TIME MAGAZINE
Thursday, Jun. 21, 2007
The Kennedy Assassination: Was There a Conspiracy?By David Talbot & Vincent Bugliosi
Yes.
On Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, Robert F. Kennedy—J.F.K.'s younger brother, Attorney General and devoted watchman—was eating lunch at Hickory Hill, his Virginia home, when he got the news from Dallas. It was his archenemy, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, of all people, who phoned to tell him. "The President's been shot," Hoover curtly said. Bobby later recalled, "I think he told me with pleasure."
For the rest of the day and night, Bobby Kennedy would wrestle with his howling grief while using whatever power was still left him to figure out what really happened in Dallas—before the new Administration settled firmly into place under the command of another political enemy, Lyndon Johnson. While the Attorney General's aides summoned federal Marshals to surround R.F.K.'s estate (they no longer trusted the Secret Service or the FBI)—uncertain of whether the President's brother would be the next target—Bobby feverishly gathered information. He worked the phones at Hickory Hill, talking to people who had been in the presidential motorcade; he conferred with a succession of government officials and aides while waiting for Air Force One to return with the body of his brother; he accompanied his brother's remains to the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he took steps to take control of medical evidence, including the President's brain; and he stayed coiled and awake in the White House until early the next morning. Lit up with the clarity of shock, the electricity of adrenaline, he constructed the outlines of the crime. Bobby Kennedy would become America's first J.F.K. assassination-conspiracy theorist.
The President's brother quickly concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, had not acted alone. And Bobby immediately suspected the CIA's secret war on Fidel Castro as the source of the plot. At his home that Friday afternoon, Bobby confronted CIA Director John McCone, asking him point-blank whether the agency had killed J.F.K. (McCone denied it.) Later, R.F.K. ordered aides to explore a possible Mafia connection to the crime. And in a revealing phone conversation with Harry Ruiz-Williams, a trusted friend in the anti-Castro movement, Kennedy said bluntly, "One of your guys did it." Though the CIA and the FBI were already working strenuously to portray Oswald as a communist agent, Bobby Kennedy rejected this view. Instead, he concluded Oswald was a member of the shadowy operation that was seeking to overthrow Castro.
Bobby knew that a dark alliance—the CIA, the Mafia and militant Cuban exiles—had formed to assassinate Castro and force a regime change in Havana. That's because President Kennedy had given his brother the Cuban portfolio after the CIA's Bay of Pigs fiasco. But Bobby, who would begin some days by dropping by the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Va., on his way to the Justice Department, never managed to get fully in control of the agency's sprawling, covert war on Castro. Now, he suspected, this underground world—where J.F.K. was despised for betraying the anti-Castro cause—had spawned his brother's assassination.
As Kennedy slowly emerged from his torment over Dallas and resumed an active role in public life—running for U.S. Senator from New York in 1964 and then President in 1968—he secretly investigated his brother's assassination. He traveled to Mexico City, where he gathered information about Oswald's mysterious trip there before Dallas. He met with conspiracy researcher Penn Jones Jr., a crusading Texas newspaperman, in his Senate office. He returned to the Justice Department with his ace investigator Walter Sheridan to paw through old files. He dispatched trusted associates to New Orleans to report to him on prosecutor Jim Garrison's controversial reopening of the case. Kennedy told confidants that he himself would reopen the investigation into the assassination if he won the presidency, believing it would take the full powers of the office to do so. As Kennedy adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once observed, no one of his era knew more than Bobby about "the underground streams through which so much of the actuality of American power darkly coursed: the FBI, CIA, the racketeering unions and the Mob." But when it came to his brother's murder, Bobby never got a chance to prove his case.
No.
I have found there are 32 separate reasons for concluding there was no conspiracy. Here are just a few of them:
After 44 years of investigation by thousands of researchers, not one speck of credible evidence has ever surfaced that groups such as the CIA, organized crime or the military-industrial complex were behind the assassination, only that they each had a motive. And when there is no evidence of guilt, that fact, by itself, is very strong evidence of innocence. Moreover, the very thought of members of the military-industrial complex (Joint Chiefs of Staff, captains of industry) or the CIA or organized crime actually plotting to murder the President of the U.S. is surreal, the type of thing that only belongs, if at all, in a Robert Ludlum novel.
