Camelot - It is a silly place.

[John Beckham]

I think people have forgotten what kind of family the Kennedy's were. Jack's behavior, ties, history make him no better than the crime families they went after. He stepped on alot of toes and broke promises that got both he and his brother into early graves. Bobby had balls, but was just as stupid to toy with Giancana, telling him "are you going to answer my questions? Or just giggle like a little girl?" Or sending a copy of his book to Hoffa with a smart-ass remark inscribed in it? Jack giving the go-ahead to explode nuclear bombs in the Van Allen Belt (read about our planet losing it's magnetic field!) We shouldn't look at the Kennedy's any differently than the Bush dynasty!!! Don't flame on me for that remark without reading my post please!!! I'm also sorry for this long post, but I don't think many people know the history of Joseph Kennedy and his sons.... When Joseph "Joe" was fresh out of college in 1912, his father got him a job as a state bank examiner. Here, he had access to useful information about the confidential affairs of companies and individuals who had credit lines with major Boston banks. He found out which companies were in trouble and which had extra cash, who was planning new products or acquisitions and who was about to be liquidated. A former Harvard classmate, Ralph Lowell, said, "That bank examiner's job took him all over the state and laid bare the condition of every bank he visited. He acquired information of value to himself and others." Joe's strategy was to obtain inside information about troubled companies from banks, then drive their stock down so he could buy them more cheaply. While still on the state payroll as a bank examiner, he made an acquisition that was aided by inside information. Bought a Boston investment company called Old Colony Realty Associates Inc. He turned the company from an old-line investment firm into one that made money on the misery of others. Under his direction, the company specialized in taking over defaulted home mortgages. Joe would then paint the houses, and resell them at far higher prices. By the time the company was dissolved, his $1000 investment had grown to $75,000. He began cultivating strong alliances with members of the press, including William Randolph Hearst, who would print glowing stories about Joe's successes. In January 1914, when Joe was elected president of Columbia Trust, Hearst ran a series praising him as the youngest bank president in the country. The stories neglected to mention that Columbia Trust was owned by Joe's father and his friends. Joe eventually assumed control of Columbia Trust by borrowing money from other family members who were never repaid. Kerry McCarthy, Joe's grandniece who interviewed some of those people for a research paper, said, "I found money was loaned to him by family members and not repaid. Since it was family, he didn't feel there was a need to." In June 1914, Joe married Rose Fitzgerald, daughter of Boston mayor John Fitzgerald. Joe would use this new connection for all it was worth. In 1917, with W.W.I already in progress, the US government announced that young men would be drafted into military service, and that draft resisters would be executed. Although most of Joe's friends from Harvard had already volunteered to serve, he had no intention of fighting. He had already been placed in Class 1 and was subject to immediate call-up, when his father-in-law, Mayor Fitzgerald, acquired a job for him at the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation in Quincy, Massachusetts. Although he knew nothing about shipbuilding, he was made general manager, a job which effectively kept him out of the war. Daniel Strohmeier, vice president of Bethlehem Steel, said, "Joe was accommodated to skip the draft during W.W.I because of a lot of pressure from his father-in-law." Seven months after the armistice was signed to end W.W.I, he left the shipyard. Having avoided the draft, he had no more need to work there. He was given a job with the venerable Boston stock brokerage firm Hayden, Stone and Co, after Fitzgerald promised to swing business to the firm if they hired his son-in-law. Galen Stone, a friend of Joe's father-in-law, taught his protégé how to make huge sums of money off unsuspecting investors by trading on inside information. While the practice of using inside information was not then illegal, it was unethical. Stone breached his fiduciary duty to his stockholders, while Joe made money because of his privileged position at Hayden, Stone. Joe once told a Harvard friend, "It's so easy to make money in the market we'd better get in before they pass a law against it." It was easy, as long as one was willing to breach trust. Besides using inside information improperly, he made fabulous sums through what were known as stock pools. This was a way of manipulating the market by forming a syndicate and arranging for the members to trade stock back and forth. By bidding the price of the stock higher, the pool members created the appearance that the public was bidding up the price. In fact, the syndicate members retained the profits, and when the trading public bit by joining the action, the syndicate members sold out, leaving the public with losses. Joe called the practice "advertising" the stock. January 29, 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified. It prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, or importation of "intoxicating liquors" for "beverage purposes." For Joe, the law represented an opportunity to make huge profits. He formed alliances with crime bosses in major markets, among them Boston, NY, Chicago, and New Orleans. These would come in handy years later when his son was running for national office. Among his mob associates was Frank Costello, former boss of the Luciano crime family, who bragged, "I helped Joe get rich." Sam Giancana, who would later figure prominently in Jack's presidency, called Joe "one of the biggest crooks who ever lived." Joe bought liquor