Stanley Marks' JFK book Murder Most Foul!

This book features two volumes in one: Stanley J. Marks' Murder Most Foul! (1967) and Rob Couteau's biographical essay that surveys the life and work of this author of a forgotten classic. It also includes an in-depth examination of Murder Most Foul! that shows how and why it was so far ahead of its time and that places it in the context of other researchers, past and present. Couteau shares his detective work in unraveling the clues of Marks' Zelig-like biography, which touches on so many pivotal moments in 20th-century cultural and political history. This groundbreaking biography was also produced with the help of Marks' only child, Roberta Marks. JFK scholar Jim DiEugenio calls Couteau's work "important," "first-rate," and "a wonderful homage" to "one of the most important critics of the Warren Report ever ... and an unsung hero in the JFK case. Stanley Marks was rocket miles ahead of everyone. He really understood the big picture early. And not just on the JFK case." DiEugenio is the foremost scholar on the Kennedy assassination, author of Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case, and scriptwriter for Oliver Stone's documentary in the works, JFK: Destiny Betrayed (2020). With the release of Bob Dylan's ballad, "Murder Most Foul" this spring, which may have been influenced by Marks' book, interest in the author has been reawakened, largely as a result of Couteau's article on Marks. More than fifty years after the publication of Murder Most Foul! the text still resonates with a prescient vision. A fearless author who was blacklisted by HUAC, Stanley Marks was one of the first American researchers to draw a direct connection between the murders of JFK, RFK and MLK. In 1973, the JFK Library contacted Marks with a request to purchase Murder Most Foul! for their collection. In 1979, the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on Assassinations cited five of Marks' assassination-related titles (including Murder Most Foul!) in its report. Marks published nineteen books on politics and religion, one of which received accolades from Arnold Toynbee and Herbert Marcuse. His first book, a bestseller titled The Bear that Walks Like a Man: A Diplomatic and Military Analysis of Soviet Russia (1943), was reviewed in over thirty mainstream newspapers and received glowing praise from John Cudahy, President Roosevelt's former ambassador to Poland and Belgium. Source: www.amazon.com

Stanley Marks’ wry irony flourishes throughout MMF, and there are many instances of the author’s trademark style of humor mixed with outrage, born from insight. And his reference to the “national interest” has been largely replaced by a term that we’ve seen with ever-increasing frequency over the last few decades: “National Security” with its concomitant erosion of civil rights; violation of human rights; and censoring of information that belongs in the hands of citizens. Although the work of early researchers has been absorbed and superseded by that of subsequent authors, Marks still remains ahead of the curve when it comes to the larger picture that he paints at the conclusion of his book, which enters into a broader philosophical speculation regarding what will happen to the collective psyche of America as a result of the assassination in Dealey Plaza in 1963. He titles his second chapter: “The Fraudulent Autopsy, Or How to Lie in a Military Manner.” His humor is also displayed in chapter four Coup d’État!, which bears the heading: “The Non-existing Paper Bag, Or How to Manufacture Evidence” (referring to a false claim that Oswald had slipped a rifle into a paper bag, then snuck it into work on the day of the assassination). In chapter seven, Marks issues a warning that even researchers today would be wise to heed: “How many ‘Hearings,’ ‘Witnesses,’ and Affidavits were produced? The FBI inundated the Commission with 25,000 reports; in fact, the FBI gave the Commission so many reports of its ‘investigations’ that the FBI created a ‘fog’ over the work of the Commission. It now seems to have been deliberate for, in a period of 9 months, no group of 14 lawyers could have read, digested, and analyzed each report to see what each report would have on an overall picture of the conspiracy.” In chapter fourteen, Stanley takes CIA Director Dulles to task. He begins by quoting Dulles from an article that appeared in Look magazine in 1966: “If they found another assassin,” says Dulles, “let them name names and produce their evidence.” Marks replies: “This contemptuous statement directed at the American citizenry revealed the attitude of the Commission. The Commission did not praise the president; they gave him a funeral and used his shroud to conceal his murderers.” Taking a further dig at Dulles, Marks rhetorically asks: “Mr. Dulles, how can other assassins be named if material is NOT in the National Archives? Was there a conspiracy, Mr. Dulles? Of course there was!” 

Next, he introduces the subject of Kennedy’s foreign policy—according to Marks, the most probable reason he was killed: “With the relaxation of tensions between the U.S. and the USSR after President Kennedy’s confrontation with the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Batista Cuban exile organization, with many members on the CIA payroll, decided that Kennedy must go.” Three years later, in A Heritage of Stone, Jim Garrison would extrapolate on this theme of JFK’s attempt to end the Cold War and how it may have led to his undoing. Although Marks couldn’t have known the full extent of the connection between various assassination attempts on De Gaulle and the Kennedy assassination, his instinct—coupled with his in-depth knowledge of European history—was already leading him in this direction: “As History has shown a conspiracy spreads rumors. The various assassination attempts upon President De Gaulle were always preceded by rumors and the French Agencies took care to track them down. Yet, in spite of this, De Gaulle narrowly escaped death when the attempted killers received word one hour before the attempt.” In fact, a figure linked to the numerous attempts on De Gaulle’s life was lurking in Fort Worth and Dallas at the same time that JFK visited those two cities during his final day on earth. As Henry Hurt explains in Reasonable Doubt (1987), a man claiming to be Jean Souètre, a French army deserter and member of the Organisation Armée Secrète (a right-wing French paramilitary group) was apprehended by American officials in Dallas shortly after Kennedy’s murder and immediately expelled from the country. In the chapter “The Rape of the American Conscience,” Marks places the blame directly up on the Commissioners: “The members of the Commission did not achieve their status in the American social, economic, and political scale by being stupid; therefore one can only conclude that these seven had some understanding, whether spoken or implied, that this Nation of 195,000,000 souls would be torn asunder if the Commission reported to them that a Conspiracy had murdered President John F. Kennedy. Yet, these seven men place their honor upon a Report that would wilt in the noonday sun.” Thus, the Commissioners—who certainly weren’t “stupid”—must have assumed that the American people were. After quoting Harry S. Truman’s dictum, “The buck stops here,” Marks concludes: “That the Commission was negligent and slothful in its responsibility has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.” repeatedly emphasizes the fact that four principles enumerated in the Preamble to the Constitution—justice, domestic tranquility, promoting the general welfare, and securing liberty were blasphemously violated by the conspirators as well as the Commissioners. The author concludes: “People, in all nations, must stand for an ideal. The United States of America was not born on the idea that its President could be shot like a dog in the street and his murderers be ‘shielded from this day on’ because it would be ‘against the National Interests.’” This line clearly resembles one from Dylan’s own “Murder Most Foul” when he sings: “shot down like a dog in broad daylight.”

With the murder of an idealistic president comes the death of our own youthful idealism: “The Spirit has in this year of 1967 been replaced by cynicism of everything ‘American’ … The Youth … which a Nation must have to exist, had a feeling within them that the nation did not care for the future. There is no Spirit today. How can there be? A Congress that passes a law which drafts only the poor, white or black? This is the Spirit of America?” Note how Stanley capitalizes both Nation and Youth, as if to highlight their equivalence and remind us that these are potentially sacred forces, crucial to society’s future well-being. Later on, he will also capitalize another term normally rendered in lower-case: Citizen. The author includes several remarks that appear to be aimed directly at Ronald Reagan, a future president of the United States who was then governor of California (where Marks currently resided): “A Governor that destroys an educational system? A Governor who believes that only the youth who has parents with money should enter the Universities and Colleges of his state? A Governor that believes mental health can be cured with pills?” Such challenges remain with us now, not just in one state but across the entire nation: racial injustice; poverty; unequal educational opportunity; and mental illness problems that are addressed with government approved pill popping, which in various other publications Marks links directly to the stress caused by lack of economic opportunities and the widespread cynicism that engulfed America. At the same time, Timothy Leary encouraged young people to use streets drugs to “tune in, turn on, and drop out.” And he specifically instructed his acolytes to avoid politics: “The choice is between being rebellious and being religious. Don’t vote. Don’t be politic. Don’t petition.” For the Establishment, Woodstock was preferable to a half million protestors showing up at the National Mall. The result of all this was that by the late Sixties and early Seventies “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll” became a new opiate of the masses. Marks would later make a direct reference to such matters in his study on monotheism, Jews, Judaism and the United States, where he warns: “Both the U.S. and the USSR have been using ‘mind-controlling’ drugs since 1970! However, various states have also been using such drugs to control “unruly” children (see S. J. Marks’ Through Distorted Mirrors, 1976).” Thus, as early as the mid-1970s—decades before the widespread public indignation over the use of Ritalin to control schoolchildren—Marks was broaching the issue of the pharmaceutical industry’s abuse. We’ll never know to what extent the market for psychotropic medication came as a result of a youth culture that had been encouraged to destroy their own psychic equilibrium with street drugs… as a true “Lost” Generation. 