I have found 53 pieces of evidence that point irresistibly to Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt. For example, the murder weapon was Oswald's; he was the only employee who fled the Texas School Book Depository after the shooting in Dealey Plaza; 45 min. later, he killed Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit; 30 min. after that, he resisted arrest and pulled his gun on the arresting officer. What's more, during his interrogation, Oswald's efforts to construct a defense—which included denying that he owned the rifle in question (or any rifle at all)—turned out to be a string of provable lies, all of which show an unmistakable consciousness of guilt. Only in a fantasy world can you have 53 pieces of evidence against you and still be innocent. Conspiracy theorists are stuck with this reality.
Even assuming that the CIA or Mob or military-industrial complex decided "Let's murder President Kennedy," Oswald would be among the last people in the world those organizations would choose for the job. Oswald was not an expert shot and owned only a $12 mail-order rifle—both of which automatically disqualify him as a hit man. He was also a notoriously unreliable and emotionally unstable misfit who tried to commit suicide by slashing his wrists when the Soviets denied him the citizenship he sought. If the Mafia leaders, for instance, decided to kill the President of the U.S.—an act that would result in a retaliation against them of unprecedented proportions if they were discovered to be behind it—wouldn't they use a very professional, tight-lipped assassin who had a successful track record with them, someone in whom they had the highest confidence? Would they rely on someone like Oswald to commit the biggest murder in American history?
But let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that the CIA or Mob decided to kill Kennedy and also decided that Oswald should do the job. It still doesn't make any sense. After Oswald shot Kennedy and left the book depository, one of two things would have happened, the less likely of which is that a car would have been waiting for him to help him escape down to Mexico or wherever. The conspirators certainly wouldn't want their killer to be apprehended and interrogated by the authorities. But the more likely thing by far is that the car would have driven Oswald to his death. Instead, we know that Oswald was out on the street with $13 in his pockets, attempting to flag down buses and cabs. What does that fact, alone, tell you?
Three people can keep a secret but only if two are dead. Yet we are asked to believe that in 44 years, not one word of the vast alleged conspiracy, not one syllable, has ever leaked out. Additionally, the motorcade route in Dallas, which took the President right beneath Oswald's window, wasn't even selected until Nov. 18, just four days before the assassination. Surely no rational person can believe a group like the CIA or the Mob would hatch its conspiracy with Oswald to kill Kennedy within only four days of the President's trip to Dallas.
To this day, the overwhelming majority of the American people (75%) have bought into the conspiracy idea. Their reasons vary widely: general mistrust of government; the desire to imbue Kennedy's death with deeper meaning than a random act of violence or a simple relish for intrigue. Despite the total lack of evidence, the story of a J.F.K. assassination conspiracy has captivated the nation for the past half-century and is likely to do so for many years to come.
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10 Persistent Kennedy Assassination Theories
By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer | November 20, 2013 04:35pm ET
http://www.livescience.com/41382-top-kennedy-assassination-conspiracies.html
On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy died in Dallas, Texas, the victim of a shot through the head that rung out as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza. The spot, marked with a white X, became the birthplace of dozens of conspiracy theories.
The Warren Commission's investigation of the JFK assassination, commissioned by Lyndon B. Johnson in the months following Kennedy's death, determined that the killer was a former U.S. Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, who fired three shots from the Texas School Book Depository along the motorcade route.
But many Americans aren't buying it. Polls suggest that since the assassination, most people disbelieve the "lone gunman" theory. According to Gallup, 52 percent of Americans believed the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy in the week after the president's death. The number reached 81 percent in both the 1970s and 1990s.
As of 2013, 61 percent think more than one person killed Kennedy. And Kennedy conspiracy beliefs aren't just held by average Joes and Janes: The U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations argued in 1978 that more than one gunman was present that day, and this month, Secretary of State John Kerry told NBC's "Meet the Press" that he has "serious doubts" that Oswald acted alone.
So if Americans don't think Oswald acted alone, whom do they blame for Kennedy's death? Here is a sampling of popular Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.
The Mafia
A few days before the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, 13 percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters they believed the Mafia was behind the killing.
The Mafia conspiracy theory typically centers on New Orleans mobster Carlos Marcello, who was deported to Guatemala after Kennedy came to office and charged his brother, Robert, with tackling organized crime as the U.S. Attorney General. After Marcello made his way back to the United States (there's an apocryphal story of him slogging through the jungle in alligator shoes), he allegedly made threats against thepresident. He also allegedly made a jailhouse confession of the crime to an FBI informant. Mafia conspiracy believers point to Lee Harvey Oswald's trip to New Orleans prior to the assassination, as well as to the mob ties of Oswald's killer Jack Ruby.
The government
Or did the government do it? Thirteen percent of Kennedy conspiracy believers think so, according to Gallup. It's not entirely clear who these believers consider to be "the government," as a number of theories involve government agents.