from overseas distillers and supplied it to organized crime syndicates that picked up the liquor on the shore. Costello would later confirm that Joe had approached him for help in smuggling liquor. He would have the liquor dumped at a so-called Rum Row, a transshipment point where police were paid to look the other way, and Costello and other mobsters would then take over. They distributed the liquor, fixed the prices, established quotas, and paid off law enforcement and politicians. They enforced their own law with machine guns, usually calling on experts who did bloody hits on contract. Columnist John Miller wrote, "The way Costello talked about Joe, you had the sense that they were very close during Prohibition." By the mid-1920s, Fortune estimated Joe's wealth at $2 million. Yet since he had left Hayden, Stone in 1922, he had had no visible job. While he made hundreds of thousands of dollars manipulating the market, only bootlegging on a sizable scale would account for such sudden and fabulous wealth. He used the profits from his bootlegging operations to fuel his continued stock market speculating, and finance his efforts in the film industry. After making his fortune on and off Wall Street, he was one of the first Eastern businessmen to grasp the potential of the movie business. By the mid-1920s, the American film industry was turning out 800 films a year and employed as many people as the auto industry. This was "a gold mine", he told several friends. After buying a chain of thirty-one small movie houses, he realized that the way to make real money was on the production side. Moreover, he was attracted to the glamour of Hollywood. Not only could he influence the way films were made, he could meet dazzling young women. While his wife was in Boston, pregnant with their eighth child, Joe was in Hollywood engaged in his notorious liaison with the superstar Gloria Swanson. Swanson was by no means his first extramarital adventure, but she was his first real affair. She was the perfect trophy to symbolize the great worldly success he had achieved.Joe purchased KAO (Keith-Albee-Orpheum Theaters Corp), a chain with 700 movie theaters in the US and Canada, and more than 2 million patrons daily. Edward Albee, the founder of KAO, had initially refused to sell out, but when Joe promised that he would remain in control of the chain, Albee agreed to his offer. But once the papers were signed and Joe was chairman, he said bluntly, "Didn't you know, Ed? You're washed up. Through." In 1928, Joe was asked to serve as a special advisor on the board of Pathe Exchange Inc., a production company who produced a weekly newsreel. He soon became chairman of Pathe and began implementing his own ideas, beginning by slashing the salaries of the employees. The cost cutting applied to others, however, and not to himself, he was drawing a salary of $100,000 from Pathe. Later that year, he merged FBO with his chain of theaters (KAO) to form the famous RKO. He then had RCA trade its FBO stock for stock in the new company, a deal which brought him $2 million. He had become so entranced by Swanson and Hollywood that when his father died in May of 1929, he would not leave CA to attend the funeral. Joe's cousin Joseph Kane later confronted him saying, "You son of a bitch, you didn't even go to your father's funeral. You were too busy on the West Coast chasing Swanson around." He replied, "I couldn't leave. If I left for two days, the Jews would rob me blind." A friend, Kane Simonian, observed, "Joe didn't attend his father's funeral....When someone doesn't go to his father's funeral, you can believe he would do anything." Indeed, nothing so much illuminates Joe's character as his decision to remain in CA while the rest of the family and many of Boston's most notable citizens paid their last respects to the man who had been responsible for so many of Joe's early successes. From Joe's entry into Harvard, to his job as bank examiner and designation as president of Columbia Trust, PJ had always been there to help his son. Now that his father could do nothing more to help him, he was too busy in Hollywood to say good-bye. In 1931, he plundered Pathe Exchange. He arranged for RKO to pay Pathe insiders like himself $80 a share. The rest of the stockholders would receive just one dollar and fifty cents a share. Favoring insiders to such a degree was nothing more than robbery. Since he had acquired the stock for $30 a share, he more than doubled his investment in fewer than two years. Stockholders filed suit, but nothing came of it. He was in a position to dictate the terms of the deal, he was able to craft the transaction to enrich himself. Moreover, he took advantage of privileged information from the files of major stockholders in the movie companies who were clients of Guy Currier, his partner at RKO. While Currier was on vacation in Italy, Joe pillaged his files for inside information such as the size of holdings of other stockholders and their financial condition. He then used the information to further his own interests. When Currier returned, he discovered that RKO's value had plummeted, and he and his fellow investors had been betrayed. Joe "did not behave in an honorable way," said Anne Anable, Currier's granddaughter. "Unfortunately, my grandfather didn't realize how corrupt Joe was," she said. Years later, Wisconsin Congressman John Schafer took to the floor of the House to denounce Joe as the "chief racketeer in the RKO swindle." Another congressman, William Sirovich of NY, said the "inside group at RKO had committed fraud by unloading their stock, making millions." He called for an investigation of the movie industry, but by then Joe had become close to key congressional leaders as well as to President Roosevelt, and the probe was mysteriously halted. In Joe's papers, Doris Kearns Goodwin found letters from anguished stockholders of Pathe. Anne Lawler of Jamaica Plain in Boston said she lost her life savings. "This seems hardly Christian like, fair or just for a man of your