Very much in the spirit of Publilius Syrus (“The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted”), Marks concludes the penultimate chapter of MMF by addressing Allen Dulles; and, with a lovely touch, issues his own verdict against both Dulles and the Commission: “No, Mr. Dulles, it was not the responsibility of the American Citizen to find and name the assassins; that was your task. Your lack of responsibility to the task is the cause for your failure. You had at your disposal the entire operating machinery of the Government of the United States. We citizens have only what you and your fellow commissioners wrote. We read, we looked, we analyzed, we thought; and we, nearly 70% of us, now deliver a verdict on your work: The Warren Commission was a failure.” The Postscript of MMF is graced by the title: “Jim Garrison, ‘St. George’ Versus the ‘Dragon’!” Unlike other researchers who were snookered by the mainstream media’s drumbeat assault upon Garrison (we now know was orchestrated by the CIA), Marks realized that Garrison, as St. George, was up against a State-sponsored dragon. The author states: “By the time this book appears in print, the Kennedy Conspiracy may claim another victim; none other than Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans, whose ‘lance of truth’ has pierced vital organs of the Conspiracy That Murdered President Kennedy.” On the final page of MMF, Marks makes a prediction that, sadly, comes to pass: “As the day for the Clay Shaw trial approaches, the greater the use of the media for the perpetration of the lie increases. If the forces behind the Conspiracy cannot destroy Mr. Garrison’s case, they may decide to destroy the man, either physically or by reputation.” Indeed, this proved to be the case: the powers-that-be went after Garrison’s reputation and attempted to sully it. 

As Gaeton Fonzi discusses in The Last Investigation, the Agency had long since perfected its craft of sullying and destroying the reputation of world leaders who refused to tow the line. Character assassination would also prove to be a second, posthumous conspiracy launched against JFK. Regarding the media’s obsequious role in all this, Marks adds: “Various members of the mass communication media bribed witnesses, hid witnesses, issued fraudulent interviews… and produced nation-wide television programs which upheld the findings of the Warren Commission. How incredible! Why? The answer to ‘why’ can be found in the fact that many of the active and inactive participants of the Conspiracy will be found in the ranks of the government and the economic strata of our Nation.” Marks now introduces the crucial subject of the ruling economic elite, which exists one level above the CIA. This concept was rarely broached by assassination researchers until Fletcher Prouty published The Secret Team (1972). Marks includes a chapter titled “The Establishment” in which he sums it up nicely: “It can be said that not more than 8,000 persons comprise the Establishment. They control every major decision, foreign and domestic, made in the nation. It is not a ‘conspiracy’ but a ‘meeting of the minds.’ They sincerely believe that ‘what is good for them is good for the country. At the foreign policy level, the ‘Establishment’ works through the following four agencies: (1) the Council of Foreign Affairs; (2) the Committee for Economic Development; (3) The National Security Council; and (4) the CIA.” Much of the rest of this chapter is comprised of lists of other organizations, foundations, and corporations funded by Establishment forces and tasked with “the movement of policy directed by the Establishment.” All this has a direct bearing on Dulles, who worked as a partner on the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell (along with his brother, John Foster Dulles), a firm that represented leading multinational corporations and interests such as those of the oligarchic Rockefellers. As a principal law partner there, Dulles was positioned at the apex of a visible pyramid of power. But above this first structure one can also imagine a second, inverted pyramid: one far less visible and inhabited by those éminence grises. The Dulles brothers served as interlocutors between these two structures, via institutions such as Sullivan and Cromwell. During a discussion on the dangers of the Agency, almost as an aside, he accurately predicts what will happen next in Chile; and he does so by tying the fate of that nation to Vietnam: “After the extermination of the Indo-Chinese nations as nations, the CIA will then proceed to ‘exterminate’ another nation–Chile. The Establishment’s propaganda is already being published with the same old trite and dreary slogans: ‘The Chileans pose a threat to our security.’ A nation that is more than 5,000 miles away from the territorial mainland of the United States, with no navy, army, or air force that cannot even drop leaflets on our mainland! Thus, with the CIA ‘protecting’ the people from ‘invasions’ and the FBI maintaining its ever-vigilant status over the ‘dissenters,’ the people calmly lockstep their way into a prison of their own making.” What follows is an affirmation of this dire reality as well as an insightful remark regarding the principal motivation behind President Kennedy’s desire to lead our nation: “I don’t think there’s any question about the fact that the same forces removed everyone. Every one of these men were humanists. They were concerned about the human race. And above all, they were opposed to the evolution of America into an imperialist empire-seeking warfare state. Which it has become, I’m afraid. They’re eliminating them, one by one. Always a ‘lone’ assassin.”

On the penultimate page of MMF, Marks asks: “To whom does the mass communication system owe its loyalty? To the people who have fought, are fighting, and will continue to fight for the ideas of the ‘freedom of the press’; or to its advertisers?” In conclusion, Marks invokes a fellow lawyer and philosopher who served as the third American president and whose words Marks uses to plead his case. “Thomas Jefferson once said that the most important factor in a democracy is a free press; he did not say a ‘privileged’ press. The hideous activity of NBC, CBS, ABC, and other organs of the mass communication media can lead to a conclusion that certain members of that media know that President Kennedy was murdered by Conspirators and the Conspiracy must never be allowed to face the light of day.” Stanley ends on a note that continues to resonate, because what he calls the “light of day” has yet to emerge—for reasons we know all too well. We are still facing the same challenge. According to the census, Marks was born in Waukegan, Illinois in 1914, just three years before the birth of JFK. When he was four years old, his parents died from the 1918 influenza pandemic that infected a third of the world’s population. According to his daughter Roberta, after their death, Stanley was placed in the care of his foster parents, Sarah and Samuel Markowitz, from whom he took his surname, later changing it to “Marks.” One of the few things Roberta knows about her father’s upbringing is that Stanley often said “he never had enough food. When you see pictures of him as a youth, he was bone-thin.” One is tempted to surmise that his privations and experience on Chicago’s hardscrabble streets may have helped to mold him into a lifelong FDR New Dealer. Shortly after his twenty-second birthday, Stanley married Ethel Milgrom, a nineteen-year-old Chicago native. Ethel would served as his editor, helping to polish Stanley’s sometimes awkward, strident prose. After attending the University of Illinois in 1937, he graduated from the affiliated John Marshall Law School, which is still Chicago’s only public law school. Marks graduated during a precarious moment in history; and perhaps this explains why a law school graduate was working as a salesman. In 1969, the war machine was grossing “eighty-billion dollars a year in America.” The “resource wars” conducted in subsequent decades in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq continued in the same vein and the reasons for Kennedy’s removal can be seen just as clearly when we analyze the foreign policy agenda of most of the presidents who have followed in his wake. 

And instead of benefitting from rapacious profit, Kennedy’s foreign policy views were driven not only by idealism but by humanism. One of the Marks’ volumes on religion, Through Distorted Mirrors, received high praise from both Arnold Toynbee and Herbert Marcuse. In Toynbee’s blurb, which is printed on the back cover, he calls the work a “remarkable tour de force.” This is followed by that of Marcuse: “This book is not a history book, nor a religious book. Rather, it is one that deals with Man’s Humanity toward Man and, at the same time, dealing with Man’s inhumanity toward Man. A book that will stimulate and aggravate the reader.” A belief in what man is capable of; of what narrow-mindedness he might fall victim to; and of how change must come through visions that inspire as well as through rhetoric that provokes are all things that were also shared by the Kennedy brothers. Stanley’s story is a story of our times. An orphaned first-generation American who graduated from law school during the Great Depression, he furthered his education by accumulating a 5,000 book library, conducted research with the approval of a Secretary of State, taught at a remarkably avant-garde school, served under General MacArthur, and was rewarded for such efforts by being blacklisted by HUAC. He later settled in LA and, undaunted, proceeded to publish at least twenty-two other books. On March 28, 1979, Murder Most Foul! was included in the Library of Congress. On the same day, the House of Representatives’ Select Subcommittee on Assassinations issued a report that cites five assassination-related titles authored by Marks. Former Newsweek correspondent Joachim Joesten  remarked: “To my knowledge, nobody but Jim Garrison (and an obscure West Coast writer named Stanley J. Marks) has ever endorsed before my unswerving contention that the murder of John F. Kennedy was nothing short of a camouflaged coup d’état.” “MMF” is by far the most polemical of Dylan's songs, with “Masters of War” coming in a close second. Although his lyrics are usually clear in terms of narrative, they do possess an artful manner of defying a singular interpretation. Yet, atypically, the polemical “MMF” features some rather direct statements. More early JFK investigative books: The Grassy Knoll (1965) by Harold Feldman, Lee Harvey Oswald and the American Dream (1967) by Paul Sites, How Kennedy Was Killed; The Full Appalling Story (1968) by Joachim Joesten, Investigation of a Homicide: The Murder of John F. Kennedy (1969) by Judith Whitson Bonner, Plodding Toward Terror: A Personal Look At The Jack Ruby Case (1974) by Ralph M. Pabst, History's Verdict; The Acquittal Of Lee Harvey Oswald (1975) by Ross F. Ralston,  Aiming For The Jugular In New Orleans (1976) by William H. Davis, etc. Source: kennedysandking.com

60th Anniversary of JFK's victory

60 years ago, John Kennedy was elected President of the United States, winning back the White House for the Democrats after eight years of Republican rule. The final result showed JFK won the White House with 34,227,096 votes, to Nixon’s 34,107,646, with 303 electoral votes to 219. It was an even narrower victory than election analysts had first thought. The result made him the first Roman Catholic president in US history and the youngest elected president as well. Nixon was gracious in defeat? As Donald Trump cries fraud, a different tone took hold 60 years ago. Following initial doubt over the result, Nixon addressed the crowd gathered at republican headquarters in Los Angeles in the early hours. He told them: “I want senator Kennedy to know - I want you all to know - that if this trend does continue and he does become president, he will have my whole-hearted support”. In his acceptance speech in the 1960 United States presidential election to the Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, JFK stated: "We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus." In the words of Robert D. Marcus: "Kennedy entered office with ambitions to eradicate poverty and to raise America's eyes to the stars through the space program."

