

As reviewed today in The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/08/ask-not-the-kennedys-and-the-women-they-destroyed-maureen-callahan-review

The press, I notice, is pleased to smack its lips: "As a senator, JFK tried out his priapic power by impregnating a 15-year-old babysitter and positioning an aide beneath his desk to ******* him while he multitasked in his office. As president, he ushered White House secretaries upstairs after work for brief, brusque sessions of ********** and rewarded them with a post-****** snack of cheese puffs..."  It gets ugly-worse.

I have Callahan's book and I endorse the general tenor of it although I have not read it. I do know she made some simple factual mistakes in the book and I learned that from reading an Amazon review.

Regarding John F. Kennedy in particular: he was highly sexually promiscuous, adulterous and extremely reckless in his search for continual sex with many partners. That happens to be extremely historically important because two solid sources (Evelyn Lincoln and Pierre Salinger) thought that the only way LBJ got placed onto the 1960 Democratic ticket on July 14, 1960 was LBJ's and Sam Rayburn's use of sexual blackmail on JFK. A third source, Hy Raskin, who was a key campaign aide to JFK, also believed that LBJ forced his way onto the 1960 Democratic ticket.

It was most definitely NOT because Ted Sorensen weirdly thought that LBJ might be a good match for JFK.

Regarding the equally unhinged Lyndon Johnson: he used to brag that he got more girls by accident than JFK had on purpose: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/04/three-new-revelations-about-lbj/377094/

I suggest reading some of the government documents that the Smoking Gun website has collected on the "Darkside" of John Kennedy. JFK's enemies in the government - Hoover and Lyndon Johnson - were well plugged into JFK's reckless sexual shenanigans and used them as a sword over JFK.

https://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/jfk-tales-darkside 

These 2 are particularly informative government docs:

1) https://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/naked-picture-senator-kennedy?page=0

2) https://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/president-branded-debaucher?page=0 

I think that the top blackmail item that LBJ and Sam Rayburn used in July, 1960 (from so many to chose from!) was JFK's affair with a pretty twenty something girl named Pamela Turnure, who died last year and who witnessed Jackie Kennedy say "Lyndon Johnson did it" within hours of the JFK assassination while on Air Force One.

 

 

[Johnny Cairns]

13 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I have Callahan's book and I endorse the general tenor of it although I have not read it. I do know she made some simple factual mistakes in the book and I learned that from reading an Amazon review.

Regarding John F. Kennedy in particular: he was highly sexually promiscuous, adulterous and extremely reckless in his search for continual sex with many partners. That happens to be extremely historically important because two solid sources (Evelyn Lincoln and Pierre Salinger) thought that the only way LBJ got placed onto the 1960 Democratic ticket on July 14, 1960 was LBJ's and Sam Rayburn's use of sexual blackmail on JFK. A third source, Hy Raskin, who was a key campaign aide to JFK, also believed that LBJ forced his way onto the 1960 Democratic ticket.

It was most definitely NOT because Ted Sorensen weirdly thought that LBJ might be a good match for JFK.

Regarding the equally unhinged Lyndon Johnson: he used to brag that he got more girls by accident than JFK had on purpose: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/04/three-new-revelations-about-lbj/377094/

I suggest reading some of the government documents that the Smoking Gun website has collected on the "Darkside" of John Kennedy. JFK's enemies in the government - Hoover and Lyndon Johnson - were well plugged into JFK's reckless sexual shenanigans and used them as a sword over JFK.

https://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/jfk-tales-darkside 

These 2 are particularly informative government docs:

1) https://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/naked-picture-senator-kennedy?page=0

2) https://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/president-branded-debaucher?page=0 

I think that the top blackmail item that LBJ and Sam Rayburn used in July, 1960 (from so many to chose from!) was JFK's affair with a pretty twenty something girl named Pamela Turnure, who died last year and who witnessed Jackie Kennedy say "Lyndon Johnson did it" within hours of the JFK assassination while on Air Force One.

 

 

Robert, I have a simple question for you and I do not require war and peace as an answer to it. If JFK was so reckless and highly blackmailable, as you speculate, then why was he ear marked for assassination? Someone so reckless, would have been kept on a tight leash. That means, no blockade during the missile crisis, full scale invasion during the Cuban disaster of 1961, no nuclear test ban treaty, no giant strides on civil rights and not going after the Mafia. 
 

 

[Paul Brancato]

3 hours ago, Johnny Cairns said:

Robert, I have a simple question for you and I do not require war and peace as an answer to it. If JFK was so reckless and highly blackmailable, as you speculate, then why was he ear marked for assassination? Someone so reckless, would have been kept on a tight leash. That means, no blockade during the missile crisis, full scale invasion during the Cuban disaster of 1961, no nuclear test ban treaty, no giant strides on civil rights and not going after the Mafia. 
 

 

I’ve thought the same. 

[Robert Morrow]

7 hours ago, Johnny Cairns said:

Robert, I have a simple question for you and I do not require war and peace as an answer to it. If JFK was so reckless and highly blackmailable, as you speculate, then why was he ear marked for assassination? Someone so reckless, would have been kept on a tight leash. That means, no blockade during the missile crisis, full scale invasion during the Cuban disaster of 1961, no nuclear test ban treaty, no giant strides on civil rights and not going after the Mafia. 
 

