Sunday, March 31, 2013
JFK and John Connally
JFK and Texas ’
John Connally shared a fateful day and fragile past
Published: 30
March 2013 11:24 PM
Dictabelt recording of Oval Office phone call from
President John F. Kennedy to John Connally on the morning after Connally was
elected governor of Texas :
JFK: “What about Dallas ?”
Connally: “Dallas ?
I lost the hell out of it. I lost it by 21,000 votes.”
JFK: “What did we lose Dallas
by, do you remember? In ’60?”
Connally: “Yes sir, you lost [by] over 60,000 votes.”
JFK: “60,000 votes? Hell, I got uh… you know, they’re
up there talking to me about, remember having that Federal
Building down there and all the
rest of that stuff. I don’t know why we do anything for Dallas .”
Connally: “I’m telling you, they just murdered all of
us. But, we’re gonna change that now.”
Like reverse images of each other, John F. Kennedy and John
Connally rode through the streets of Dallas ,
conversing little as they waved to the crowds and approached the climax of
their mutual drama.
Just three months apart in age and both blessed with
movie-star good looks, the two possessed unquenchable ambition that had led
them from open conflict to a correct, if not warm, alliance after Connally’s
patron, Lyndon Johnson, joined the 1960 ticket as Kennedy’s running mate.
The bullets that passed through Kennedy and Connally in Dealey
Plaza did not consecrate the
fragile coalition in blood. Instead, they shattered it in such a way that the
pieces could never be reassembled. While Kennedy was canonized as a martyr,
Connally recovered from his massive wounds. Following the horror of Dallas ,
he traveled a serpentine path that eventually led him into the inner sanctum of
JFK’s great nemesis, Richard Nixon. Connally died in 1993.
Had Kennedy shared Nixon’s penchant for enemies lists or his
brother Bobby Kennedy’s love of a grudge, John Connally would have been one of
the first knights cast out of Camelot — banished
after the 1960 Democratic Convention. Instead, the tall and charismatic Texan —
a man Jackie Kennedy called too pretty to be handsome — was given one of the
top jobs in the Pentagon and parlayed it right into the Texas Governor’s
Mansion.
With a recorded Oval Office phone call from Kennedy to a
just-elected Gov. Connally, we have the audiblesignature of JFK as
the cool realist who quickly assesses that this foe-turned-friend may hold the
keys to Texas ’ 25 wavering
electoral votes in his 1964 re-election campaign.
On the phone with Connally, the president was genial yet
analytical as both men dissected the Texas
win. Clearly proud, Connally boasted about the strength of his victory — “I
carried 205 out of 254 counties” — and Kennedy probed, particularly interested
in Dallas and whether Connally
received the endorsements of its two newspapers.
The new governor’s surefooted election raised his standing
with the Kennedy White House as a political force in Texas .
For the next year, Connally
would be the focus of an Oval Office lobbying campaign to bring JFK to Texas
and shore up uncertain support in a state that Lyndon Johnson could not
guarantee for Kennedy’s re-election bid in 1964.
Back in 1960, even with the powerful LBJ on the ticket, JFK
won Texas by a threadbare 46,233
votes. (In 1964, running without Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson carried
Texas by more than 700,000 votes.)
In November 1962, however, LBJ was a gelded, depressed and
irascible vice president. His protégé Connally was on the rise, influential
with Texas oil money and popular
with moderates and Republicans, who were not naturally disposed to the
Northeastern Kennedy. Most of the boilerplate narrative that JFK came to Texas
to mend political fences was written after the assassination.
Fate would place Kennedy and Connally so physically close
together that minutes after the assassination, as doctors closed the bullet
wound in the governor’s chest, they searched in vain for a wound that would
explain the copious blood and soft tissue coating his head.
And then came the epiphany — the red ooze was not
Connally’s, it was Kennedy’s.
In the eyes of history, John Connally is eternally linked to
John F. Kennedy through the blood they spilled together in Dealey
Plaza .
Personal tragedy
In the summer of 1960, 43-year-old John Connally arrived in Los
Angeles for the Democratic National Convention at a
crossroads. As executive director of Lyndon Johnson’s campaign for president,
he was shackled to a vacillating candidate more preoccupied with the
consequences of losing the nomination than with the glories of winning it.
Sorrow without solace had visited Connally and his wife,
Nellie, the previous summer when their eldest child, a 16-year-old daughter,
Kathleen, known as K.K., died a mystifying death from a shotgun blast, just six
weeks after eloping with her boyfriend, Bobby Hale. The young man’s explanation
was that she was depressed and holding the gun to her head when he leaped for
it and it went off.
A post-mortem revealed that K.K. was pregnant.
“Most of her head was blown off,” said the sheriff who called
the shocked Connally to break the news.
The 18-year-old Hale was cleared following a
less-than-satisfying investigation.
Living in Fort Worth ,
Connally had spent the previous decade as personal attorney for a man who, if
not the wealthiest in America ,
was close — the rough-hewn, low-profile Fort Worth
oilman Sid Richardson.
Through the 1950s, as Richardson’s smooth, articulate
representative, Connally sat on the board of the New York Central Railroad,
kept a suite at Washington, D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel and had his hand in all
Richardson’s businesses, from California’s Del Mar racetrack to uranium mines
in Colorado and Oregon.
But five months after K.K. Connally’s death, Sid Richardson
was also dead, leaving Connally largely as a consigliere without portfolio.
By the summer of 1960, working again for his political
mentor Lyndon Johnson, Connally had but one mission: to block the supremely
organized, lavishly financed Kennedy campaign from seizing the presidential
nomination.
Getting a late start, Johnson railed against Kennedy’s youth
and inexperience and privately derided the younger man as “Sonny Boy,” but he
gained no traction. The only hope lay in proving JFK was unfit for office.
Connally the slugger
The Johnson camp was aware of one of John F. Kennedy’s most
closely guarded secrets: The dashing Massachusetts
senator, so famous for his vigor, suffered from Addison’s disease and might die
without constant maintenance doses of cortisone.
Even a small infection could turn fatal, as it almost had
when Kennedy’s back was operated on in 1954 and the incision site refused to
heal.
Word of the infection had quickly reached Senate Majority
Leader Lyndon Johnson.