At the news conference at Parkland Hospital, Dr. Malcolm Perry stated three times that JFK’s throat wound was an entry. Unfortunately, Perry later refused to repeat this for the WC. But recent JFK releases include a statement from Perry’s surgical colleague at the University of Washington. Perry had admitted to Dr. Donald Miller, Jr., that he had told the truth on November 22, 1963 (it was an entry wound), but then later (under pressure) he had lied to the WC.  Just one month before, Dr. Austin Griner had told Dr. Michael Chesser that federal agents had threatened Perry (born in Allen, Texas) with deportation if he did not reverse his initial report of an entrance wound. Dr. Carrico said: "There was a round bruise circle around the throat wound... as it always is." In forensic analysis, an exit wound may or may not have a bruise circle around it, but an entrance wound always has the bruise circle around. Such a tiny throat exit wound could not be duplicated in experiments by the WC; Milton Helpern, who had done 60,000 autopsies, had never seen an exit wound that small. Before political leverage was exerted, the first scenario by the CIA’s National Photographic and Interpretation Center (NPIC) included a throat shot at Z-190; During a WC Executive Session (December 18, 1963), Hale Boggs, and Gerald Ford discussed a possible frontal shot from the overpass. The alteration of the Zapruder film: The initial clue to its alteration was the limousine stop. The Zapruder film does not show such a stop, but the ten closest witnesses all recalled such a stop. Altogether, over 50 witnesses recalled a stop. Even early articles often take this stop for granted. The pre-eminent authority on the Z-film is John Costella, a PhD physicist with special expertise in the properties of light. He is also highly skilled at detecting optical distortions produced via imaging transformations, a skill that is directly pertinent to the Zapruder film. As a simple demonstration, Costella notes the impossible features of Z-232 (i.e., frame 232 of the Zapruder film), which was originally published in LIFE’s 1963 Memorial Edition. In Z-232, this blurring is grossly inconsistent, which could only occur if this frame had been altered. In 1975, Rockefeller Commission documents (notes made by the CIA's technical staff at NPIC) showed that NPIC had possessed the film the weekend of the assassination. It was unclear for decades whether the CIA at NPIC had copied the film as a motion picture (and possibly altered it), or had simply made prints. 

.  

In 2009, researcher/author Peter Janney located the NPIC official and briefing-board czar, Dino Brugioni, and then Janney and Douglas Horne together queried Brugioni about his own involvement with the Z-film during that weekend. It turned out that the two NPIC officials interviewed by Horne in 1997 were part of a second Z-film event at NPIC that same weekend (on Sunday night, November 24), but that Brugioni had been in charge of the first Z-film event (the prior evening, on Saturday night, November 23). The ARRB had not known that there had been two events. Brugioni and his team examined the original, unaltered film at the first event (and made blowup prints from individual frames); the second "briefing board" event, the next night, involved a different team of workers at NPIC, who made blowup prints of an altered Z-film. Horne's interviews in 1997 for the ARRB revealed that the Z-film delivered to NPIC for the second event had been created (i.e., altered) at Kodak's primary research and development facility, "Hawkeyeworks," in Rochester, N.Y., during a 12-hour period during Sunday, November 24, 1963. Because the CIA had a longstanding contractual relationship with Kodak at Hawkeyeworks, it is likely that Kodak performed these Z-film alterations at the behest of the CIA. The existence of two separate events, just one day apart, with neither group aware of the other one, very strongly implies an intelligence operation. Brugioni initially (to his utter amazement) had not known about this second event, as he had attended only the first event. Furthermore, he believes that the extant Z-film is not the film he saw. Early viewers of the original film had seen evidence for multiple shots—clearly more than admitted by the WC—so these subsequent alterations were essential for the official WC conclusion. In short, if the Z-film had not been altered, it would have been obvious that the WC’s scenario (of only three shots) was a myth. But there is even more. The Black Patch over the back of JFK’s head is grossly (even preposterously) apparent in a copy of the Z-film obtained directly from the Archives by Sydney Wilkinson. This is a US government authorized and certified, third generation, 35 mm, dupe negative of the “forensic version” of the Zapruder film. Moreover, many independent observers—Greg Burnham, Milicent Cranor, Scott Myers, Dan Rather, Cartha DeLoach, William Reymond, William Manchester, Homer McMahon, Dino Brugioni, Erwin Schwartz, Rich Delarosa, and others—have seen a different version of the Zapruder film. Each one of these, without conferring with anyone else, recalls a version that is clearly different from the extant one. Furthermore, their observations (of details missing from the extant film) are consistent with one another. As a further clue to the history of this puzzle, David Lifton will suggest (in his forthcoming book Final Charade) that Robert S. McNamara probably approved the Z-film alteration. 

LBJ decided to secretly tape all his telephone conversations. He told close aides that he did this for two main reasons. It would help him write his memoirs; and he could use this information to apply pressure (blackmail) on politicians and businessmen. Johnson informed his longtime personal assistant Mildred Stegall that if he died unexpectedly, she must destroy the tapes and their transcripts. However, when died of a heart attack at San Antonio, Texas, on 22nd January, 1973, Stegall did not carry out his instructions. Instead, she placed them in sealed boxes and sent them to the LBJ Presidential Library with the instructions that they must not be opened until at least January 2023. Johnson appointed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren to head the commission. Other members of the commission included Allen W. Dulles (the former head of the CIA who had been sacked by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs disaster), John J. McCloy (chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank and the Ford Foundation, who at the end of the war helped recruit senior figures in the Gestapo into the security services of West Germany and the United States that made him blackmailable). This rest of the Commission were politicians that President Johnson could manipulate - Gerald Ford, Richard B. Russell, John S. Cooper and Thomas H. Boggs. Johnson was especially close to Russell who gave him daily updates on what was being said at the Warren Commission meetings. The phone call tape to appoint Earl Warren as head of the commission has either been destroyed or has never been declassified. However, we do have several telephone conversations with Richard Russell, the Senator from Georgia and the leader in Congress resisting Civil Rights legislation. At first Russell refused to serve on the commission. Johnson said: "You've never turned your country down. This is not me. This is your country... You're my man on that commission and you're going to do it! And don't tell me what you can do and what you can't because I can't arrest you and I'm not going to put the FBI on you. But you're goddamned sure going to serve - I'll tell you that!" This is how Johnson worked. He said "I'm not going to put the FBI on you". This is a reminder that he has information about Russell that the FBI is interested in. (Johnson used a man called Bobby Baker to pay bribes to Russell.) Johnson was confident he would be the Democratic Party nomination to be their candidate in 1960. He was the Senate majority leader, the second most powerful man in American politics. As majority leader you decide on who becomes chairman of the various Senate committees. Senators or their financial backers were willing to pay large sums of money to become chairman of committees that can award highly profitable government contracts to private companies. 

John Kennedy was the first person to declare himself as a candidate. Johnson thought that Kennedy had little chance of being successful as he was a Roman Catholic and came from the north of the country. Catholics were a persecuted minority in the Deep South. The Ku Klux Klan lynched not only blacks, socialists and trade unionists, but Catholics (they disliked them because they allowed blacks to attend their services). The Democrat Party had only selected one Catholic as a prospective president (Al Smith in 1928) who lost heavily to Herbert Hoover. People in the Deep South voted for a Republican from the North rather than a Roman Catholic. Johnson was confident that Kennedy's campaign would falter, and he would arrive late in the contest to take the nomination. Johnson calculated that Kennedy would be badly beaten by Hubert Humphrey in the May primary in the solidly Protestant West Virginia. In the final days of the campaign, using both planes and cars, Joseph P. Kennedy "moved in hundreds of thousands of dollars (possibly over $1 million) into the state." Kennedy defeated Humphrey by a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent, "a state the national press had said a Catholic could never win." By 1963 John F. Kennedy realised that Lyndon B. Johnson had become a problem as vice-president as he had been drawn into political scandals involving Fred Korth, Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker. According to James Wagenvoord, the editorial business manager of Life, the magazine was working on an article that would have revealed Johnson's corrupt activities. "Beginning in later summer 1963 the magazine, based upon information fed from Bobby Kennedy and the Justice Department, had been developing a major newsbreak piece concerning Johnson and Bobby Baker. On publication Johnson would have been finished and off the 1964 ticket (reason the material was fed to us) and would probably have been facing prison time. At the time LIFE magazine was arguably the most important general news source in the US. The top management of Time Inc. was closely allied with the USA's various intelligence agencies and we were used after by the Kennedy Justice Department as a conduit to the public." The fact that it was Robert Kennedy who was giving this information to Life Magazine suggests that Kennedy intended to drop Johnson as his vice-president. This is supported by Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's secretary. In her book, Kennedy and Johnson (1968) she claimed that in November, 1963, Kennedy decided that because of the emerging Bobby Baker scandal he was going to drop Johnson as his running mate in the 1964 election. Kennedy told Lincoln that he was going to replace Johnson with Terry Sanford, the Governor of North Carolina. On 22nd November, 1963, a businessman, Don B. Reynolds, appeared before a secret session of the Senate Rules Committee. Reynolds also told of seeing a suitcase full of money which Bobby Baker described as a "$100,000 payoff to Johnson for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract". Reynolds also provided evidence against Matthew H. McCloskey. 