One popular accusation, cited by 1 percent of Gallup respondents: Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's vice president, ordered the deed. According to the book "The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ" (Skyhorse Publishing, 2013) by libertarian political activist Roger Stone, Kennedy's successor murdered not only Kennedy, but also several others on his path to political power. Most believers of this theory say that LBJ had the motivation — a desire for the presidency — and that he worked with a shadowy cabal of co-conspirators. Supposedly, Johnson hated Kennedy and feared being dropped from the 1964 presidential campaign ticket.
"It's very important to understand that Johnson was merely the linchpin of the conspiracy that I believe involved the CIA," Stone told the Voice of Russia.
The CIA
Ah, the CIA! Seven percent of conspiracy-loving Americans blame the Central Intelligence Agency for Kennedy's death. The theory was perhaps even more popular in the 1960s and 1970s, as Americans became aware that the CIA really had plotted to assassinate Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem (successfully) and Cuba's Fidel Castro (unsuccessfully). After the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961, Kennedy and the CIA were on rough terms, leading conspiracy-minded individuals to suspect the CIA retaliated by having the president killed.
CIA conspiracies often overlap with mob conspiracies because of revelations that the agency worked with organized crime on its Castro schemes.
Fidel Castro
But what about Castro himself? He certainly had reason to be unhappy with the Kennedy administration: The CIA was plotting to kill him, after all, and had trained Cuban exiles to attempt to overthrow his communist government in the fumbled Bay of Pigs Invasion.
LBJ himself subscribed to this conspiracy theory. On two separate occasions, in 1968 and 1969, he said in interviews that he thought Castro had been behind the assassination. For his part, Castro denied the allegations, calling the idea "absolute insanity" in a 1977 interview. Having the U.S. president killed would have been too dangerous for Cuba, as the United States would surely retaliate, Castro said.
Nevertheless, today, 5 percent of Americans believe Cuba was behind the assassination, Gallup found.
Anti-Castro Cubans
While some conspiracy theorists implicate Castro in Kennedy's death, others blame Castro's enemies. (A lot of people had possible motives, it seems.)
Cuban exiles who hoped to reclaim their homeland from Castro's communist government had their hopes dashed when the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion failed. Some blamed Kennedy for botching the operation. The House Select Committee on Assassinations spurred on this theory in their 1979 report, which said that individual angry Cuban exiles may have been in on the plot.
Political Components
Five percent of Americans who believe in a JFK conspiracy today think unnamed political opponents had Kennedy shot, and another 5 percent say unknown special interest groups were responsible. Some are more specific, according to Gallup's recent polling: Two percent blame big business or Big Oil (Dallas being in petroleum-loving Texas); 1 percent say labor unions or Teamsters were behind the assassination, and another 1 percent say right-wing political operatives are to blame. Three percent blame the Ku Klux Klan or other racist groups.
In 2010, the KKK theory got a boost from a former FBI agent named Don Adams, who claimed that Florida radical Joseph Adams Milteer told an informant in 1963 that a plot to kill the president was in the works. Like just about everyone with an opinion on the JFK assassination, Adams has written a book about his theory, "From an Office Building with a High-Powered Rifle: One FBI Agent's View of the JFK Assassination" (Trine Day, 2012).
On the other hand, a full perusal of Milteer's allegedly prescient remarks about the shooting reveals his "foreknowledge" may have been more bluster than not: Milteer talks of presidential look-alikes and an assassination at the White House, and his description of a possible sniper assassination plot is vague and generic.
Russia
Lee Harvey Oswald was a defector to the Soviet Union. He lived in the USSR from 1959 to 1962. According to some conspiracy believers, he was brainwashed or simply recruited to assassinate the president during this time.
The Soviet conspiracy's motivation is said to be Nikita Khrushchev's anger at having to remove weapons from Cuba in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In 2007, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, a defector from Romania, wrote a book claiming the KGB plotted to assassinate a number of world leaders, including Kennedy. Adding to the intrigue, Oswald visited the Russian embassy in Mexico in the weeks leading up to the assassination.
Of course, an attack traced back to Russia would have risked nuclear war, leading some skeptics to dump this theory.
The military-industrial complex
Could the war in Vietnam have indirectly caused Kennedy's death? One percent of American conspiracy believers think so, Gallup reports.
