[CTRL] [2a] The Posthumous Assassination of JFK

[Kris Millegan]

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Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr1197-jfk.html">Probe V5N1:
The Posthumous Assassination of JFK…</A>
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>From the November-December, 1997 issue (Vol. 5 No. 1)

The Posthumous Assassination of JFK Part II
Sy Hersh and the Monroe/JFK Papers:
The History of a Thirty-Year Hoax


By James DiEugenio

On September 25, 1997, ABC used its news magazine program 20/20 to take an
unusual journalistic step. In the first segment of the program, Peter
Jennings took pains to discredit documents that had been about to be used by
its own contracted reporter for an upcoming show scheduled for broadcast. The
contracted reporter was Seymour Hersh. The documents purported to show a
secret deal involving Marilyn Monroe, Sam Giancana, and President John F.
Kennedy. They were to be the cornerstone of Hersh’s upcoming Little, Brown
book, The Dark Side of Camelot. In fact, published reports indicate that it
was these documents that caused the publisher to increase Hersh’s advance and
provoke three networks to compete for a television special to hype the book.
It is not surprising to any informed observer that the documents imploded.
What is a bit surprising is that Hersh and ABC could have been so naive for
so long. And it is ironic that ABC should use 20/20 to expose a phenomenon
that it itself fueled twelve years ago.

What happened on September 25th was the most tangible manifestation of three
distinct yet overlapping journalistic threads that have been furrowing into
our culture since the Church Committee disbanded in 1976. Hersh’s book would
have been the apotheosis of all three threads converged into one book. In the
strictest sense, the convergent movements did not actually begin after Frank
Church’s investigation ended. But it was at that point that what had been a
right-wing, eccentric, easily dismissed undercurrent, picked up a second
wind—so much so that today it is not an eccentric undercurrent at all. It is
accepted by a large amount of people. And, most surprisingly, some of its
purveyors are even accepted within the confines of the research community.

The three threads are these: 1) That the Kennedys ordered Castro’s
assassination, despite the verdict of the Church Committee on the CIA’s
assassination plots. As I noted last issue, the committee report could find no
 evidence indicating that JFK and RFK authorized the plots on Fidel Castro,
Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, or Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam.
2) That the Kennedys were really “bad boys,” in some ways as bad as Chicago
mobsters or the “gentleman killers” of the CIA. Although neither JFK nor RFK
was lionized by the main centers of the media while they were alive, because
of their early murders, many books and articles were written afterward that
presented them in a sympathetic light, usually as liberal icons. This was
tolerated by the media establishment as sentimental sop until the revelations
of both Watergate and the Church Committee. This “good guy” image then needed
to be altered since both those crises seemed to reveal that the Kennedys were
actually different than what came before them (Eisenhower and the Dulles
brothers) and what came after (Nixon). Thus began a series of anti-Kennedy
biographies. 3) That Marilyn Monroe’s death was somehow ordained by her
“involvement” with the Kennedy “bad boys.” Again, this was at first a rather
peculiar cottage industry. But around the time of Watergate and the Church
Committee it was given a lift, and going back to a 1964 paradigm, it combined
elements of the first two movements into a Gothic (some would say grotesque)
right-wing propaganda tract which is both humorous and depressing in its
slanderous implications, and almost frightening in its political and cultural
overtones. Egged on by advocates of Judith Exner (e.g. Liz Smith and Tony
Summers), this political and cultural time bomb landed in Sy Hersh’s and
ABC’s lap. When it blew up, all parties went into a damage control mode,
pointing their fingers at each other. As we examine the sorry history of all
three industries, we shall see that there is plenty of blame (and shame) to
be shared. And not just in 1997.

As we saw in Part One of this article, as the Church Committee was preparing
to make its report, the Exner and then Mary Meyer stories made headlines in
the Washington Post. These elements—intrigue from the CIA assassination
plots, plus the sex angles, combined with the previous hazing of Richard
Nixon over Watergate—spawned a wave of new anti-Kennedy “expose” biographies.
Anti-Kennedy tracts were not new. But these new works differed from the
earlier ones in that they owed their genesis and their styles to the events
of the mid-seventies that had brought major parts of the establishment
(specifically, the CIA and the GOP) so much grief. In fact we will deal with
some of the earlier ones later. For now, let us examine this new pedigree and
show how it fits into the movement outlined above.