He suggested that he'd given $25,000 to Baker in order to get the contract to build the District of Columbia Stadium. Members of the committee thought that when this information was published Lyndon B. Johnson would be forced to resign. Reynolds' testimony came to an end when news arrived that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. In September, 1975, a subcommittee under Richard Schweiker was asked to investigate the performance of the intelligence agencies concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In its final report, issued in April 1976, the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities concluded: "Domestic intelligence activity has threatened and undermined the Constitutional rights of Americans to free speech, association and privacy. It has done so primarily because the Constitutional system for checking abuse of power has not been applied." The committee also revealed details for the first time of what the CIA called Operation Mockingbird (a secret programme to control the media). In 1976, a Detroit News poll indicated that 87% of the American population did not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who killed Kennedy. Later that year, Senator Thomas N. Downing called for a new investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Downing said he was certain that Kennedy had been killed as a result of a conspiracy. He also believed that the CIA and the FBI had withheld important information from the Warren Commission. The House Select Committee of Assassinations set up a panel of forensic pathologists to examine the autopsy materials and other medical evidence. During the investigation the committee discovered that the Dallas Police had a recording of the assassination. A microphone, mounted on one of the motorcycles escorting the motorcade, had picked up sounds in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. Acoustic experts analysed the recording and were able to distinguish four rifle shots. They concluded that there was a 95 per cent probability that the third bullet was fired from the Grassy Knoll. As a result of this acoustic evidence G. Robert Blakey was able to state that there were "four shots, over a total period of 7.91 seconds were fired at the Presidential limousine. The first, second and fourth came from the Depository; the third from the Grassy Knoll." The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that "scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy." It added that "on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy". The HSCA was "unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy." G. Robert Blakey and Richard Billings wrote an account of the HSCA investigation entitled The Plot to Kill the President (1981). In the book Blakey and Billings argue that there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. In 1993 Gaeton Fonzi, the HSCA leading investigator, published The Last Investigation, a book detailing his research into the assassination. It is considered by many critics as among the best books on the Kennedy assassination and is currently recognized as an authority on those aspects of the assassination involving anti-Castro Cubans and the intelligence agencies. Fonzi became very interested in the forces that enabled the the cover-up to take place: "Could any but a totally controlling force - a power elite within the United States Government itself - call it what you will, the military-intelligence complex, the national security state, the corporate-warfare establishment - could any but the most powerful elite controlling the U.S. Government have been able to manipulate individuals and events before the assassination and then bring such a broad spectrum of internal forces to first cover up the crime and then control the institutions within our society to keep the assassination of President Kennedy a false mystery for 50 years?" Source: spartacus-educational.com 

The Trial of the Chicago 7, JFK Symposium

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) directed by Aaron Sorkin - Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden

-Abbie Hoffman: Let me ask you something…You think Chicago would’ve gone differently if Kennedy got the nomination?

-Tom Hayden: Do I… [chuckles] Yeah. Yes, I do. I think the Irish guys would have sat down with Daley.

-Abbie Hoffman: I think so too. That’s why I was wondering, weren’t you just a little bit happy when the bullet ripped through his head? No Chicago, no Tom Hayden.

-Tom Hayden: I was one of the pallbearers, you fucking animal!

An International Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy was held on October 17-19, 2013 at Duquesne University, The Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law. Jim DiEugenio was one of the participants.

Jim DiEugenio: When I gave the first talk in 2013 at the Wecht Conference, I got a long standing ovation. As I noted, in the Algeria speech, John Kennedy warned about the possible explosion of Muslim fundamentalism in that area. Therefore he worked with men who he thought were more secular and progressive. And against monarchs like King Saud and the Shah. Well, who was responsible for the eventual explosion of Muslim fundamentalism there that Kennedy so feared? John McCloy! It was McCloy, being paid by David Rockefeller, who lobbied Jimmy Carter's advisors to convince the president to do something he did not want to do: let the Shah into America for medical treatment. But before Carter caved, he asked the meeting, "Alright, but I wonder what you guys are going to advise me to do when they invade our embassy and take our employees hostage?" You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried! That's how bad McCloy was. He also helped bring us Reagan. In 1963, David Rockefeller wanted to meet with JFK about overthrowing the government of Brazil. Kennedy refused to meet Rockefeller. After his death, LBJ took the meeting. The next year, the CIA arranged a coup in Brazil. Who was their point man? John McCloy. While he was sitting on the Warren Commission! Does that not define a conflict of interest? Many of us feel that John McCloy and Allen Dulles were the real centers of power on the Warren Commission. I have already indicated what McCloy did with Rockefeller and the CIA and Brazil in April of 1964. Well, guess what? Allen Dulles did something just as compromising in that same month. He decided to visit Harry Truman in Missouri. Why? He did not like that anti CIA column that Truman published in December 1963. Where Truman recommended the CIA's operational arm be severed and it revert to intelligence gathering only. In fact, Dulles actually wanted Truman to retract the essay. Truman would not. So Dulles wrote a memo to CIA trying to get others who had influence with the former president to convince him to do so. It turns out that although Truman's anti CIA column was published a month after the JFK assassination, through his papers, we learn that the rough draft was completed on December 11th. But it was started on December 1st! Considering the fact that Truman had to have thought about it before committing anything to paper, this brings the provenance of the essay to about one week after JFK was killed. As I said, the meeting ended unsuccessfully for Dulles, since Truman was not going to retreat. Dulles now walked to the door and praised the new CIA director John McCone. But he had not mentioned Kennedy yet. He now did, in a truly startling way. He now mentioned the "false attacks" on CIA in relation to Vietnam and how Kennedy had repudiated these attacks! What could Dulles be talking about here? And why bring this up with Truman? He has to be speaking about the columns published in October of 1963 by Arthur Krock and Richard Starnes. They both spoke about the rising power of the CIA, especially in relation to Vietnam policy. Krock's source called the CIA influence in Vietnam a "malignancy". One which the White House could not control. 

Both articles spoke about an inevitable Seven Days in May scenario, except the coup of the American president would originate with the CIA, not the Pentagon. Now, contravening Dulles, I know of no source that says Kennedy disowned those columns. But I do know of some who say that, not only did he not object, he was an off the record source. After all, Krock was a close friend of his father Joe Kennedy. Therefore, Dulles was trying to dupe Truman by deceiving him. But if these are the columns he was referring to, then his actions are even more revealing. Especially because it was he who brought up Kennedy's name personally in regards to them. Dulles' comments and actions--his personal visit, the bid for retraction, the bringing up of Kennedy's name while investigating his murder--all of these imply that Dulles thought Truman wrote the column due to the former president's suspicions about the CIA, Kennedy's murder and the Vietnam War, which LBJ was now in the process of escalating. What makes this even more interesting is this. If one looks at the first wave of essays and books on the JFK case, which will begin in 1965, no one connected those dots: Vietnam, the Krock/Starnes columns, Kennedy's murder, at that time. Dulles was doing it at least ten years before anyone else did. By trying to get Truman to retract, was Dulles making sure no one else would connect the dots that early? If so, as prosecutors like Vincent Bugliosi say, this displays "consciousness of guilt". "After two weeks of debate, Kennedy was the only guy in the White House refusing to commit combat troops." (John Newman, JFK and Vietnam, p. 138) Kennedy's foreign policy reforms were all overturned by LBJ and the CIA. And then hammered into the ground by Nixon and Kissinger. 

Which is why the late Jonathan Kwitny wrote his excellent book Endless Enemies. In the book Virtual JFK, it is revealed that LBJ understood he was breaking with Kennedy on Vietnam. And he then tried to cover up that fact! The record of the McNamara meeting in Hawaii, May '63 was finally declassified by the ARRB in 1997. It was a bombshell. So much so that it convinced the NY Times (Tim Weiner, December 23, 1997) that Kennedy was planning to get out of Vietnam. The thesis of John Newman's book is that Kennedy did understand what was happening in Vietnam. I mean surely after the battle of Ap Bac, because his State Department representatives were in country at the time. As John Newman states, Kennedy was essentially going to hoist the hawks on their own petard. That is, since they said we were winning, then we could withdraw. Even though Kennedy knew that was not the case. Which is why he was telling McNamara to speed up the timetable. "In the final analysis, it's their war," JFK said to Walter Cronkite on 2nd September 1963. This policy brought him in conflict with the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence Complex. As Arthur Schlesinger pointed out in an interview he gave in 1978, in 1962-63, the CIA and others were attempting to subvert the foreign policy of the Kennedy administration. Kennedy suspected that the CIA was behind the assassination on 1st April, 1963, of Quinim Pholsena, the left-wing Foreign Minister in Laos. This was a heavy blow to Kennedy’s foreign policy: an attempt to create neutral, democratic countries as a buffer to communism. JFK and the Unspeakable by Jim Douglass, Virtual JFK by James Blight, American Tragedy by David Kaiser, Death of a Generation by Howard Jones and Lessons in Disaster by Gordon Goldstein - These all books agree with John Newman's main thesis. Namely that Kennedy was planning on leaving Vietnam, his assassination altered the intent, and Johnson then reversed what JFK was going to do. In fact, Virtual JFK offers documentary evidence that Johnson knew he was reversing Kennedy's withdrawal plan and he'd enlisted McNamara in his deception. LBJ did not have any of the sophistication or insight into foreign affairs, demonstrated with my opening powerpoint, that Kennedy had. 