According to the military-industrial complex conspiracy theory, Kennedy intended to pull the U.S. military out of Vietnam. Shadowy forces in the military, resenting the impending decision, had him killed. Oliver Stone's popular conspiracy film "JFK" (1991) pushes this theory, arguing that Kennedy's assassination was a military coup designed to put the war-friendly Johnson in office. [10 Most Outrageous Military Experiments]
After JFK's death, however, his brother Robert told reporters that Kennedy had no intention of pulling out of Vietnam, and historians are uncertain how the Vietnam War would have turned out with Kennedy at the helm.
The Secret Service
It's the ultimate inside job: The Secret Service, tasked with protecting the president, ensures his death instead ... the theory goes.
About 1 percent of conspiracy believers polled by Gallup in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the assassination blamed the Secret Service for killing Kennedy. According to this theory, anti-Kennedy agents in the Service had no interest in protecting him from shots. Conspiracy theorists also find it suspicious that certain security measures, such as agents near the rear bumper of the car, weren't in place that day in Dallas.
Both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations cleared the Secret Service, but the House committee determined the agents were deficient in their duties.
I dunno, just somebody
Forty percent of Americans who blamed a conspiracy for killing Kennedy had no particular sense of who was behind the plot, according to Gallup's November 2013 poll. This large number of uncertain people may reflect a few factors. Dissatisfaction with the official story is probably one. The difficulty of sifting through dozens of potentially plausible villains is likely another.
A third factor, however, may simply be that the JFK assassination has taken on a life of its own. Conspiracy theory chatter begets conspiracy theory books begets conspiracy theory movies begets more chatter, books and movies debunking all of the above. Eventually, the idea that something secretive happened becomes almost enshrined in the culture.
"If you're living in this culture, you know it's not unreasonable for you to say 'well, everyone's talking about it,'" University of Miami political scientist Joe Uscinski told LiveScience. "And a lot of our beliefs are based on 'Everyone's talking about it.'"
By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer | November 20, 2013 04:35pm ET
http://www.livescience.com/41382-top-kennedy-assassination-conspiracies.html
On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy died in Dallas, Texas, the victim of a shot through the head that rung out as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza. The spot, marked with a white X, became the birthplace of dozens of conspiracy theories.
The Warren Commission's investigation of the JFK assassination, commissioned by Lyndon B. Johnson in the months following Kennedy's death, determined that the killer was a former U.S. Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, who fired three shots from the Texas School Book Depository along the motorcade route.
But many Americans aren't buying it. Polls suggest that since the assassination, most people disbelieve the "lone gunman" theory. According to Gallup, 52 percent of Americans believed the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy in the week after the president's death. The number reached 81 percent in both the 1970s and 1990s.
As of 2013, 61 percent think more than one person killed Kennedy. And Kennedy conspiracy beliefs aren't just held by average Joes and Janes: The U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations argued in 1978 that more than one gunman was present that day, and this month, Secretary of State John Kerry told NBC's "Meet the Press" that he has "serious doubts" that Oswald acted alone.
So if Americans don't think Oswald acted alone, whom do they blame for Kennedy's death? Here is a sampling of popular Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.
The Mafia
A few days before the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, 13 percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters they believed the Mafia was behind the killing.
The Mafia conspiracy theory typically centers on New Orleans mobster Carlos Marcello, who was deported to Guatemala after Kennedy came to office and charged his brother, Robert, with tackling organized crime as the U.S. Attorney General. After Marcello made his way back to the United States (there's an apocryphal story of him slogging through the jungle in alligator shoes), he allegedly made threats against thepresident. He also allegedly made a jailhouse confession of the crime to an FBI informant. Mafia conspiracy believers point to Lee Harvey Oswald's trip to New Orleans prior to the assassination, as well as to the mob ties of Oswald's killer Jack Ruby.
The government
Or did the government do it? Thirteen percent of Kennedy conspiracy believers think so, according to Gallup. It's not entirely clear who these believers consider to be "the government," as a number of theories involve government agents.
One popular accusation, cited by 1 percent of Gallup respondents: Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's vice president, ordered the deed. According to the book "The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ" (Skyhorse Publishing, 2013) by libertarian political activist Roger Stone, Kennedy's successor murdered not only Kennedy, but also several others on his path to political power. Most believers of this theory say that LBJ had the motivation — a desire for the presidency — and that he worked with a shadowy cabal of co-conspirators. Supposedly, Johnson hated Kennedy and feared being dropped from the 1964 presidential campaign ticket.
"It's very important to understand that Johnson was merely the linchpin of the conspiracy that I believe involved the CIA," Stone told the Voice of Russia.
