Kennedy family:
private understanding, public acquiescence

Robert Kennedy (senior): JFK's brother

 

Robert Kennedy did challenge the Warren Report, privately. In One Hell of a Gamble, Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, inform us that Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy sent William Walton, a close friend of President Kennedy, to Moscow on November 29, 1963 to deliver their analysis of the assassination. Walton told the Soviets that the Kennedys believed the killing of President Kennedy was "the result of a conspiracy." Four days earlier, in fact, the Soviets had come to their own conclusion that Kennedy had been killed by "extremely right-wing elements that did not like his policies, especially his policy toward Cuba."

"By the end of December (1963) KGB analysts had concluded that an anti-Soviet Coup d’etat had occurred."

Publicly, Robert remained silent about the true nature of the killing of his brother because he deferred to the need to maintain domestic tranquility in the face of a high-level conspiracy far more powerful than the Kennedy family.

Vincent Salandria, The Pearson-Steel Thesis ( 2000)

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKsalandria.htm

 

 

https://kennedysandking.com/news-items/the-msm-and-rfk-jr-only-45-years-late-this-time

Sunday, 03 February 2013 14:35
The MSM and RFK Jr.: Only 45 years late this time
Jim DiEugenio reports on how the MSM's Charlie Rose reacted to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s statements concerning his uncle's assassination, and how the filmed interview was subsequently withheld from the public.

The evidence at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Jan. 11, 2013

On the evening of January 11th, Charlie Rose interviewed Robert Kennedy Jr. and his sister Rory in Dallas at the Winspear Opera House. This was part of Mayor Mike Rawlings hand chosen committee's year long program of celebrating the life and presidency of John F. Kennedy. In fact, Rawlings introduced the program. He probably did not like how it turned out, for during this interview Kennedy Jr. said that his father thought the Warren Report was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship" and he was "fairly convinced" that others were involved. Robert Jr. himself thought that the evidence in the JFK case, "…at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman."

To my knowledge, this is the first time that a member of the Kennedy family has stated these sentiments in public. Kennedy Jr. went further and backed up the idea, widely held by many that RFK "publicly supported the Warren Commission report but privately he was dismissive of it." He added "He was a very meticulous attorney. He had gone over reports. He was an expert at examining issues and searching for the truth." ....

The fact that RFK did not buy into the Warren Report, and he only endorsed it in public for political reasons, this has been established for quite some time. In 2007 David Talbot, in his book Brothers, clearly showed that Bobby Kennedy never bought into the Oswald-did-it line. That from the moment he learned of his brother's death he suspected a plot had been behind it. (Click for a review)

He "publicly supported the Warren Commission report but privately he was dismissive of it." He added "He was a very meticulous attorney. He had gone over reports. He was an expert at examining issues and searching for the truth."
RFK, Jr. about his father Robert Kennedy

A decade previous to Talbot, in 1997, Tim Naftali and Aleksandr Fursenko published the fine book, One Hell of a Gamble,a study of the Missile Crisis from the Russian point of view. In that volume, the authors first wrote about William Walton's now famous mission to Moscow in 1964. Walton was ostensibly going as a goodwill ambassador for cultural exchanges, but his real objective was to carry a message to Nikita Khrushchev from Robert and Jackie Kennedy. That message was that, although the American media had jumped on this lone gunman idea, they thought that President Kennedy had been killed by a domestic conspiracy… one that was politically motivated from the rightwing. That because of this assassination, the attempts at détente that Kennedy and Khrushchev had made would now have to be placed on hiatus. Johnson was much too pro-big business to pursue that ideal. Therefore, RFK would soon resign. When he became president, the effort at reconciliation would then continue. (Talbot, p. 12)

However, way before that book, there had been instances during Jim Garrison's inquiry into the Kennedy assassination that indicated Robert Kennedy was quite interested in what the New Orleans DA was uncovering. In this author's current book, Destiny Betrayed (Second Edition) I note an instance where RFK was in California staying at a friend's house in 1968. Family friend Mort Sahl was also there. That night, Sahl had to leave for a performance. When he got back, his then wife told him that RFK peppered her with questions about what Garrison was digging up. (Sahl was working for Garrison.) Richard Lubic, a campaign worker for Bobby Kennedy in 1968 told another Garrison investigator, Bill Turner, that RFK said that if he were elected president, he would like to reopen the Warren Commission inquiry. (Talbot, p. 359) In Harold Weisberg's original manuscript of Oswald in New Orleans, he wrote about being in contact with someone in Bobby Kennedy's 1968 campaign. He communicated to Weisberg that RFK had real doubts about the Warren Commission. Weisberg told his contact if this were the case RFK should voice his concerns in public, making sure he would not be assassinated because of his belief. After Bobby was killed, Weisberg wrote that never was a seer less happy with the fulfillment of his prophecy.

