27-07-2018, 10:32 PM
(This post was last modified: 29-07-2018, 01:13 AM by James Lateer.)
posted by Mr. Dagosto:
[Please justify this claim with verifiable evidence. JFK was set up by stripping his security as documented by Vince Palamara and the incompetence (and perhaps, at a high level, complicity) of the SS. Palamara has debunked the myth about JFK ordering the SS agents off the back of the limo. The death wish stuff is a lazy narrative promulgated by hack authors and media types. Because of his health issues and close brushes with death by natural causes JFK had a clear sense of his own mortality and as president, of his own vulnerability to overthrow and assassination. That doesn't equate to a death wish.
RFK did not have SS protection as a candidate (his assassination led to that) and probably distrusted the SS after his brother's assassination and there's considerable evidence that so-called security guards contributed to or participated in his assassination. I'm at a loss to understand how you equate this to making "things easy" for his assassins. What do you imagine he could have done differently?]
I can only respond as follows:
Here's a definition of death wish:
"A desire for someone's death, especially an unconscious desire for one's own death."
I'm not sure how anyone can read in-depth about the (mostly admirable) traits of the Kennedy's in the Camelot days, as well as in WWII and in the 1960's without the question of the "death wish" coming up.
I guess you could split hairs about whether a soldier who volunteers all the way down the line so he can be at the front is motivated by bravery or by a "death wish." I guess the same question could be posed about the tragic results of the actions of the Kennedy's which (to me) seem self-destructive in retrospect.
After watching the CNN series on the American Dynasty: The Kennedys, I was even more struck by their behavior in this regard.
I have to admit that I sometimes judge people who are into risk taking as either being self-destructive or having a death wish. I, personally, would never seek to ride a motorcycle or fly in small airplanes because of the danger. The following is, unfortunately a true story:
Locally, the chairman of the Anti-Helmet Law Movement in a large nearby city met his death from head injuries suffered in a motorcycle-car collision. To me, that's a death wish. I'm sorry. I guess I can add "hack authors" to the list of questionable things I have been called this year which includes "fabulist", "hare-brain" and "libelist". Oh well, I take all of this as good-natured.
As for the possible Kennedy death-wish trait, we know that RFK was an obvious target for assassination and had been explicitly warned of this by novelist Gore Vidal in person. Yet RFK strictly forbid any police to be anywhere near his campaign rallies. He had as security men Roosevelt Greer (a football player) and Rafer Johnson (a track star). And it is well known that at the Ambassador Hotel when he was shot, he had exited the ballroom through the kitchen which was against security policy. He sure didn't act like somebody who was a known likely target for assassination.
As for the others, how can you look at the risk-taking of Edward Kennedy involved in Chappaquiddick and not see some kind of self-destructive behavior? And there was the "suicide mission" of the eldest brother Joseph Kennedy, Jr. And also, the risky night flight in a small airplane by the inexperienced pilot John F. Kennedy, Jr. And Kathleen Kennedy also died flying in a small airplane (which many people would avoid and which is risky but not necessarily suicidal). And there are questions about how the PT-109 got in front of a Japanese destroyer and whether this violated good Naval procedure?
I think that sharing a mistress with a Mafia kingpin might be called risky, too. And having affairs with German and Soviet spies. How many items to we need? To me, it's a little like the situation with one's own personal health....if you don't take responsibility for your own health, but put it entirely in the hands of doctors, then you will have problems. You have to bee more concerned about your own health than your doctors. Or else...
Ditto for presidential security. If you'r president, you have to devote some time and thought to security matters. I have yet to see even one memo from either JFK or RFK which dealt with the details of Secret Service policy, the issue of a bullet-proof limo (which was a big deal to J Edgar Hoover for himself) or any other such item.
Probably the best material that paints a vivid picture of this entire problem is the following page scanned from the book Above The Law by James Boyd"
ABOVE THE LAW
page 63
"…about his car, all but overwhelming the grim-faced Secret Service men. Already, the bodyguard who was "riding shotgun" on the front bumper had had his jacket ripped off and his trousers torn. Nine times the milling thousands stopped the Presidential motorcade in downtown Hartford, and each time they were rewarded with im*promptu orations from the big-eared, grinning giant whose patriarchal affection seemed generous enough to encompass them all. [referring to LBJ].