“I find it hard to believe, but they tell me young Kennedy
is near death,” LBJ said to aide Horace Busby. “They tell me he’ll be dead in a
matter of a few weeks.”
But despite receiving the last rites of the church, Kennedy
recovered and returned to the Senate. By 1960, Johnson had learned that Addison ’s
had been the culprit. Connally believed that the time had come to use the
information.
“Connally was a political heavyweight who was quick and
deadly when it came to one-on-one slugging,” the late Texas
Sen. John Tower
recalled in his 1991 memoir.
A week before the opening of the convention, Connally and
fellow Texan India Edwards, co-chairman of the Citizens for Johnson committee,
called a news conference to announce Kennedy’s Addison’s disease.
Connally had planned to make the charge himself, but
Edwards, a veteran of Harry Truman’s 1948 presidential campaign and a woman 22
years Connally’s senior, held him back.
“My career was nearing an end whereas John was a young man
just starting up,” she remembered in her memoir. “If I had known then that he
would become a Democrat for Nixon in 1972 and later a Republican, I am sure I
would not have done anything to further his career.”
So with Connally by her side, Edwards told the press she was
disgusted with Kennedy’s “muscle flexing” and added that reputable doctors with
a Boston hospital informed her that
Kennedy would be dead without regular medication.
An indignant Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s campaign manager, replied
that his brother did not have “an ailment described classically as Addison’s
disease. Any statement to the contrary is malicious and false.”
Regardless of the veracity of the allegation, it did nothing
to slow the Kennedy momentum. What it did do was enrage the Kennedy camp.
In his 1965 oral history for the JFK Library, JFK’s press
secretary Pierre Salinger said, “The India Edwards-John Connally press
conference [was] about as low a blow as you will ever want to find in American
politics.”
In a Texas
hotel room the night before the assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy told her
husband, “I just can’t stand Governor Connally.”
Years later, Edwards would recall, “[People] felt that I had
made it sound as if Kennedy had syphilis.”
LBJ as VP
More than a half-century later, it’s hard to see why the
charge of Addison’s disease was more egregious than two months earlier when
Kennedy partisan Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. labeled JFK’s then-challenger Hubert
Humphrey a draft dodger during the crucial West Virginia
primary.
A fixture of Jackie and Jack Kennedy’s inner social circle,
the dissolute, disappointed son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt hoped to be
named secretary of the Navy.
Of the many epithets applied to him, lazy was the most
common.
“We had assigned a fellow named Bob Dunn to Franklin
for the full campaign,” Kennedy aide John Seigenthaler recalled in his oral
history for the JFK Library. “He had the responsibility to keep Franklin
off his butt and on the campaign trail.”
When Kennedy won the 1960 nomination on the first ballot in
Los Angeles, he left his ninth-floor suite and came down the back stairs to
Lyndon Johnson’s seventh-floor suite to offer him the vice presidency.
The shock to Kennedy’s liberal supporters and the
conservative oil crowd backing Johnson came when the Senate majority leader,
perhaps the second-most-powerful man in Washington ,
accepted the powerless VP spot.
“We had succeeded in finding a combination that the
conservatives and the liberals equally disliked,” Connally later wrote.
“The reaction from some of our close friends was very
painful,” Lady Bird Johnson would remember in a 1996 oral history interview for
the LBJ Library. “I think John Connally got in his car with Nellie and started
driving immediately back to Texas .”
Johnson’s candidacy had been backed by oil-rich,
communist-fearing Southerners whom Connally had scared for months with the
specter of the liberal, Northeastern Kennedy. In the time that it took LBJ to
accept the No. 2 slot, Connally had to tack and tell angry Johnson donors that
their enemy wasn’t Kennedy, it was his Republican challenger, the conservative
Vice President Richard Nixon.
And then he had to look cautiously over his shoulder at
Kennedy’s inner circle, ruthless Boston Irish Catholic political operators who
were still fuming that the Texans had publicly labeled their man as diseased.
Surprise appointment
Following JFK’s general election victory on Nov. 8, 1960 , FDR Jr.’s appointment
as secretary of the Navy was such a certainty that Kennedy had leaked it
to The New York Times, even though he promised his new secretary of
defense, Robert McNamara, complete autonomy to choose his people.
“Roosevelt was very anxious to obtain
the position of secretary of the Navy,” McNamara said in his 1964 oral history
for the JFK Library. But McNamara absolutely refused, invoking Kennedy’s pledge
not to interfere in Pentagon appointments.
After his own talent search, McNamara phoned the new
president in Palm Beach , Fla. ,
to say that he had found the perfect candidate for secretary of the Navy — an
able Texan named John Connally.
Politically naïve by his own admission, McNamara would later
say, “I didn’t really realize [the] extent to which at one time there may have
been considerable friction between him and President Kennedy.”
Amused rather than annoyed, JFK agreed to the appointment.
“In a humorous vein, the full extent of which I didn’t realize until later,
[he] said that he wanted me to discuss it with two of his associates who were
at hand,” McNamara recalled.
Kennedy passed the phone to let McNamara break the news to
his elated houseguests, Vice President-elect Lyndon Johnson and Speaker of the
House Sam Rayburn, both political godfathers to Connally.
Reluctant host
His 11 months as head of the Navy were followed by a
successful run for governor and fresh attention from JFK, who began to lobby
for a presidential visit to Texas .
“I had, frankly, been elected by the people that President
Kennedy needed the most,” Connally would later testify to a congressional
subcommittee, “by the moderates and the conservatives of the state.”
Connally was not eager to begin his term by throwing his arm
around Jack Kennedy in front of a home crowd.
But Kennedy persisted. Pressure for a full swing through Texas
climaxed after a June 1963 presidential motorcade in downtown El
Paso . Connally entered a suite at the Cortez Hotel
with the president, Lyndon Johnson and JFK’s tough-guy appointments secretary,
Kenny O’Donnell.
“Well, Lyndon, are we ever going to get this trip to Texas
worked out?” the president asked.
“The governor is here, Mr. President, let’s find out,” LBJ
answered.
“I knew at that point my string had run out,” Connally
recalled. “I knew we were going to have a trip to Texas .”