 

John Kennedy was earmarked for assassination because he and RFK were running a "destroy LBJ" program in fall of 1963. LBJ was acutely aware of and highly agitated about the Kennedys' attempts to destroy him. LBJ and his Texas powerbrokers Ed Clark and D.H. Byrd were not too happy about this.

Lyndon Johnson, who blackmailed his way onto the 1960 Democratic ticket - there is no other legit reason for why this pairing weirdly happened - was very likely plotting the death of John Kennedy as soon as he got onto the 1960 Democratic ticket. 

I do think that CIA-affiliated people with Operation Mongoose and/or the Miami JM-Wave station were used by LBJ, Gen. Edward Lansdale as the field team to murder JFK. These "shooters" were likely enraged over JFK's Cuba policy which was no invasion of Cuba and a possible reconciliation, or normalization of relations with Cuba.

JFK was not killed because of the nuclear test ban treaty, nor because of his position on civil rights nor because of Robert Kennedy's assault on the LBJ-friendly mafia.

Jeremy Kuzmarov's take on the JFK assassination is very close to mine: https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/11/22/60-years-after-jfks-death-it-is-more-and-more-apparent-that-kennedy-was-a-victim-of-a-palace-coup-spearheaded-by-vice-president-lyndon-b-johnson/

JFK was not killed because he was not going to prosecute the Vietnam War. He was, in part, killed because of Gen. Edward Lansdale's rage over the death of his longtime friend Diem in a JFK-sponsored coup. Lansdale was quite unhappy about his own political castration and removal from government on 10/31/1963 at the precise time a coup was going on in Vietnam.

One more thing: the JFK in July, 1960 was merely the Democratic nominee for president. That is someone with tremendously less power than SOMEONE WHO IS ACTUALLY PRESIDENT, which occurred in January, 1961.

And when JFK became president - as that very moment this was occurring:

 

Bobby Baker (LBJ’s right hand man and bag man) told Don Reynolds on Inauguration Day 1/20/61 that the s.o.b. John Kennedy would never live out his term and that he would die a violent death

Bobby Baker, one of Lyndon Johnson’s closest associates, said this during the inauguration of John Kennedy

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbakerB.htm

[“A Primer of Assassination Theories,” Edward Jay Epstein, Esquire, 12/01/1966]

QUOTE

In January of 1964 the Warren Commission learned that Don B. Reynolds, insurance agent and close associate of Bobby Baker, had been heard to say the FBI knew that Johnson was behind the assassination. When interviewed by the FBI, he denied this. But he did recount an incident during the swearing in of Kennedy in which Bobby Baker said words to the effect that the s.o.b. would never live out his term and that he would die a violent death.

UNQUOTE

Web link to Esquire article: https://classic.esquire.com/article/1966/12/01/a-primer-of-assassination-theories

[“A Primer of Assassination Theories,” Edward Jay Epstein, Esquire, 12/01/1966]

Journalist Alfed Steinberg: Lyndon Johnson was so concerned about the Kennedys dropping him from the 1964 Democratic ticket that he developed severe stomach pains

QUOTE

A midwestern Senator who travelled with Johnson on a fall fundraising affair for Senator Thomas Dodd remarked to his colleagues that Johnson had remarked lugubriously during their New England visit that “I am going to be out for a second term. Jack has another man in mind for Vice President.” So concerned was Johnson over what he believed would be his political doom that he developed severe stomach pains.

UNQUOTE

[Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, p. 589]

 

 

Edited yesterday at 12:19 AM by Robert Morrow

[Robert Morrow]

On 7/10/2024 at 12:13 PM, Johnny Cairns said:

Robert, I have a simple question for you and I do not require war and peace as an answer to it. If JFK was so reckless and highly blackmailable, as you speculate, then why was he ear marked for assassination? Someone so reckless, would have been kept on a tight leash. That means, no blockade during the missile crisis, full scale invasion during the Cuban disaster of 1961, no nuclear test ban treaty, no giant strides on civil rights and not going after the Mafia. 
 

 

Let me simplify my answer: blackmailable at the 1960 Democratic convention when JFK was looking at a tight race versus Nixon, is not the same as blackmailable when JFK WAS THE SITTING PRESIDENT OF THE USA. JFK was in a much, much stronger position when he was the sitting president. 

Hugh Sidey of Time Magazine was a friend JFK and was stunned at the sexual risks the man was taking. Sidey was not going to be writing about this stuff. Other folks came very close to writing about it in 1963. 

Edited 8 hours ago by Robert Morrow

[Johnny Cairns]

1 hour ago, Robert Morrow said:

Let me simply my answer: blackmailable at the 1960 Democratic convention when JFK was looking at a tight race versus Nixon, is not the same as blackmailable when JFK WAS THE SITTING PRESIDENT OF THE USA. JFK was in a much, much stronger position when he was the sitting president. 