character," she wrote. "I wish you would think of the poor working woman who had so much faith in you as to give all their money to your Pathe." Joe had been chairman of FBO for two years and nine months, chairman of Keith-Albee-Orpheum for five months, special adviser to First National Pictures for six weeks, special adviser to RCA for two and a half months, and adviser to Paramount Pictures for seventy-four days. In all, Joe had made an estimated $5 million in the movie business. By 1930 he had plenty to smile about. He had seen the Depression coming, and as Black Tuesday approached, he liquidated his long term investments while continuing to make money on the declining market by selling short. Selling Short, usually an investor purchases stock and later sells it, earning a profit if the stock has gone up. Selling short reverses the process. The investor who believes the price of a stock will go down borrows stock - say at $10 a share - from a broker for a fee. If the price falls to $8, he buys new shares at the lower price of $8 and gives them back to the broker to replace the shares he borrowed at $10. He then gets to keep the $2 difference as his profit. By selling short, Joe made sums estimated at more than $1 million and contributed to the eventual market crash by forcing prices down. The fact that the market was unregulated was largely responsible for the crash. Salesmen had made wild claims to a gullible public. Stock pools such as those perfected by Joe had defrauded legitimate investors. Reporters and columnists had acted as shills for companies peddling stocks in return for payoffs. The crash set off a worldwide financial panic and depression that would last for years. By 1932, 12 million Americans were jobless. Governments responded with strict tariff restrictions that dried up world trade. In Germany, where 5.6 million people were out of work, the depression contributed to the rise of Hitler. Considerably richer because of his short selling, Joe gleefully told friends that he had sold off his Wall Street holdings before the bottom dropped out of the stock market. He said he was now waiting to pick up the pieces left by "dumb people." His wealth was now estimated at over $100 million. By 1933, he was again manipulating the stock market to his advantage, even as federal investigators were swarming over Wall Street trying to expose the conditions that had led to the crash. The stock market crash and resulting panic would eventually lead to the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to which he was named head. By 1933 the states had also begun repealing prohibition, and with his usual foresight, he could see it was only a matter of time before the 18th Amendment was repealed and liquor flowed freely again. He used his connections in Washington to obtain permits to import ridiculously large quantities of Haig & Haig and Dewar's as "medicine." He stockpiled the liquor in warehouses so that when Prohibition ended, he would have more high quality liquor in stock than anybody else. Joe also took steps to make sure he had cornered the market in Scotch. In September, he invited the President's son, James Roosevelt, to join him on a trip to England. He used young Roosevelt to get access to those who controlled Scotland's distilleries. Returning with distribution rights to brands such as Haig & Haig, Dewar's scotch, and Gordon's gin, Joe proceeded to build Somerset Importers into a force in the liquor business. On December 5, prohibition was repealed and Joe was ready. He took steps to protect his fortune and the future of his children. He moved to establish a series of trust funds that would eventually make all his children financially independent. These trust funds would eventually guarantee each of his children, and their mother, over twenty million dollars apiece. In the 40's, J. Edgar Hoover, is blackmailed (by photographic evidence of his homosexuality with longtime companion and FBI #2 Clyde Tolson) by the notorious mob member Meyer Lansky. He also appears to have been subject to compromise because of his fancy for young boys. Also supposedly captured on film by members of the mob. Some claim seeing him dressed in drag, called Mary at private parties. Through the 40's and 50's, Hoover virtual ignored organized crime and his investigations into political corruption was mainly used as a means of gaining control over politicians in powerful positions. In 1959 Hoover had 489 agents spying on communists but only 4 investigating the Mafia. As early as 1945 Harry Truman complained how Hoover and his agents were "dabbling in sex life scandals and plain blackmail when they should be catching criminals". Joe's oldest daughter, Rosemary, was considered shy and mentally limited. Symptoms of what many suspect was dyslexia. For years the family had dealt with the problem by sending her away to various special schools and convents. By age twenty one she had deteriorated greatly, giving way to tantrums, rages and violent behavior. She was beginning to understand that she would never measure up to her closest siblings, and the resulting frustration led to physical fights and, worse, long absences at night when she would be wandering the streets. Increasingly, Rosemary was seen as a liability to the family's political ambitions, and in 1942, Joe moved to deal with the problem. Without telling anyone, not even her mother, he arranged for her to have a prefrontal lobotomy at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. The experimental operation was believed to work wonders with people who had emotional problems. In her case it was a disaster and left her permanently disabled, paralyzed on one side, incontinent and unable to speak coherently. She was never allowed to return home, but instead was spirited away to St. Coletta's School in Wisconsin. Rosemary's fate and how it was handled was the ultimate Kennedy deception. As late as 1958 the family was maintaining the fiction that she had become a quasi nun in Wisconsin, content to renounce the glamorous