The CIA
Ah, the CIA! Seven percent of conspiracy-loving Americans blame the Central Intelligence Agency for Kennedy's death. The theory was perhaps even more popular in the 1960s and 1970s, as Americans became aware that the CIA really had plotted to assassinate Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem (successfully) and Cuba's Fidel Castro (unsuccessfully). After the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961, Kennedy and the CIA were on rough terms, leading conspiracy-minded individuals to suspect the CIA retaliated by having the president killed.
CIA conspiracies often overlap with mob conspiracies because of revelations that the agency worked with organized crime on its Castro schemes.
Fidel Castro
But what about Castro himself? He certainly had reason to be unhappy with the Kennedy administration: The CIA was plotting to kill him, after all, and had trained Cuban exiles to attempt to overthrow his communist government in the fumbled Bay of Pigs Invasion.
LBJ himself subscribed to this conspiracy theory. On two separate occasions, in 1968 and 1969, he said in interviews that he thought Castro had been behind the assassination. For his part, Castro denied the allegations, calling the idea "absolute insanity" in a 1977 interview. Having the U.S. president killed would have been too dangerous for Cuba, as the United States would surely retaliate, Castro said.
Nevertheless, today, 5 percent of Americans believe Cuba was behind the assassination, Gallup found.
Anti-Castro Cubans
While some conspiracy theorists implicate Castro in Kennedy's death, others blame Castro's enemies. (A lot of people had possible motives, it seems.)
Cuban exiles who hoped to reclaim their homeland from Castro's communist government had their hopes dashed when the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion failed. Some blamed Kennedy for botching the operation. The House Select Committee on Assassinations spurred on this theory in their 1979 report, which said that individual angry Cuban exiles may have been in on the plot.
Political Components
Five percent of Americans who believe in a JFK conspiracy today think unnamed political opponents had Kennedy shot, and another 5 percent say unknown special interest groups were responsible. Some are more specific, according to Gallup's recent polling: Two percent blame big business or Big Oil (Dallas being in petroleum-loving Texas); 1 percent say labor unions or Teamsters were behind the assassination, and another 1 percent say right-wing political operatives are to blame. Three percent blame the Ku Klux Klan or other racist groups.
In 2010, the KKK theory got a boost from a former FBI agent named Don Adams, who claimed that Florida radical Joseph Adams Milteer told an informant in 1963 that a plot to kill the president was in the works. Like just about everyone with an opinion on the JFK assassination, Adams has written a book about his theory, "From an Office Building with a High-Powered Rifle: One FBI Agent's View of the JFK Assassination" (Trine Day, 2012).
On the other hand, a full perusal of Milteer's allegedly prescient remarks about the shooting reveals his "foreknowledge" may have been more bluster than not: Milteer talks of presidential look-alikes and an assassination at the White House, and his description of a possible sniper assassination plot is vague and generic.
Russia
Lee Harvey Oswald was a defector to the Soviet Union. He lived in the USSR from 1959 to 1962. According to some conspiracy believers, he was brainwashed or simply recruited to assassinate the president during this time.
The Soviet conspiracy's motivation is said to be Nikita Khrushchev's anger at having to remove weapons from Cuba in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In 2007, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, a defector from Romania, wrote a book claiming the KGB plotted to assassinate a number of world leaders, including Kennedy. Adding to the intrigue, Oswald visited the Russian embassy in Mexico in the weeks leading up to the assassination.
Of course, an attack traced back to Russia would have risked nuclear war, leading some skeptics to dump this theory.
The military-industrial complex
Could the war in Vietnam have indirectly caused Kennedy's death? One percent of American conspiracy believers think so, Gallup reports.
According to the military-industrial complex conspiracy theory, Kennedy intended to pull the U.S. military out of Vietnam. Shadowy forces in the military, resenting the impending decision, had him killed. Oliver Stone's popular conspiracy film "JFK" (1991) pushes this theory, arguing that Kennedy's assassination was a military coup designed to put the war-friendly Johnson in office. [10 Most Outrageous Military Experiments]
After JFK's death, however, his brother Robert told reporters that Kennedy had no intention of pulling out of Vietnam, and historians are uncertain how the Vietnam War would have turned out with Kennedy at the helm.
The Secret Service
It's the ultimate inside job: The Secret Service, tasked with protecting the president, ensures his death instead ... the theory goes.
About 1 percent of conspiracy believers polled by Gallup in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the assassination blamed the Secret Service for killing Kennedy. According to this theory, anti-Kennedy agents in the Service had no interest in protecting him from shots. Conspiracy theorists also find it suspicious that certain security measures, such as agents near the rear bumper of the car, weren't in place that day in Dallas.