Hugh Sidey of Time Magazine was a friend JFK and was stunned at the sexual risks the man was taking. Sidey was not going to be writing about this stuff. Other folks came very close to writing about it in 1963. 

The first part of your answer is of course ludicrous. You have suggested many times on this forum, that Jack Kennedy was utterly reckless, highly promiscuous, and highly blackmailable before and during his presidency. Now you are saying that he was blackmailed by Johnson before the Presidency, but as soon as he became President that blackmail didn’t work? I am sorry to disappoint you, but as President the blackmail would have even more have an impact on his position. There were also plenty of people, newspaper, organised crime etc, which would have gladly leaked this information to the whoever would print/listen to it. 
 

Do you want to know why LBJ was chosen as VP? Because he was a Protestant from the south. It would elevate some fears because Jack was Catholic from the north. Also Jack was relatively unknown in the south. Texas was crucial to his campaign and having LBJ on the ticket secured Texas for him. Simple as that. 
 

[David Andrews]

15 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

I’ve thought the same. 

I'd say that they tried, and both they and JFK knew the minimal extent to which they succeeded.  Unleashing the press would be declaring open season on politicians' sex lives, as has been proven by developments after JFK's misadventures were posthumously exposed.  Would Ike want Kay Summersby's photo beside Mamie's in the press?  Yet it happened following the post-JFKA exposures.  The Profumo affair promised no good for whistleblowing American politicos.  LBJ had Bobby Baker's brothel hanging over his head.  And nobody would get a medal for forcing this on Jackie and the kids.  Remember, too, that if pressed, JFK and RFK could leak others' secrets, and one brother was Attorney-General.

If anything, JFK and Bobby discounted the "You can be replaced" message sent when LBJ was forced onto the ticket under threat of exposure.  He would be the philanderer most amenable to any cabal.

[Johnny Cairns]

47 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

I'd say that they tried, and both they and JFK knew the minimal extent to which they succeeded.  Unleashing the press would be declaring open season on politicians' sex lives, as has been proven by developments after JFK's misadventures were posthumously exposed.  Would Ike want Kay Summersby's photo beside Mamie's in the press?  Yet it happened following the post-JFKA exposures.  The Profumo affair promised no good for whistleblowing American politicos.  LBJ had Bobby Baker's brothel hanging over his head.  And nobody would get a medal for forcing this on Jackie and the kids.  Remember, too, that if pressed, JFK and RFK could leak others' secrets, and one brother was Attorney-General.

If anything, JFK and Bobby discounted the "You can be replaced" message sent when LBJ was forced onto the ticket under threat of exposure.  He would be the philanderer most amenable to any cabal.

David, 

Members of the press were about to leak the information that the world was on the brink of nuclear Armageddon in October of 1962, with their headlines about the missiles in Cuba before the President had addressed the American people, this of course would have ramped the crisis of 1962 into overdrive. The Kennedys also had many, many enemies in the United States who would have taken great pleasure in leaking all these alleged scandals to a press willing to print it. Do you not think people like Hoffa would have leaked certain information? Or Giancana? How about people like Geroge Wallace who resented Jack and Bobby for what they had done in Mississippi in 1962? As I pointed out to Robert, what Kennedy achieved in his presidency, what he stood up for, is not the actions of a reckless man. On the contrary, it is the actions of a deeply courageous and principled President. One who advanced the cause of civil rights, steered the world towards safety when the world was on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Who spear headed the space race, passed the nuclear test ban treaty and who, in October 1963, had issued a national security memorandum effectively ending the American involvement in Vietnam. Reckless? No. A hero? Yes. 

Edited 19 hours ago by Johnny Cairns

[Paul Brancato]

17 minutes ago, Johnny Cairns said:

David, 

Members of the press were about to leak the information that the world was on the brink of nuclear Armageddon in October of 1962, with their headlines about the missiles in Cuba before the President had addressed the American people, this of course would have ramped the crisis of 1962 into overdrive. The Kennedys also had many, many enemies in the United States who would have taken great pleasure in leaking all these alleged scandals to a press willing to print it. Do you not think people like Hoffa would have leaked certain information? Or Giancana? How about people like Geroge Wallace who resented Jack and Bobby for what they had done in Mississippi in 1962? As I pointed out to Robert, what Kennedy achieved in his presidency, what he stood up for, is not the actions of a reckless man. On the contrary, it is the actions of a deeply courageous and principled President. One who advanced the cause of civil rights, steered the world towards safety when the world was on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Who spear headed the space race, passed the nuclear test ban treaty and who, in October 1963, had issued a national security memorandum effectively ending the American involvement in Vietnam. Reckless? No. A hero? Yes. 

Agree. And earlier when I said I thought much the same I was referring to your earlier post questioning why, if JFK could be blackmailed, would he be assassinated? So many books and movies smear him and besmirch his legacy. They seem to be part of a concerted effort. And it has by and large worked. I’m thinking of my baby boomer friends. After years of talking about JFK with them there is only one out of a few hundred that opened his mind enough to read a book I recommended, and it had a profound effect on him. It’s some kind of massive brainwashing, and these hit pieces are part of it. Headlines stick, and then everyday life intrudes and they are too busy dealing with hosts of problems. They remain unsuspecting of the true extent to which their lives today were impacted by events 60 years ago.