world of her siblings to teach less fortunate children. Today the official family version is that she was born retarded, and that only her mother's herculean efforts had made it possible for her to appear normal.Having tried and failed, Joe knew he could never become president, but his sons could. He quenched his thirst for power through them. He had hoped that his eldest son, Joe Jr. would fulfill his dream. That dream ended in August 1944 when Joe Jr., a Navy pilot, was killed after volunteering for a dangerous secret bombing mission over Germany. Columnist and family friend Arthur Krock was convinced that the reason Joe Jr. had volunteered for such a dangerous mission was to compensate for his father's reputation as a coward. In Palm Beach during Christmas of 1944, Joe gave his son John "Jack" Kennedy the orders: He was to take Joe Jr's place and enter politics. In 1957, Jack described the event, telling a reporter: "It was like being drafted. My father wanted his eldest son in politics. 'Wanted' isn't the right word. He demanded it." Joe would later brag that "I got Jack into politics. I told him that Joe Jr was deceased and that it was therefore his responsibility to run for Congress." In 1946, Joe decided that the eleventh congressional district of Massachusetts, with it's high concentration of Catholic voters, would be the perfect launching pad for his son's political career. There was only one problem: James Michael Curley, the former mayor of Boston and governor of Massachusetts, occupied the seat. Curley, however, was in danger of being indicted for mail fraud, and Joe decided that what the man needed most was some money. "Curley knew he was in trouble with the feds over the mail fraud rap," recalled Joe's friend Joe Kane. "The ambassador paid him to get out of his congressional seat......Curley figured that he might need the money." Joe paid Curley $12,000 through his bag man Joe Timilty. He promised additional campaign help if Curley chose to run again for mayor of Boston in the 1946 election, which Curley did. After being elected, Curley was sent to prison for mail fraud. He continued to serve from prison. To Joseph, this was standard operating procedure, recalled Kane. "Everything he got, he bought and paid for. And politics is like war. It takes three things to win. The first is money and the second is money and the third is money." On April 25, 1946, John "Jack" Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination to Congress. The next month, Joe founded the Joseph P Kennedy Jr Foundation which began furiously pumping money into Catholic institutions in Jack's adopted district. The timing was not a coincidence, and led one Massachusetts congressman to describe the gifts as "political currency."Joe's main job now became running his son's campaign. In effect, he was the candidate, devising campaign strategy and making every financial and policy decision. To conceal his own role and the extent of Jack's financing, he paid for everything clandestinely and in cash. David Powers, who ran Jack's Charlestown headquarters described how Joe's aide would meet him "at the campaign's central headquarters, and then lead me into the men's room, where, putting a dime into the slot, he would take me into a closed toilet stall. Then, with no one able to watch us, he would hand me the cash, saying, 'You can never be too careful in politics about handing over money." He also arranged for Jack to receive a salary from the Maine and New Hampshire Theaters Co, which he owned. Joe could then deduct it as a business expense. In addition, two of his theater employees took care of all the campaign expenses. For example, if Jack needed a rental car, he simply charged it to his father's theater company. Jack's opponent in the primary election was a legitimate politician named Joe Russo. To insure that he won the primary, Joe paid Joseph Russo ( a janitor ) to also enter the race. This effectively confused the voters, and split the votes for Joe Russo. Russo the janitor recalled how Joe's friend Joseph Timilty and another man had visited him one day and asked him to run. In return, he said, "They offered me favors. Whatever I wanted." In fact, he said later, he wound up getting very little - occasional payments of $50 in cash. Even the aunt of the real candidate voted for the janitor, recalled Joseph A Russo, the real candidate's son. "They didn't leave anything unturned," he said. His father claimed that Kennedy's people had also arranged for other bogus candidates to "run in other areas to break up the Irish vote, or some other vote. They played for keeps." After Jack won the Democratic primary, Joe sold Somerset Importers Inc., freeing $8 million to help Jack in his campaign and insuring that his liquor holdings would not become an issue. Just as he had done with the rent for Jack's campaign offices, Joe paid cash for Jack's advertising. John T Galvin, who was in charge of the advertising, recalled that "It was handled so that very few people knew.....There was a campaign law that limited campaign contributions. It didn't affect us very much." Joe also received crucial support from his friends in the media. For example, William Randolph Hearst, who owned the Boston American newspaper, had one of his reporters check in at Jack's headquarters every day. No other candidate got such special attention. Joe also got Hearst to ignore Jack's opponent Michael Neville, the mayor of Cambridge, and the paper would not accept his advertising. Joe spent $300,000 on Jack's first campaign, according to House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill, equivalent to $2.2 million today. O'Neill said that the sum was six times what he himself spent in the same district during a tough race six years later. In O'Neill's view, Joe was the "real force" behind the Kennedy's. "Joe was an ongoing factor in Massachusetts politics," O'Neill said. "Every time a Democrat ran for governor, he would go down to see Joe, who would always send him home with a briefcase full of