Trashing the Kennedys: Ad Infinitum

I do not use this Substack site to link to Kennedysandking.com.  But this is one case where I will make an exception since I think the audience would—and should-- be interested. There is a three part series there right now entitled “Maureen Callahan Goes over the Edge—Along with Megyn Kelly”. To be frank, I never heard of Callahan before she wrote her abominable book. I did find out later that her and Kelly share a common past, namely they were both employed by Rupert Murdoch for a long period of time.  But before we go into that and just how bad the Kelly interview with Callahan was, let me address my overall theme.

In American culture there has been a category of, let us call it, “trash the Kennedys” in literature, television and even films.  (A good example being the Netlfix film made out of Joyce Carol Oates’ novel Blonde.) This genre has been around for awhile.  It began with professional rightwing authors like Victor Lasky and Ralph DeToledano back in the sixties. It was their job to slash and burn John and Robert Kennedy while they were in office. But then, after both Kennedys were killed, something I once called “the posthumous assassination” began to operate as a cultural phenomenon.

It started in earnest in the seventies. One of the angles and motifs for this character assassination after death was because the CIA plots to kill Castro were unearthed by the Church Committee investigations.  That committee chronicled the genesis of these plots since they were the first to have access to the CIA Inspector General Report on the subject.  And that is still the best report there is on the topic.  It specifically states—on pp. 132-33-- that the Agency had no presidential approval for the plots. So the CIA had to find ways to counter the accusation by Senator Frank Church that they were running amok like a rogue elephant.

This counter was made possible by the inexplicable fact that, for whatever reason, the Church Committee decided not to publish the IG Report in their appendixes. Therefore a dishonest CIA officer, Sam Halpern, became a mouthpiece to any cheapjack writer who would listen to his tall tales declaring that Bobby Kennedy was somehow involved in these plots. This went on into the nineties when Seymour Hersh published his atrocious book on John Kennedy, The Dark Side of Camelot, which some writers found so poor they referred to it as “The Dark Side of Seymour Hersh”. Even though the IG Report was now declassified, Hersh actually listened to Halpern.  Hersh was later demolished on this point by John Newman, who proved at length and in depth, that both of Hersh’s sources—Halpern and Director of Plans Dick Bissell—lied about this issue. And Hersh accepted them at face value. (See Newman’s volume Into the Storm, especially pp. 182-91)

The other prominent angle used to tarnish the Kennedys was the alleged affairs they had with Marilyn Monroe. As writers like Don McGovern have shown, this mythology began with another rightwing hack writer, namely Frank Capell, in the sixties.  It was significantly furthered in the seventies  by Norman Mailer and the infamous literary fraudster Robert Slatzer. Even though any intelligent, objective person could discern that Slatzer was a prevaricator, both Anthony Summers in the eighties and Donald Wolfe in the nineties profusely used him as a reference. To anyone who has read the many  exposes about Slatzer, this is both inexplicable and inexcusable.

In her book, Ask Not, Callahan does not use the Castro angle. But she does use the Monroe angle.  And she references Hersh, Summers and Wolfe.  She even sourced the late David Heymann. Which is actually kind of shocking.  Because Heymann has been exposed as a fraudster almost as many times as Slatzer has. Which, I guess, shows that Callahan is an equal opportunity employer in this regard.

Callahan especially wants to somehow implicate Bobby Kennedy in an affair with Monroe, so she liberally uses another fabricator, the late Agnes Laverne Carmon, who was popularly known as Jeanne Carmen. Carmen tried to say that she lived adjacent to Monroe. As April VeVea has discovered, this was not true. She actually lived several miles from Monroe.  (See VeVea’s Facebook entry of 7/12/24) Carmen also claimed she was Monroe’s best female friend. Again,  there was no evidence for this in any of Monroe’s address books, with her other friends, or her later discovered files. Carmen then said that under pressure from ”powerful forces” she had to move out of LA to Arizona in 1962, the year Monroe passed. But VeVea discovered that Carmen was still living in LA at least as late as 1967.

And this is where Callahan really falls over the edge. In the eighties, Carmen was in receipt of several thousand dollars to support the original fraudster, Robert Slatzer, in a documentary he was pitching for television. Carmen then contacted her friend Ted Jordan about the idea and offered him a spot on the show. And here is the key: according to Jordan, Carmen said all he would need to do is “read the script”. (ibid)

But this was just the beginning for Carmen. Later on she migrated from one fraudster, Slatzer, to another, Heymann. For his book on RFK she now revealed that she was not just allegedly best friends with Monroe. She apparently forgot to say previously that she had an affair with President Kennedy, “And he wasn’t even good in bed.”  (Heymann, RFK: A Candid Biography of Robert F. Kennedy, p. 313) Something else that was kind of novel: she, Monroe and Bobby used to go nude bathing at Malibu. (ibid, p. 314) Oh and Carmen has to add: the cover up about Monroe’s death was so complete that the perpetrators broke into her home also! (ibid, p. 324)

I could go even further with Carmen.  Because the longer she was interviewed and the more appearances she made on TV—VeVea says she did 31—the more her memory was replenished with things she should have never forgotten.