[Johnny Cairns]

26 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Agree. And earlier when I said I thought much the same I was referring to your earlier post questioning why, if JFK could be blackmailed, would he be assassinated? So many books and movies smear him and besmirch his legacy. They seem to be part of a concerted effort. And it has by and large worked. I’m thinking of my baby boomer friends. After years of talking about JFK with them there is only one out of a few hundred that opened his mind enough to read a book I recommended, and it had a profound effect on him. It’s some kind of massive brainwashing, and these hit pieces are part of it. Headlines stick, and then everyday life intrudes and they are too busy dealing with hosts of problems. They remain unsuspecting of the true extent to which their lives today were impacted by events 60 years ago.

I agree Paul, 100%.

[Robert Morrow]

17 hours ago, Johnny Cairns said:

The first part of your answer is of course ludicrous. You have suggested many times on this forum, that Jack Kennedy was utterly reckless, highly promiscuous, and highly blackmailable before and during his presidency. Now you are saying that he was blackmailed by Johnson before the Presidency, but as soon as he became President that blackmail didn’t work? I am sorry to disappoint you, but as President the blackmail would have even more have an impact on his position. There were also plenty of people, newspaper, organised crime etc, which would have gladly leaked this information to the whoever would print/listen to it. 
 

Do you want to know why LBJ was chosen as VP? Because he was a Protestant from the south. It would elevate some fears because Jack was Catholic from the north. Also Jack was relatively unknown in the south. Texas was crucial to his campaign and having LBJ on the ticket secured Texas for him. Simple as that. 
 

You got that wrong. In no way shape or form was LBJ chosen because the Kennedys wanted a Protestant on the ticket or because they wanted to win Texas or the South. The Kennedys were going to pick Sen. Symington and make a play for California which they ended up losing by 1/2 percent with Johnson on the ticket.

Not knowing that impinges someone's understanding of the JFK assassination because it underplays the very real hatred and contempt that the Kennedys and LBJ had for each other before, during and after the Johnson being put on the ticket. At the 1960 Democratic convention LBJ allies John Connally and India Edwards were publicly tell the press the JFK had Addison's Disease and was unfit for office. LBJ himself was roaming around telling people that JFK's father Joe Kennedy, Sr had supported Hitler before WWII. Both of these items sent the Kennedys in a rage (because both items were basically true!)

The evidence is very clear: the Kennedys had already picked Sen. Stuart Symington of Missouri and had offered him the VP job as late as July 13, 1960 which was the day that John Kennedy won the Democratic nomination. LBJ's response was to get drunk as a skunk the night of 7/13/1960 and roam his hotel hallway cursing the Kennedys in the foulest way imaginable. The WEIRDLY the next afternoon Lyndon Johnson was picked by the Kennedys to be VP - something that stunned both the LBJ and Kennedy delegations. That is because LBJ/Rayburn put the strongarm on JFK early in the morning of 7/14/1960 and the Kennedys spent most of that day trying to keep LBJ off the ticket due to the volcanic response from Democratic liberals to who the Kennedys had sworn that the hated LBJ would NEVER be picked for the vice presidency.

JFK was very embarrassed about picking LBJ and he told his press secretary Pierre Salinger that it would be better if the truth were NEVER KNOWN as how to Johnson got onto the 1960 Democratic ticket. Kennedy couldn't hold a press conference and say I am picking LBJ because Johnson and Rayburn are sexually blackmailing me and threatening to blow up my general election campaign if I don't pick LBJ.

Johnson - after swearing both publicly and privately for months that he would NEVER be a VP to John Kennedy - suddenly had a desperate urge, a craving, a need to be on the 1960 Democratic ticket. And that reason was he knew that that hate levels between himself and the Kennedys was so high that if JFK were elected in the fall of 1960 they would immediately incite a rebellion among Senate Democrats and remove the hated, dictatorial LBJ as Democratic Majority Leader! Therefore, Johnson and his inner circle figured out that LBJ's only way to keep political viability was to force his way on the 1960 Demo ticket as VP.

LBJ was following the old adage: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The Johnsonians thought: well we can always murder JFK later if he becomes president. That hatred level was so high and that was the plan and it was enacted on 11/22/1963.

JFK crumbled to the pressure and made a fatal mistake as he succumbed to LBJ and put him at the VP slot.