cash." November, 1946, Richard M. Nixon wins a House seat with financial help from Meyer Lansky and other Mob leaders. Nixon's campaign manager, Murray Chotnier, has top Mafia figures as legal clients, as well as ties to New Orleans Mafia chief Carlos Marcello and Mob connected Teamsters official James Hoffa. On November 5, 1946, Jack was elected to Congress. Seven days later, he filed a report with the Massachusetts secretary of state certifying that no money had been collected for, or had been spent on his campaign. Having been elected to Congress three terms, Jack began a race for the Senate in April 1952, seeking the seat held by Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. The race was still a toss-up when Joe learned that John Fox, owner of the powerful Boston Post, was in desperate need of money. The Boston Post, which had a circulation of over 300,000, had been credited with helping defeat Michael Curley in his last campaign in 1949, and with being responsible for getting Maurice Tobin elected governor of Massachusetts. Under Fox, the Boston Post favored Republicans. The newspaper had endorsed Eisenhower for president, and was expected to endorse Lodge. Indeed, those close to Fox confirmed that he "hated Jack." Fox had bought the Boston Post in 1952 for about $4 million. As a down payment, Fox had paid $2 million for the newspaper, but the IRS immediately took it for back payment of his own taxes. The publisher soon found himself unable to pay his bills. It was generally assumed that the Boston Post would endorse Lodge, but Fox was desperate for funds, and Joe was only too happy to help out. Two days before the election, following a private meeting with Joe, Fox gave a front-page endorsement for Jack. Former Massachusetts state senator Robert L Lee said the Post endorsement of Jack was the "turning point" in the campaign. Lee believed that if Lodge had received the paper's endorsement, it "would have been sufficient to put him back in the Senate." During a House subcommittee hearing in 1958, Fox admitted that Joe had given him a $500,000 loan late in 1952. He insisted that he "repaid it with interest," and that it had nothing to do with his paper's endorsement of Jack. Joe issued a statement saying that the loan - the equivalent of $2.7 million today - was "purely a commercial transaction for 60 days only with full collateral, at full interest, and was fully repaid on time....." Raymond Faxon, Fox's friend and vice president of the publisher's investment business, revealed the truth about the transaction for the first time years later. Faxon revealed that two days before the election, John Griffin, the editor-in-chief of the Boston Post, informed Joe that the paper was about to endorse Lodge. He also told him that Fox was desperately in need of cash, having been turned down for a loan by local banks. Joe called Fox and asked him to meet at a local club which Fox owned. In return for an endorsement of Jack, Joe offered Fox a loan that, contrary to what both men later said, carried no interest and was not fully collateralized. "Fox needed the money, and he got it from Joe," Faxon said. "It was $500,000. The whole thing was a payoff." Based on Faxon's recollection that a bank would have charged interest of about 5 percent at the time, the interest waived amounted to about $10,000, the equivalent of $54,000 today. Aside from that, making any loan to such a shaky financial operation without full collateral represented a bribe. "No bank would have made the loan," Faxon said. "The word 'payoff' was exactly what it was." Riding the Boston Post endorsement, Jack won the Senate race, beating Lodge by less than 6 percent of the vote. Jack reported expenses for the campaign of $349,646. That amount would not have covered even the cost of the billboard advertisements alone. It was widely assumed that the true cost of the campaign was several million dollars. Now that Joseph had gotten Jack elected to the Senate, he told his son to find a wife. In May 1952, Jack had been introduced to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. When Jack brought Jackie to Hyannis Port in the spring following the election, Joe decided she would be Jack's wife. Jackie had "all the social ingredients that Joe thought would help Jack achieve the presidency," wrote C David Heymann in A Woman Named Jackie. As usual, Jack did what his father told him to do, and on June 24, 1953 the couple announced their engagement. Jack's friend Lem Billings said, "Joe not only condoned the marriage, he ordained it." If Joe had one area of expertise, it was manipulating the media. Long before spin doctors and political gurus talked of "packaging" presidential candidates, he shaped Jack's image more effectively than any Madison Avenue executive. "We're going to sell Jack like soap flakes," he said. In fact, he routinely paid off publishers as well as public officials to get what he wanted. Thomas Winship, the editor of the Boston Globe, recalled that Joe routinely "gave cases of Haig & Haig Pinch Bottle Scotch to press people, to people at the Globe, to political writers, and to a lot of people in Washington." Joe sent expensive jewelry to female columnists, a confidant said, and gave cash to others. "He distributed a substantial amount to journalists," the confidant said. In addition, "Reporters took consulting assignments. Some of these guys were pretty amenable to consulting fees and gifts." Columnists, especially, were "for sale" - not to mention politicians. For such purposes, Joe always kept large stashes of cash. His friend and confidant Frank Morrissey recalled that Joe had once called him to Hyannis Port to help him move $1 million in cash from the basement of his home. "A big northeast storm was coming up, and the old man was afraid a lot of the cash would get wet," Morrissey said. Joe had persuaded a top television executive in New England to give Jack lessons in going before a camera. "He was consumed by the fact that TV would make the difference in the presidential election," the