Max Holland unearths a JFK-related document recently found in Bobby Kennedy’s papers. The story it tells provides a granular look at the workings of President Kennedy’s Cuba policy on the eve of the disaster in Dallas. Read more
Tag Archive for RFK
Judicial Watch lawsuit seeks 7 JFK records in RFK’s papers
Who says the government can’t keep a JFK secret?
Author Max Holland and the watchdog group Judicial Watch sued the National Archives earlier this month for seven records related to the JFK’s assassination that are held in the unreleased papers of Robert F. Kennedy. Like my lawsuit for CIA JFK records, Holland’s complaint shows the government is very capable of keeping JFK secrets.
A Judicial Watch press release has the details. Read more
RFK: CIA director said two people involved in JFK shooting
“I asked him [RFK], perhaps tactlessly, about Oswald. He said that there could be no serious doubt that he was guilty, but there was still argument whether he did it by himself or as part of a larger plot, whether organized by Castro or by gangsters. He said that the FBI thought he had done it by himself, but that McCone thought there were two people involved in the shooting.”
— Arthur Schlesinger writing about a conversation with Robert Kennedy on Dec 5 1963, quoted in Schlesinger’s Journals: 1952-2000, p. 214.
CIA chief told RFK about two shooters in Dallas
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and CIA Director John McCone (photo credit: CIA)
Why did Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy believe that his brother President John F. Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy, as his son recently said?
Did RFK have any evidence for his belief, asked readers of the widespread coverage of RFK Jr.’s comments?
It turns out RFK had it on good authority that two people were involved.
RFK speechwriter on JFK in 2013: Time to ‘marshal ALL of the current evidence”
Adam Walinksy, RFK speechwriter
In the wake of comments by Bobby Kennedy Jr. about what his father thought of his uncle’s assassination, we received this email from Adam Walinsky, who served as Robert Kennedy’s speechwriter from 1964 to 1968:
“I believe the Agency will obfuscate until the end of time (and this means also resistance and obfuscation from its innumerable allies and associates, as well as general defenders of the status quo throughout Washington, New York, etc. etc.).
The only way I can see forward would be to marshal ALL of the current evidence, in effect a second Warren Report rather than a single book; and in this Report to take every aspect to the fullest extent possible, especially the late revelations and semi-confessions of the last few years. Nothing less would be adequate for the huge shift in prospect for our basic understanding of American history and government.”
Walinsky’s plainspoken comments are another sign of how public discussion of the JFK story is changing in 2013.
RFK aide Frank Mankiewicz: “Some sort of conspiracy”
“I came to the conclusion that there was some sort of conspiracy, probably involving the mob, anti-Castro Cuban exiles, and maybe rogue CIA agents.”
– RFK’s press secretary Frank Mankiewicz, quoted in David Talbot’s Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, p. 312.
Fact Check: Were Bobby Kennedy Jr.’s comments about JFK evidence accurate?
RFK Jr.’s claims
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments that his father did not believe that a “lone-gunman” killed his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, have now been covered by all four television networks (CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC), and gone viral on the internet. The remarks marked the first time a Kennedy family member has publicly questioned the official theory that JFK was killed by a lone gunman.
Were RFK Jr.’s remarks factually accurate? Read more
RFK & Jackie to the Soviets: “He [the assassin] did not act alone”
“Perhaps there was only one assassin, but he did not act alone…..Dallas was the ideal location for such a crime.”
– William Walton, a friend of the Kennedys, speaking on behalf of Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy. Walton delivered his message in Moscow to Georgi Bolshakov, who had been a backchannel to the Soviet leadership and was asked to repeat it to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. This incident occurred a week after the assassination.
The story was told first in Timothy Naftali and Alexsandr Furskenko’s One Hell of a Gamble. Naftali is the director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California. The story is also recounted in David Talbot’s Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years.
Bobby Kennedy: “I thought they would get one of us”
“There’s so much bitterness I thought they would get one of us, but Jack, after all he’d been through, never worried about it.”
- Robert Kennedy on the afternoon of JFK’s assassination, according to Justice Dept. spokesman Edwin Guthman, who was with RFK at Hickory Hill (Brothers, by David Talbot, p.4).
The pain of Ethel Kennedy
A new feature length documentary on the wife of Robert F. Kennedy will air in January 2013, a reminder that we will be Read more