Beside the animated President, Senator Thomas Dodd sat woodenly, a stiff waving of his arm the only accompaniment to the gyrations of his Chief. Once, the President handed him the bull horn, ad*monishing him to "talk it up, Tom," but Dodd gave up after a few ineffectual stabs. Something about the scene challenged his sense of dignity; he was no longer the crowd hawker of his college days. And he was a little uneasy. He had followed John Kennedy through the Naugatuck Valley in 1960, and the experience had lingered with him. At two A.M., the narrow main streets of those valley towns were choked almost impassably with vociferous crowds that pressed in frantically upon Kennedy's car. Dodd later told me of his alarm, and an anxious look came into his eyes. "Kennedy started this mob stuff," he said. "He eggs them on by reaching for their hands. You can't fool like that with crowds. Some day these monkeyshines will lead to a disaster, and remember that I foretold it." Perhaps he suffered from the same foreboding as he sat beside Kennedy's successor.
From the portico of the Hartford Times Building, Lyndon Johnson looked out upon the one hundred and fifty thousand people who had waited three hours to see himalmost as many people as the entire population of Hartford. Sixty-five thousand wildly cheering admirers packed the square below hirn. lt was the greatest assemblage ever seen in the Connecticut capital, greater than that which had turned out for F.D.R., for Eisenhower, for Kennedy. When told that the crowd set an all time record, Mr. Johnson insisted that it be announced immediately. "And they say I have no crowd appeal," he jibed happily to Dodd. The Senator, in contrast, still seemed ill at ease. When he approached a battery of microphones to introduce the President to an audience grown impatient with preliminaries, he was off his usual form. The old tremor, which invariably recurred in times of anxiety, had stiffened his upper lip and faintly impeded bis speech. Dodd was conscious that before Hartford's multitudes he was a flopbut he was powerless to do anything about it.
The President, enjoying himself hugely, teased up the rising ovation…" etc. etc. etc....
So the above is the judgment of a fellow campaigner and politician to JFK. This is my best evidence of the careless attitude toward security on the part of JFK. Others may disagree we me on all of the above, of which I am well aware...
James Lateer
[Please justify this claim with verifiable evidence. JFK was set up by stripping his security as documented by Vince Palamara and the incompetence (and perhaps, at a high level, complicity) of the SS. Palamara has debunked the myth about JFK ordering the SS agents off the back of the limo. The death wish stuff is a lazy narrative promulgated by hack authors and media types. Because of his health issues and close brushes with death by natural causes JFK had a clear sense of his own mortality and as president, of his own vulnerability to overthrow and assassination. That doesn't equate to a death wish.
RFK did not have SS protection as a candidate (his assassination led to that) and probably distrusted the SS after his brother's assassination and there's considerable evidence that so-called security guards contributed to or participated in his assassination. I'm at a loss to understand how you equate this to making "things easy" for his assassins. What do you imagine he could have done differently?]
I can only respond as follows:
Here's a definition of death wish:
"A desire for someone's death, especially an unconscious desire for one's own death."
I'm not sure how anyone can read in-depth about the (mostly admirable) traits of the Kennedy's in the Camelot days, as well as in WWII and in the 1960's without the question of the "death wish" coming up.
I guess you could split hairs about whether a soldier who volunteers all the way down the line so he can be at the front is motivated by bravery or by a "death wish." I guess the same question could be posed about the tragic results of the actions of the Kennedy's which (to me) seem self-destructive in retrospect.
After watching the CNN series on the American Dynasty: The Kennedys, I was even more struck by their behavior in this regard.
I have to admit that I sometimes judge people who are into risk taking as either being self-destructive or having a death wish. I, personally, would never seek to ride a motorcycle or fly in small airplanes because of the danger. The following is, unfortunately a true story:
Locally, the chairman of the Anti-Helmet Law Movement in a large nearby city met his death from head injuries suffered in a motorcycle-car collision. To me, that's a death wish. I'm sorry. I guess I can add "hack authors" to the list of questionable things I have been called this year which includes "fabulist", "hare-brain" and "libelist". Oh well, I take all of this as good-natured.