Resisting JFK’s idea for a series of fundraisers, Connally
mapped out nonpartisan visits to San Antonio ,
Houston , Fort
Worth and Dallas ,
followed by one fundraiser in Austin .
On Oct. 4, 1963 ,
the Texas governor was welcomed
into the Oval Office, where he explained his plan to JFK. Sitting on a white
sofa in front of the fireplace, he looked at the president gently moving in his
rocking chair and suggested that the presence of Mrs. Kennedy would make the
trip look less political.
“I agree with you,” the president said noncommittally. He
would invite her once she returned from overseas, where she had gone to lift
her spirits following the recent death of the couple’s 2-day-old son, Patrick
Bouvier Kennedy.
On the same day that Connally outlined his plan in the Oval
Office, Jackie Kennedy quietly boarded a 325-foot yacht in Athens
accompanied by FDR Jr. and his wife, Suzanne.
Welcoming the American first lady aboard was the yacht’s
owner, Aristotle Onassis, the future husband of Jacqueline Kennedy.
A Boston Globe editorial promptly cried out, “Does
this sort of behavior seem fitting for a woman in mourning?” Ohio Congressman
Oliver Bolton publicly chastised both Mrs. Kennedy and Roosevelt for accepting
the “lavish hospitality” of the shady shipping tycoon.
Returning to Washington
amid the bad publicity, Jacqueline Kennedy agreed to accompany her husband to Texas .
A month before departing for Texas, both Kennedys escorted
their friends, journalist Ben Bradlee and his wife, Tony, to the White House
theater for a screening of the new James Bond film, From Russia With Love.
As the foursome walked from the family quarters to the East Wing, JFK lamented
the idea of Lyndon Johnson getting the Democratic presidential nomination in
’68.
“Well, then who?” the first lady asked.
According to Bradlee’s account, JFK shot back, “It was going
to be Franklin , until you and
Onassis fixed that.”
Welcome mats
While the Lone Star hospitality was not nearly so lavish as
life onboard the Onassis yacht, Nellie and John Connally had gone to some
lengths to impress the Kennedys.
Before departing the Governor’s Mansion to join the Kennedys
for the two-day tour, Nellie asked that the entry rug be cleaned before the
Nov. 22 reception for the president, who would be flying in from Dallas .
Jack Kennedy would not live to see the rug in the Governor’s
Mansion. But it was not Nellie and John Connally’s last opportunity to
entertain a president at home. On a later occasion, the couple readied their
Picosa Ranch in South Texas for a visit from a different
commander-in-chief.
Planes of some of Texas ’
most prominent citizens were packed alongside the private Connally runway, 800
yards away from the ranch house. Hovering above the scene was the presidential
helicopter, which scattered the reddish brown Santa Gertrudis cattle through
the tall coastal Bermuda .
Among the guests looking skyward as the chopper descended
were Dallas oilman Bunker Hunt,
maverick Dallas financiers John
Murchison and Clint Murchison Jr., Fort Worth
publisher Amon Carter Jr. and Sid Richardson’s nephew and heir apparent, Perry
Bass.
Smiling as he ducked out the door of the big green aircraft
was President Richard Nixon, accompanied by his wife, Pat.
“I’m sorry we scared your cattle,” Nixon said as he shook
hands with Connally, the Democratic Party star who was about to jump ship to
become not just a Republican but one of the closest advisers to the infamously
insular Nixon.
Another face in that small ranch crowd was a Houston
lawyer who could not have known that in less than two years, he would force
Nixon from office — future Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski.
The moneyed, powerful guests discussed their common
antipathy for Nixon’s upcoming election opponent, George McGovern. Amid the
din, no one heard the bell that was already tolling for the Nixon presidency.
His sullen minions were frantically trying to conceal the White House
connection to a recent Washington
burglary.
A year after the ranch party, the first domino of scandal
fell when Nixon’s pugnacious vice president, Spiro Agnew, was charged with
accepting cash bribes and resigned his office. With Nixon’s presidency becoming
more precarious each day, he had to appoint not just a new VP, but his possible
successor.
The isolated president sat at Camp David
and examined his list of four names. No. 4 was his eventual choice, Gerald
Ford.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, a Democrat who had
worked hand-in-hand with President Kennedy, warned that the Senate would not
confirm someone who would be a strong 1976 GOP presidential nominee. That ruled
out Nixon’s No. 3 choice, Ronald Reagan, and his No. 2, Nelson Rockefeller.
“With all of the problems I was having with Watergate, I
could not become embroiled in a massive partisan slugging match over the
selection of the new vice president,” Nixon later wrote.
After some quiet checking, Nixon learned to his dismay that
Congress would also never confirm his No. 1 choice.
The name at the very top of Richard Nixon’s list was John
Connally.
A note on sources
In reporting for this narrative, Alan Peppard consulted with
several resource centers and published sources, including:
Presidential Recordings Program, Miller
Center , University
of Virginia
U.S. Elections Atlas
In History’s Shadow, John Connally and Mickey Herskowitz,
1993
Archive, The Dallas Morning News
The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally, James Reston Jr.,
1989
Oral History Program, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and
Museum
Oral History Program, LBJ Presidential Library
Consequences, John G. Tower, 1991
Pulling No Punches, India Edwards, 1977
The Death of a President, William Manchester, 1967
History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. 5:
The McNamara Ascendancy, Alfred Goldberg, Steven L. Rearden, Doris M. Condit,
2006
Witness Testimony, House Select Committee on Assassinations,
Report 1979
Nemesis, Peter Evans, 2004
Conversations with Kennedy, Benjamin C. Bradlee, 1975
The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1978
Friday, March 29, 2013
"Ride the Tiger" - Sam and Frank, Jack and Judy
"Ride the Tiger" new Theater Production
March 29, 2013 )
8:42 a.m. EDT , March 29, 2013
New York actor
and teacher Jordan
Lage is playing the role of Giancana in the play that starts preview
sin New Haven on Wednesday, March
27.
Sam and Frank, JFK
and Judy Now on Stage
Jordan Lage plays Sam and Paul Anthony Stewart plays
Frank.