Both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations cleared the Secret Service, but the House committee determined the agents were deficient in their duties.
I dunno, just somebody
Forty percent of Americans who blamed a conspiracy for killing Kennedy had no particular sense of who was behind the plot, according to Gallup's November 2013 poll. This large number of uncertain people may reflect a few factors. Dissatisfaction with the official story is probably one. The difficulty of sifting through dozens of potentially plausible villains is likely another.
A third factor, however, may simply be that the JFK assassination has taken on a life of its own. Conspiracy theory chatter begets conspiracy theory books begets conspiracy theory movies begets more chatter, books and movies debunking all of the above. Eventually, the idea that something secretive happened becomes almost enshrined in the culture.
"If you're living in this culture, you know it's not unreasonable for you to say 'well, everyone's talking about it,'" University of Miami political scientist Joe Uscinski told LiveScience. "And a lot of our beliefs are based on 'Everyone's talking about it.'"
Crime, She Writes
BREAKING DOWN THE HEADLINES
FORBESWOMAN | 5/16/2012 @ 5:21PM |43,440 views
Kennedy Curse Strikes Again: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wife Found Dead
Cathy Scott, Contributor
The Kennedy family is facing yet another tragedy. This time, Mary Richardson Kennedy, the second wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was found dead today in her home.
Law enforcement told TMZ that Mary Kennedy, 52, was discovered dead in her Mount Kisco, New York, home this afternoon.
The Bedford Police Department responded to the scene just after 1:30 p.m. to investigate a possible “unattended death,” meaning that her death had not been witnessed by anyone. Radaronline has reported that it was a suicide, but that has not been confirmed.
The couple married in 1994. Robert filed for divorce in May 2010 and, three days later, Mary was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in Westchester County, authorities said at the time.
They had four children together.
Robert Kennedy Jr. is the son of former Sen. Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.
The so-called Kennedy curse has stalked the family with loss and tragedies.
In 1941, Robert Kennedy Jr.’s aunt, Rosemary Kennedy, born with developmental problems, underwent a lobotomy that resulted in her spending the rest of her life institutionalized. She died in 2005.
Three years later, the eldest Kennedy uncle, Joseph Kennedy Jr, died in a plane crash while on a bombing mission over the Channel during the second world war. In 1948 another plane crash in France killed a sister, Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish, at 28.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated with his wife at his side as his presidential motorcade rolled through Dallas, Texas.
In 1968, Robert’s father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., was assassinated at age 42 inLos Angeles following his victory in California’s Democratic presidential primary election.
Thirteen months later, while returning from a party on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts with a aide Mary Jo Kopechne, Edward “Ted” Kennedy drove off a bridge and the car ended up in the water. Kennedy managed to escape, but Kopechne drowned. The event left a negative mark on Ted Kennedy’s political career.
In 1984, David Kennedy, one of Robert Kennedy’s 11 children, died at age 28 of an overdose of cocaine and other drugs. Thirteen years later, Michael, another of Robert’s sons, was killed when he hit a tree while skiing in Aspen, Colorado.
In 1999, Robert Jr.’s cousin, John Kennedy Jr., died with his wife and sister-in-law when their small plane crashed into the Atlantic near Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
This article is available online at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/crime/2012/05/16/kennedy-curse-strikes-again-robert-f-kennedy-jr-wife-reportedly-found-dead/
On August 5, 1962, movie actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home in Los Angeles. She was discovered lying nude on her bed, face down, with a telephone in one hand. Empty bottles of pills, prescribed to treat her depression, were littered around the room. After a brief investigation, Los Angeles police concluded that her death was "caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide."
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926. Her mother was emotionally unstable and frequently confined to an asylum, so Norma Jean was reared by a succession of foster parents and in an orphanage. At the age of 16, she married a fellow worker in an aircraft factory, but they divorced a few years later. She took up modeling in 1944 and in 1946 signed a short-term contract with 20th Century Fox, taking as her screen name Marilyn Monroe. She had a few bit parts and then returned to modeling, famously posing nude for a calendar in 1949.
She began to attract attention as an actress in 1950 after appearing in minor roles in theThe Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve. Although she was onscreen only briefly playing a mistress in both films, audiences took note of the blonde bombshell, and she won a new contract from Fox. Her acting career took off in the early 1950s with performances inLove Nest (1951), Monkey Business (1952), and Niagara (1953). Celebrated for her voluptuousness and wide-eyed charm, she won international fame for her sex-symbol roles in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), andThere's No Business Like Show Business (1954). The Seven-Year Itch (1955) showcased her comedic talents and features the classic scene where she stands over a subway grating and has her white skirt billowed up by the wind from a passing train. In 1954, she married baseball great Joe DiMaggio, attracting further publicity, but they divorced eight months later.
