New book 'Ask Not' attacks Kennedy family misogyny

[Joe Bauer]

1 hour ago, Robert Morrow said:

Kenny O'Donnell 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?"

This sounds like something JFK would say imo.

The above quote sounds like something JFK would think and say imo.

Edited 17 hours ago by Joe Bauer

[Joe Bauer]

Hoover and LBJ had the goods on JFK.

The Mafia had the goods on Hoover. Probably on JFK as well with Judyth Exner.

JFK and RFK had the goods on LBJ.

Dulles had the goods on ... take a ticket and stand in line.

E. Howard Hunt had the goods on Nixon.

Others had the goods on Hunt.

Mahue had the goods on Nixon and Donald Nixon and who knows who else.

Nutty, eccentric extreme right-wing Howard Hughes was a CIA front and behind who knows what.

Texas oil Hunt, Murchison, Byrd ( richest men on Earth at the time ) funded the craziest most extreme right wing JFK hating organizations - JBS, Minutemen.

Murchison's El Charro resort in La Jolla, CA catered to Hoover, Mafia and who knows who else in the dark world of corruption. Commie threat obsessed fanatic JFK and RFK hating General Ed Walker was one of their puppets.

Ed Clark had the goods on everything Texas.

What a GD Machiavellian crazy corrupt cesspool/circus!

"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."

 

 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Joe Bauer

[James DiEugenio]

This is simply and utterly false.

And I showed why in my review of Sean Fetter's meritless book.

The reason being is simple:  from the very start, when Sorenson made out his  first list, Johnson was at the top.

The question always was whether or not, he would accept it .

Kennedy did not think he would.  But at the convention, Alsop, and Graham, said he should ask.  And Tommy Corcoran and Tip O'Neill both told him that he would take it and JFK said that would be his most likely path to victory. Since be had been hemorrhaging support in the south since his 1957 declaration for Brown v Board, which he did twice, once in Mississippi.  That is how the call came to be.  And Connally told LBJ he should accept.  Bobby Kennedy did everything he could to stop it, but he failed.

What Hersh did with this, like about everything he did in his trash compactor of a book, was simply and utterly wrong.  He relied on someone who was not even in on the deliberations, ignored all the established precedents, and from there zoomed to a preordained assumption that was simply mythological.  That Fetter, or anyone else, should rely on Hersh in this day and age for anything is simply unfathomable. Especially after the sorry debacles of the Marilyn Monroe trust and the Underwood messengering with Exner between Washington and Chicago. 

I mean please. Not on this forum.

Edited 15 hours ago by James DiEugenio

[Johnny Cairns]

2 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

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:

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}

 

Robert, 

First of all your comment “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.” Is utterly preposterous. Of course Kennedy wanted to win Texas and the South, if he never had them, he would never have been elected president in 1960. Ted Sorensen speaking about this issue in his book Counsellor states that “JFK’s selection of LBJ as his running mate was not wholly surprising to me. Johnson had the precise biography that a young, relatively inexperienced Northeastern Catholic liberal needed to balance the Democratic ticket. Kennedy, somewhat left of center, regarded LBJ as somewhat right of center on many issues and a bridge to the Democratic Southerners, conservatives, and moderates whose support he knew he would ultimately need in the election and might otherwise have difficulty obtaining.” (p.242, Counselor.) I also think you underestimate the Anti Catholic sentiment that haunted Jack Kennedys campaign. Ted Sorensen stated that, LBJ “was picked in part because he was different from Kennedy, he was a Protestant- Kennedy had to worry about anti Catholics. ( 92Y, Conversation with Ted Sorensen) 

 

I think the following point is a perfect rebuttal to your regurgitation of Hersh’s discredited work, which you quote from in abundance. 
 

Was JFK a moral leader? An American president, commander in chief of the world’s greatest military power, who during his presidency did not send one combat troop division abroad or drop one bomb, who used his presidency to break down the barriers to religious and racial equality and harmony in this country and to reach out to the victims of poverty and repression, who encouraged Americans to serve their commitments and to love their neighbours regardless of the colour of their skin, who waged war not on smaller nations but on poverty and illiteracy and mental illness and his own country, and who restored the appeal of politics for the Young and sent peace corps volunteers overseas to work with the poor and untrained and other countries— was in my book a moral president, regardless of his private misconduct. (Counselor; p123) 

[Johnny Cairns]

1 hour ago, Joe Bauer said:

Hoover and LBJ had the goods on JFK.