Looking for Mr. Kennedy
(And Not Finding Him)

The first anti-Kennedy book in this brood, although not quite a perfect fit
into the genre, is The Search for JFK, by Joan and Clay Blair Jr. The book
appeared in 1976, right after Watergate and the Church Committee hearings. In
the book’s foreword, the authors are frank about what instigated their work:

During Watergate (which revealed to us the real character of President
Richard M. Nixon—as opposed to the manufactured Madison Avenue image), our
thoughts turned to Jack Kennedy....Like other journalists, we were captivated
by what was then called the “Kennedy mystique” and the excitement of “the New
Frontier.” Now we began to wonder. Behind the image, what was Jack really
like? Could one, at this early date, cut through the cotton candy and find
the real man? (p. 10)

In several ways, this is a revealing passage. First of all, the authors
apparently accept the Washington Post version of Watergate—i.e. that Nixon,
and only Nixon, was responsible for that whole range of malfeasance and that
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein got to the bottom of it. Second, it seems to
me to be a curious leap from the politically misunderstood shenanigans of
Watergate to the formative years of John Kennedy’s college prep days and
early adulthood, which is what this book is about. It takes JFK from his days
at the exclusive Choate School in Connecticut to his first term as a
congressman i.e. from about 1934 through 1947. I don’t understand how
comparing the political fallout from Watergate with an examination of
Kennedy’s youthful years constitutes a politically valid analogy. Third, the
Blairs seem a bit behind the curve on Nixon. If they wanted to find out the
“truth” about Nixon all they had to do was examine his behavior, and some of
the people he employed, in his congressional campaign against Jerry Voorhis,
his senatorial campaign against Helen Douglas and, most importantly, his
prosecution of Alger Hiss. These all happened before 1951, two decades before
Watergate. Nothing in JFK’s political career compares with them.

The book’s ill-explained origin is not its only problem. In its final form,
it seems to be a rush job. I have rarely seen a biography by a veteran writer
(which Clay Blair was) so poorly edited, written, and organized. The book is
nearly 700 pages long. It could have been cut by a third without losing
anything of quality or substance. The book is heavily reliant on interviews
which are presented in the main text. Some of them at such length—two and
three pages—that they give the volume the air of an oral history. To make it
worse, after someone has stopped talking, the authors tell us the superfluous
fact that his wife walked into the room, making for more excess verbiage
(p.60). And on top of this, the Blairs have no gift for syntax or language,
let alone glimmering prose. As a result, even for an interested reader, the
book is quite tedious.

The Blairs spend much of their time delving into two areas of Kennedy’s
personal life: his health problems and his relationships with the opposite
sex. Concerning the first, they chronicle many, if not all, of the myriad and
unfortunate medical problems afflicting young Kennedy. They hone in on two in
order to straighten out the official record. Previous to this book, the
public did not know that Kennedy’s back problem was congenital. The word had
been that it came about due to a football injury. Second, the book certifies
that Kennedy was a victim of Addison’s disease, which attacks the adrenal
glands and makes them faulty in hormone secretion. The condition can be
critical in fights against certain infections and times of physical stress.

Discovered in the 19th century, modern medication (discovered after 1947)
have made the illness about as serious as that of a diabetic on insulin. I
exaggerate only slightly when I write that the Blairs treat this episode as
if Kennedy was the first discovered victim of AIDS. They attempt to excuse
the melodrama by saying that Kennedy and his circle disguised the condition
by passing it off as an “adrenal insufficiency.” Clearly, Kennedy played word
games in his wish to hide a rare and misunderstood disease that he knew his
political opponents would distort and exaggerate in order to destroy him,
which is just what LBJ and John Connally attempted to do in 1960. The myopic
authors save their ire for Kennedy and vent none on Johnson or a potentially
rabid political culture on this issue.

The second major area of focus is Kennedy’s sex life. The authors excuse this
preoccupation with seventies revelations, an apparent reference to Exner,
Meyer, and perhaps Monroe (p. 667). Kennedy seems to have been attractive to
females. He was appreciative of their overtures. There seems to me to be
nothing extraordinary about this. Here we have the handsome, tall, witty,
charming son of a millionaire who is eligible and clearly going places. If he
did not react positively to all the attention heaped on him, I am sure his
critics would begin to suggest a “certain latent homosexual syndrome.” But
what makes this (lengthy) aspect of the book interesting is that when the
Blairs ask some of Kennedy’s girlfriends what his “style” was (clearly
looking for juicy sex details), as often as not, the answer is surprising.
For instance, in an interview with Charlotte McDonnell, she talks about
Kennedy in warm and friendly terms adding that there was “No sex or anything”
in their year long relationship (p. 81). Another Kennedy girlfriend, the very
attractive Angela Greene had this to say:

Q: Was he romantically pushy?