(T. Charles Erickson /
By FRANK RIZZO, frizzo@courant.comThe
Hartford Courant
When William Mastrosimone was working on the script for the
1992 mini-series "Sinatra," the singer told him a startling tale that
involved Joseph Kennedy Sr., JFK, Chicago
mob boss Sam Giancana and Judith Exner, Sinatra's
girlfriend who was also mistress to both Kennedy and Giancana.
It was a tale of power, sex, murder, intrigue and hubris,
the stuff of Greek tragedy, not to mention political and mob legend.
That story was the starting point for a new play, "Ride
the Tiger," now in previews, and opening Wednesday, April 3, at New Haven'sLong Wharf Theatre.
An earlier version of the work titled "Dirty
Business" premiered in Florida
in 2008. But Mastrosimone, (off-Broadway's "Extremities," "The
Woolgatherer," and "Shivaree" which premiered at Long
Wharf in 1983) says this new
version steps away from docudrama and refocuses on the psyches of the
high-profile characters.
The Long Wharf production stars John Cunningham as the
senior Kennedy, Douglas Sills as JFK, Peter Anthony Stewart as Sinatra,
Christina Bennett Lind as Exner, and Jordan Lage as Giancana. Artistic director
Gordon Edelstein stages the show.
Over a diner breakfast near the meatpacking district where
the theater is located, the Trenton, N. J.-born Mastrosimone, 65, talked about
gaining Sinatra's trust and his own efforts to fill in the details of the story
of how the singer put the Kennedys in contact with Giancana, how the Mafia's
efforts in Chicago helped get Kennedy elected, how the Kennedys — once in
office — betrayed that favor, and what happened after.
Short, stout and balding Mastrosimone looks like someone who
could easily travel in the shadowy circles of power and intrigue, a no-nonsense
sideman who would make you feel comfortable sharing a confidence, counsel or a
drink.
"I found Sinatra at a time in his life when he was very
willing to tell the story," he says sotto voce.
"This was a man who was 77 and he wanted to get things
off his chest," says the writer. "Basically Frank was saying that Sam
Giancana had the motive, the means and the opportunity to do this."
"This" meaning the 1963 assassination of the
president.
Mob Ties
The play takes place from 1960 during the presidential
campaign through 1962, and presents a motive that allows the audience to
project to Dallas in 1963 and
imagine that Kennedy's assassin did not act alone.
The connections among the CIA, JFK and the mob is not breaking
news. Members of the Giancana family have already recounted their version of
the time in "Double Cross: The Explosive, Inside Story of the Mobster Who
Controlled America," a 1992 book by Giancana's brother Chuck Giancana and
Chuck's son Sam. Giancana's daughter Antoinette also wrote about political and
mob ties in the 2005 book "JFK and Sam: The Connection Between the
Giancana and the Kennedy Assassinations."
Mastrosimone is working as a dramatist, using information
from Sinatra's personal perspective to imagine the behind-the-scenes power
plays.
Does he believe that the well-established mob connections
led to Kennedy's assassination?
"Yeah," says Mastrosimone.
It started, he says, in 1960 with the senior Kennedy — who
made money in the booze business during and after g Prohibition — asking the
entertainer, who was a pal to JFK, to lunch.
"Joe said to Frank, 'You know some very unsavory people
in Chicago .' He never said,
'Mafia.' Joe asked Frank to go to Chicago
to ask Giancana, who was an organized crime figure there, to swing the union
vote Jack's way in the election."
"Sinatra went to Giancana and asked him for this
personal 'favor' which was the coin of the realm in that world. The assumption
was in the end Kennedy would get the labor vote and the mob would have someone
in the White House."
But once elected, Kennedy's brother Robert became attorney
general and launched a campaign against the Mafia by jailing, indicting and
deporting mobsters all around the country.
"It was a precaution against anyone saying the Mafia
got the president elected," says Mastrosimone, "and it worked."
All About Hubris
"What do you call someone who asks a favor like that
and then tries to screw the Mafia?" says Mastrosimone. "Are they
idiots? The Kennedys are not idiots. It's about hubris."
"Ride the Tiger" characterizes JFK as being
"undisciplined, out-of-control and an adrenaline freak," says the
playwright. In the play's first scene Joe Kennedy, a formidable planner who envisions a
100-year dynasty for his sons and their offspring, warns his son about his
problem.
"The Kennedys cut Frank out, too," says
Mastrosimone, "and that infuriated Sam who felt like he looked like a fool
in front of his people — and foolish means weak and that means there's danger
to his own life from his own people.
"Sam said to Frank: 'Joe knows who I am but his kids
think I'm the Boy Scouts. They don't appreciate that I am a powerful man.' The
last thing he said to Frank was, 'We're going to show those two brothers how
the Boy Scouts keep score."
JFK was killed in 1963; his brother Robert in 1968, though
Mastrosimone says the mob link to RFK's assassination is not strong. Giancana's
relationship with the CIA — he was involved
since the late '50s in plots to kill Cuba's Fidel Castro — has fueled a conspiracy theory
about the presidential assassination.
That theory was bolstered beginning in January, 1975, when a
senate committee was created, headed by U.S. Sen. Frank Church, a Democrat from
Idaho , to investigate CIA
and Mafia ties.
Prior to testifying, Giancana was killed June 19, 1975 , in his Chicago
home, from gun shots to the back of his head and in the mouth — the latter seen
as a warning against talking.
Mastrosimone believes that Giancana knew his killer because
the table was set for two and sausages and peppers were simmering on the stove.
The writer is not sure whether the murder was a mob hit or done by the CIA .
Mastrosimone remembers a telling transcript of a wiretap at
a restaurant where Giancana and another mobster were meeting. When the other
mobster, who was just indicted, asked him what to do, Sam pointed to a stuffed
marlin hanging on the wall. 'You see that fish up there? The only way it got
caught was when it opened its [expletive] mouth.'
Power of Beauty
And as for party girl Exner who linked Kennedy and Giancana?
Compared to the other characters, "she looks like an
ant next to giants," he says. "But her power was that of the Geisha
Girl — the power of beauty, being subservient and possessing the ability to
stop a man in his tracks with a glance. She understood that powerful men don't
want powerful mistresses. They want malleable people.
"But there are things that she wants. She believes that
Jack loves her and she has a future. She believes she can be First Lady, though
she never says that. Still, she fights for that in her own way."