As of July 13, 1960 the Kennedys were all set to pick Stuart Symington and the evidence on that is plentiful:

JFK’s good friend Hy Raskin tells how Lyndon Johnson forced his way onto the Democratic ticket as VP in 1960: read the Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh, p.124-129:

Close JFK friend Hy Raskin: “Johnson was not being given the slightest bit of consideration by any of the Kennedys… On the stuff I saw it was always Symington who was going to be the vice president. The Kennedy family had approved Symington.” [Hersh, p. 124]

John Kennedy to Clark Clifford on July 13, 1960: “We’ve talked it out – me, dad, Bobby – and we’ve selected Symington as the vice president.” Kennedy asked Clark Clifford to relay that message to Symington “and find out if he’d run.” …”I and Stuart went to bed believing that we had a solid, unequivocal deal with Jack.” [Hersh, p.125]

Hy Raskin: “It was obvious to them that something extraordinary had taken place, as it was to me,” Raskin wrote. “During my entire association with the Kennedys, I could not recall any situation where a decision of major significance had been reversed in such a short period of time…. Bob [Kennedy] had always been involved in every major decision; why not this one, I pondered… I slept little that night.” [Hersh, p. 125]

John Kennedy to Clark Clifford in the morning of July 14, 1960: “I must do something that I have never done before. I made a serious deal and now I have to go back on it. I have no alternative.” Symington was out and Johnson was in. Clifford recalled observing that Kennedy looked as if he’d been up all night.” [Hersh, p. 126]

John Kennedy to Hy Raskin: “You know we had never considered Lyndon, but I was left with no choice. He and Sam Rayburn made it damn clear to me that Lyndon had to be the candidate. Those bastards were trying to frame me. They threatened me with problems and I don’t need more problems. I’m going to have enough problems with Nixon.” [Hersh, p. 126]

Raskin “The substance of this revelation was so astonishing that if it had been revealed to me by another other than Jack or Bob, I would have had trouble accepting it. Why he decided to tell me was still very mysterious, but flattering nonetheless.” [Hersh, p. 126]

JFK to Pierre Salinger on how LBJ got to be picked as Vice President: “The whole story will never be known. And it’s just as well that it won’t be.”

Stuart Symington (spartacus-educational.com)

QUOTE

Following the nomination and selection of Johnson as the vice-presidential candidate Thursday night, I returned to the office and was immediately called by a number of newspaper men who were checking on a story by John S. Knight, publisher of the Knight Newspapers, which purported that Johnson had forced Kennedy to select him as the vice-presidential candidate.

Earlier that day I had gone to Bob Kennedy's room which was across from mine in the Biltmore Hotel. Ken O'Donnell was there and after I came in they were discussing the possibilities for Vice President. Bob Kennedy asked me to compute the number of electoral votes in New England and in the "solid South." I asked him if he was seriously thinking of Johnson and he said he was. He said Senator Kennedy was going over to see Johnson at 10 a.m. Ken O'Donnell violently protested about Johnson's being on the ticket and I joined Ken in this argument. Both of us felt that Senator Stuart Symington would make a better candidate but Senator Johnson seemed to be on Bob's mind. I remembered all of this later that night when I saw the news report about Johnson forcing himself on the ticket.

I called Bob Kennedy that night to check the Knight story. Bob said it was absolutely untrue. From my conversation with him, however, I gathered that the selection of Johnson had not been accomplished in the manner that the papers had reported it had. I got the distinct feeling that, at best, Senator Kennedy had been surprised when he asked Senator Johnson to run for Vice-President and Johnson accepted...

A day or two after the convention, I asked JFK for the answer to that question. He gave me many of the facts of the foregoing memo, then suddenly stopped and said: "The whole story will never be known. And it's just as well that it won't be."

UNQUOTE

[Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy, p. ]

 

CBS Reporter Nancy Dickerson's Account of how Lyndon Johnson got selected at the 1960 Democratic convention: the Kennedys greatly wanted Stuart Symington for VP and repeatedly had made that known. Dickerson was a reporter who was very close to LBJ.

QUOTE

            As the convention drew nearer, JFK had three secret meetings with Clark Clifford, who was handling the campaign of Senator Stuart Symington. The first was a luncheon at Kennedy's Washington house, where, through Clifford, he offered the Vice Presidency to Symington, provided Symington's Missouri delegation votes went to Kennedy. Symington turned down the deal. The second conversation, which took place in Los Angeles, was a repeat of the first, and again it was refused. The third conversation was in Kennedy's hideaway in Los Angeles, during which he told Clifford that he was fairly certain of a first-ballot victory and asked if Symington would be his running mate. As Clifford later told me, "There were no strings attached. It was a straight offer." The Symington and Clifford families conferred, Symington agreed to run, and Clifford relayed the news to Kennedy.

          Clifford was playing a unique role: he was not only Symington's campaign advisor but JFK's personal lawyer as well. He is one of the world's most sophisticated men, and he does not make mistakes about matters like this. As he told me, "We had a deal signed, sealed and delivered."

          [...]

          Early the next morning, Thursday, July 14, John Kennedy walked down the flight of stairs from his suite to call on Senator and Mrs. Johnson. There was a new sense of seriousness about him, a reserved inner calm that was perceptible not only in the way he walked, but in the way reporters and onlookers gave him a new deference, standing aside to let him through. I never dreamed that he was there to offer the Vice Presidency to LBJ- and if any of those among the more than fifty other reporters outside the door were thinking about it, they didn't say so. It never crossed my mind because Johnson had sworn to me a dozen times, both on the air and off, that he would never take the Vice Presidency.

          For his part, Johnson had been expecting the offer; he took it at face value and said he'd think it over. A politician to his bones, he could see the merits of a Kennedy-Johnson combination. All the Johnson aides believed it was a serious offer, and LBJ went to his grave saying he thought so, but there were many in the Kennedy camp who believed that it was only a courtesy.