A: I don’t think so. I never found him physically aggressive, if that’s what
you mean. Adorable and sweet. (p. 181)

In another instance, years later, Kennedy was dating the beautiful Bab
Beckwith. She invited Kennedy up to her apartment after he had wined and
dined her. There was champagne and low music on the radio. But then a news
broadcast came on and JFK leaped up, ran to the radio, and turned up the
volume to listen to it. Offended, Beckwith threw him out.

Another curious observation that the book establishes is that Kennedy did not
smoke and was only a social drinker. So if, as I detailed in the Mary Meyer
tale, Kennedy ended up a White House coke-sniffer and acid head, it was a
definite break with the past.

The Blairs’ book established some paradigms that would be followed in the
anti-Kennedy genre. First, and probably foremost, is the influence of
Kennedy’s father in his career. In fact, Joe Kennedy’s hovering presence over
all his children is a prime motif of the book. The second theme that will be
followed is the aforementioned female associations. The third repeating
pattern the Blairs’ established is the use of Kennedy’s health problems as
some kind of character barometer. That because Kennedy and his circle were
not forthright about this, it indicates a covert tendency and a penchant for
covering things up.

It would be easy to dismiss The Search for JFK as a slanted book, and even
easier to argue that the authors had an agenda. Clay Blair was educated at
Tulane and Columbia and served in the Navy from 1943-1946. He was a military
affairs writer and Pentagon correspondent for Time-Life from 1949 to 1957. He
then became an editor for the Saturday Evening Post and worked his way up to
the corporate level of that magazine’s parent company, Curtis Publications.
Almost all of his previous books dealt with some kind of military figure or
national security issue e.g. The Atomic Submarine and Admiral Rickover, The
Hydrogen Bomb, Nautilus 90 North, Silent Victory: the U.S. Submarine War
Against Japan. In his book on Rickover, he got close cooperation from the
Atomic Energy Commission and the book was screened by the Navy Department. In
1969 he wrote a book on the Martin Luther King murder called The Strange Case
of James Earl Ray. Above the title, the book’s cover asks the question
“Conspiracy? Yes or No!” Below this, this the book’s subtitle gives the
answer, describing Ray as “The Man who Murdered Martin Luther King.” To be
sure there is no ambiguity, on page 146 Blair has Ray shooting King just as
the FBI says he did, no surprise since Blair acknowledges help from the
Bureau and various other law enforcement agencies in his acknowledgements.

The Ray book is basically an exercise in guilt through character
assassination. This practice has been perfected in the Kennedy assassination
field through Oswald biographers like Edward Epstein and Priscilla Johnson
McMillan. Consider some of Blair’s chapter headings: “A Heritage of
Violence,” “Too Many Strikes Against Him,” “The Status Seeker.” In fact,
Blair actually compares Ray with Oswald (pp. 88-89). In this passage, the
author reveals that he also believes that Oswald is the lone assassin of
Kennedy. He then tries to imply that Ray had the same motive as his
predecessor: a perverse desire for status and recognition. Later, Blair is as
categorical about the JFK case as he is about the King case:

In the case of John F. Kennedy the debate still rages. Millions of words have
been written—pro and con. Yet no one has produced a single piece of hard
evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was anything more than a psychopath acting
entirely on his own. (p. 106)

I could continue in a similar vein with excerpts from this book and I could
also go on with more questionable aspects of Clay Blair’s background. And I
could then use this information, and the inferences, to dismiss The Search
for JFK. I could even add that Blair’s agent on his Kennedy book was Scott
Meredith, who was representing Judith Exner at the time. But I won’t go that
far. I may be wrong, but in my opinion I don’t think the book can be
classified as a deliberate distortion or hatchet job. Although the authors
are in some respects seeking to surface unflattering material, I didn’t feel
that they were continually relying on questionable sources or witnesses, or co
nsistently distorting or fabricating the record. As I have mentioned, the
book can be criticized and questioned—and dismissed—on other grounds, but, as
far as I can see, not on those two.