Exner wrote her own memoir in 1977 entitled, "My
Story."
"I don't buy her version at all," says
Mastrosimone. "It's laughable. I think she wrote that book after Sam was
murdered to tell the Mafia, 'Look, I have a chance to spill the beans and I'm
not going to do it. In fact, I'm going to entertain you with all this [b.s.]
and lie and you will see you have nothing to fear from me.' I believe she was
truly fearful for her life." Exner died in 1999 at the age of 65. Joseph
Kennedy suffered a stroke in 1961 and died in 1969, living long enough to see
two sons assassinated. Sinatra died in 1998 at the age of 82.
Though Mastrosimone thought Exner's version was a protective
concoction he believes the behind-the-scenes story Sinatra told him for two
reasons.
"When we talked about JFK his eyes welled up. He was
still smarting from the betrayal 25 years later. But there was an even greater
reason why I believed him. The story he told made him look bad. That tough
Sinatra of popular propaganda is not in this play. In this play he gets pushed
around. He's humiliated. So why would he tell this story? Because he wanted the
truth to be told."
Does Mastrosimone have any fear of retribution for telling
this story?
"It would look good on my resume if I ended up like
Johnny Roselli in a 50-gallon drum filled with cement," he says with a
small smile of the mobster known as "Handsome Johnny," a friend of
Sinatra's who was called twice to Church's committee. "But the mentality
of the mob has changed. They would be proud of this."
And finally, the meaning of the title of the play?
Mastrosimone says it came from Kennedy's inaugural address
in which he warned countries who were gravitating toward Communism.
"Once you are riding the tiger," says
Mastrosimone, paraphrasing Kennedy, "the problem comes in the
dismounting."
RIDE THE TIGER runs through April 21 on Long
Wharf 's main stage, 222
Sargent Drive , New Haven . Tickets
are $42 to $72. Information: 203-787-4282 and http://www.longwharf.org.
'Ride the Tiger' at Long Wharf
Joe Meyers
Published 2:06 pm ,
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
The history and mythology of John
F. Kennedy that has fascinated Americans for more than a half-century
is the inspiration for the new play at Long
Wharf Theatre, "Ride the Tiger," by William
Mastrosimone.
The play is about one of the most gossiped-about aspects of
the Kennedy story -- his friendship with Frank
Sinatra and his sexual relationship with Judith
Exner, a woman Kennedy shared with mob boss Sam
Giancana.
Some say the tangled web of politics, show business and
organized crime played a role in Kennedy's assassination less than three years
after he became president, so "Ride the Tiger" will be of special
interest to the conspiracy theorists going into overdrive as we approach Nov. 22, 2013 -- the 50th
anniversary of the terrible events in Dallas .
In a phone interview last week, Lage said he was thrilled
that director Gordon
Edelstein had chosen him to be part of this much-anticipated
production.
"It's one of those roles you only get every few years,
so I feel very lucky. There aren't a lot of roles as juicy as this," Lage
said of playing Giancana.
"That whole era is just so interesting -- the fiction
that has been created out of it, and this is a fiction," the actor
stressed of Mastrosimone's take on what happened between the four major
characters in the lead up to the 1960 election and then the months after that.
The mix of the real and the mythological might remind some
theatergoers of the Oliver
Stone film, "J.F.K," Lage said.
"You do have to regard it as a made-up story, but there
is also that element of could this have been what happened?," the
performer noted of the many fictionalized takes on Kennedy and his tragic end
over the past 50 years (including, most recently, the very popular Stephen
King novel "11/22/63").
Lage said there has been much talk of the real Sinatra at
rehearsals for the play because Mastrosimone interviewed the star extensively
when he wrote a TV miniseries on the performer's life.
Apparently, Sinatra told the writer some things off the
record that might have found their way into "Ride the Tiger."
"Some of it seems too unbelievable to be true,"
Lage said, adding with a laugh, "But what could be more unbelievable than
what is going on in Washington
now?"
The actor has done some research into the gangster he plays,
but has focused on bringing the Giancana of the script to life rather than
create a facsimile of the real man.
Lage was stymied in his attempt to find out what Giancana
himself sounded like because there is so little footage of the gangster
available.
"I watched the footage of him (at one of the Senate
organized crime hearings) but he only gave monosyllabic answers, so I can't
really go for `authenticity,' " the actor said.
Giancana was a Chicago
mobster and Lage is well versed in Chicago
accents from his long association with David
Mamet, both as a student and then as an actor in his plays. (At the urging
of Mamet, Lage and a few of his fellow actors founded the Atlantic
Theater Company in the Chelsea
section of Manhattan .)
"David (and his friends) grew up in the 1950s so I'm
not even sure if Giancana would have sounded anything like that since he came
from a much earlier era," he said.
The fascination with the Kennedy era has intensfied with the
popularity of the "Mad Men" TV series, which has depicted the lifestyles
of the men and the women of the early 1960s in loving detail.
"Every generation seems to have its own nostalgia
interests. In the 1970s there were so many things about the 20s -- `The Sting,'
`The Great Gatsby.' I think now we've moved up a few decades to `Mad Men' and
the Kennedys," Lage said.
Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent
Drive , New Haven . Wednesday,
March 27-April 21. $52-$42. 203-787-4282, www.longwharf.org.
RFK Desk Diary for 1963 Missing
Rfk Diaries Shed Light On An Era
April 03, 1994|By Boston
Globe.
WASHINGTON — Less than
three months after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, the Johnson
administration was asking Robert F. Kennedy to review the funeral bills,
according to documents released for the first time Friday by
the John F. Kennedy Library and the National Archives.
"I tried to pass this on to
Sarge," wrote Robert Kennedy's secretary, Angie Novello, referring to
Kennedy's brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, after the White House requested a
meeting on the funeral expenses. "But they referred it back to us.
Couldn't someone else do this?"
….The records do not include Kennedy's desk diaries for 1963
or for periods in 1962, including a 13-day stretch beginning the day before Marilyn
Monroe died on Aug. 4. Steven Tilley, head of the Kennedy collection at the
National Archives, said his agency has requested those documents from the
Kennedy Library in Boston . But
library officials said they are not available.