executive said. As one aide put it, "The old politicians relied on their experience, but he and his boys left nothing to chance." Joe, it seemed, had "learned a lot of tricks from the movies" during his Hollywood days. Henry Luce, a long time friend and ally of Joe, was editor-in-chief and principal stockholder in Time Inc. The founder of Time and Life, Luce was arguably the most powerful publisher in America, and Joe had cultivated their relationship since his Roosevelt days. For years, Luce had given him frequent and complimentary press coverage in the magazines he controlled, and Luce's equally favorable coverage of his son had been critical to Jack's early campaigns. In 1956, Luce was vacationing with Joe on the Riviera when he cabled his editors and suggested they devote more space to Jack, who "was emerging as a national figure." In November 1957, Fortune magazine listed Joseph as one of the sixteen wealthiest people in the country, with a net worth of $200 to $400 million. On December 2, 1957, Jack's smiling face appeared for the first time on the cover of Time magazine. As ordained by his father, he had just begun his bid for the presidency. George Smathers, a family friend and Senator from FLA., claimed that "Joe had a good deal to do with getting Luce to put Jack on the cover of Time. Jack had not made any great record as a congressman or senator. It was nothing outstanding in terms of what others were doing. Lots of congressmen had more legislative accomplishments than Jack." Giving such prominence to a fledgling candidate was unusual, and the cover story which called Jack the "Democratic Whiz of 1957" gave him a tremendous boost. Just weeks before Jack appeared on the cover of Time, Joe had bragged to his friend Cardinal Spellman, "I just bought a horse for $75,000, and for another $75,000, I put Jack on the cover of Time." Spellman recalled that Joseph was "very proud of the fact that he had spent $75,000, and now he would not have to spend as much on advertising." The sum was equivalent to $385,000 today. "He did not say whether he paid it directly to Luce," Spellman added. Several months later when Jack learned that Life magazine was going to run a story saying that evangelist Billy Graham was coming out for Nixon, Jack called Luce to complain that the story would be unfair. When Joe called and put the pressure on, Luce ordered the story killed. During an interview on ABC-TV in December 1958, Eleanor Roosevelt said that "Senator Kennedy's father has been spending oodles of money all over the country, and probably has a paid representative in every state by now." She said she had been told that his father would spend "any money" to make his son the first Catholic president. Many people told her of money spent by him on Jack's behalf. "Building an organization is permissible," she said, "but giving too lavishly may seem to indicate a desire to influence through money." Joe solicited author William Bradford Huie to distribute cash to politicians who would help Jack, according to what Huie later told a Time reporter. Huie said he routinely made payoffs of $1000 (equivalent to $4800 today), and promised he would reveal more details, but died before he could. Meanwhile, Joe cranked up the media campaign. In October 1959, Look began running a series of articles about Jack. Prepared with the family's cooperation, they may as well have been written by Joe himself. One article declared that Jack was in excellent health, when in fact he had been diagnosed in 1947 as having Addison's disease, a failure of the adrenal glands. When a Boston reporter suggested that Jack should disclose his health history, a Kennedy aide replied, "No, Joe doesn't want that to be done. We can't do it now." Another article tried to downplay Joe's role in the campaign, fictitiously reporting that he had little influence over his son and had no interest in spending money on political campaigns. "In political circles," the article claimed, "the Kennedy's are not regarded as big spenders." On January 2, 1960, Jack formally announced his presidential candidacy, and declared that the White House must be "the center of moral leadership." Two months later, Jack began his affair with a former actress named Judith Exner. While seeing Jack, Exner was also seeing Sam Giancana, who was the head of the Chicago Mafia and a former partner in Joe's bootlegging business. Giancana, who was credited with at least two hundred killings, was considered one of the most powerful men in organized crime. He controlled betting, prostitution, loan sharking, and owned interests in three Las Vagas hotels. Jack and Bobby identified the West Virginia primary as key to winning the nomination. The state's nomination was ninety-five percent Protestant and a win there would convince convention delegates that Jack's Catholicism would not be an issue in the presidential election. Jack's opponent in the Democratic primary was Hubert Humphrey, the senator from Minnesota, who was beloved by West Virginia coal miners for his longtime union support and folksy, old-fashioned campaign style. But Humphrey's small-town ways were no match for the Kennedy bandwagon's deep pockets and high technology. There is no doubt that Jack's huge TV budget also helped. The Kennedy men were not content to rely on statesmanship alone. At Jack's request, Exner arranged a meeting for him with Sam Giancana, who agreed to use his influence with West Virginia officials to ensure victory there. Bob McDonald, close friend and lawyer of Sam Giancana, introduces Sam to Joe in Judge Tooey's office(a famous Chicago judge). Joe promised Sam that if he helps get Jack elected, he would have a "friend" as president. CIA and mob had a relationship since the later years of the Eisenhower presidency. Jack makes his younger brother Robert "Bobby" Kennedy head of CIA. Bobby wants to make his name taking down the mob. It is widely reputed and partially exposed in the Church Committee Hearings that Giancana and other mobsters had been recruited