The Mafia had the goods on Hoover. Probably on JFK as well with Judyth Exner.

JFK and RFK had the goods on LBJ.

Dulles had the goods on ... take a ticket and stand in line.

E. Howard Hunt had the goods on Nixon.

Others had the goods on Hunt.

Mahue had the goods on Nixon and Donald Nixon and who knows who else.

Nutty, eccentric extreme right-wing Howard Hughes was a CIA front and behind who knows what.

Texas oil Hunt, Murchison, Byrd ( richest men on Earth at the time ) funded the craziest most extreme right wing JFK hating organizations - JBS, Minutemen.

Murchison's El Charro resort in La Jolla, CA catered to Hoover, Mafia and who knows who else in the dark world of corruption. Commie threat obsessed fanatic JFK and RFK hating General Ed Walker was one of their puppets.

Ed Clark had the goods on everything Texas.

What a GD Machiavellian crazy corrupt cesspool/circus!

"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."

 

 

 

Joe, regarding Judith Exner, James A. Wechsler pointed out in his New York Post column, the recollections of Mrs Exner, the most notorious claimant of Kennedys misconduct, were “steadily refreshed as her agent solicited more money… resolved not to let her story be topped by other women, who, based on reality or fantasy , are prepared to tell all” . The more women who claimed such a role, the less newsworthy and less credible their retroactive revelations became. It is also easy to sell sensational allegations when no one is alive to disprove them. (Counselor p. 117)

Edited 15 hours ago by Johnny Cairns

[James DiEugenio]

What is the evidence that JFK despised Lyndon Johnson?

From everything I have read, and its a lot, Kennedy treated Johnson with respect both in the senate and as VP.  

The stuff that went on prior to the convention, Kennedy understood that as pure politics in a  political race. 

Kennedy understood that as a northeast Catholic liberal, LBJ would balance out the ticket in every way, geographically, religiously and politically.  

So it just made the most political sense.  I repeat, Sorenson's first list had Johnson at the top.  (Kennedy, p. 184) Sorenson then adds, "He had strong voter appeal in areas where Kennedy had little or none.. He was a protestant with a capital P. Above all, Kennedy respected him..."

Clark Clifford was managing Symington's campaign. When Kennedy approached him to feel him out, Clifford replied that Symington was not interested, he was playing for a second ballot.  (Schlesinger,  A Thousand Days, p. 40)

 

[W. Niederhut]

So, this is now the third JFKA board thread about Maureen Callahan's book, Ask Not, since June 14th.

Technically, this book isn't about the JFK assassination.

The other two threads were moved the JFK Books board.

Incidentally, I noticed that the recent WaPo review of Ask Not was the second most-read article at WaPo today!  Sex sells.

That WaPo review includes a number of explicit slurs about RFK, Jr.'s sex life.

IMO, this thread should probably be moved to the JFK Books board, but I have requested a second opinion from the forum mods on this issue.

 

 

 

 

Edited 14 hours ago by W. Niederhut

[James DiEugenio]

That is correct William.  it should be. 

[Paul Brancato]

Robert - what is the evidence on Joseph Kennedy supporting Hitler? 

[Ron Bulman]

Here's your second opinion W.

[Robert Morrow]

7 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

The above quote sounds like something JFK would think and say imo.

My mistake. Kenny O'Donnell was quoting JFK's rationalization for picking Lyndon Johnson as VP. O'Donnell was one of the ones outraged by the weird, out-of-blue pick of LBJ as VP on July 14, 1960. Notice how JFK does not want that egotistical backstabber Lyndon Johnson as the Democratic Majority Leader of the Senate.