Dubious Davis

Such is not the case with John Davis’ foray into Kennedy biography. The
Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster 1848-1983, was published in 1984, before Davis
became the chief spokesman for the anti-Garrison/Mob-did-it wing of the
ramified assassination research community. In its very title, his book is
deceptive in a couple of interesting ways. First, from the dates included, it
implies that the book will be a multigenerational family saga tracing the
clan from Joe Kennedy’s parents down to youngest brother Teddy. But of the
book’s 648 pages of text, about 400 deal with the life and death of John F.
Kennedy. And more than half of those deal with his presidency. In no way is
the book an in-depth family profile. Secondly, as any school boy knows, the
word dynasty denotes a series or succession of at least three or more rulers.
So Jack Kennedy’s two years and ten months as president constitute the
shortest “dynasty” in recorded history. In reality, of course, it was not a
dynasty at all and the inclusion of the word is a total misnomer.

But there is a method to the misnoming. For Davis, it is necessary to suggest
a kind of “royal family” ambience to the Kennedys and, with it, the
accompanying aura of familial and assumed “divine right.” One of the author’s
aims is to establish the clan as part of America’s ruling class, with more
power and influence than any other. He is clear about this early on, when he
writes that Joe Kennedy Sr. was richer than either David or Nelson
Rockefeller (p. 133). As any student of wealth and power in America knows,
this is a rather amazing statement. In 1960, according to John Blair’s
definitive study The Control of Oil, the Rockefeller family had controlling
interest in three of the top seven oil companies in America, and four of the
top eight in the world. They were also in control of Chase Manhattan Bank,
one of the biggest in the nation then and the largest today. They also owned
the single most expensive piece of real estate in the country, Rockefeller
Center in New York City. The list of private corporations controlled by them
could go on for a page, but to name just two, how about IBM and Eastern
Airlines. I won’t enumerate the overseas holdings of the family but, suffice
it to say, the Kennedys weren’t in the same league in that category. JFK knew
this. As Mort Sahl relates, before the 1960 election, he liked to kid Kennedy
about being the scion of a multimillionaire. Kennedy cornered him once on
this topic and asked him point blank how much he thought his family was
worth. Sahl replied, “Probably about three or four hundred million.” Kennedy
then asked him how much he thought the Rockefellers were worth. Sahl said he
had no idea. Kennedy replied sharply, “Try about four billion.” JFK let the
number sink in and then added, “Now that’s money, Mort.”

Throughout the book, Davis tries to convey the feeling of a destined royalty
assuming power. So, according to Davis, Kennedy was thinking of the Senate
when he was first elected to the House. Then, from his first day in the
Senate, he was thinking of the Vice-Presidency (p. 147).
Epitomizing this idea, Davis relates a personal vignette about the Kennedy
family wake after JFK’s funeral. Davis, a cousin of Jackie Kennedy, was
leaving the hall and paused to shake hands with Rose Kennedy to offer his
condolences (p. 450). Mother Kennedy surprised him by saying in a cool,
controlled manner: “Oh, thank you Mr. Davis, but don’t worry. Everything will
be all right. You’ll see. Now it’s Bobby’s turn.” Such coolness differs
greatly from what is revealed in the recently declassified LBJ tapes in
which, after the assassination, Rose could not even speak two sentences to
the Johnsons without dissolving into tears. But the portrait is in keeping
with the ruthless monarchy that Davis takes great pains to portray.

As I said above, the main focus is Kennedy’s short-lived “dynastic”
presidency. And this is where some real questions about Davis’ methodology
and intent arise. As he does in his assassination book Mafia Kingfish, Davis
proffers a long bibliography to create the impression of immense scholarship
and many hours quarrying the truth out of books, files, and libraries. But,
like the later book, the text is not footnoted. So if the reader wishes to
check certain facts, or locate the context of a comment or deduction, he is
generally unable to do so. But fortunately, some of us have a background that
enables us to find out where certain facts and deductions came from. This is
crucial. For in addition to his wild inflation about the prominence of the
Kennedy family in the power elite, another of Davis’ prime objectives is to
reverse the verdict of the Church Committee and place Kennedy in the center
of the CIA plots to kill Castro.

Pinning the Plots on Kennedy

As I said in Part One of this article, there is no evidence of such
involvement in either the CIA’s Inspector General report of 1967, or in the
Church Committee’s report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign
Leaders, issued in late 1975. In fact, both advance evidence and conclusions
to indicate the contrary. So how does Davis propagate that the Kennedy
brothers knew about, authorized, and encouraged the plots? The first method
is by performing minute surgery on the 1975 report. Davis states that Allen
Dulles briefed JFK on the plots at a November 27, 1960 meeting with the
President-elect. He uses Deputy Director Dick Bissell as his source for this
disclosure (Davis, p. 289). I turned to the committee report that dealt with
Bissell’s assumptions on this matter (Alleged Assassination Plots p. 117).
Here is the testimony Davis relies on:

Bissell: I believe at some stage the President the President and the
President-elect both were advised that such an operation had been planned and
was being attempted.