As Fredrick Logevall shows in his book Choosing War, LBJ was much more the classic Cold Warrior who would have been at home with Foster Dulles' banal bromides about the red specter of communism threatening to spread from Indochina to the Philippines to Hawaii to California if Saigon fell. Therefore LBJ was much more in tune with what the CIA and the military wanted in Vietnam, that is direct American intervention. When Kennedy learned of the deaths of Diem and his brother, he "leaped to his feet and rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face...." (Douglass, p. 211) He then did two things: he recalled Henry Cabot Lodge from Saigon for the purpose of firing him. And he told NSC assistant Michael Forrestal that there was going to be a complete review of Vietnam policy. Neither of these ever happened. Why? Because Kennedy was murdered that same month. LBJ told his assistant Bill Moyers he was going to give the generals what they wanted and Vietnam was not going to slip away like China did. In a declassified phone call of February 20, 1964, Johnson told McNamara, "I always thought it was foolish for you to make any statements about withdrawing [off Vietnam]. I thought it was bad psychologically. But you and the president thought otherwise." In other words, Johnson was aware of what Kennedy and McNamara were planning a withdrawal. Kennedy really did not like Saudi Arabia or the Shah. None of the foreign policy for the next 50 years (including current) would have happened on JFK's watch... it simply wasn't his style. It's interesting to trace the rise of the nutty neo-cons. It actually started under former Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford. Ford continued with Kissinger as Secretary of State. But he then promoted Rumsfeld and Cheney. Those two felt that Kissinger/Nixon detente with Russia was too liberal. Too much like Kennedy. In 1968, General James M. Gavin stated: There has been much speculation about what President Kennedy would have done in Vietnam had he lived. Having discussed military affairs with him often and in detail for 15 years, I know he was totally opposed to the introduction of combat troops in southeast Asia. His public statements just before his murder support this view. Paul B. Fay, undersecretary of the Navy under JFK, stated: If John Kennedy had lived, our military involvement in Vietnam would have been over by the end of 1964. To aide Larry Newman, Kennedy said: “The first thing I do when I’m re-elected, I’m going to get the Americans out of Vietnam. Exactly how I’m going to do it, right now, I don’t know.” And then we have John McCain who accidentally called the JFK assassination an 'intervention' in the 2008 debates. McCains' father was very high up in the Navy. In fact, he was an Admiral who was off the coast of Vietnam. He was very much involved with the actual bombing and blockading of Indochina. Look him up in William Shawcross' Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (2002) Source:educationforum.ipbhost.com

The Devil is in the Details (Malcolm Blunt & Alan Dale's conversations on JFK)

This volume is a collection of ten transcribed conversations, recorded 2014 - 2019, between Assassination Archives and Research Center's executive director Alan Dale, and the esteemed British intelligence analyst, Malcolm Blunt. These unscripted conversations elevate the discussion of key assassination investigation areas well beyond the well-worn paths familiar to those who choose to study President Kennedy's life, his career in public service, the Cold War context of his presidency, the true circumstances and meaning of his death, and the alleged facts associated with the U.S. government's investigations into his assassination. Malcolm Blunt is regarded within the assassination research community as an invaluable resource on the CIA's internal systems and management authorities as they existed during the 1950s and '60s; he has invested more time and greater focus than perhaps any other individual on the JFK records held at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, MD.

"Malcolm Blunt is the researcher’s researcher. He turned me on to the ARRB’s hunt for missing Church Committee records, the suppressed story of Oswald and Customs in New Orleans, and more. Like that of Peter Dale Scott and John Newman, Malcolm’s work digging in the mines of CIA routing sheets and information flow gives us valuable insight into Oswald’s connections to U.S. intelligence and how he came to take the fall for Kennedy’s murder in Dallas. Malcolm and Alan Dale in these interviews shine a flashlight in the fog-laden graveyard where the bodies are buried." –Rex Bradford, President of Mary Ferrell Foundation 

"Malcolm Blunt's brilliant work in the deep caves of the National Archives has opened up new perspectives on the Kennedy case for other researchers. Alan Dale's deft questioning of him in this book will help others to emulate his achievements." -Peter Dale Scott, author of Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Dallas '63: The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House, and The American Deep State

"The devil is in the details -- also the light of truth. For nearly three decades, Malcolm Blunt has been digging through stacks of U.S. government documents and illuminating their meaning. It took an English citizen, working in his spare time and sidetracking his holidays, to burrow deeply into the hidden and hiding-in-plain-sight facts of the John F. Kennedy assassination -- the most earth-shaking American crime of the 20th Century. Countless Kennedy scholars, authors and independent researchers have come to depend on Blunt for eye-popping discoveries that previously eluded them. I count myself among this crowd." -David Talbot, author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America's Secret Government and Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years

“It is the mission of the Assassination Archives and Research Center to obtain, preserve and disseminate information on political assassinations. The founding fathers of this country understood that in order to be their own governors a people must “arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.” British researcher Malcolm Blunt’s knowledge of the internal operations of Cold War intelligence agencies is peerless. This collection of conversations with Alan Dale is a fascinating and groundbreaking penetration of the secrecy which warps the roles of all major players on the global stage." -James H. Lesar, president of Assassination Archives and Research Center

"America does not know that over 2 million pages of documents were declassified 22 years ago on the JFK assassination. Those pages redefined the scope and the nature of President Kennedy's murder. Malcolm Blunt is one of the few who has read and collected many of those documents. Not many people know who he is, but for those who do know, he is a hidden hero in the Kennedy case." -James DiEugenio, author of Destiny Betrayed

"Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall listening-in on a conversation between two incredibly intelligent, informed and knowledgeable people as they discuss the CIA, the national security state during the Cold War, how the National Archives, maintains and hides records and documents, how the government hides and keeps its secrets, and the Kennedy assassination? Here’s your chance. Don't miss it." -Dan Hardway, Attorney; Former staff investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations 

"Malcolm Blunt’s encyclopedic knowledge of the inner workings of the CIA during the era of the Cold War is unrivaled. He is the Rosetta Stone for coded intelligence agency cables. Alan Dale’s discussions with Blunt offer an astonishing range of depth and details essential to anyone with an interest in understanding President Kennedy's murder and the hidden machinations of U.S. spy bureaucracies." -Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., author of American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family

"Malcolm Blunt, an English psychiatric support manager turned forensic analyst, taught me a crucial art: how to understand the flow of information inside the CIA. I thought I understood something of the subject, but Blunt took me to a new level of insight. Alan Dale's fascinating interviews evoke Blunt's ingenious methodology and his wry humor. For anyone who wants to gain a granular understanding of the CIA's paper flow in the 1950s and 1960s, Dale's aptly-named volume, The Devil is in the Details, is essential." -Jefferson Morley, author of Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the Kennedy Years; and The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Angleton

"The most penetrating, influential interviews present not as interrogations, but as dialogues between a deeply informed questioner and a topically masterful subject. Success may be measured in direct proportion to the trust and respect that develop to bridge the gap, so to speak – qualities delivered in abundance by Alan Dale and Malcolm Blunt throughout these historic exchanges. The light they shed on the JFK assassination and associated operations is unlike any illumination you have yet to experience." -Charles R. Drago, co-founder of the original JFK Truth and Amnesty Commission (1997), author of the Introduction to George Michael Evica’s “A Certain Arrogance” (2011) and Afterword to H.P. Albarelli, Jr.’s “Coup in Dallas” (2020) 

"The name “Malcolm Blunt” is synonymous with phrases such as “trusted source” and “detailed insight” in relation to JFK records. That became apparent to me long before I knew anything else about him. It is not mere hyperbole. His abilities in these areas were always going to bring him into the sunlight as the most well-known private source of documents and interpretations of same, outside of the Mary Ferrell Foundation. No mean feat for a lone and modest individual without even a website to call home! With much gratitude, I recommend these interviews to all who care." -Greg R. Parker, author of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War

"When one studies the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, one quickly realizes that there were really two assassinations. One was the assassination of the man. And the other was the assassination of the truth. With The Devil is in the Details, Alan Dale presents a series of conversations with perhaps the utmost expert on this second assassination, Malcolm Blunt. Rich in detail, these conversations with Blunt unveil an aspect to the Kennedy assassination unseen but to a select few. But they're not without their humor. In reading these interviews, in fact, one can't help feeling like a fly on the wall eavesdropping on the most interesting conversation at a D.C. hotel." -Pat Speer, author and producer of JFK: The Mysterious Death of Number 35 

"Malcolm Blunt has tried to familiarize himself with every JFK document in the archives in College Park. One of the best things that happened to me as a JFK researcher was befriending Malcolm Blunt. Malcolm and I were there from the earliest days of the newly formed Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) which had the power to acquire and declassify JFK assassination records. No one had spent more time following the ARRB than I and no one has spent more time in Archives II acquiring and reading the documents than Malcolm. Almost everything I would want to do as a JFK researcher Malcolm has already done." -David Kaiser, author of The Road to Dallas