by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who had taken power in January 1959. Giancana was himself reported to have said that the CIA and the Mafia are "different sides of the same coin." However, Sam's daughter, Antoinete Giancana, has stated her belief that her father was running a scam in order to pocket millions of dollars in CIA funding. According to the recently. declassified CIA "Family Jewels" documents, Giancana and Miami Syndicate leader Santo Trafficante Jr. Giancana sent his lieutenant, Paul "Skinny" D'Amato, into West Virginia to get out the vote. D'Amato met with sheriffs who controlled the state's political machine. He forgave debts many of them had run up at his 500 Club in Atlantic City and handed cash payments to others. FBI wiretaps reveal that Frank Sinatra also distributed large mob donations to pay off election officials. Years later, in a People magazine story, Exner described how she had introduced Giancana to Jack, who asked for the mob's help in financing the campaign. While it is not documented, it is clear Giancana gave money to the campaign. After the election, an FBI wiretap picked up Giancana talking with Johnny Roselli, a mob associate. He said his donation had been "accepted", yet complained that Bobby, whom Jack had appointed attorney general, was cracking down on organized crime. He said he expected that "one of these days, the guy will do me a favor...." Giancana apparently had believed that in helping Jack's campaign, he was gaining a friend in the White House and protection from future prosecution by the government.Tip O'Neill recalled that Eddie Ford, a Boston real-estate man, "went out there with a pocket full of money." O'Neill said Ford would "see the sheriff, and he'd say to the sheriff, 'Sheriff, I'm from Chicago. I'm on my way south. I love this young Kennedy boy. He can help this nation, by God. He'll do things for West Virginians. I'll tell you what. Here's $5000. You carry your village for him or your county for him, and I'll give you a little reward when I'm on my way back.' " O'Neill said, "They passed money around like it was never seen." One of the most important contributions Joe made to his son's campaign was to create the Ken-Air Corporation, purchase for it a $385,000 Corvair twin-engine turboprop airplane, and then lease it to the candidate for the ridiculous sum of $1.75 a mile. Joe got a large tax deduction, while the plane gave Jack a tremendous advantage over Hubert Humphrey in the Democratic primary. While Humphrey either wasted time waiting around airports for commercial flights or lumbered about in his campaign bus, Jack sped here and there in his private plane, covering more territory in less time and at less expense. In providing the cash for Jack's campaign, Jack's father used the Catholic Church and, in particular, Cardinal Cushing. One of the couriers told author Peter Maas how it worked: For example, if Boston area churches had collected $950,000 on a particular Sunday from collections, Joe would write a check for $1 million to the diocese, deduct it as a charitable contribution, and receive the $950,000 in cash. Thus, in this example, the church got a contribution of $50,000, he could deduct the entire amount on his income tax, and he could use the money to pay off politicians without fear that it would be traced. "The cash is untraceable," Maas said. "Part of the money goes to the diocese. He gets a contribution from Joseph for more than what the cash is. It's brilliant. Nobody can trace the money." In 1966, Cushing admitted that he had played a role in making payoffs to ministers. He told Hubert Humphrey, "I'll tell you who elected Jack. It was his father, Joseph, and me, right here in this room." Cushing explained that they both decided which Protestant ministers should receive "contributions" of $100 to $500. As cushing described the tactic, "It's good for the church, it's good for the preacher, and it's good for the candidate." Maas also recalled that as a writer for the Saturday Evening Post he interviewed a political operative in one dirt-poor town in West Virginia who told him his county was for Humphrey. "A few weeks later, I interviewed him again, and he said the county was for Jack. I asked what had changed, and he said with a smile, 'My workers each got $20, and I got $150. We're for Kennedy." When Jack narrowly defeated Humphrey in the West Virginia primary, Humphrey withdrew from the presidential race. It was the most important victory of Jack's campaign. On July 11 the Democratic National Convention nominated Jack for president. Some party leaders were leery of him, however. Truman opposed him, telling reporters, "I'm not against the Pope, I'm against the Pop." Eleanor Roosevelt regarded Jack as one of "the new managerial elite that has neither principles nor character." Meanwhile, Jackie had learned about Jack's philandering and developed a visceral dislike of politics. "She was ready to divorce Jack, and Joe offered her $1 million to stay until Jack entered the White House," said Igor Cassini. "He paid $1 million for her to stay with Jack until he was elected. He didn't tell me, but my brother and I learned about it." On November 8, 1960, Jack was elected president, defeating Republican Richard Nixon. Jack received 34,226,731 votes to 34,108,157 for Nixon. The popular vote margin, 118,574, was the equivalent of a win by one vote in every precinct in America. Kennedy's Electoral College majority was 303 to 219. The winning margin was provided by the state of Illinois, where in the eleventh hour, the votes that came in from Cook County's mob-dominated West Side put Jack over the top. "Actually, and this goes without saying, the presidency was really stolen in Chicago, without a question, by the Democratic machine," recalled mobster Mickey Cohen. "I know that certain people in the Chicago organization knew that they had to get Jack in." Not, to go on about his affairs with Campbell, Monroe and especially with Mary Pinchot Meyer, possibly taking LSD before making love...