As for the possible Kennedy death-wish trait, we know that RFK was an obvious target for assassination and had been explicitly warned of this by novelist Gore Vidal in person. Yet RFK strictly forbid any police to be anywhere near his campaign rallies. He had as security men Roosevelt Greer (a football player) and Rafer Johnson (a track star). And it is well known that at the Ambassador Hotel when he was shot, he had exited the ballroom through the kitchen which was against security policy. He sure didn't act like somebody who was a known likely target for assassination.
As for the others, how can you look at the risk-taking of Edward Kennedy involved in Chappaquiddick and not see some kind of self-destructive behavior? And there was the "suicide mission" of the eldest brother Joseph Kennedy, Jr. And also, the risky night flight in a small airplane by the inexperienced pilot John F. Kennedy, Jr. And Kathleen Kennedy also died flying in a small airplane (which many people would avoid and which is risky but not necessarily suicidal). And there are questions about how the PT-109 got in front of a Japanese destroyer and whether this violated good Naval procedure?
I think that sharing a mistress with a Mafia kingpin might be called risky, too. And having affairs with German and Soviet spies. How many items to we need? To me, it's a little like the situation with one's own personal health....if you don't take responsibility for your own health, but put it entirely in the hands of doctors, then you will have problems. You have to bee more concerned about your own health than your doctors. Or else...
Ditto for presidential security. If you'r president, you have to devote some time and thought to security matters. I have yet to see even one memo from either JFK or RFK which dealt with the details of Secret Service policy, the issue of a bullet-proof limo (which was a big deal to J Edgar Hoover for himself) or any other such item.
Probably the best material that paints a vivid picture of this entire problem is the following page scanned from the book Above The Law by James Boyd"
ABOVE THE LAW
page 63
"…about his car, all but overwhelming the grim-faced Secret Service men. Already, the bodyguard who was "riding shotgun" on the front bumper had had his jacket ripped off and his trousers torn. Nine times the milling thousands stopped the Presidential motorcade in downtown Hartford, and each time they were rewarded with im*promptu orations from the big-eared, grinning giant whose patriarchal affection seemed generous enough to encompass them all. [referring to LBJ].
Beside the animated President, Senator Thomas Dodd sat woodenly, a stiff waving of his arm the only accompaniment to the gyrations of his Chief. Once, the President handed him the bull horn, ad*monishing him to "talk it up, Tom," but Dodd gave up after a few ineffectual stabs. Something about the scene challenged his sense of dignity; he was no longer the crowd hawker of his college days. And he was a little uneasy. He had followed John Kennedy through the Naugatuck Valley in 1960, and the experience had lingered with him. At two A.M., the narrow main streets of those valley towns were choked almost impassably with vociferous crowds that pressed in frantically upon Kennedy's car. Dodd later told me of his alarm, and an anxious look came into his eyes. "Kennedy started this mob stuff," he said. "He eggs them on by reaching for their hands. You can't fool like that with crowds. Some day these monkeyshines will lead to a disaster, and remember that I foretold it." Perhaps he suffered from the same foreboding as he sat beside Kennedy's successor.
From the portico of the Hartford Times Building, Lyndon Johnson looked out upon the one hundred and fifty thousand people who had waited three hours to see himalmost as many people as the entire population of Hartford. Sixty-five thousand wildly cheering admirers packed the square below hirn. lt was the greatest assemblage ever seen in the Connecticut capital, greater than that which had turned out for F.D.R., for Eisenhower, for Kennedy. When told that the crowd set an all time record, Mr. Johnson insisted that it be announced immediately. "And they say I have no crowd appeal," he jibed happily to Dodd. The Senator, in contrast, still seemed ill at ease. When he approached a battery of microphones to introduce the President to an audience grown impatient with preliminaries, he was off his usual form. The old tremor, which invariably recurred in times of anxiety, had stiffened his upper lip and faintly impeded bis speech. Dodd was conscious that before Hartford's multitudes he was a flopbut he was powerless to do anything about it.
The President, enjoying himself hugely, teased up the rising ovation…" etc. etc. etc....
So the above is the judgment of a fellow campaigner and politician to JFK. This is my best evidence of the careless attitude toward security on the part of JFK. Others may disagree we me on all of the above, of which I am well aware...
James Lateer