One of the people Vincent Salandria had accused - Jacob Cohen - pops up periodically in John Kelin's book, Praise from a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report. "Between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1966, there was a debate arranged in Boston about the Warren Report. Epstein was invited to be a participant, but he declined the invitation. Vince Salandria did participate and his main opponent was a young scholar named Jacob Cohen. Cohen had presented an article defending the Commission in the July 11, 1966 issue of The Nation." John Kelin describes Cohen in some more detail. "Cohen was the Yale professor who had published “The Vital Documents” in The Nation the previous summer. He had written a second article, “The Warren Commission Report And Its Critics,” which was in the then-current issue of Frontier magazine. He had also just appeared in a television discussion with Jones, Mark Lane, Leo Sauvage, and Harold Weisberg called “A Reexamination of the Warren Report.” His book, Honest Verdict, had not yet been published but was still being mentioned as a work-in-progress." In November 1975, Cohen was cited as an expert in a NYT hit piece on Jim Garrison, written by James Phelan. In June 1992, Cohen attacked Oliver Stone's JFK. John Kelin describes Cohen as a 'Yale professor', but Cohen had left Yale in 1960, six years prior to the debate. From 1964, to 1968, Cohen was on leave of absence from teaching, and was serving on the staff of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). But prior to 1964, Cohen was at another academic institution. It was a place he'd spent the four years prior to his work with CORE, and it was a place he'd spend the next five decades at, after he finished his work with CORE. He was a member of the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba, alongside Virginia Prewitt and Hal Hendrix, both of whom had worked with David Atlee Phillips. He served as an advisor to Lyndon Johnson, and worked alongside Walt Rostow, acting as a consultant on Vietnam policy. He also personally drafted letters of advice to the President on the running of the war, and wrote speeches for President Johnson. He maintained high level communications with the CIA. He asked for and received memorandums from George A. Carver, the CIA official who worked as head of the CIA's National Planning Task Force on Vietnam. When he visited Carver in person, memorandums about the visit were sent directly to Richard Helms. He warned Lyndon Johnson that something should be done about the critics of the Warren Commission, and sent a detailed memo to Johnson to that effect. He warned Vincent Salandria: "You'll have to be killed." He sent a letter to the Times Literary Supplement attacking Warren Commission critics. His letter closely matched CIA Dispatch 1035-960, and what he wrote was later used as the basis for an early Time magazine article that defended the official story. He returned to the subject of the assassination in articles throughout the 70's, and continued to attack researchers of the subject. The institute where Cohen took up residence was Brandeis University, and the Dean of the Faculty at the time Cohen arrived was John P. Roche. Roche owed his career in the Johnson administration to Bill Moyers, who he'd known for some years prior, and who had recommended Roche for his position as an advisor to government. When Cohen appeared as a prominent critic, and ultimately debated Vincent Salandria, he likely had an important supporter in government - John Roche. Roche was also LBJ's point man on attacking Bobby Kennedy. In an interview, John Roche emphasised how much he detested Bobby Kennedy, and noted how he’d been in near fistfights with RFK twice at opposite ends of the decade. In 1968, there’s a quote from John Roche telling Johnson that MLK should be ‘destroyed’. According to Ghosts in the White House: LBJ, RFK and the Assassination of JFK by Michael W. Schuyler, Cohen finished this conversation saying ‘of course, John Roche hated Robert Kennedy even more’. Jacob Cohen, more than almost any other academic, has devoted his life to protect the official story, and to attack researchers of the subject. He began doing this in 1966, and continued until he retired from academic life a half century later in 2017. 

“Carolyn threw Michael Bergin in John’s face,” the Hollywood producer Clifford Streit told Vanity Fair. “I think she used Michael Bergin in any way she could to get a reaction out of John. The only one in the world who thought Carolyn would choose Michael over John was John.” Michael Bergin's memoir is discredited, as well as the crude attempts to smear the beautiful love story of JFK's son and Carolyn Jeanne Bessette. Dottie Randazzo: "Some things just don't add up in Bergin's book. I mean you are going to write a book about your relationship with someone who has passed away, and can't defend herself. On top of that, many names of people in the book are made up, which the author admits to. At the end Bergin says that he wrote the book to clear up any bad rumors about Carolyn. He doesn't mention that he's making money off the book. Throughout the entire book he is chasing money. Another example of an incident which doesn't ring true: You go on this romantic vacation with Carolyn to the Florida Keys. She won't come out of the room for a week, so no one sees the two of you together. She destroys the pictures that were taken of the two of you. Why wouldn't she put the pictures in the box with all the other mementos that she kept that had your name or picture on it? Such a disappointment! The Other Man consists of Michael Bergin primarily painting his autobiography. His relationship with Carolyn Bessette & JFK, Jr. is given little or no detailed info. It seemed Bergin wrote his book as an outlet to whine on end about his life. Carolyn Bessette never considered him her boyfriend, she never told anyone they were dating, and she kept herself very closed off him. Michael Bergin's dislike for John Kennedy Jr. does shine throughout, dislike and jealousy. Maybe because John Jr was really a gentleman? Or a better lover than him, despite Bergin's (and Gordon Henderson) malicious hints? Source: educationforum.ipbhost.com

A Brief and Shining Moment with JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette, Matt Berman asks vote for Biden

Patrick Petty (stylist of Mark Wahlberg and the Funky Bunch) opened his first store, House of Culture Shock, on Newbury Street in Boston. Through his daughter, Petty met a young Boston University student named Carolyn Bessette when she went shopping at his boutique. Allegedly, Wahlberg hit on Bessette, but she refused his advances, due probably to his bad reputation. Later, it was she who introduced his client, Mark Wahlberg, to Calvin Klein for those career-changing underwear ads. Neil Kraft and Herb Ritts greenlighted Wahlberg for the campaign, following it with Calvin Klein television advertisements. Magazine and television promotions sometimes featured Wahlberg exclusively or accompanied by model Kate Moss (with whom he had an affair in 1992). Annie Leibovitz also shot a famous session of Mark Wahlberg in CK underwear for Vanity Fair's annual Hall of Fame issue. Although Carolyn Bessette was credited for enhancing the careers of Kate Moss, Mark Wahlberg, and Michael Bergin, it was Patrick Demarchelier who supervised the final word with Calvin Klein. 

Marya Tenney: It still catches me off guard when I load my groceries onto the conveyor belt in the checkout line. And there it is, on the magazine rack, squeezed between the claims of the “Best New England Clam Shacks” and “Spectacular 4th of July Jello Desserts,” the faces of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her husband John F. Kennedy, Jr., staring back at me from the cover of a magazine. It’s been twenty-one years and I am still surprised by the amount of sadness I feel over Carolyn’s untimely death. In the years immediately following their deaths, the yearly rehashing of the crash, and some newly revealed details about her personality and character offered up by some “friend”, only add to the sadness. After all, what kind of friends did they have who would peddle such stories, whether they were true or not? And yet after twenty-one years they still claim new material to reveal. I have no way to accurately judge the veracity of the gossip about her marriage. But as I’ve read the last two decades worth of articles, I’ve tried to reconcile the woman described in them with the girl I came to know briefly in college. I’ll never forget the first time I saw her. She sat at the back of a classroom in the School of Education at Boston University. She was uncommonly pretty. But it was more than merely pretty. Who is this girl, I thought. She looked like a movie star. Her long golden brown hair cascaded over her shoulder and her ice blue eyes were so light she appeared otherworldly. She hadn’t yet begun to sport the high voltage platinum hair, but she was still stunning. I couldn’t help but stare. Her long legs were casually propped up on the chair in front of her, and her body language conveyed an absolute indifference to the environment. In all fairness, at the time, I too was not particularly interested in the difference between reliability versus validity in educational testing. I just didn’t have the beauty or confidence to be quite so blatant in showing my own lack of edge-of-my-seat fascination. Despite the fact that we both loved children, Carolyn and I chose the field of education less because of a passion, but more likely because we were daughters of educators. As luck would have it, and because neither of us had any friends in the class, we were thrown together on a project to research and analyze the California Achievement Test. A third person was assigned to our group. This student was very talkative and shared, without being asked, her personal experience with anorexia and bulimia. I have no recollection as to how the subject even came up. At some point, Carolyn gently but unmistakably kicked me under the table. I glanced sideways at her. A barely perceptible eye roll. As this long monologue by our colleague went on, Carolyn continued to make conspiratorial eye contact with me. As the three of us chatted, I got a sense of what it felt like to be “chosen” by someone like Carolyn. I admit that I liked the way it felt. When the other student left, Carolyn practically exploded with the thoughts she had not spoken. She went on to tell me that she knew a lot about the subject of anorexia as one of her sisters had it and nothing this girl had said rang true at all. I had no way to know who to believe but I didn’t much care. I was just relieved to be the one Carolyn was kicking conspiratorially under the table and not the object of her derision. The fact that she had rejected the other girl and was inviting me into her orbit more profound. I was in awe of her beauty and confidence, and so painfully aware of my lack thereof, that I was flattered that she seemed to like me. And then she did something I wouldn’t even consider ever doing. She grabbed my black daily planner, confidently flipped to the back, and jotted down her name and number in the address section under B. And so began our friendship. 

