The 'Strange' Death of Hale Boggs

[Peter Lemkin]

Peter, Nathaniel, Jack, David. Dawn, Charles, Everyone,

This may not be much help, but I would suspect that Cokie Roberts. like many of those family members affected by the deaths of loved ones in relation to the deaths of President John Kennedy, Robert, and John, Jr., are afraid to speak out, if they do know something. They may have been threatened somehow, or they consider the wiser choice to appear to agree with the "official" story.

One example I know of is that of the wife and children of Grant Stockdale, good friend of John Kennedy, former Ambassador to Ireland, and business man of Miami, Florida. On December 2, 1963, ten days after President Kennedy was assassinated, he had supposedly committed suicide by jumping from his office window in the Dupont Building and landing on a roof eight stories below. An investigator who looked into this could not find the autopsy report in the Coroner's office, but elsewhere. Stockdale had had blunt trauma, but not in areas of his head and body that would have hit the roof. It seemed that he had been murdered by being hit and thrown out of the window to make it look like a suicide. (A technique described in a CIA manual, BTW.)

After that the family was frightened and harassed by threatening phone calls; told to keep quiet; their home was broken into; and an attempt was made on the life of the one of the children. The family finally moved out of state to protect themselves.

Grant Stockdale was the good friend of John Kennedy about whom Army Colonel Jose Rivera told me in April 1963 when he said that Kennedy's best friend would commit suicide by jumping from a high window because of his grief over the President's death. Stockdale interceded in events, such as the riots at the University of Mississippi which erupted when the school was to be racially integrated. Stockdale was originally from Mississippi and went to plead with the Governor of Mississippi at the President's request to not let the riots get out of hand and cause the loss of life. Governor Ross Barnett refused to heed the plea, unfortunately.

Stockdale was also asked by President Kennedy to visit military air bases in Florida to see what was happening there. Kennedy had suspected the Army and Air Force were gearing up to bomb Cuba without his authorization. Sure enough, Stockdale found that planes were being loaded up with bombs, which he reported back to the President.

It is also likely that Stockdale had found out about the plans to assassinate Kennedy, and had to be eliminated for that reason before he could tell this publicly. On the day he died, he had an appointment with a newspaper reporter later in the day. It is conceivable that he may have told Jack, Robert, and Ted Kennedy before the assassination.

When I attended the ASK, Lancer, and COPA meetings in Dallas over the years, I met a young woman who said she was a cousin of Hale Boggs. She had made inquiries into his death and told me what she had found. I encouraged her to write all this up for publication somewhere because it was important, but I don't know if she did. She was a resident of Dallas and knew many of the people there. As I recall, she said that searching parties had flown over the site of the crash and saw movements there, so someone was still alive.

We corresponded for a while. I still have her name in an old address book. If anyone would like to try to find her, please send me an email. Tell her that you learned her name from me and that I met her at a COPA meeting years ago.

One more comment about families being silenced. I do think that many of the Kennedy family members, including Robert and Ted, had been threatened into silence. Robert was waiting for his chance to investigate his brother's death, but was gunned down before he could. I think Ted's problem with Chappaquiddick was also handled the same way. He may not have been in the car at all, and Mary Jo Kopechne, judging from the vast amount of blood having dried, then staining her white blouse, was beaten before she went into the water. Blood from injuries occurring within water would not have stained the blouse, but washed away. Also, her body did not appear to be that of a drowning victim, according to the mortician who prepared her body for shipment for burial.

The death of John, Jr., was no accident. There was no dense haze in the Martha's Vineyard Airport vicinity; visibility was clear. Many strange things appeared in the government's report of the airplane crash. John was supposed to have had a flight instructor aboard; he had never flown that new plane of his without one. Only five of the six seats were found. Witnesses on the beach at that time heard and saw an explosion in the sky which may have been John's plane. His logbook. listing passengers and other information, was never found, although the empty bag where it was kept was found. The debris of the crash was widely scattered on the ocean floor, suggesting an explosion.

John was mulling over an idea to run for Daniel Moynihan's Senate seat, and possibly for president some day. He had planned to spend his time talking it over with old friends and classmates who would also attend the wedding in Hyannis Port. This may have threatened enemies of the Kennedy's who had aspirations of a similar sort of their own.

Adele

Yes, many family and friends have been threatened and killed - for a variety of reasons - and there is a general climate of fear to look behind the curtain for many. All the strange deaths and threats, you mention above Adele, I'd agree with. However, if we stay afraid and paralized (as they want us to be) we make no progress and we remain in slavery. Not all can or will chose to do battle and much of it will be of the Don Quixote variety (in the level of its effect), but try - those of us who dare - must. I couldn't read from Cokie's voice if it was fear of just really thinking any idea of foul-play was insane - what did surprise me was her seeming disinterest to even discuss the strange death of her father. So it goes....