Senator Baker: By whom?

Bissell: I would guess through some channel by Allen Dulles.
The Chairman: But you’re guessing aren’t you?

Bissell: I am, Mr. Chairman, and I have said that I cannot recollect the
giving of such briefing at the meeting with the President in November....

Even thought Bissell does not remember any briefing at this November meeting,
Davis writes as if he does and uses him as a source. Yet the report goes on
to say (Ibid p. 120): “Bissell surmised that the reasons he and Dulles did
not tell Kennedy at that initial meeting were that they had ‘apparently
thought it was not an important matter’.” (p. 120.) When Frank Church asked
Bissell if that was not rather strange, Bissell replied, “I think that in
hindsight it could be regarded as peculiar, yes.” (Ibid, p. 121.) Davis
leaves these last two Bissell quotes out, probably because they would vitiate
his “conclusion” that Dulles and Bissell informed JFK of the plots.
Incredibly, Davis builds on this foundation of sand by postulating that the
reason Kennedy decided to go ahead with the Bay of Pigs was that he knew the
CIA would kill Castro by then and it would therefore be an easy victory!
(Davis, p. 292.)

Davis must know he’s on shaky ground, because he fishes for substantiation
outside of the Church Committee report. Davis states that his quest for this
led him to the home of none other than Richard Helms (Ibid, p. 289). Helms
told Davis, “that he believed Bissell was correct, that, knowing him, he
would not commit perjury before a Senate committee.” (Ibid). Davis leaves out
the fact that perjury is precisely what Helms committed before a Senate
committee in 1973 about CIA involvement in Chile. He also fails to tell the
reader anything about the Helms-Bissell relationship, which makes his
“vouching” for Bissell almost humorous. When the two were in the CIA, there
were few rivalries more pronounced and few resentments more public than the
one between Bissell and Helms, who resented his boss because Bissell kept him
out of the loop on some operations. Helms, according to Evan Thomas’ The Very
Best Men, was happy to see the Bay of Pigs capsize because it meant Bissell
would be out and that Helms would move up ( p. 268). So, to most objective
readers, if Helms has now switched to endorsing Bissell, there must be some
extenuating circumstances involved. There are, and again, Davis does not tell
the reader about them. As the Inspector General’s report tells us, when
Dulles and Bissell began cleaning out their desks, a new team took over the
Castro plots, namely Bill Harvey and Ted Shackley. The man they reported to
was Helms, the highest link in the chain (Alleged Assassination Plots pp.
148-153). In other words, the alchemy of John Davis with Bissell helps get
Helms off the hook for responsibility for the continuing unauthorized plots.
And Helms needs all the help he can get. When John McCone (Kennedy’s
replacement CIA Director) expressly forbade any assassination plots, Helms
said he couldn’t remember the meeting (Ibid, p. 166). When evidence was
advanced that, in direct opposition to Bobby’s wishes, Helms continued the
Castro plots and allowed an operative to use RFK’s name in doing so, Helms
said he didn’t remember doing that either (Ibid p. 174). On the day that RFK
met with CIA officials to make it clear there would be no more unauthorized
plots against Castro, Kennedy’s calendar reads as follows: “1:00—Richard
Helms.” Helms could not recall the meeting (Ibid p. 131). With this much to
explain away, Helms must have poured coffee for Davis the day they met.
But Davis is not done. He also writes the following:

Kennedy also met on April 20 with the Cuban national involved in the
unsuccessful underworld Castro assassination plot, a meeting that was not
discovered until the Senate Committee on Intelligence found out about it in
1975. That Kennedy could have met with this individual, whose name has never
been revealed, without knowing what his mission had been, seems
inconceivable. (Davis p. 297.)

Imagine the images conjured up by this passage to a reader who has not read
the report. I had read the report and I thought I had missed something. How
did I forget about Kennedy’s private meeting with Tony Varona in the Oval
office? JFK asks Varona why he couldn’t get at Castro and then pats him on
the head and says try it again. When I turned to page 124 in the report, I
saw why I didn’t remember it. The meeting, as described by Davis, did not
occur. At the real meeting are Kennedy, Robert McNamara, General Lyman
Lemnitzer “and other Administration officials.” Also in the room “were
several members of Cuban groups involved in the Bay of Pigs.” The report
makes clear that this was the beginning of the general review of the Bay of
Pigs operation that would, within three weeks, result in the Taylor Review
Board which would then recommend reforms in CIA control of covert operations.
There is no hint, so pregnant in Davis’ phrasing, that anything about
assassination was discussed.