"We've never seen the desk diaries for 1963 or for the
gaps in 1962," said Will Johnson, the chief archivist at the Kennedy
Library. "We've asked the Kennedy family for them, but no one really
seemed to know if they existed."
I have been told by other researchers that some materials
that had not been made available by the presidential library, the Kennedy
Presidential Library, up here -- and I know that you were there yesterday and
that you doubtless know more about those than I do, and so, I'm just going to
give a written summary of oral histories, but there were some gaps in the
Robert Kennedy material, including his desk diaries -- the year 1963 was
missing -- telephone messages for '62 and '63 are missing but resume in
'64, and logs of Robert Kennedy telephone conversations. I have a feeling you
know much more about this than I do.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
The Pseudo Debate
History Will Not Absolve
Orwellian Control, Public
Denial,
and the Murder of President Kennedy
and the Murder of President Kennedy
E. Martin Schotz
The Pseudo-Debate
All of this
brings us to the real cover-up over all these years, which was not “Oswald” per
se but rather “the debate over Oswald.” In this
process we see the CIA following the
principles of intelligence agency assassination and cover-up as outlined by
Isaac Don Levine, an associate of Allen Dulles, in his analysis of the
assassination of Leon Trotsky by the Soviet Union ’s
NKVD. As Levine revealed, the classic manner by which an intelligence agency
attempts to cover itself is by the use of confusion and mystery. The public is
allowed to think anything it wants, but is not allowed to know, because the
case is shrouded in supposed uncertainty and confusion. This was and is the big
lie, that virtually no one is sure who really killed President Kennedy or why.
Of course over the years the terms
of the “debate” have been shifted as the public has learned more and more about
the case. Thus initially the phony debate was organized around the question of
whether the Warren Report was accurate or not. In other words, the
public was supposed to debate whether there was or wasn’t a conspiracy. As this
position was gradually eroded and it became evident that more and more of the
public did not believe in the lone assassin theory, another aspect of the
debate was developed.
The first fallback position of the
government was to acknowledge that perhaps or more than
likely there was a conspiracy, but if there was, the chief suspects were
Fidel Castro, the KGB, or the Mafia. And while these theories were pushed, it
was argued that the Warren Commission, acting in haste, had perhaps erred in
missing an assassin here or there. But all this was framed as honest error.
In order to bolster the government’s
credibility, the government always needed some writers who would argue that
the Warren Report in fact had been true, that Oswald was the lone
assassin after all. Thus the “debate” was broadened and complicated, but the
honor of the members of the Warren Commission was never conceded by the
government. It is important to understand that for the purposes of the
government it was not necessary that anyone actually be convinced that these
defenders of the Warren Report were correct. It was only necessary that people
believe that their writings were debatable, i.e., that there was some substance
to their arguments that Oswald was the lone assassin. If that point could be
debated, then the government was safe, because the criminal conspiracy of the
government of the United States
to shield the assassins after the fact was obscured.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
11/22/63 Origin of "Fear and Loathing"
“The fear and loathing that’s on me after today’s
murder…What happened today is more meaningful than the entire contents of the
little magazines for the past 20 years…and the next 20, if we get that
far.”
–
Hunter S. Thompson - 11/22/63 [1] See: The Origin of "Fear and Loathing.”
In a letter to his friend, (Pulitzer
Prize winning novelist) William Kennedy, Thompson uses the term, "Fear and
Loathing" for the first time on the Day John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas
Entering the Era of the Shitrain &
The Death of Hope
November, 22, 1963
Woody Creek
I am tired enough to sleep here in this chair, but I have to be in town at8:30 when Western
Union opens so what the
hell. Besides, I am afraid to sleep for fear of what I might learn when I wake
up. There is no human being within 500 miles to whom I can communicate anything
- much less the fear and loathing that
is on me after today's murder. God knows I might go mad for lack of talk. I
have become like a psychotic Sphinx - I want to kill because I can't talk.
I suppose you will say the rotten murder has no meaning for a true writer of fiction, and that the "real artist" in the "little magazines" are above such temporal things. I wish I could agree, but in fact I think what happened today is far more meaningful than the entire contents of the "little magazines" for the past 20 years. And the next 20, if we get that far.
We now enter the era of the shitrain, President Johnson and the hardening of the arteries. Neither your children nor mine will ever be able to grasp what Gatsby was after. No more of that. You misunderstand it of course, peeling back the first and most obvious layer. Take your "realism" to the garbage dump. Or the "little magazines." They are like a man who goes into a phone booth to pull his pod. Nada, nada.
The killing has put me in a state of shock. The rage is trebled. I was not prepared at this time for the death of hope, but here it is. Ignore it at your peril. I have written Semonin, that cheap book-store Marxist, that he had better tell his boys to buy bullets. And forget the dialectic. This is the end of reason, the dirtiest hour in our time. I mean to come down from the hills and enter the fray. Tomorrow a cabled job request to "The Reporter." Failing that, the "Observer." Beyond that, God knows, but it will have to be something. From now until the 1964 elections every man with balls should be on the firing line. The vote will be the most critical in the history of man. No matter what, today is the end of an era. No more fair play. From now on it is dirty pool and judo in the clinches. The savage nuts have shattered the great myth of American decency. They can count me in - I feel ready for a dirty game.
Fiction is dead. Mailer is an antique curiosity. The stakes are now too high and the time too short. What, O what, does Eudora Welty have to say? Fuck that crowd. The only hope now is to swing hard with the right hand, while hanging on to sanity with the left. Politics will become a cockfight and reason will go by the boards. There will have to be somebody to carry the flag.
My concept of the new novel would have fit this situation, but now I see no hope for getting it done, if indeed, any publishing houses survive the Nazis scramble that is sure to come. How could we have known, or even guessed? I think we have come to that point.
Send word if you still exist - HST
(From "The Proud Highway: Saga Of A Desperate Southern Gentlemen")
November, 22, 1963
I am tired enough to sleep here in this chair, but I have to be in town at
I suppose you will say the rotten murder has no meaning for a true writer of fiction, and that the "real artist" in the "little magazines" are above such temporal things. I wish I could agree, but in fact I think what happened today is far more meaningful than the entire contents of the "little magazines" for the past 20 years. And the next 20, if we get that far.