In 1955, she studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City and subsequently gave a strong performance as a hapless entertainer in Bus Stop (1956). In 1956, she married playwright Arthur Miller. She made The Prince and the Showgirl--a critical and commercial failure--with Laurence Olivier in 1957 but in 1959 gave an acclaimed performance in the hit comedy Some Like It Hot. Her last role, in The Misfits(1961), was directed by John Huston and written by Miller, whom she divorced just one week before the film's opening.
By 1961, Monroe, beset by depression, was under the constant care of a psychiatrist. Increasingly erratic in the last months of her life, she lived as a virtual recluse in her Brentwood, Los Angeles, home. After midnight on August 5, 1962, her maid, Eunice Murray, noticed Monroe's bedroom light on. When Murray found the door locked and Marilyn unresponsive to her calls, she called Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, who gained access to the room by breaking a window. Entering, he found Marilyn dead, and the police were called sometime after. An autopsy found a fatal amount of sedatives in her system, and her death was ruled probable suicide.
In recent decades, there have been a number of conspiracy theories about her death, most of which contend that she was murdered by John and/or Robert Kennedy, with whom she allegedly had love affairs. These theories claim that the Kennedys killed her (or had her killed) because they feared she would make public their love affairs and other government secrets she was gathering. On August 4, 1962, Robert Kennedy, then attorney general in his older brother's cabinet, was in fact in Los Angeles. Two decades after the fact, Monroe's housekeeper, Eunice Murray, announced for the first time that the attorney general had visited Marilyn on the night of her death and quarreled with her, but the reliability of these and other statements made by Murray are questionable.
Four decades after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains a major cultural icon. The unknown details of her final performance only add to her mystique.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/marilyn-monroe-is-found-dead
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926. Her mother was emotionally unstable and frequently confined to an asylum, so Norma Jean was reared by a succession of foster parents and in an orphanage. At the age of 16, she married a fellow worker in an aircraft factory, but they divorced a few years later. She took up modeling in 1944 and in 1946 signed a short-term contract with 20th Century Fox, taking as her screen name Marilyn Monroe. She had a few bit parts and then returned to modeling, famously posing nude for a calendar in 1949.
She began to attract attention as an actress in 1950 after appearing in minor roles in theThe Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve. Although she was onscreen only briefly playing a mistress in both films, audiences took note of the blonde bombshell, and she won a new contract from Fox. Her acting career took off in the early 1950s with performances inLove Nest (1951), Monkey Business (1952), and Niagara (1953). Celebrated for her voluptuousness and wide-eyed charm, she won international fame for her sex-symbol roles in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), andThere's No Business Like Show Business (1954). The Seven-Year Itch (1955) showcased her comedic talents and features the classic scene where she stands over a subway grating and has her white skirt billowed up by the wind from a passing train. In 1954, she married baseball great Joe DiMaggio, attracting further publicity, but they divorced eight months later.
In 1955, she studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City and subsequently gave a strong performance as a hapless entertainer in Bus Stop (1956). In 1956, she married playwright Arthur Miller. She made The Prince and the Showgirl--a critical and commercial failure--with Laurence Olivier in 1957 but in 1959 gave an acclaimed performance in the hit comedy Some Like It Hot. Her last role, in The Misfits(1961), was directed by John Huston and written by Miller, whom she divorced just one week before the film's opening.
By 1961, Monroe, beset by depression, was under the constant care of a psychiatrist. Increasingly erratic in the last months of her life, she lived as a virtual recluse in her Brentwood, Los Angeles, home. After midnight on August 5, 1962, her maid, Eunice Murray, noticed Monroe's bedroom light on. When Murray found the door locked and Marilyn unresponsive to her calls, she called Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, who gained access to the room by breaking a window. Entering, he found Marilyn dead, and the police were called sometime after. An autopsy found a fatal amount of sedatives in her system, and her death was ruled probable suicide.
In recent decades, there have been a number of conspiracy theories about her death, most of which contend that she was murdered by John and/or Robert Kennedy, with whom she allegedly had love affairs. These theories claim that the Kennedys killed her (or had her killed) because they feared she would make public their love affairs and other government secrets she was gathering. On August 4, 1962, Robert Kennedy, then attorney general in his older brother's cabinet, was in fact in Los Angeles. Two decades after the fact, Monroe's housekeeper, Eunice Murray, announced for the first time that the attorney general had visited Marilyn on the night of her death and quarreled with her, but the reliability of these and other statements made by Murray are questionable.