UNQUOTE

[Nancy Dickerson, "Among Those Present: A Reporter's View of 25 Years in Washington," pp. 43-44]

 

Robert Kennedy stormed into LBJ’s hotel room in Los Angeles and told him if he (LBJ) knew what was good for him, he would get off the 1960 Democratic ticket!

 LBJ and Unity: Kennedy vs. Johnson

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzJn7vaA3ZQ

 John Connally, Bobby Baker and a third man are in this video

01:29

Finally, the candidate's brother, Robert Kennedy, paid Johnson a visit.

01:35

I was in the room, in Johnson's bedroom with Johnson and John Connally, the three of us

01:40

alone on the morning of the nomination for the vice presidency at about 10:30, when Bobby

01:49

Kennedy stormed in and started screaming at Johnson that if he knew what was good for

01:55

him, he'd get off that ticket.

01:56

So what happened was that Mr. Rayburn and John Connally went in to meet with Bobby Kennedy.

02:01

And Bobby Kennedy said that all hell had broken loose on the convention floor and that Johnson

02:08

was going to have to withdraw, just change his mind and not accept the vice presidency.

02:12

And Mr. Rayburn looked at him and he said, "Aw," and uttered an expletive that I am not

02:18

going to use.

02:19

Old man Rayburn said, "dooky, sonny," and kicked him out.

02:22

I said, "Your brother came down here and offered him the vice presidency and Mr. Johnson accepted it.

02:29

Now, if he doesn't want him to have it, he's going to have to call and ask him

02:33

to withdraw."

02:34

And I am grateful, finally, that I can rely in the coming months on many others, on a

02:42

distinguished running mate who brings unity and strength to our platform and our ticket,

02:48

Lyndon Johnson.

Kenny O’Donnell said that JFK took him into the bathroom for privacy and told him something that he was instructed to never reveal about why he had picked Lyndon Johnson to be Vice President:

O'Donnell is quoting John Kennedy here:

QUOTE

I’m 43 years old, and I’m the healthiest candidate for President in the United States. You’ve traveled with me enough to know that. I’m not going to die in office. So the Vice-Presidency doesn’t mean anything. I’m thinking of something else, the leadership of the Senate. If we win, it will be by a small margin, and I won’t be able to live with Lyndon Johnson as the leader of a small majority in the Senate. Did it occur to you that if Lyndon Johnson becomes the Vice President, I’ll have Mike Mansfield as the leader in the Senate, somebody I can trust and depend on?

UNQUOTE

[Don Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat, p. 155-156]

JFK did not want Lyndon Johnson as a the Democratic Majority Leader in the Senate

In his oral history Robert Kennedy said that JFK was glad to have LBJ as a neutered Vice President because otherwise he would be majority leader “and that would be just impossible. Lyndon Johnson would screw him all the time.” RFK said that “Mansfield was loyal to [JFK]. So he was very pleased.”

[Don Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat, p. 156]

Alfred Steinberg describing the last moments of the JFK-LBJ 1960 Demo ticket being created. LBJ fell into a “deep depression” after getting on the 1960 Demo ticket.

QUOTE

          Graham told him to speak again to Johnson, and when he handed the receiver to him, Johnson lay sprawled over the bed. “Yes… yes … yes,” he said into the phone at intervals. Kennedy was telling him he had already told reporters that Johnson would be the Vice Presidential nominee.

          While Graham ahd been putting through the phone call, Bobby Baker was sent to find Bobby Kennedy and bring him into Johnson’s bedroom. When they returned, Bobby Kennedy spoke to his brother, “Well, it’s too late now,” he said before half slamming down the phone.

          With the subject now settled beyond recall, Lyndon and Lady Bird walked into the hall, stood on chairs before the sweaty crush of reporters and cameras, and he read his statement accepting the Vice Presidential nomination. Then he signified the complete change in his relations with Kennedy since the week began by going to Kennedy’s suite, when he pledged “total commitment” to his new leader. Afterward, Johnson confessed, he fell into a deep depression.

UNQUOTE

[Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy: A Close-Up of the President from Texas, p. 533]

At 1960 Democratic convention, Robert Kennedy told journalist Robert Novak that the Kennedys were considering 3 people for Vice President: Senator Stuart Symington (MO), Senator Scoop Jackson (WA) and Gov. Orville Freeman (MN)

QUOTE

          We had asked JFK campaign manager Bobby Kennedy for help. Strictly for guidance and not to be published, would he give us the names of all possibilities as his brother’s running mate? We would then write a profile on each, and at the last minute slip in the story on the one selected. He gave us three names: Senator W. Stuart Symington of Missouri, Senator Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson of Washington, and Governor Orville Freeman of Minnesota. We thought it odd for the little-known Freeman to be in that company.

          I don’t believe Bobby intentionally misled us. I came to believe Freeman already had been chosen, and Bobby put up the two senators as decoy. Bobby only knew about the selection of LBJ only a few hours before we did.