LBJ knew this as well and it is PRECISELY why LBJ and Sam Rayburn strongarmed Kennedy to put Johnson on the 1960 Democratic ticket. Johnson knew it Kennedy was elected in the fall of 1960, the first order of business was getting rid of LBJ as the Senate Democratic Majority leader, which would have been easy to do because the Democratic Caucus had just elected a bunch of Northern Democratic liberals in 1958 who did not like LBJ and were not in the grips of the oil companies that LBJ spent so much time lathering with special tax breaks.

As JFK told Pierre Salinger, "The truth will never be known" as to how LBJ got on the ticket which was because the 1960 Demo ticket was birthed in a very shameful way: the vice presidential pick, in typical LBJ manner, blackmailed, threatened and bullied his way onto the ticket. JFK would not public discuss that damaging reality.

Neither JFK, RFK or Jackie Kennedy ever said something "Lyndon Johnson was picked because he was a Protestant so we could win the south and Texas."

Now look at the behavior of Robert Kennedy, the man leading the "destroy Johnson" campaign at the behest of his brother JFK, in 1963. Does the following anecdote lead someone to think the Kennedys cared one whit about having LBJ on the 1964 Democratic ticket?

John Connally aide John Singleton on Robert Kennedy: “the most arrogant person I ever met.” John Singleton was also a longtime supporter of Lyndon Johnson.

QUOTE

In 1963, Bobby went to Texas to plan a presidential visit. An aide to Democratic Governor John Connally remembered him as “the most arrogant person I had ever met.” At the airport, the aide handed Kennedy a memo on what they wanted the President to say about oil and gas. After reading it, Bobby tore it up, threw it on the ground, and said, “We’re not going to say anything like that. We put that son of a bitch on the ticket to carry Texas, and if you can’t carry Texas, that’s y’all’s problem.

UNQUOTE

[Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant, p. 652]

 

 

[Robert Morrow]

5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

What is the evidence that JFK despised Lyndon Johnson?

From everything I have read, and its a lot, Kennedy treated Johnson with respect both in the senate and as VP.  

The stuff that went on prior to the convention, Kennedy understood that as pure politics in a  political race. 

Kennedy understood that as a northeast Catholic liberal, LBJ would balance out the ticket in every way, geographically, religiously and politically.  

So it just made the most political sense.  I repeat, Sorenson's first list had Johnson at the top.  (Kennedy, p. 184) Sorenson then adds, "He had strong voter appeal in areas where Kennedy had little or none.. He was a protestant with a capital P. Above all, Kennedy respected him..."

Clark Clifford was managing Symington's campaign. When Kennedy approached him to feel him out, Clifford replied that Symington was not interested, he was playing for a second ballot.  (Schlesinger,  A Thousand Days, p. 40)

 

We will start with Jackie Kennedy:

Jackie Kennedy on what JFK really thought about Lyndon Johnson

QUOTE

But Bobby told me this later, and I know Jack said it to me sometimes. He said, “Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?” So many times he’d say it - or if there was ever a problem.

UNQUOTE

[Thomas Oliphant & Curtis Wilkie, The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year Campaign, p. 278]

QUOTE

But in ’68, I know, he was thinking in some little way, what could you do? Well, first place, I thought Lyndon would be too old then to run for president. I mean, he [JFK] didn’t like that idea that Lyndon would go on and be president because he was worried for the country. And Bobby told me that he’d had some discussions with him. I forget exactly how they were planning or who they had in mind. It wasn’t Bobby, but somebody. Do something to name someone else in ’68.

[Thomas Oliphant & Curtis Wilkie, The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year Campaign, p. 278]

Sadly, Ted Sorensen is flat out lying about John Kennedy respecting Lyndon Johnson. As Kenny O'Donnell and Robert Kennedy have both told us there is no way a President Kennedy would have liked LBJ to be the Senate Democratic Majority Leader.

Previously I have given you examples from both Burkett van Kirk of the Senate Rules Committee and James Wagenvoord of Life Magazine and both men have said that Robert Kennedy separately sent a Justice Department lawyer to their organizations in the fall of 1963 with a dossier on Lyndon Johnson that was to be used to destroy LBJ so the Kennedys would have a pretext to get Johnson off the 1964 Democratic ticket. I guess that would be proof that JFK did not like Johnson.