Four decades after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains a major cultural icon. The unknown details of her final performance only add to her mystique.
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The Top 5 John F. Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy TheoriesOne Gunman or Two? Soviets or the CIA? The Best JFK Conspiracy Theories
By RUSSELL GOLDMANNov. 11, 2013--
The fifty years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy have done little to quell the public's interest or skepticism about who killed the president.
In 1964, a year after the president's death, the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, better known as the Warren Commission, concluded that Kennedy was killed by a single gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who acted alone and not part of a conspiracy.
In 1978, however, another government committee, the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations, found that in addition to Oswald, there likely was a second gunman who fired at the president's motorcade. The commission concluded that the gunmen were part of a "conspiracy," without determining exactly who was behind it, opening the door to five decades and a cottage industry of theories.
According to a 2003 ABC News Poll, 70 percent of Americans believe Kennedy's death was "the result of a plot, not the act of a lone killer." Fifty-one percent believe Oswald did not act alone, and 7 percent believe Oswald was not involved at all in the assassination.
In the years since Kennedy's death more than 2,000 books have been written about the assassination, many of which espouse one or more conspiracy theories.
In no particular order and with no endorsement, here are five of the most popular Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.
The Soviets Did It
The Soviets seem like an obvious choice if you're looking for a dark hand behind Kennedy's assassination. Proponents of the theory point to two pieces of evidence. First, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were engaged in a bitter cold war. Conspiracy theorists allege that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was so embarrassed by having to back down following the Cuban Missile Crisis he ordered the hit on Kennedy. The other compelling piece of evidence is Lee Harvey Oswald's connection to the USSR. Though a former marine, Oswald had twice visited the Soviet Union with his Russian-born wife Marina. Both the Warren Commission and the House Committee on Assassinations found little evidence to support a Soviet-backed operation, but one former KGB agent came out years later to say the Russians played a role in the plot.
The Mafia Did it
This much we know is true, the CIA had contacts with organized crime families to discuss assassinating the president. Only the president was Cuba's Fidel Castro, not Kennedy. The mob was heavily invested in casinos and other lucrative investments in Cuba before Castro's communist revolution, according to one iteration of the theory. Kennedy botched the Bay of Pigs invasion, ending any hopes of American organized crime returning to Cuba and enraging the mafia. Furthermore, the mob did not like Kennedy's crusading younger brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and hoped the younger brother would lose his influence if his brother was killed. One version of the theory has the CIA, who had already contacted the mob about killing Castro, asking the mafia to carry out the Kennedy hit. In another version the mob is paid to kill Kennedy by anti-Castro Cubans. Many proponents of this conspiracy theory point to Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner with known mafia connections, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald two days after his arrest. The Warren Commission cleared the mafia from involvement in any such plot. The House Committee on Assassinations found that the mafia was not involved in a conspiracy, but did not rule out that individuals with mob ties were part of the plot.
The Cubans Did It
Given that U.S. agents tried to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro numerous times, the theory goes, Castro decided he would repay the honor and try to assassinate Kennedy. Perhaps the most famous proponent of the Cuban theory was President Lyndon Johnson, the man who would succeed Kennedy following the assassination. "Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to him first," Johnson told ABC News in 1968. Both the Warren Commission and the House Committee on Assassinations cleared the Cubans of any involvement and when Castro was interviewed by Bill Moyers in 1977 he called the theory "absolute insanity."
Lyndon Johnson Did It
Who had the most to gain from killing Kennedy? Lyndon Johnson, the man who became president. The gist of the theory is that Johnson was motivated by ambition and received help from members of the CIA and wealthy tycoons who believed they would profit more under a Johnson administration. According to one version of the theory, Johnson was aided in the plot by another man who would become president, George H.W. Bush, a burgeoning CIA official who happened to be in Dallas on the day of the assassination.
The CIA Did It
In nearly every theory that involves American conspirators, be they wealthy industrialists or tough-as-nails mafiosi, one group is routinely represented – the CIA. The Central Intelligence Agency is an easy boogeyman. Its workings and agents are a secret to most Americans, and the agency in the 1960s had a reputation for high-level political assassinations. One theory suggests that Oswald was a CIA operative and agents tampered with his FBI file before and after the investigation to make it appear he was a communist and lone wolf. In its 1978 report, the House Select Committee on Assassinations found that there was no indication that Oswald "had ever had contact with the Agency."
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