[Jsnow915]

I agree he was a politican,just like the rest,full of shit and are a part of the "whats in it for me club"...I'm interested in the mystery of the assassination and of course don't like the fact that my government was over thrown by some force with out the consent of the American public...and our Constitution is currently being shit on...But in general,the Kennedys were working their way to try and be a dynasty like the Rockefellers...they just did it in a later point in our history where there was more news coverage and more people willing to tell the truth to the public...and they paid with their lives.Who knows where this country would be at this point if he was never killed....alot of what if's.

[John Beckham]

Agreed, that's why the powers to be are so concerned about the whole JFK thing. To know that just about everyone in a position of power killed the president and covered it up would be extremely dangerous, cause for an America revolution...That's the shame in this whole thing. Who could you believe, or trust (as if you could anyway) if the world finds that our own government did this

[Bob]

Listen, the Kennedy family had flaws no question about it. EVERYONE knows the history of their family, and also what Joe Sr. did and how corrupt his was. He was a bootlegger, womanizer and was an isolationist. But his sons, although they had many of his attributes, were men that tried to help bridge the gap between the poor and less afluent and the rich and very powerful. Unlike the Bu$h family for instance, that almost NO ONE knows the history of, prior to Poppy, and also exclusively is for only the rich and elite circle in which they are part of. JFK and RFK had flaws, no doubt. But compared to the Bu$h family or the Rockefeller family, they tried to bring the world some stability. JFK wanted to end the Vietnam war, and all of the war profitting that goes with it. JFK wanted to tear the CIA into 1,000 pieces. RFK went after the mob with a vengence. JFK was making drastic changes to the Federal Reserve. JFK was going to make Big oil pay their fair share. JFK died for because of those beliefs. So did RFK. Look at the world now. Look at all the wars and the war profiteering that is going on...the corporate army's like those in Blackwater. Look at the harm the CIA has caused the world since 1963. With all the drug running, wars, stolen elections and coups they participated in. Look at Big banking right now and the $700 BILLLION dollar bail out that they just received from the United States. Look at Big oil now. Exxon just reported a $15 BILLION dollar profit last QUARTER! JFK saw the future and he tried to change it. We are living in the reality of the world he feared might happen. Yes, JFK had flaws, but he was a great leader that tried to make a difference. But the bastards killed him for his beliefs, and those same bastards are in power today. Different names now, but the same bastard philosophy.

[John Beckham]

Perhaps, if JFK got us out of Vietnam without a resolution with the commies, would we soon have been fighting another war as communism spread? Or just sit back and watch it happen? WW3? A buch of what-if's alright. I just wanted to make sure people knew the scandals that occured. Joe Kennedy's ideas about making $ certainly didn't help the Stock Market in 1929.

[Jsnow915]

I think its a battle of ego's with politicians...you would think the Kennedys would be smarter about attacking the mob especially after it bought JFK's votes in Illinois...did he think they wouldn't retalliate?

[ChristophMessner]

Camelot is not a silly place, cause it is good, when the strong and the legitimate one is leading. John Beckham wrote:Jack's behavior, ties, history make him no better than the crime families they went after. That's not true, because Jack went after the crime, whereas the crime families did not go after the crime. He wanted to change the system of corruption, whereas the crime families wanted to stay with the system fo corruption. John Beckham wrote:Agreed, that's why the powers to be are so concerned about the whole JFK thing. To know that just about everyone in a position of power killed the president and covered it up would be extremely dangerous, cause for an America revolution...That's the shame in this whole thing. Who could you believe, or trust (as if you could anyway) if the world finds that our own government did this It's good that you name the reality like it really is, John, it was not one lone assassin, but almost all of JFK's enemies who participated in his murder. Yes, you are right, it is more than obivous and thousands of indications speak for that it was not a lone assassin. I think, when the world finds out, that the own government did this, the world will start to trust all the people who found that out and spoke the truth out, who just named the reality like it really is and not lied to them like the politicians, and that would be good. It would be a world with more trust, once the government of the US would admit having participated in a coup d'etat in a criminal way.

[turtleman]

Someone's insinuations are all over the map it appears. And the short story post with the anti-Kennedy slant letting us all know we are better off without JFK and his removal was actually justifiable. What logic.

[Pasquale DiFabrizio]

turtleman wrote:Someone's insinuations are all over the map it appears. And the short story post with the anti-Kennedy slant letting us all know we are better off without JFK and his removal was actually justifiable. What logic.I'm totally with you on that one. Jsnow summed it up nicely. No matter who JFK was, he was still killed and another form of government took over. That short story certainly DID sound like a justification for his killing, didn't it?

[saracarter766]

JFK's behavior is none of your buisness mr beckham as neither it is mine he was our president and he was tragically murdered in front of everyone who loved him the most and thought of him so much. Judge not lest ye be judged. turtleman that was beautifully said.