UNQUOTE

[Robert Novak, The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years of Reporting in Washington, p. 68}

 

Edited 8 hours ago by Robert Morrow

[David Andrews]

1 hour ago, Johnny Cairns said:

David, 

Members of the press were about to leak the information that the world was on the brink of nuclear Armageddon in October of 1962, with their headlines about the missiles in Cuba before the President had addressed the American people, this of course would have ramped the crisis of 1962 into overdrive. The Kennedys also had many, many enemies in the United States who would have taken great pleasure in leaking all these alleged scandals to a press willing to print it. Do you not think people like Hoffa would have leaked certain information? Or Giancana? How about people like Geroge Wallace who resented Jack and Bobby for what they had done in Mississippi in 1962? As I pointed out to Robert, what Kennedy achieved in his presidency, what he stood up for, is not the actions of a reckless man. On the contrary, it is the actions of a deeply courageous and principled President. One who advanced the cause of civil rights, steered the world towards safety when the world was on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Who spear headed the space race, passed the nuclear test ban treaty and who, in October 1963, had issued a national security memorandum effectively ending the American involvement in Vietnam. Reckless? No. A hero? Yes. 

And I gave you the reasons that JFK was not exposed.

I stopped there because it was stretching the topic to mention that the hate for JFK had so amassed, along with feelings that he was a comsymp or traitor, that only bloody public murder would do, and not mere disgrace.  Murder that could be further blamed on Castro's Cuba or Soviet Russia.  Not sex-offender smears that could be turned against half of Washington.  They wanted him dead for all the things they couldn't prove.

Who was it that said JFK was politically reckless?  Not I.  Not a hero?  Then why am I here? 

You have me confused with the MSM because I recognize the idol was flawed.  I'll remember to be more obvious.

Edited 18 hours ago by David Andrews

[Robert Morrow]

2 hours ago, David Andrews said:

I'd say that they tried, and both they and JFK knew the minimal extent to which they succeeded.  Unleashing the press would be declaring open season on politicians' sex lives, as has been proven by developments after JFK's misadventures were posthumously exposed.  Would Ike want Kay Summersby's photo beside Mamie's in the press?  Yet it happened following the post-JFKA exposures.  The Profumo affair promised no good for whistleblowing American politicos.  LBJ had Bobby Baker's brothel hanging over his head.  And nobody would get a medal for forcing this on Jackie and the kids.  Remember, too, that if pressed, JFK and RFK could leak others' secrets, and one brother was Attorney-General.

If anything, JFK and Bobby discounted the "You can be replaced" message sent when LBJ was forced onto the ticket under threat of exposure.  He would be the philanderer most amenable to any cabal.

John Kennedy sure did have Bobby Baker's brothel hanging over his head in 1963. And the absolute proof of that was Robert Kennedy forced the lovely Ellen Rometsch to leave the USA in two or three days!! That is absolute proof of Kennedy having an affair with Rometsch (and God knows how many other girls under Baker's command). Need a say more that Bobby Baker was Lyndon Johnson's right hand man. Suzy Chang was yet another gal pal of JFK and another reason he followed the Promumo affair so intently.

JFK reckless? Getting your girl's from LBJ's right hand man Bobby Baker is the ultimate in reckless. It's just crazy and the height of extremely poor judgement. But men think they can do that when they are the PRESIDENT.

Robert Kennedy was running Rometsch out of the country in late October, 1963 (around 10/27/1963) which was the exact same time that the Kennedys had there "Destroy LBJ" campaign in high gear!! There was a bitter sub rosa war going on between the Kennedys and LBJ's forces... and we know who won that battle! Remember LBJ's neighbor of 19 years FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was the one leaking the Rometsch material to the media!

Ellen Rometsch - https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKrometsch.htm 

Edited 18 hours ago by Robert Morrow

[Matthew Koch]

The Guardian and the Author are very Right Wing [Sarcasm Added]

This would have been written by the Focus on the Family Religious Right, when I was a kid in the 90's

Now Mainstream Left Media like the Guardian, MSMBC do it!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

The journalist’s sickening account of how generations of Kennedys casually abused the women around them with impunity is a timely reminder of the dangers posed by damaged men who crave power

 

Peter Conrad

Mon 8 Jul 2024 02.00 EDT

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“Ask not,” said President Kennedy as he rallied young Americans to volunteer for national service in his inaugural address, “what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Kennedy had a stricter rule for the women in his life, as journalist Maureen Callahan reveals in her lacerating exposé: asking nothing in return, they were expected to do what their commander-in-chief required, which meant supplying him with sex whenever and wherever he fancied.

As a senator, JFK tried out his priapic power by impregnating a 15-year-old babysitter and positioning an aide beneath his desk to fellate him while he multitasked in his office. As president, he ushered White House secretaries upstairs after work for brief, brusque sessions of copulation and rewarded them with a post-coital snack of cheese puffs; at one lunchtime frolic in the basement swimming pool he instructed a young woman to orally relieve the tensions of a male crony and looked on in approval as she obeyed. His wife, Jackie, whom he infected with a smattering of venereal ailments, lamented that his assassination deprived her of the chance to vent her rage at him. Nevertheless, she embraced his naked body before it was placed in a casket at the Dallas hospital, bestowing a final, perhaps frosty kiss on his penis.