Jackie Kennedy, JFK's wife

1963 trip of family friend - Timothy Naftali book uncovered this, puzzled because the public comments of the family supported the "lone gunman" claim

Senator Ted Kennedy, JFK's brother

At the end of his life, Ted Kennedy published a book "True Compass" where he claimed to believe in the Warren Commission. But long before then the gap between the public statements of the family and their private understanding had been well documented. It is sad this man went to his grave never saying what he really knew. It is hard to know precisely the reason for this self-censorship but it is likely that fear for the safety of family members is at least a partial explanation.

Robert Kennedy Jr., JFK's nephew

www.orbisbooks.com/jfk-and-the-unspeakable.html

"In JFK and the Unspeakable Jim Douglass has distilled all the best available research into a very well-documented and convincing portrait of President Kennedy's transforming turn to peace, at the cost of his life. Personally, it has made a very big impact on me. After reading it in Dallas, I was moved for the first time to visit Dealey Plaza. I urge all Americans to read this book and come to their own conclusions about why he died and why -- after fifty years -- it still matters."
-- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

 

www.orbisbooks.com/a-monthly-letter-from-orbis-books-editor-robert-ellsberg.html

This statement is itself historic: the first time any member of the Kennedy family has publicly endorsed a book that attributes President Kennedy's assassination to a conspiracy involving the military-intelligence establishment of the U.S. government. But what sets Douglass's book apart from the many treatments of Kennedy's assassination is his methodical case for the reasons behind it: to thwart the President's extraordinary turn toward peace, especially his back-channel negotiations with Nikita Khrushchev to dismantle the Cold War. So, elements of his own government viewed the President as a dangerous traitor, one to be eliminated.
Only by remembering this story can we take up the challenge that Kennedy left unfinished—the challenge to make peace our legacy for generations yet unborn.

 

https://kennedysandking.com/reviews/robert-f-kennedy-jr-american-values-lessons-i-learned-from-my-family

Monday, 11 June 2018 21:04
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family
Written by Edward Curtin

As reviewer Edward Curtin opines: when a truthful, beautifully written and moving book published by a major house is shunned by mainstream book reviewers, one can fairly well guess the book has touched a sore spot which the corporate media would prefer not to expose to the public. So it is with this courageous memoir by RFK's son and namesake.

When a book as fascinating, truthful, beautifully written, and politically significant as American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family, written by a very well-known author by the name of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and published by a prominent publisher (HarperCollins), is boycotted by mainstream book reviewers, you know it is an important book and has touched a nerve that the corporate mainstream media wish to anesthetize by eschewal. ....

.... the writer, now a 64-year-old-man, but then a 14- year-old-boy, named after his look-alike father, the father who supported and encouraged him despite his difficulties in school, the father who took the son on all kinds of outdoor adventures—sailing, white water canoeing, mountain climbing—always reminding him to "always do what you are afraid to do" and which the son understood to be "boot camp for the ultimate virtue—moral courage. Despite his high regard for physical bravery, my father told us that moral courage is the rarer and more valuable commodity." Such compelling, heartfelt writing, with not a word about who might have killed his father, would be another reason why the mainstream press would review this book.

It is the heart of this book that has the reviewers avoiding it like the plague, perhaps a plague introduced by a little mockingbird. [Mark's note: "Mockingbird" was a CIA nickname for their manipulation of the media]

American Values revolves around the long war between the Kennedys and the CIA that resulted in the deaths of JFK and RFK. All the other chapters, while very interesting personal and family history, pale in importance.

No member of the Kennedy family since JFK or RFK has dared to say what RFK, Jr. does in this book. He indicts the CIA.

While some news outlets have mentioned the book in passing because of its assertion of what has been known for a long time to historically aware people—that RFK immediately suspected that the CIA was involved in the assassination of JFK—Robert Jr.'s writing on the war between the CIA and his Uncle Jack and father is so true and so carefully based on the best scholarship and family records that the picture he paints fiercely indicts the CIA in multiple ways while also indicting the mass media that have been its mouthpieces. These sections of the book are masterful lessons in understanding the history and machinations of "The Agency" that the superb writer and researcher, Douglass Valentine, calls "organized crime"—the CIA. A careful reading of RFK Jr.'s critical history leads to the conclusion that the CIA and the Mafia are not two separate murderer's rows, but one organization that has corrupted the country at the deepest levels and is, as Kennedy quotes his father Robert—"a dark force infiltrating American politics and business, unseen by the public, and out of reach of democracy and the justice system"—posing "a greater threat to our country than any foreign enemy." The CIA's covert operations branch has grown so powerful that it feels free to murder its opponents at home and abroad and make sure "splendid little wars" are continually waged around the globe for the interests of its patrons. Robert Jr. says, "A permanent state of war abroad and a national security surveillance state at home are in the institutional self-interest of the CIA's clandestine services."