Womanizer and Warmonger?

One of the more startling sections of the Davis book is his treatment of
Judith Exner. From the above, one would guess that he thoroughly buys into
the 1977 Exner-Demaris book. He does and he mentions her name quite often.
What is surprising is that he goes even further. Apparently, Davis realizes
his jerry-built apparatus of Bissell-Helms, and adulteration of the record
will not stand scrutiny. So he calls up Ovid Demaris, coauthor of Judith
Exner: My Story (p. 319). From this phone call, Davis is informed that Exner
lied in the book. She did tell Kennedy about her affair with Sam Giancana and
JFK got jealous. From this, Davis builds another scaffolding: he now
postulates that Exner was Kennedy’s conduit to the CIA-Mafia plots to kill
Castro (Ibid p. 324). What is breathtaking about this is that this is
something that not even Exner had uttered yet, at least not for
dissemination. And she won’t until her get-together with Kitty Kelley in the
February 1988 cover story for People. This curious passage leads one to think
that Davis may have planted the seed from which the Kelley story sprouted.

To go through the entire Davis book and correct all the errors of fact,
logic, and commentary would literally take another book. But, in line with my
original argument about anti-Kennedy biography, I must point out just two
parts of Davis’ discussion of JFK’s Vietnam policy. The author devotes a
small chapter to this subject. In his hands, Kennedy turns into a hawk on
Vietnam. Davis writes that on July 17, 1963, Kennedy made “his last public
utterance” on Vietnam, saying that the U.S. was going to stay there and win
(p.374). But on September 2, 1963, in his interview with Walter Cronkite,
Kennedy states that the war is the responsibility of “the people of Vietnam,
against the Communists.” In other words, they have to win the war, not
Americans. Davis makes no mention of this. Davis similarly ignores NSAM 111
in which Kennedy refused to admit combat troops into the war, integral to any
escalation plan, and NSAM 263, which ordered a withdrawal to be completed in
1965. This last was published in the New York Times (11/16/63), so Davis
could have easily found it had he been looking.

In light of this selective presentation of the record on Vietnam, plus the
acrobatic contortions performed on the Church Committee report, one has to
wonder about Davis’ intent in doing the book. I question his assertion that
when he began the book he “did not have a clear idea where it would lead.”
(p. 694) So I was not surprised that in addition to expanding Exner’s story,
he uncritically accepted the allegations about Mary Meyer and Marilyn Monroe
(pp. 610-612). As the reader can see, in the three areas outlined at the
beginning of this essay, Davis hit a triple. In all the threads, he has
either held steady or advanced the frontier. It is interesting in this regard
to note that Davis devotes many pages to JFK’s assassination (pp. 436-498).
He writes that Kennedy died at the “hands of Lee Harvey Oswald and possible
co-conspirators” (p. 436). Later, he will write that Sirhan killed Bobby
Kennedy (p. 552). Going even further, he can state that:

It would be a misstatement, then, to assert that Deputy Attorney General
Katzenbach and the members of the Warren Commission...consciously sought to
cover up evidence pertaining to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. (P.
461)

As the declassified record now shows (Probe Vol. 4 #6 “Gerald Ford: Accessory
after the Fact”) this is just plain wrong. Davis then tries to insinuate any
cover-up was brought on by either a backfiring of the Castro plots (Davis p.
454) or JFK’s dalliance with Exner (p. 498). As wrongheaded and against the
declassified record as this seems, this argument still has adherents, e. g.
Martin Waldron and Tom Hartman. They refine it into meaning that the Kennedys
had some kind of secret plan to invade Cuba in the offing at the time of the
assassination. This ignores the Church Committee report, which shows that by
1963, Kennedy had lost faith in aggression and was working toward
accommodation with Castro. It also ignores the facts that JFK would not invade
 Cuba under the tremendous pressures of either the Bay of Pigs debacle, or
the Cuban Missile Crisis in which Bobby backed him on both occasions.
Reportedly, like Davis, Waldron likes to use CIA sources like Bill Colby (Mr.
Phoenix Operation) on JFK’s ideas about assassination. Just as Newman
corrected the Vietnam record in 1992, his long-awaited book Kennedy and Cuba w
ill do much to correct these dubious assertions.