We now enter the era of the shitrain, President Johnson and the hardening of the arteries. Neither your children nor mine will ever be able to grasp what Gatsby was after. No more of that. You misunderstand it of course, peeling back the first and most obvious layer. Take your "realism" to the garbage dump. Or the "little magazines." They are like a man who goes into a phone booth to pull his pod. Nada, nada.
The killing has put me in a state of shock. The rage is trebled. I was not prepared at this time for the death of hope, but here it is. Ignore it at your peril. I have written Semonin, that cheap book-store Marxist, that he had better tell his boys to buy bullets. And forget the dialectic. This is the end of reason, the dirtiest hour in our time. I mean to come down from the hills and enter the fray. Tomorrow a cabled job request to "The Reporter." Failing that, the "Observer." Beyond that, God knows, but it will have to be something. From now until the 1964 elections every man with balls should be on the firing line. The vote will be the most critical in the history of man. No matter what, today is the end of an era. No more fair play. From now on it is dirty pool and judo in the clinches. The savage nuts have shattered the great myth of American decency. They can count me in - I feel ready for a dirty game.
Fiction is dead. Mailer is an antique curiosity. The stakes are now too high and the time too short. What, O what, does Eudora Welty have to say? Fuck that crowd. The only hope now is to swing hard with the right hand, while hanging on to sanity with the left. Politics will become a cockfight and reason will go by the boards. There will have to be somebody to carry the flag.
My concept of the new novel would have fit this situation, but now I see no hope for getting it done, if indeed, any publishing houses survive the Nazis scramble that is sure to come. How could we have known, or even guessed? I think we have come to that point.
Send word if you still exist - HST
(From "The Proud Highway: Saga Of A Desperate Southern Gentlemen")
Sunday, March 24, 2013
More Missing Church Depositions?
Missing Church
Committee Depositions
This document
lists Church Committee depositions which are referenced in the following two
Committee reports, but are not in the 53 boxes of currently-released Committee
records:
Interim Report
(Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders)
Schweiker-Hart
Report (Book V: The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F.
KennedyL Performance of the Intelligence Agencies)
Where page
numbers of references are given, this is for the first such reference. In many
cases, the deposition in question is cited more than once.
Interim Report
Depositions
related to Patrice Lumumba assassination plots:
“Joseph
Scheider” (alias for Sidney Gottlieb, CIA Special Assistant to DDP for Scientific
Matters), 10/7/75 (p. 21)
“Joseph
Scheider,” 10/9/75 (p. 21)
Michael Mulroney
(senior CIA officer in Directorate of Plans), 6/9/75 (p. 38)
Michael
Mulroney, 9/9/75 (p. 38) – Note: this is possibly a typo
and refers to 6/9/75
Michael
Mulroney, 9/11/75 (p. 38)
Douglas Dillon (Undersecretary
of State), 9/2/75 (p. 53)
Depositions
related to Fidel Castro assassination plots:
Case Officer, 8/4/75 (p. 73)
Duty Officer, 8/11/75 (p. 73)
Case Officer 1,
8/11/75 (p. 86) – Note: even though the Interim Report refers to a “Case
Officer 1” on 8/11/75 and a “Case
Officer 2” on 8/11/75, and even though the released records have case officer
depositions on each of these days, the released 8/11/75 (Weatherby, FNU) is NOT
Case Officer 1. It is a brief reappearance of Case Officer 2, and Case
Officer 1’s deposition is not present in the released files.
(Desmond
Fitzgerald’s) “Assistant,” 9/18/75 (p. 88)
Sheffield
Edwards (Director of the CIA Officer of Security), Rockefeller
Commission testimony, 4/9/75 (p. 96)
George McManus
(Helms’ Special Assistant for Cuba ), 7/22/75 (p. 101)
McGeorge Bundy
(White House advisor), 7/11/75 (p. 119)
“Official” (in CIA Western Hemisphere Division), 9/18/75 (p. 150)
John McCone (CIA Director), 6/6/75 (p. 164)
Depositions
related to Rafael Trujillo assassination plots:
Henry Dearborn (Dominican Republic Deputy-Chief-of-Mission), 7/29/75 (p. 199)
Didier (CIA Station Officer), 7/8/75 (p. 199)
Depositions
related to Ngo Dinh Diem assassination plots:
William Colby (CIA Director), 6/20/75 (p. 221). Note: This deposition is referenced in Howard
Jones’ Death of a Generation (Oxford University Press, 2003). See Chapter 16 footnotes 25, 26, and 29.
Depositions
related to Rene Schneider assassination plots:
Richard Helms (CIA Director), 7/15/75 (p. 228)
Henry Kissinger
(Secretary of State), 8/12/75 (p. 228)
William Colby (CIA Director), 7/14/75 (p. 229)
Thomas
Karamessines (CIA Deputy Director for Plans), 8/6/75 (p. 232)
Chief, Chili
Task Force, 7/31/75 (p. 233)
William Broe (CIA Division Chief), 8/4/75 (p. 235)
Philpott (DIA Deputy Director), 8/5/75 (p. 236)
Robert Roth
(Army Colonel), 8/14/75 (p. 236)
Robert Roth, 10/7/75 (p. 236)
Donald Bennett (DIA Director), 8/5/75 (p. 237)
Daniel Graham (DIA Director), 8/5/75 (p. 237)
Sarno (CIA agent), 7/29/75 (p. 244)
Alexander Haig, 8/15/75 (p. 247)
Depositons
related to other matters:
Gordon, 9/16/75 (p. 333) – CIA employee who testified about a written
order to destroy toxin
Schweiker-Hart
Report
Chief, JM/WAVE CIA Station, 5/16/75 (p. 11)
Chief, JMWAVE, 5/6/76 (p. 14) – Note: this is possibly a typo
and refers to 5/16/75
Intelligence
Officer, 5/10/64 [sic] (p. 13)
Thomas
Karamessines (Deputy to CIA ’s Helms), 4/18/76 (p. 25)
Supervisor, 4/27/76 (p. 35) – Note: p. 35 refers to
Supervisor I and Supervisor II both testifying on 4/27/76 . The released records include on
Supervisor transcript, unidentified as to whether it is Supervisor I or
Supervisor II. The other, whichever it is, is not in the rel
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Missing SSCIA Docs?
