Edward Kennedy Redux IV

Countrycollectivists,

So.  We find ourselves swinging around for one more pass at the life and times of EMK, fondly remembered and sorely missed.  The occasion for this one is the response to one of my recent blogs from Joan Mellen, our  versatile and frequently trenchant colleague in the intelligence field.  Joan wrote an important book about the attempt by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to dig up the roots of the conspiracy to murder Jack Kennedy, A Farewell to Justice.  Joan wrote me:

"I don't know if I missed this segment, but people keep asking, why did Teddy stand in the way of the investigation of the death of his brother JFK?  Because he certainly did, following Bobby's lead, maybe, but Bobby was dead.  What was the rationale?"

In his memoir, True Compass, published shortly before he died, Edward Kennedy wrote that "Late in 1964, Bobby asked me to review the Warren Commission's newly released report on the assassination because emotionally he couldn't do it."  Earl Warren gave Ted a briefing, and "made the case for me."

In Bobby and J. Edgar I dealt in some detail with Robert Kennedy's response to the shooting, his suggestion to Warren that he include on the Commission Allen Dulles and John McCone -- two go-along types unlikely to challenge a cover-up.  When Garrison began his investigation, Bob sent Walter Sheridan -- his most reliable demolition expert -- to undermine the inquiry.  And so forth.

I responded as follows to Joan:

"You didn't miss the segment.  I always found Ted ambivalent about the JFK murder, not anything he would talk about.  He once told me that "Dad had a lot of friends and contacts we didn't really know anything about," which was as close as he dared go.  I suppose when Ted was handing around cash that originated with the mob in 1960 in West Virginia he must have had an inkling that there were family associations he had to protect.  Underneath, Ted felt dependent on his father's support and afraid of what the old man might do to him -- he remembered -- and told me about -- the way Joe had deep-sixed Rosemary, as I spelled out in Edward Kennedy:  An Intimate Biography.

"In Bobby and J. Edgar I attempted to lay out the entire scenario.  While running Mongoose Bobby had himself worked closely with syndicate types like Johnny Rosselli, who had become assets of the CIA.  Eager to justify another invasion of Cuba, on the pretext of a purported assassination attempt by Oswald, who had been set up as a pro-Castro fanatic while working as a CIA agent in New Orleans, Bobby had probably signed off on the whole big-store operation, which the Agency's mob associates had been brought in to front.  Then Jack got popped, Oswald survived the original planning to take him out and everybody involved scrambled to cover up his tracks.  I assume that Ted had figured out enough of all this to realize that Bob was implicated, however inadvertently.  Loyalty to his brother -- or at least the public perception of his brother -- no doubt lay behind the rather tepid support Kennedy gave to the Warren Commisssion conclusions in his memoirs.  Interestingly, a number of people closest to Ted, whom I still see regularly, have come around to accepting my overall conclusions.

"In outline, that's what I think."

A slice of history, bound to be controversial.

Cheers,

Burton Hersh

Edward Kennedy Redux II

Countrypaisanos,

Again, computer meltdown.  Again, salvation.  Bear with us.

Our last blog was taken up with anecdotal reminiscences about Ted Kennedy.  Three books and many pieces for Esquire and The Washingtonian later, I put it all together in the spellbinding Edward Kennedy: An Intimate Biography (Counterpoint, 2010) .  Hard-cover or trade paperback, it's all there.  Let's turn to substance.

One of my earlier treatments of Kennedy's life and career was called The Shadow President. The title was intended to suggest Kennedy's amazing capacity to manipulate beneath the surface of public events and work toward outcomes frequently more effective and ultimately more meaningful than the legislative process.  No president could hope to realize his agenda without Kennedy's quiet cooperation.

LBJ saw that unlike Jack Kennedy -- whom Lyndon Johnson regarded openly as a crippled playboy during his Senate years -- or the fractious Bobby, Ted Kennedy, within a few months of his arrival in the Senate in 1963, was demonstrating an extraordinary legislative gift.  At home in the Senate, Ted was a ferociously hard worker. Johnson set the freshman Senator to work on immigration legislation and involved him with the Voting Rights boilerplate already making its way through committee.  This gave Kennedy status enough to push for an end to most of the exemptions keeping middle-class youngsters out of the butchershop in Viet Nam, which provoked an uproar among the country-club set and begin to legitimize the agonizing process of American withdrawal.

Simultaneously, Kennedy maneuvered within the committees drafting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation to introduce language eliminating the poll tax, a device cherished since Reconstruction around the Old South to prevent a significant number of blacks from voting.  While the segregationists who controlled the important committees were able to block Kennedy's legislation, the issue now surfaced with such prominence that the Supreme Court was drawn into the battle and quickly ruled the poll tax illegal. Were Kennedy still around, by now it's safe to bet he would  have inserted himself into the struggle over "voter registration," another hard-right conspiracy artfully designed to disenfranchise the helpless.

Deft as he was, Kennedy managed all this without alienating even outspoken bigots like Mississippi's James Eastland. Ted had a knack for trading favors, enlisting idealism and practicality and self-interest among his colleagues on both sides of the aisle.  Conservatives from Orrin Hatch to Bob Dole found themselves sponsoring Kennedy's legislation, often with their names attached to the bills.  Kennedy was after results, not glory.

Many of his successes, especially in foreign policy, were spectacular, if largely unheralded.  When a confrontation with the Soviets over intermediate-range missiles threatened, Kennedy worked back-channels with Leonid Breznev and defused the crisis.  When most of the leadership in the Reagan White House had opted for a quick and dirty ground war in Nicaragua, Kennedy colluded with Tip O'Neill and John Boland in the Congress while himself creating an issue over the Misquito Indians in the region that made intervention too sticky to consider.  After a quick visit in Bobby's memory to South Africa, Ted recruited Connecticut Republican Lowell Weiker and double-teamed the Congress into enacting legislation that cut off all U.S. investment until apartheit ended and democracy emerged.  As things developed, that didn't take long.

Without question Kennedy's most durable issue was reform of the health system, universal coverage.  He stole good ideas from anybody who came up with one. Himself perhaps the greatest expert in government on the intricacies of the issue, he shared whatever he knew with anybody willing to learn.  One avid student, it turned out, was Mitt Romney.

But more on that next time.

Burton Hersh