"Liberal" Turncoats:
Collier and Horowitz

The same year that the Davis book appeared, another anti-Kennedy book was
published. It was entitled The Kennedys: An American Drama, and was written
by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. These two were both former editors at
the liberal Ramparts publication. After the magazine folded, both began to
write biographies of famous American families while on their way from the
left to the extreme right. In order, the pair examined the Rockefellers, the
Kennedys, the Fords, and the Roosevelts. As with Davis, it is interesting to
note the difference in their treatments of the Rockefellers (1976) and the
Kennedys (1984). In the earlier book, the authors note toward the end that
they had access to the Rockefeller family archives (p. 636). In another book
of theirs, Destructive Generation, they write that the Rockefeller book began
when the pair were soliciting funds to keep Ramparts afloat (p. 275). This is
how they got in contact with the younger generation of that clan. So when the
magazine fell, they went to work on the family biography with access to
people and papers that no outside, nonofficial authors had before. It is
interesting that, in 1989, the authors wrote that when they started the
Rockefeller book, they were expecting to excavate an “executive committee of
the ruling class” and thereby unlock the key to the American power elite. But
they found that they only ended up writing about American lives (Ibid). They
ended up with that result because that seems to have been the plan all along.
Towards the end of the book, the authors strike a rather wistful note, a sort
of elegy for a once powerful family that is now fading into the background (Th
e Rockefellers, p. 626). This is extraordinary. Consider some of the things
the Rockefellers accomplished in the seventies: they were part of the effort
to quadruple gasoline prices through their oil companies; David Rockefeller
took part in the effort to get the American government to intervene in Chile
in 1973; the Trilateral Commission, which the Rockefellers sponsored,
funneled many of its members into the Carter administration; in 1979, Henry
Kissinger and David Rockefeller convinced Carter to let the Shah of Iran into
the country for medical treatment. The reaction in Iran helped give us
Reagan-Bush. The rest, as they say, is history.

In comparing the two books, one is immediately struck by a difference in
approach. Whatever the shortcomings of the Rockefeller book, there is a
minimal reliance on questionable sources. And the concentration on individual
lives very seldom extends into a pervasive search for sex and scandal. This
difference extends to even the photos chosen for the two books. The
Rockefeller book is fairly conventional with wide or half page group shots or
portraits. In the Kennedy book, even the one page of group shots are tiny
prints. The rest are wallet-sized head shots that when leafed through, give
the impression of mug shots.

The accompanying text is suitable to the photo layout. There seems to me to
be both a macro and micro plan to the book. The overall plan is to make Joe
Kennedy a sort of manipulating overseer to his sons and, at the same time,
make him into a status-seeking iconoclast whose beliefs and sympathies are
contra to those of America. The problem with this is dual. First, it is the
typical “like father, like son” blanket which reeks of guilt, not just by
association, but by birth. Second, the blatant ploy does not stand scrutiny
because what makes John and Robert Kennedy so fascinating is how different the
ir politics and economics were from Joe Kennedy’s and how fast the difference
was exhibited. To use just two examples from JFK’s first term in the House,
Kennedy rejected his father’s isolationist Republican type of foreign policy
and opted for a more internationalist approach when he voted for the Truman
Doctrine and Marshall Plan. Second, Kennedy voted to sustain Truman’s veto of
Taft-Hartley which would weaken unions and strengthen American big
businessmen—people like his father. From there on in, the splits got wider
and wider. It is this father-son dichotomy that none of these books cares to
acknowledge let alone explore—which reveals their intent. (An exception is
the Blairs’ book, which does acknowledge the split on pp. 608-623.)

In their approach to JFK, Collier and Horowitz take up where the Blairs left
off. In fact, they play up the playboy angle even more strongly than the
Blairs. When Kennedy gets to Washington in 1947, this note is immediately
struck with “women’s underthings stuffed into the crevices of the sofa” (p.
189) and a “half-eaten hamburger hidden behind books on the mantel” (Ibid).
The problem here is there is no source given for the first observation and
the hamburger is sourced to none other than CIA-Washington Post crony Joe
Alsop, the man who, as Don Gibson pointed out, talked LBJ into forming the
Warren Commission (Probe Vol. 3 #4 pp. 28-30).