Carolyn was a textbook “Queen Bee.”  She was popular and beautiful and dated only the “BMOC”, the Big Men on Campus. They were rich or athletes. At Boston University, athletes were held in higher esteem than the wealthy because being wealthy was pretty common there. And among the athletes, hockey players had the highest status of all. It was in this arena that my budding friendship with Carolyn hit a roadblock. Carolyn was dating a hockey player. Some women are Queen Bees. And wherever there are queen bees, there are “wannabees.” This phenomenon sort of applies to the crowd that I hung with at the time I met Carolyn. My closest friends, a completely different group of young women, were reasonably attractive and they wanted to date hockey players. It’s just a Boston University kind of thing. While my friends engaged in flirtations, the hockey players didn’t actually seem to date my wannabee friends. Carolyn had, in her serious relationship with the captain of the hockey team, what my friends wanted. I, of course, was way outside this problem in that I wasn’t even attractive enough to be a wannabee; I was more like a “wannabee in training”. What complicated the situation is that the members of the wannabee circle that I traveled in did not like Carolyn. They did not like her at all. Like all groupies, the wannabees occasionally followed the hockey team to away games. Girlfriends of hockey players of course did this as well. At one such away game, I ran right into Carolyn as I left the restroom. She seemed thrilled to see me, which she conveyed with an affectionate, familiar squeeze of my arm. What was I doing there, she happily wanted to know. She clearly was completely unaware of my wannabee in training status. I explained vaguely that some “friends” thought it might be a fun road trip. I talked amiably with Carolyn but became increasingly uncomfortable as I noticed my “real friends” were watching me from a distance with great interest. We parted with a warm clasping of hands and assurances that we’d see each other next week in class. She went into the ladies room and I went back to my pals, feeling inexplicably sheepish. I was met with laughter and some good natured teasing comments about my apparent “new best friend, Carolyn.” We were all amused by the situation. I briefly wondered if Carolyn’s friendliness toward me would raise me up in the wannabee hierarchy or with my already admittedly lowly status within this group, cast me out entirely. As it turned out, at the time, it did neither. I continued with this uneasy semi-friendship with Carolyn. We greeted each other warmly when we saw each other in class or a pub. At the time it seemed too complicated and slightly disloyal to my so-called friends. From afar Carolyn was cooly captivating; up close she was warm and made me feel well-liked and important. She was physically responsive when talking to people; reaching out and touching and looking a person straight in the eye. She could be kind of haughty but I also experienced her being incredibly warm. She was both distant and yet approachable. I witnessed her having loud public disagreements with her college boyfriend. She often had to put up with women pursuing him, so I kind of get that. Undoubtedly, she had some special qualities, she was really all these things long before she ever married America’s Prince and I suspect she was all these things after she married him as well. But the various books and articles produced don’t always tell that interpretation. She has, unfortunately, been defined almost solely on the basis of her choice of husband. And it doesn’t seem fair to reduce her to that element. Some years back, I found that daily planner from my college days. There on the pages in back, I found the page where Carolyn had written her name and phone number. I couldn’t help but wonder about the “choice” in friends that I had made almost 30 years earlier. That all too familiar reflection of the road not taken in friendships over a lifetime. Carolyn, it turns out, had in addition to some loyal and true friends, an inordinate number of people who, for reasons unfathomable to me, now share or perhaps even fabricate stories about her. It always makes me wonder what kind of friends do this? What kind of friend unnecessarily shares an unflattering detail or, worse, a purely made up story about a deceased friend who can no longer defend herself? I sure as hell wouldn’t. And what of the friends that I “chose” over of her? Holding that page with Carolyn’s round scrawl,  I began to actually think about them. Not a single one of those girls from that time is my friend today. I thought about the fact that I was not invited to even one of their weddings. Not one. None of those people came to my father’s funeral nor sent a card. None of them were there to comfort me through the long illness and eventual death of my sister and brother. Having read numerous accounts, even amongst the salacious ones, of Carolyn’s great capacity for caring and loyalty to her friends in times of need, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she would have been there for me. As I tossed my old daily planner in the trash, I tore out the page on which she had written her name and number. I put it in a cardboard box along with other loose paper memories and closed the top. As it stands, today, I don’t really miss the group of friends who were part of my earlier life, my college days, at all. I obviously could never breach that inner circle and no one really needs “friends” like them. But had I accepted Carolyn’s invitation to be her friend, and had a relationship developed, I think I would miss a friend like her quite a lot. Source: maryakosstenney.wordpress.com

Jefferson Arrington (a driver for RMA Chauffeured Transportation in Rockville, Maryland): I had been driving a limousine for eight years, and I was assigned as a chauffeur for John Kennedy Jr and his wife Carolyn in 1988. The son of JFK said to me the first day: "Hi, I'm John Kennedy. Nice to meet you." I had been sent to pick him up at Signature Aviation in Washington, where private aircraft fly in to the Reagan National Airport. My passenger, JFK Jr., was in town for an event at the White House. The occasion was the premiere of the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" (1998). Because of his father's initiation of the American space program, Jr. had been invited to the dinner reception and he'd also been asked to make the opening remarks. On the way to his hotel, John Kennedy decided to visit the graves of his parents at Arlington Cemetery. Either people did not recognize him or they just left him alone, because I didn't see anyone approach him. John stayed at the graves for a while, and when he returned to the car, I took him to his hotel. In mid-afternoon, we drove out to the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where we were to pick up Carolyn Bessette. John introduced me to her: "Jefferson, this is my wife, Carolyn," he said. My impression at the time was how very nice, how normal, these people were. She was lovely and dressed in a classic way. I remember thinking she was not a raving beauty in the traditional sense, but a very pretty woman, and she was exceptionally nice. As we drove back to the hotel, the two of them talked and held hands. John took the opportunity of this 20-minute drive to read his speech to Carolyn. As a result, I got to hear it before anyone at the White House dinner. As you might imagine, the speech was very well written, with some quotes from President Kennedy woven in. When John finished reading, Carolyn leaned forward and kissed him, telling him how much she liked it. There was a slight pause, and John finally spoke. "Now when I quote my father, I hear his voice." Again, Carolyn gave him a warm hug and kiss. I felt as if I had been in on a very personal, wonderful moment. Later that evening, we pulled into the White House grounds at the east entrance, by a small fountain. Despite a large exodus from the White House at around 11:15 PM, the Kennedys did not emerge until well after midnight. On our short trip back to the hotel, the couple spoke of what a great evening it had been. John commented he had not recognized any of the White House. Just what he meant became clear a year later. President Clinton had given John and Carolyn a tour of the private quarters he shared with Hillary Rodham Clinton. Supposedly, John did not like the new approach of the Clintons at the White House. I remember the wonderful brightness of John and Carolyn. It was for me a brush with greatness, a chance to be a witness to a small bit of history. The morning after the White House event, I arrived at the hotel at about 5:20 AM to pick John up for an early flight. When we arrived at National Airport, John hopped out of the car and grabbed his small bag. He made a point to stop, shake my hand and thank me. He also took an envelope out of his pocket and said: "My wife and I would like you to have this." I thanked him and he was off. I really hoped the envelope would hold a simple signed note. But instead, it held a very generous, very thoughtful tip. He had taken the time to give me an envelope, which seemed so in character for this fellow. After all, he had been John Kennedy all his life, and he was very good at it. —The Day John Died (2007) by Christopher Andersen

"My father told me what sons of bitches big businessmen were, but I never believed it until now." (JFK Jr reflecting on his difficulties with Hachette Publishers).

Matt Berman (Instagram, October 2020): The Donald Trump cover was the worst cover for George magazine, hands down. This photoshoot of Donald and Melania Trump took place shortly after John Kennedy Jr's fatal plane crash. I was in the midst of negotiating an exit package with Hachette, where I'd worked for eight years, I missed John and I was extremely depressed and distracted. I was feeling sick and I needed a rest. I couldn't find a taxi, and took the R train headed downtown. By 23rd Street, I had chills and felt lightheaded. On the 8th street train platform, a stranger looking down at me, said: Don't move, you're bleeding badly." I'd had a fall and I had collapsed headfirst into the corner of a metal column after exiting my train. "Extreme dehydration," the doctor explained, as he stitched my forehead. I learned that Hachette had decided to continue producing the magazine with a new editor who forbade our archived photoshoots for covers. This new editor said he was excited to feature Donald Trump. I was sent with my assistant Michele for a photoshoot and I couldn't decline. The Trump Tower was like the tackiest hotel in the world, with gold and marble and crystal overloads, with fake Monet and Renoir paintings. It was quite the contrast to John and Carolyn's downtown loft with its cozy sofas and beers in the fridge. During the shoot, Michele and I stood out of the shooting frame, behind Donald and Melania. It was gross. With John gone, it was all pay to play. Had John been in charge, that photoshoot would never have been produced. John couldn't stand Trump's presence, especially since he had hit on his wife Carolyn at Mar-a-Lago in 1997... Please, vote for Biden!

Depiction of Mental Illness in Film, Taxi Driver

A new study, “Depiction of Mental Illness in Film and Association with Financial and Critical Success“ written by researchers from Stanford University, Yale University, and the University of Connecticut (published on October 22, 2020) finds that movies about mental illness have consistently earned more money, gotten better reviews, and won more Academy Awards than average since as far back as 1977. In recent years, there have been many much-discussed films about mental illness, for example Joker, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Inside Out, and Silver Linings Playbook. This new study analyzes more than 2,000 movies about mental illness between 1977 and 2019. Example keywords included autism, schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, mental disorder, suicide, mental institution, etc. This filtering resulted in 2,043 movies that had plots involving mental illness. Suicide was by far the most common mental illness-related search term, occurring in 1,114 of these films. The researchers found that the number of movies about mental illness has been increasing by about two films per year since 1977. Though the overall percentage of films about mental illness changed from one year to the next, it consistently remained between 10-20%. 