No Kennedy has dared speak like this since Senator Robert Kennedy last did so—but privately—and paid the price. His son tells us:

Days before his murder, as my father pulled ahead in the California polls, he began considering how he would govern the country. According to his aide Fred Dutton, his concerns often revolved around the very question that his brother asked at the outset of his presidency, 'What are we going to do about the CIA?' Days before the California primary, seated next to journalist Pete Hamill on his campaign plane, my father mused aloud about his options. 'I have to decide whether to eliminate the operations arm of the Agency or what the hell to do with it,' he told Hamill. 'We can't have those cowboys wandering around and shooting people and doing all those unauthorized things.'

Then he was shot dead.

For whatever their reasons, for fifty-plus years the Kennedy family has kept silent on these matters. Now Senator Robert Kennedy's namesake has picked up his father's mantle and dared to tell truths that take courage to utter. By excoriating the secret forces that seized power, first with the murder of his Uncle Jack when he was a child, and then his father, he has exhibited great moral courage and made great enemies who wish to ignore his words as if they were never uttered. But they have been. They sit between the covers of this outstanding and important book, a book written with wit and eloquence, a book that should be read by any American who wants to know what has happened to their country.

 

www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/john-f-kennedys-vision-of-peace-20131120

John F. Kennedy's Vision of Peace
On the 50th anniversary of JFK's death, his nephew recalls the fallen president's attempts to halt the war machine

By ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
November 20, 2013 12:30 PM ET

JFK's great concerns seem more relevant than ever: the dangers of nuclear proliferation, the notion that empire is inconsistent with a republic and that corporate domination of our democracy at home is the partner of imperial policies abroad. He understood the perils to our Constitution from a national-security state and mistrusted zealots and ideologues. He thought other nations ought to fight their own civil wars and choose their own governments and not ask the U.S. to do it for them. Yet the world he imagined and fought for has receded so far below the horizon that it's no longer even part of the permissible narrative inside the Beltway or in the mainstream press. Critics who endeavor to debate the survival of American democracy within the national-security state risk marginalization as crackpots and kooks. His greatest, most heroic aspirations for a peaceful, demilitarized foreign policy are the forbidden­ debates of the modern political era.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, JFK's niece

is one of two members of the Kennedy family to sign the 2018 call for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X. She was Lieutenant Governor of Maryland for two terms from 1995 to 2003, and then lost an election for Governor in 2002.

Christopher Lawford, JFK's nephew

nephew of JFK (mother was Patricia Kennedy Lawford, JFK's sister)
in public - we accept the official story
in private to a JFK researcher - I read as much as I can about this!
had been at an event about overcoming addiction

Kerry Kennedy McCarthy: spoke at the 2013 JFK Lancer conference.

 

https://kennedysandking.com/news-items/the-msm-and-rfk-jr-only-45-years-late-this-time

The MSM and RFK Jr.: Only 45 years Late this Time

by Jim DiEugenio
2/3/2013

Further demonstrating how only in the MSM can the fairy tale exist that RFK and the Kennedy family abided by the Warren Commission, consider the words of Kennedy cousin Kerry McCarthy to Debra Conway in 1997. McCarthy was a speaker at Lancer's November in Dallas conference. She told Conway that, whatever the Kennedys say in public about the JFK murder, when you visit their homes, you will see several of the JFK assassination books lining their shelves.

 

www.jfklancer.com/Dallas2013/speakers.html#Kerry%20McCarthy
Kathleen (Kerry) McCarthy
John F. Kennedy's Cousin

Kathleen Mary McCarthy, named for mother Marylou's beloved cousin Kathleen (Kick) Kennedy Harrington, is an acknowledged historian of the Kennedy Family lineage. She is the owner and curator of the Loretta Kennedy Connelly Collection. She has been a source for most major published biographies on the Kennedy family. She has appeared in a myriad of documentaries produced and aired both in America and Europe. Her research has been used for over 4 decades by the JFK Presidential Library. She is a published author with articles on Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, and has done research for The New England Genealogical Society. Kerry is a governmental affairs and public relations consultant. For over thirty years she has also been a radio and television host and reporter in Florida.

Kerry has attended and spoken at many JFK Lancer Conferences and joins us again after some years of absence for the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of her cousin John F. Kennedy's death.

 

Kerry Kennedy McCarthy, JFK Lancer 11-22-1997 DALLAS, TEXAS
www.jfklancer.com/Kerry.html
KERRY McCARTHY'S SPEECH AT JFK LANCER AWARDS BANQUET

a crime referred too often to as the "crime of the century." Perhaps what is truly is the crime of the century is that Jack Kennedy was taken from us, and our world became more crime- ridden.
....