 

Sex was their way of both defying and flirting with death

JFK’s conduct mimicked the tom-catting of his father, Joseph, who kept his wife, Rose, permanently pregnant while he took up with movie stars such as Gloria Swanson – whom he raped without bothering to introduce himself at their first meeting – and Marlene Dietrich. Not to be outdone, JFK shared Marilyn Monroe with his brother Bobby, his attorney general. Appointed ambassador to the UK in 1938, Joe declared democracy to be defunct and hailed Hitler’s new world order. He particularly admired Nazi eugenics, which weeded out human specimens he found “disgusting”, and he applied the sanitary theory to his own family. His daughter Rosemary seemed emotionally volatile and looked too chubby to appear in press photographs; deeming her a “defective product”, he had her lobotomised, which left her “functionally a two-year-old”. His wife was not consulted about the operation.

 

View image in fullscreen Eunice and Rosemary Kennedy in 1938. Photograph: George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images

A “negative life force”, Callahan suggests, was passed down from Joe to his descendants. The promiscuous Kennedy men had scant liking for women; with no time for pleasure, they practised what Callahan calls “technical sex”, short-fused but excitingly risky because this was their way of both defying and flirting with death. During the showdown with Russia over Cuban missiles, JFK installed a nubile minion in his absent wife’s bedroom for amusement while he diced with “nuclear oblivion – a catastrophe of his own making”.

The same sense of existential danger elated JFK’s son John, a playboy princeling who loved to show off his genitalia after showering at the gym. Callahan argues that for John Jr “dying was a high”, an orgasmic thrill that he insisted on sharing with a female partner. “What a way to go,” he marvelled after almost killing a girlfriend when their kayak capsized. In 1999, he bullied his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and her sister into flying with him on a private plane he had not qualified to pilot; in bad weather he was baffled by the instrument panel, and all three died when the tiny Piper Saratoga spiralled into the ocean. The accident, in Callahan’s view, was “a murder-suicide”.

 

View image in fullscreen Jackie Onassis, right, with her children Caroline Kennedy and John F Kennedy Jr in 1989.Photograph: Vin Cataani/EPA

An angry sympathy for the women “broken, tormented, raped, murdered or left for dead” by the Kennedys inflames and sometimes envenoms Callahan’s writing. Her account of Rosemary’s unanaesthetised lobotomy left me reeling. It’s equally painful to read about the agony of Mary Jo Kopechne, who drowned in Ted Kennedy’s overturned car at Chappaquiddick in 1969 while he wandered off to arrange for a fixer to finesse press accounts of the calamity: upside down, she contorted her body for hours to gasp at a dwindling pocket of air. Carolyn Bessette tormented herself to qualify as a blond Kennedy consort, enduring a makeover that left her scalp scorched by bleach. In case cosmetic scars seem trivial, Callahan adds a terse allusion to the state of Bessette’s corpse, severed at the waist by her seatbelt in the plane that John Jr so air-headedly crashed.

After all this carnage, the book tries to conclude with a quietly triumphal coda. Liberated by the death of her second husband, Jackie Onassis took a low-paid job with a Manhattan publisher, which allows Callahan to imagine her anonymously merging with the crowd on her way to work, “just another New York woman on the go”. That, however, is not quite the end of the dynastic story. Jackie’s nephew Robert Kennedy Jr is a candidate for president in this November’s election, despite possessing a brain that he believes was partly eaten by a worm, a body that houses the so-called “lust demons” he inherited from his grandfather, and a marital history that gruesomely varies the family paradigm: the second of his three wives, in despair after reading a diary in which he tabulated his adulterous flings and awarded them points for performance, killed herself in 2012.

 

View image in fullscreen The dynasty continues… Robert F Kennedy Jr in May. Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

But the longest shadow is cast by Ted, promoted as the family’s presidential heir apparent in 1980 even though he was “the runt of the litter, kicked out of Harvard for cheating” and a flush-faced alcoholic into the bargain. A psychiatric assessment quoted by Callahan discerns in sloppy, greedy Ted a “narcissistic intemperance, a huge, babyish ego that must constantly be fed”. Sound familiar? That diagnosis makes Trump an honorary Kennedy, with Boris Johnson as a kissing cousin. I sniffed a further connection when Callahan describes Ted arriving drunk at a royal dinner in Brussels with an equally plastered sex worker as his date; the pair appalled the company with their intimate antics, which at one point included urinating on an antique sofa. Could this episode have been reimagined in Christopher Steele’s debunked 2016 dossier where, without evidence, Trump is said to have watched sex workers in a Moscow hotel defile a bed in which the Obamas had slept by drenching it in a golden shower?

Invented or not, such tales are fables about the pathology of politics. Forget the pretence of public service that these damaged men spout as they tout for votes. They seek electoral office because it licenses them to act out their fantasies – to randomly grab pussies or shoot passersby on Fifth Avenue with utter impunity. Having power over others makes up for their own quaking impotence, and all of us, not only those betrayed wives and disposable lovers, are their abused and casually obliterated victims.

 Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan is published by Mudlark (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

 

 

 

 

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