Likewise, the authors used IMDB ratings and Academy Award nominations (and wins) as proxies for critical success. In terms of critical reception, they found that the average IMDB rating for the mental illness movies was above average for every year from 1977 to 2019. The films depicting mental illness scored an average rating of 6.4, versus 5.9 for films overall. Films about mental illness have also consistently done better than average in terms of Academy Award nominations and wins. Across all of years examined, films about mental illness accounted for 15.7% of all nominations. These films also won 17.2% of awards given out between 1977 and 2019. While their findings indeed indicate a growing interest in movies about mental illness, “there is danger of fetishizing mental health problems, or of poor depictions being celebrated,” they write. “Psychiatrists and mental health providers,” they suggest, “must play a role in shaping future depictions of mental illness in cinema.” Source: www.medrxiv.org

Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro), is Taxi Driver‘s lonely, alienated “anti-hero.” He wants Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), he’s obsessed with her beauty. But, he has no idea what a woman wants or how to date, let alone to have a relationship with anyone, even his fellow taxi drivers. He’s disconnected. When he makes a real faux pas with Betsy, he must redeem himself and save the world of women from scum. The scum Travis wants to wash away. He must have disconnected long ago. Because Travis knows nothing about pop culture, movies, women, or what makes him tick. “I first saw her at the Campaign Headquarters, wearing a white dress. She appeared like an angel.” The headquarters are Presidential hopeful, Senator Charles Palantine’s (Leonard Harris). He proceeds to tell her his observations of her – yet, really his projections of all he can’t accept in himself: “I watch you. I see people around you, but you’re lonely. Not a happy person. You need something. Maybe a friend.” That’s Travis. He’s the one that needs a friend. “You going to be my friend?” Betsy asks seductively as they sit at a coffee shop: “I had black coffee, apple pie with a slice of melted yellow cheese. She had coffee and fruit salad when she could have had anything she wanted.” He wants her to want him. For all Travis’ unworldliness, he has a fragile self-protective arrogance. Until it is soon “shot down.” The more Travis talks to Betsy, the more disturbed we see his obsessive fantasy is: “You like the guy you work with? I could tell there was no connection. When I walked in there was something between us, an impulse we both were following that gave me the right to talk to you. Otherwise, I would never have had the courage.” Yet Travis’ arrogance covers a deep insecurity. Travis doesn’t have anything in common with Betsy. His mind is lost in disturbed preoccupations. When Senator Palantine gets into his taxi and asks him what bothers him most, Travis goes off: “Clean up this city. It’s a sewer.” Can he count on Palantine? No. Travis can’t count on anyone. Travis’ mind is very split. As quickly as “the angel” entered his life, Betsy’s gone. Another rejection Travis can’t take. 

“Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Bars and cars and everywhere. There’s no escape.” He calls and pleads with Betsy to have dinner or coffee. Sends her flowers. Bouquets of returned flowers pile up in his house; dead. He tries to apologize: “I didn’t know that was the way you felt.” He’s in torment: “The smell of flowers made me sick. Headaches got worse. I think I got stomach cancer.” Travis can’t take her refusals. He storms into headquarters, enraged: “Why won’t you answer my phone calls? You’re going to die in hell like the rest of them.” Clearly, this isn’t his first humiliation: “I realize now she’s just like the others, cold and distant and many people are like that, women for sure, they're like a union." He writes a sad letter to his estranged parents, lying that he’s been seeing a girl named Betsy for a few months. They’d be proud. We know he’s trying to toughen up against self-hate. Maybe saving Iris will redeem him. There’s still the mystery of what he’s training for with his target practices, workouts, and gun maneuvers. But, Travis gets it in his head to save Iris (Jodie Foster), a fourteen-year-old runaway hooker under the spell of Sport (Harvey Keitel) her “lover-pimp.” She jumped in Travis’ cab once and wanted to get away. But, Sport pulled her out.

We might think about Iris as Travis’ innocent, young, self that took a wrong turn, had some very hurtful experiences, went to war, and came back jaded. With a family he didn’t want to be with; didn’t go home to; who were distant and uninviting; without love. Iris is certainly at war inside; young and alone and scared. But, fighting it and fiercely independent for her own reasons. Maybe not so dissimilar to Travis’ lonely alienation. So, when she, again, literally crosses his path, he seizes the opportunity. Travis decides to save her. Can he redeem himself? In his mind? We already know he’s quite confused in his head; misguided about life and how to get things done. And, trauma upon trauma (childhood experiences and the Vietnam war) has set off a lot of buried rage. He doesn’t have any more reasonable sense of the rules of life than Iris does. He tries to talk sense into her. Tells her to go back to her family, she doesn’t belong on the streets with the likes of Sport: “You should be going to school. Going out with boys.” When Iris won’t listen and goes back to Sport, Travis takes matters into his own hands: “You can’t let him do that to other girls, least you. He’s the worst fucking scum on the earth.” After the bloodbath, when the police arrive, Travis has a crazed and happy look on his face. Proud of his accomplishments, he points his fingers at his head, gun-like, as if intends to (or metaphorically did) just kill himself. He’s single-handedly killed off the scum of the city and saved Iris. Iris will now go home. But, what was the real point of his rampage? Is he dying? Dead? 

Travis has become the city’s (and Iris’ parents) revered “Hero.” Is this reality? Or Travis’ grandiose fantasy? We’ll never know. In Travis’ mind, he’s special, better than the rest, better than Palantine (who dropped the ball on washing away the scum.) And, Betsy too now admires Travis for the “hero he is.” She’s his last passenger in Taxi Driver. Flipping the taxi meter, he absolves her completely. Travis rearranges the facts in his head, a typical trait of a schizoid mind. In planning to kill Senator Palantine, he wants to sacrifice him to the cause and make him a martyr. Scorsese confirms this idea by framing Palantine with his hands raised like the statue behind him at Columbus Circle, reminding us of Christ on the cross, the Saint of Martyr’s. Some critics came close but rarely suggested the possibility of Travis’ death. For example, in the March 1979 issue of Le Cinématographe (no. 45), François Cuel is the only one who explicitly alluded to it: "The burnt flowers, Travis’ message to Iris, rather indicate a suicidal ritual that precedes the meticulous preparation for a killing; and in the middle of the blood stains in the hotel, the real Travis, whose wounded leg already gives a cadaverous rigidity, actually dies. The overhead shot negates the ceiling and opens the sky for Travis’ flight."  Even as Travis plots his heroic acts of violence, he worries about how to save Iris. He believes he is just training to be an undercover govern agent, but his concern for Iris suggests otherwise. Travis's many contradictions make him one of the great characters in film history. Source: charactersonthecouch.com

Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy

By the time Edward Kennedy died, in August 2009, he had represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate for nearly 47 years — longer than any of his brothers had lived. He was eulogized as one of the most important legislators in American history, an assessment reflecting not only the affection he enjoyed on both sides of the aisle, but also genuine awe at his achievements. Over the course of five decades, Ted Kennedy had sponsored nearly 700 bills that became law, and left his imprint on scores of others. The Voting Rights Act of 1965; the Immigration and Nationality Act of that same year; the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 — all bore his influence or were advanced by his efforts. That struggle and its significance are the subjects of “Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour”, published on 27th October 2020 by Crown Publishing Group, the first installment of a two-volume treatment by Neal Gabler, the author of well-regarded books on Walt Disney and Walter Winchell. Kennedy’s expansive life has yielded no shortage of biographies, but Gabler’s is on its way toward becoming the most complete and ambitious. No less important, as Gabler writes, “there was a joy in him, a great love of people.” He drew them in — whether voters back home or the Southern septuagenarians who ran the Senate — won them over, made them willing, even eager, to support him. He was the most natural politician in his family, a close match in temperament to his grandfather John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, who had taught him, Gabler notes, “what empathy meant.” “Catching the Wind” lends a cinematic sweep to Kennedy’s legislative crusades — for example, his noble campaign in 1965 to ban use of the poll tax, that old racist roadblock to the African-American vote, in state elections. (The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, had prohibited its use in federal elections. The year after Kennedy’s effort foundered, the Supreme Court ruled the poll tax unconstitutional at the state level.) Gabler makes these battles exciting and the scenes are often amped up by incantation: “And then Ted quoted at length, great length, from a speech, a remarkable speech,” reads a typical passage. The reader needs no such prodding; the drama, as it develops, is real enough. The swiftness with which Ted Kennedy went from being teased by Republicans as “Little Brother” to becoming the patriarch of a political dynasty — the bearer, as he himself put it, of his martyred brothers’ standard — is unfathomable, however familiar the story remains. In 1968, when Robert was killed in Los Angeles while running for president, Ted was only 36. The pressure upon him to carry forward the campaign was instantaneous: One of Bobby’s aides cornered Ted on the flight that carried his brother’s body back to New York, pleading, “You gotta run.” Kennedy knew himself well enough not to accept a draft — he was deeply depressed, immobilized by grief. But he had lost control over himself and his future. 

Tragedy begat tragedy, and Los Angeles led, in some indirect but inexorable fashion, to Chappaquiddick in July 1969. The death of Mary Jo Kopechne (Kopechne had worked as a campaign aide for his brother, Robert Kennedy) in Ted Kennedy’s car was, as Gabler writes, “indelible — a stain he bore that no amount of penance could erase.” And Gabler suggests it was more than that. Because Kennedy, he writes, was “the face and the voice of modern liberalism,” Chappaquiddick cost liberalism its moral authority — at a time, the end of the ’60s, when that authority was already waning. “Catching the Wind” is presented as something of a parable — “This book,” Gabler states, “is about political morality” — by “political morality,” the author seems to mean, exclusively, a concern for the “voiceless and powerless,” as Kennedy often put it. The decline of liberalism, in any event, had at least as much to do with economic stagnation as it did with moral authority or the imperfections of liberal apostles. Kennedy, for his part, felt the winds shifting. In the wake of Bobby’s death and Chappaquiddick, as the book describes, he redoubled his commitment to be “the senator of all those in need.” As Gabler writes in a powerful closing, Ted Kennedy was attacked by the white working class from which the Kennedys had risen. For some of them Kennedy was now “favoring minority rights over their rights.” As Gabler’s next volume will no doubt describe, Kennedy’s response was not to change course. He would simply sail harder. Source: Source: www.nytimes.com