How could any respectable author rely on this kind of a witness to trash the memory of one of the finest Attorney Generals to ever hold the office? A man who went after the steel companies for rigging prices, who put a full court press on organized crime, who began the revolution in civil rights.  An Attorney General who announced in 1961 at the University of Georgia that—unlike his predecessor-- he would enforce the Supreme Court’s Brown vs Board decision. And yet Callahan is willing to denigrate all of that with a witness like Carmen?

But then what does all the above say about the questioner, Megyn Kelly? If you take a look at the interview Kelly did with Callahan, it is nothing less than stunning. For the simple reason that Kelly seems to accept virtually everything that Callahan says as true. Which is unfathomable. What makes it moreso is this: Kelly began her career as an attorney. Yes, she started off in the business of law for ten years. And yet I do not recall one challenging question she asks of Callahan. As an  attorney she has to know the rules of evidence and testimony.  She also has to know what hearsay is.  Further, how damaging it is for a witness to change, and then augment, their testimony.

She also must know the importance of cross examination to the cause of credibility.  As Mark Lane once noted, its fairly easy for a witness to get through direct examination. It is much more difficult to survive on cross examination. Well Callahan did not have to worry about that because ex-lawyer Kelly was not interested in any such thing. And believe me, any author who is going to use Carmen as a witness is ripe for a devastating cross examination.

For instance, Carmen maintained that Bobby Kennedy was in Los Angeles the day Monroe passed.  Callahan abides by that in her book.  Incredibly, lawyer Kelly goes along with this provable BS.  Why do I use that term?

As an attorney, Kelly has to understand the difference between a witness recalling something—especially when she in not under oath—versus photographic evidence. And further, how the value of pictures is even more magnified when the person who took the picture can testify to taking it.  Finally, a picture can provide for a water tight alibi.

Contrary to what Kelly and Callahan are trying to propagate, Bobby Kennedy was not in Los Angeles the day Monroe passed.  And there are a whole series of pictures to prove that fact. (Susan Bernard, Marilyn: Intimate Exposures, pp. 184-87) Kennedy was about 350 miles north of LA, in the San Francisco area. He was there at the invitation of a professional friend John Bates. Author Susan Bernard got in contact with his two sons, John Jr. and Charles. They provided Bernard with a set of pictures which demolish Carmen, Callahan and Kelly.  These photos were augmented by letters from John Bates, and his sons describing the settings and time of the photos. The pictures proceed from morning to night.  As John Bates wrote conclusively:

Those purported eyewitnesses who claim to have seen Bob Kennedy in Southern California on Saturday are either lying, victims of hallucinations, or they have been victimized by falsely crafted theories. (Bernard, p. 185)

Or as the estimable Don McGovern once wrote:

While the initial motivation to engage in the Kennedys-Murdered Marilyn  farrago was a political one, it quickly transmogrified  into a financial one, most certainly influenced, arguably even fomented by the financial success of Norman Mailer and Lawrence Schiller.  There is little doubt that money motivated Robert Slatzer and Jeanne Carmen, along with the obvious fact that both were camera and fame whores.  (Quoted in Gary Vitacco Robles’ Icon, Vol. 2, p. 32)

Now, Callahan and Kelly worked for Rupert Murdoch for a combined 33 years. Anyone who worked at the New York Post, which Callahan did for two decades, or at Fox News, which Kelly did for 13 years, understands the milieu and the game involved.  If anything Kelly has gotten even more rightwing now that she has her own independently produced show. Watching her discuss Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York was rather disturbing.  She actually tried to say that Trump was not named in the non- disclosure documents with porn star Stormy  Daniels, who he wanted to silence about their sexual encounter. Yet, it was shown at trial that aliases were used. Two Republican lawyers, George Conway and James Comey, reviewed the trial. They both predicted, before the verdict came in, that Trump would be convicted. As he was on all 34 counts.

The fact that Kelly called Callahan’s piece of pulp the book of the year tells the reader all one needs to know about where she is as a journalist today.  In fact, I would not use that rubric with her. When one compares her review of Trump’s New York trial with her discussion of Callahan, Kelly more resembles a carnival barker at the door of the MAGA Universe sideshow.