We are a generation ill at ease with ourselves. Unsure of ourselves. And we represent a country of people my age that have been lost since he was taken from us. In admitting that, one has to admit that indeed his loss was important enough to change the life and the history of a nation. That is a very heavy statement, and one that would have made Jack Kennedy himself very nervous.
....

This assassination work has become a tribute, in effect, to his life - and I am keenly aware of that. He loved history and he loved literature. And you, too, through your work, I feel sure we would have his appreciation for the research that you do to bring history into focus and to present that history into factual terms. If Jack Kennedy had not have gone into politics he would have remained a writer. He would have continued a career in literature. And to see those of you publishing your ideas and your thoughts and your theories in an event such as this I think is a fine tribute to a man who inspired people to think - but a man who worshiped ideas. His own Profiles In Courage told us of people who got into positions who were scared - the most remarkable thing they did was to not quit. And I urge you tonight: Do not quit in the work that you do. For we need you.

I see the parallels of the work that you present. And I see the friendships that have developed listening to some of you in the hall greeting one another. For you have a life that is unknown to many of us. You have a life filled with facts and figures, trajectories and understanding of facts that we have not been privy to. Even though in hushed tones in my family scenarios have been discussed and rumors have been flowing. There were times when Bobby's depression and sadness over his brother's death brought out conversations--perhaps feelings of guilt. So I may know things said and overheard by a child that may be different from that you know. But what we all know is: None of us know it all yet.

There is destined to be doubt in America. And even if the truth is ever told - from the animation and the program that was presented this morning to the discussions that resulted in three days of work - we will probably not even know the truth when it is presented to us because we have for so long wondered if it would ever be given to us. But the truth is that the work that you do - that the truth that you know is important even if there are varying ideas, even if there is a dissention of agreement. The truth that you know is that you care. His death was not an act of anger. It was a premeditated murder of our nation's leader. Motivated for very specific reasons and benefiting those that ordered it. The people of this nation know that. And they still hope for answers. They are a trusting lot, and we are part of that group.

My sister, Cheryl, whose career is in the medical world, often compares what happened to this country on November 22nd to the shock and trauma of war experiences - and now I wonder if perhaps she isn't more correct then I realize. Because our nation does seem to have been in a state similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Look at our society. Mary and I spoke of it earlier. Courtesy is hard to find. Civility is almost impossible to find. We see the symptoms of detachment and inability to develop relationships with others. A depression, distress, and sometimes even a feeling of helplessness which has led our country to manifest these problems into anger, and violence, and self-centered behavior whose only indication is self-concern.

I believe, as my sister first stated to me a few years ago, that our belief system was destroyed in front of our eyes. We must take it back and the one thing you can believe in is yourself. Jack's death never took us away from us. It only took him away. It took away the role of a government that most of you were raised to trust. Your responsibility was to be citizens who met the criteria of citizenship: decent, caring, honest. The type of people grew up in this room where doors were unlocked, and Jack's death was more of a death knell to that lifestyle then even to his own life.

John Kennedy Schlossberg (grandson)

www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/opinion/jfks-legacy-as-seen-by-his-grandson.html

From J.F.K.’s Grandson
Published: December 2, 2011
To the Editor:

As a young man inspired by politics and history who has spent time studying the Kennedy administration, I take issue with Ross Douthat’s Nov. 27 column, “The Enduring Cult of Kennedy,” about President John F. Kennedy, my grandfather.

Mr. Douthat suggests that President Kennedy was a “near disaster.” He criticizes Kennedy on civil rights; Kennedy was the first president to deem civil rights “a moral issue,” and applied federal authority to force desegregation.

The president described as “famously hawkish” resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis peacefully. Mr. Douthat does not mention what President Kennedy called his proudest accomplishment: the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Contrary to what Mr. Douthat asserts about the Vietnam War, in 1963, at American University, Kennedy stated that America would never start a war. Many who served in his administration, including Ted Sorensen and McGeorge Bundy, long argued that my grandfather would have never invaded Vietnam as Lyndon B. Johnson did.

Finally, I take issue with Mr. Douthat’s condescending view of the American people. He suggests that Americans who admire President Kennedy — and as Mr. Douthat points out, the majority of Americans rank him among our best presidents — do not understand their own history.

Instead, I suggest that President Kennedy’s legacy remains relevant today not because of Camelot or conspiracy, but because Americans find inspiration and meaning there.

JOHN KENNEDY SCHLOSSBERG

A version of this letter appeared in print on December 3, 2011, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: From J.F.K.’s Grandson.