Previously, I have given you evidence from George Reedy and John Connally saying that LBJ knew about this "destroy LBJ" campaign and was highly agitated about it. Read Horace Busby between the lines and it is markedly in this posthumous book as well. Then there is Phil Brennan's confirmation that Robert Kennedy was running a "destroy Johnson" campaign with the media in the fall of 1963. Phil Brennan himself was part of these efforts to expose LBJ's corruption.

Evelyn Lincoln said that during the last year of JFK's administration that JFK and Johnson only met privately together for precisely two hours. That is almost nothing. In the fall of 1963 the Kennedys were organizing their re-election campaign. Guess who was pointedly left out of that planning: Lyndon Johnson. Both Evelyn Lincoln and Jackie Kennedy believed in real time on 11/22/1963 that Lyndon Johnson had just murdered JFK - and that is because both women were highly tuned into the toxic relationship between JFK (even worse RFK) and Lyndon Johnson.

A few days before the JFK assassination, Robert Kennedy had his 38th birthday. Guess what the Kennedy entourage gave him: an LBJ voodoo doll and I am sure there were pins all stuck in it. Just like kickback king Bobby Baker was the right arm of Lyndon Johnson; Robert Kennedy was the right arm of John Kennedy who of course endorsed RFK's "destroy LBJ" gameplan.

As far as Ted Sorensen lying, he gave Jackie Kennedy a manuscript of his book Kennedy which was published in 1965. Jackie went through that thing and crossed out and deleted every time Sorensen said that Kennedy liked and admired Johnson. Sorensen put that into his last book Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History (I'm sorry I don't have the exact page number that is on).

Also, check out this hot anecdote and it will help you understand the JFK-LBJ relationship:

JFK used to joke about Lyndon Johnson staging a coup d’etat on his presidency

QUOTE

          According to his close friend, Charles Spalding, the president called him occasionally with updates about a “James Bond 007 thriller novel he said he was writing about how Lyndon Johnson was trying to take over his presidency.” One call reported how the vice president had captured him just as he was about to enter the White House swimming pool, then sealed off the facility and made it a center of operations.  Another time, Kennedy said, “Now listen to this, Charlie - you’re going to love it.  Lyndon has tied up Mrs. Lincoln and Kenny O’Donnell in a White House closet and he’s got a plane ready to take them away.” In Spalding’s words, “I don’t know if he ever put any of it down on paper, but he sure had a lot of fun with it.”

UNQUOTE

[Steven Watts, JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier, pp. 159-160]

JFK despised Lyndon Johnson reports JFK's close friend Charles Spalding

           Charles Spalding, Kennedy's old friend, may not have known the president's plans for 1964, but he did know Jack Kennedy. "Jack didn't like Lyndon," Spalding told me in a 1997 interview. "I know. He was just awful - so jealous, so disagreeable and ugly." What's worse, Spalding said, he and the president knew that Johnson wasn't  loyal - "he really was anti-him [Kennedy]"

 [Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, pp. 407-408]

John Kennedy to his good friend George Smathers:

"God dammit, I hate flying to Texas. I had to practically wring Jackie's neck to get her to go with me. I just hate to go. I have a terrible feeling about going."

Jackie Kennedy on LBJ begging JFK to go to Texas:

"Both Bobby and Adali Stevenson warned Jack it was dangerous landing in Texas. But Johnson practically begged him to go and save his own political neck."

 

 

[Robert Morrow]

8 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

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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Is abuse of women a right wing or left wing thing? From what I have found over the years is that the Left ignores the sexual predators on their side, but screams bloody murder about the sexual predators of the Right.

And the Right ignores the sexual predators on their side and screams bloody murder about the sexual predators of the Left.

A few decades ago there was a drunken, female abusing Senator Bob Packwood for Oregon, but he was pro-choice on the abortion issue and you never heard any feminist groups call him out for his bad behavior. https://www.npr.org/2017/11/27/566096392/when-bob-packwood-was-nearly-expelled-from-the-senate-for-sexual-misconduct

And when it comes to the JEFFREY EPSTEIN issue - Republicans will only talk about Epstein having ties to Bill Clinton and Democrats will only talk about Epstein having very close and real times to Donald Trump.