From: Steven D. Tilly
JFK Liaison
Textual Reference Division
NARA
April 17, 1995
Charles Battaglia
Staff Director
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
211 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Mr. Battaglia:
It has come to my attention that certain transcripts of testimony given before the Select Committee To Study Governmental Operations With Respect To Intelligence Activities may not be among the records transferred to the National Archives for inclusion in the JFK Collection. I discussed this matter with Ms. Judy Hodgson on April 13, and she suggested that I inform you in writing about this matter.
Early last week, I received a phone call from a researcher who has spent considerable time reviewing the Church Committee records. The researcher informed me that he had been reviewing again Book V of the Committee’s final report which is entitled “The Investigation Of The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of Intelligence Agencies.” The researcher directed me to page 42 of the report where testimony by the “FBI supervisor,” datedApril 8, 1976 , was referenced in
footnote 113. The researcher stated that he did not remember seeing this
transcript during his research and asked if I could locate it.
Due to the intense interest in the Church Committee records, I had a member of my staff create a folder title list for the records so we would have a finding aid for the records. A finding aid was needed since we have not received the data disk for these records. I instructed the individual making the list to be as precise as possible in describing each folder and to specifically list each transcript of testimony by name of witness and date. I am enclosing a copy of this list for your information.
In response to the researcher’s inquiry, I learned that the testimony of the “FBI supervisor” was not among the records in our custody. I began to read other footnotes in the report and realized that other transcripts of testimony were referenced that I had not seen on our list. I decided to review every footnote in the report and compiled of (sic a) list of transcripts of testimony, summaries of interviews, and affidavits described in the footnotes that are not among our holdings. I have also enclosed a copy of this list for your use. I call your attention to the fact that most of these transcripts are dated in 1976. A review of our folder title list shows that most of the transcripts in the records in our custody are dated in 1975. It goes without saying that the individuals who gave this testimony, whether identified by name or title, are very significant persons in the history of the assassination.
JFK Liaison
Textual Reference Division
April 17, 1995
Charles Battaglia
Staff Director
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
211 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Mr. Battaglia:
It has come to my attention that certain transcripts of testimony given before the Select Committee To Study Governmental Operations With Respect To Intelligence Activities may not be among the records transferred to the National Archives for inclusion in the JFK Collection. I discussed this matter with Ms. Judy Hodgson on April 13, and she suggested that I inform you in writing about this matter.
Early last week, I received a phone call from a researcher who has spent considerable time reviewing the Church Committee records. The researcher informed me that he had been reviewing again Book V of the Committee’s final report which is entitled “The Investigation Of The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of Intelligence Agencies.” The researcher directed me to page 42 of the report where testimony by the “FBI supervisor,” dated
Due to the intense interest in the Church Committee records, I had a member of my staff create a folder title list for the records so we would have a finding aid for the records. A finding aid was needed since we have not received the data disk for these records. I instructed the individual making the list to be as precise as possible in describing each folder and to specifically list each transcript of testimony by name of witness and date. I am enclosing a copy of this list for your information.
In response to the researcher’s inquiry, I learned that the testimony of the “FBI supervisor” was not among the records in our custody. I began to read other footnotes in the report and realized that other transcripts of testimony were referenced that I had not seen on our list. I decided to review every footnote in the report and compiled of (sic a) list of transcripts of testimony, summaries of interviews, and affidavits described in the footnotes that are not among our holdings. I have also enclosed a copy of this list for your use. I call your attention to the fact that most of these transcripts are dated in 1976. A review of our folder title list shows that most of the transcripts in the records in our custody are dated in 1975. It goes without saying that the individuals who gave this testimony, whether identified by name or title, are very significant persons in the history of the assassination.
While compiling this list, I remembered other testimony that was supposedly taken from the Church Committee but not among these records. One researcher has informed me that John Rosselli testified before the Committee on
I am also enclosing a copy of a document created by the Committee staff, apparently around the middle of August 1975, entitled “Assassination Testimony File.” This document was located by the individual who compiled the folder title list. I have compared this document with the folder title list and highlighted in yellow the transcripts that we located while compiling the folder title list. While this document only lists testimony taken early in the Committee’s history, there still appears to be significant documents from 1975 that are also not in our holdings. I realize that some of these individuals may have testified about other events under investigation by the Committee. However, some of the documents listed are clearly assassination related, such as Rosselli’s testimony of
Ms. Hodgson informed me that the records of the Church Committee are stored in the
Please contact me on (301) 713-6620 if you wish to discuss this matter. As I informed Ms. Hodgson, I have informed the Assassinations Records Review Board about this issue.
Sincerely,
Signed
STEVEN D. TILLEY
JFK Liaisoin
Textual Reference Division
(
Enclosures
Cc: Dr. David Marwell
Executive Director
Assassinations Records Review Board.
LIST OF MISSING CHURCH COMMITTEE TESTIMONY
(Includes some interviews and summaries)
1. FBI Supervisor,
2. Chief, SAS/CI,
3. Western Hemisphere Division Desk Officer,
4. Thomas Karamessines,
5. Amlash Case Officer,
6. Executive Officer,
7. Section Chief,
8. Chief JMWAVE,
9. Intelligence Officer,
10. Richard Helms,
11.
12. Staff Interview of
13. Staff Interview of William C. Sullivan,
14. Alex Rosen,
15. FBI Supervisor I,
16. FBI Supervisor II,
17. FBI Supervisor
18. General Investigative Division Supervisor,
19. Soviet Section Supervisor,
20. Former Section Chief,
21. Supervisor,
22. Mexico City Legat,
23. FBI Special Agent,
24. SAC,
25. Staff Interview of FBI Inspector,
26. Staff Discussion with Ambassador John Sherman Cooper,
27. James Angleton,
28. James J. Rowley,
29. FBI Agent I,
30. FBI Agent II,
31. Washington Lawyer,
32. Supervisor,
33. Client No. 1,
34. Client No. 2,
35. James Hosty,
36. Staff summary with former FBI Headquarters Supervisor,
37. FBI Headquarters Supervisor,
38. James Hosty,
39.
40. J. Gordon Shanklin,
41. Affidavits of various FBI personnel, pages 96-97
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