This is typical of the book’s low scholarly standard. Both authors have
advanced degrees from Cal Berkeley. Both had done some solid academic work in
their Ramparts days. Yet neither has any qualms about the Exner or Mary Meyer
stories. In fact they both jump on the Timothy Leary addition to the latter (
p. 355). This tabloid approach allows them to use none other than Kitty
Kelley on Jackie’s reaction to Kennedy’s supposed White House affairs.
Consider the following excerpt based on Kelley:

She knew far more about these goings-on than he ever suspected and dealt with
them through hauteur, as when she disdainfully handed him some panties she’d
found in her pillow slip, saying, “Here, would you find out who these belong
to. They’re not my size. (Ibid)
With this kind of standard I’m surprised the authors did not use that other
ersatz Kelley “bombshell” about Jackie, namely that JFK’s affairs drove her
to electroshock therapy.
Many of the sexual anecdotes go unsourced, but there is one that is footnoted
that is quite revealing. The authors use it as a coda to a chapter on Jack’s
early years in the House. This passage synthesizes the image they wish to
depict: Kennedy as the empty vessel of his father who had his role as
politician forced on him after Joe Junior’s death and who now uses sex as a
release from his own vacuity. It deserves to be quoted at length:

The whole thing with him was pursuit. I think he was secretly disappointed
when a woman gave in. It meant that the low esteem in which he held women was
once again validated....I was one of the few he could really talk
to....During one of these conversations I once asked him why he was doing
it—why he was acting like his father...why he was taking a chance on getting
caught in a scandal.... He took awhile to formulate an answer. Finally he
shrugged and said, “I don’t know, really, I guess I just can’t help it.” He
had this sad expression on his face. He looked like a little boy about to cry
(p. 214)

Pretty strong stuff. What else could the authors ask for but young Jack
confessing to their charge? But perhaps a little too perfect? After
contemplating the words, I thought to myself that JFK was never this open to
his girlfriends. Perhaps maybe Inga Arvad, who he wanted to marry, but very
few others. So I flipped back to see who the source was. The footnote read
“Authors’ interview with Priscilla McMillan.” I then remembered that, by this
time, Priscilla had been classified by the CIA as a “witting collaborator.” I
also recalled that years later, Priscilla changed her “Platonic” relationship
with JFK for the National Enquirer. She was now saying that young Jack had
actually made a pass at her.

With this in mind, it is instructive to note that in Destructive Generation, C
ollier reveals that in 1979 he started lecturing for the United States
Information Agency (p. 275). The USIA has a long, involved association with
the CIA and actually disseminated propaganda for the Warren Commission. The
date of Collier’s work approximates the time when the Kennedy book idea was
originated. Ignoring the shoddy approach and scholarly standards of the work,
the New York Times, Washington Post, and New Republic all gave the book
prominent and glowing reviews. In the latter case, Martin Peretz placed the
book on the August 27, 1984 New Republic cover under the title “Dissolute
Dynasty.” He then got longtime Kennedy basher Midge Decter to write a long
review that branded the saga “a sordid story.” Right after this ecstatic
reception, in 1985, Horowitz and Collier landed a feature story in the Washing
ton Post as “Lefties for Reagan.” Two years later, the pair went on a
USIA-State Department sponsored tour of Nicaragua. This was at a time when
the CIA was dumping millions into that country in a huge psychological and
propaganda war effort. That same year, with lots of foundation money, the
pair arranged a “Second Thoughts” conference in Washington. This was
basically a meeting of “reformed” sixties liberals bent on attacking that
decade and anyone who wished to hold it up as an era of excitement and/or
progressive achievement. Peretz attended that conference. Later, they
sponsored another conference entitled “Second Thoughts on Race in America.”
This might have been called the Washington Post take on race in the eighties
since it featured such Kay Graham-Ben Bradlee employees as Richard Cohen,
Juan Williams, and Joe Klein. Today, these two see themselves as armed guards
protecting America from any renaissance of sixties activism after Reagan.
They are quite open about this and Kennedy’s role in it in Destructive
Generation: “Just as Eisenhower’s holding action in the Fifties led to JFK’s
New Frontier liberalism in the Sixties...so the clamped-down Reaganism of the
Eighties has precipitated the current radical resurgence....” Is one to
conclude that Clinton is a radical? Was the Kennedy book a put-up job to
place them over the top with their right-wing sponsors? Or do they really
find Kitty Kelley credible? Could they really not have known that Priscilla
Johnson McMillan was doing the same thing with Kennedy that she had recently
done with Oswald in her book Marina and Lee? To put it another way: if your
function is to discredit a decade, what better way to do it than to smear the
man most responsible for ushering it in?
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End

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