The hypocrisy of hacks in both political party REEKS! (I imagine reeks to be a smell akin to a rotting dead corpse.)

[Robert Morrow]

4 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Robert - what is the evidence on Joseph Kennedy supporting Hitler? 

I am not an expert on that topic, but I think that FDR had to recall Joseph Kennedy as Ambassador to England because he was not supportive of the Allied efforts against Hitler in the run up to WWII. I think Joe Kennedy thought Hitler was going to flatten both France and England and he was not too bothered about that.

However, you might want to talk with Lyndon Johnson who was running around the 1960 Democratic convention telling the delegates that JFK's dad Joe Kennedy "thought Hitler was right."  Whether this is true or not, this absolutely enraged the Kennedy entourage and makes the selection of Lyndon Johnson as VP three days later even more weird and out of the blue. To say something like 20 years after WWII, that is called "burning your bridges."

Lyndon Johnson, on July 11, 1960, at the Democratic National Convention, speaking to the state of Washington delegates and refering to JFK’s dad Joe Kennedy:

“I wasn’t any Chamberlain umbrella man. I never thought Hitler was right.”

[Thomas Oliphant & Curtis Wilkie, The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year Campaign, p. 242]

LBJ surrogate India Edwards, standing with John Connally, at the 1960 Democratic convention, accusing JFK of having Addison’s Disease

“Doctor’s have told me he would not be alive if not for cortisone.” - India Edwards

[Thomas Oliphant & Curtis Wilkie, The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year Campaign, p. 242]

 

[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. 
 

The cover story was that JFK picked Lyndon Johnson so that he could win Texas or that LBJ could help them win in the South.

The real story is that the Kennedys as late as the night of July 13, 1960 were completely locked in on having Sen. Stuart Symington as the VP pick and this had constantly been communicated to Symington both at the convention and in the weeks leading up to it.

Then LBJ get drunk the night of 7/13/1960 as he wandered out into his hotel hallway cussing the Kennedys and saying the awful things he wanted to do to them.

Then - WEIRDLY - completely out of the blue, the Kennedys pick LBJ for the VP slot in the afternoon of 7/14/60.

That is because LBJ and Rayburn put the screws on JFK in the morning of 7/14/60. The reason for LBJ suddenly wanting and desperately DEMANDING the VP slot was because he knew the Kennedys hated his guts and would immediately have him removed as Senate Democratic Majority as the first action of the Kennedy White House - if JFK were to be elected in fall, 1960.

LBJ figured, if our ticket loses, I can always blame the loss on the top of the ticket JFK.

And, if our ticket wins, a bullet into the skull of John Kennedy would be a nice way to close out the Kennedy Administration.

Here is what was really going on at the 1960 Democratic convention on the day of 7/13/1960 - which is almost 64 years from today:

JFK had already selected Stuart Symington for Vice President, then LBJ moved in for a hostile takeover of the Vice Presidency

QUOTE

          Clifford and the six Symingtons talked far into the night. In a separate interview Jim Symington remembered that he and his brother discouraged their father. “We told him, ‘You don’t want to go and carry another guy’s water for him. Go back to the Senate where you can make a difference.’ He said, ‘Thanks, boys.’”

          Clifford was ultimately persuasive in convincing Symington to give his assent to second place on the Democratic ticket on the grounds that he could do more for Missouri as vice president than as senator.

          They all went to bed waiting word from Kennedy.

          At the top of the Kennedy high command, a similar belief prevailed about Symington’s imminent selection. According to Dick Donahue, who spent time with Larry O’Brien and Ken O’Donnell after a brief period of celebration, “We were satisfied it was Stuart Symington. You know, that was it, and there wasn’t any doubt about it.”

          The choice of Symington had actually leaked into public print hours before Kennedy won the nomination. Both Charles Bartlett and John Seigenthaler filed stories for Wednesday  citing unnamed sources who confirmed Symington’s selection. (Jack and Robert Kennedy were later identified, respectively, as the unnamed sources.) Then all hell broke loose.  [Robert Morrow's addition; journalists Charles Bartlett and John Seigenthaler were very close friends of the Kennedys.]

[Thomas Oliphant & Curtis Wilkie, The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year Campaign, p. 259-260]