Hit Piece Video with Useful Interviews

[David Andrews]

The usual topics handled by unusual suspects in The Hidden Side of the Kennedys.  Interviews on JFK's scandals with Maheu, De Loach, Sam Halpern, Secret Service, but also Soviet sources.  I don't endorse it, but the interview subjects collected are worth noting as they pass.  FWIW.

Edited September 24 by David Andrews

[Benjamin Cole]

41 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

The usual topics handled by unusual suspects in The Hidden Side of the Kennedys.  Interviews on JFK's scandals with Maheu, De Loach, Sam Halpern, Secret Service, but also Soviet sources.  I don't endorse it, but the interview subjects collected are worth noting as they pass.  FWIW.

Ha!  DA, you beat me to it!

Yes, the English language does not have an antonym for "hagiography" but if it did, the film would qualify. 

As you say, fascinating tidbits...I did not know Joe Kennedy, JFK's father, was a vocal opponent of US entry or involvement in WWII, even while US ambassador to Great Britain, right into the Nazi days. (This family embarrassment may have led to JFK's book, "Why England Slept," which posits liberal democracies must be constantly armed and ready to defend themselves against thug-tyrant governments.)

The senior Kennedy is even worse than depicted in this hit piece--"Kennedy fought bitterly with the State Department, as well as FDR, in his outspoken opposition to the president’s policy of coming to the aid of Britain in the wake of Adolf Hitler’s European onslaught."

The senior Kennedy also met with Nazi diplomats and made anti-Semitic comments.  In the eyes of the British, a new low was struck when diplomat Kennedy moved his family out of bomb-torn London to the countryside. This move prompted Randolph Churchill to say, "I thought my daffodils were yellow until I met Joe Kennedy".  The senior Kennedy also told Brit press that FDR would "fall" in the 1940 election. 

But back to the The Hidden Side of the Kennedys---

I did not realize there was a film of Maheu talking candidly about his role in connecting the Mob to the CIA. Worth watching. 

If you have any reservations about why Robert Blakey was installed in the HSCA, supplanting Richard Sprague, they will be amplified after his performances in this film. Blakey says the Kennedy fortune was made, at least in large part, by running liquor with the Mob, and that JFK was elected with Mob assistance in Illinois. Blakey then suggests the JFKA was perped by the Mob as they perceived a JFK double-cross.  The Hidden Side of the Kennedys was released in 2000, but they take film clips from before that time. 

Blakey was a mob-hunter in the Justice Department and wrote the RICO Act. Only decades later (by 2013) would Blakey apparently expand his views, and accuse the CIA of duplicity, and suggest Eladio Del Valle and Herminio Diaz were possible JFK assassins. Both were CIA assets, affiliated with anti-Castro militias, and Del Valle with Alpha 66. Not sure about Diaz. 

Too much anti-JFK vitriol to shake a stick at in this "documentary" that somehow leaves out the facts that Joe Kennedy Jr. (JFK's older brother) gave his life in WWII as a US pilot over Germany, and JFK himself served in the South Pacific. This was back when elites actually felt the need to pull their weight in wars. 

The documentary does address the intense, consuming anger felt by anti-Castro Cuban exiles towards Kennedy, and features several members of that group eviscerating JFK for perceived fecklessness. That is putting it mildly. 

In conclusion, the The Hidden Side of the Kennedys is a curiosity, evidently intended for the French market, and so imbalanced as to suggest it was financed by someone with a agenda, much like some present-day Russian- or Tehran-backed mouthpieces. 

But in 2000, who in France wanted a hatchet job on the Kennedys? 

https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/joseph-p-kennedy-most-controversial-ambassador-to-great-britain/

 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

David, I quit watching after a couple of minutes for now.  JFK, the Kennedy's a living myth, they, atomic waste that will never die. 

[David Andrews]

12 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

David, I quit watching after a couple of minutes for now.  JFK, the Kennedy's a living myth, they, atomic waste that will never die. 

Well, Ron, I figured it's tendentious crap.  I just thought someone might get something hitherto unconsidered out of the interviews, including with the Soviet subjects.  How many times does one get to see Sam Helpern on tape?

 

Edited September 25 by David Andrews

[Benjamin Cole]

18 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Well, Ron, I figured it's tendentious crap.  I just thought someone might get something hitherto unconsidered out of the interviews, including with the Soviet subjects.  How many times does one get to see Sam Helpern on tape?

 

Thanks for posting DA.

Sometimes you have to hold your nose, or even wear a gas mask, to gain a complete picture. 

As stated, the segments featuring angry Cuban exiles, BoP vets...are revealing. Chilling. Worth watching. Not for the timid.

These guys proved they would kill to liberate Cuba, many a time....