The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

July, 1969: Mary Jo Kopechne, devoted JFK girl, and later one of Bobby’s trusted aides, was in charge of packing up his files after his assassination in L. A. She read too much, learned about the Kennedy Mafia involvement and other things. She said to friends: «This isn’t Camelot, this is murder.» She was an idealistic American Catholic. She didn’t like murdering hypocrites. She died trying to get off Chappaquiddick Island, where she had overheard (along with everyone else in the cottage) Teddy Kennedy’s end of […] telephone calls from John Tunney and to Joe Alioto, and Democrat bigwigs Swig, Shorenstein, Schumann and Bechtel. […] Mary Jo, up to there with Mafia, ran screaming out of the cottage on her way to Nader. Drunken Teddy offered to drive her to the ferry. Trying to get away from the curious Sheriff, Teddy sped off toward the Bridge, busted Mary Jo’s nose when she tried to grab his arm from the back seat, and bailed out of the car as it went off the bridge. Mary Jo, with a busted nose, breathed in an air bubble in the car for more than two hours waiting for help, while Teddy, assuming she was dead, went to set up an alibi. Mary Jo finally suffocated in the air bubble, diluted with carbon dioxide. It took her 2 hours and 37 minutes to suffocate while Teddy called Jackie and Onassis on the Christina. Teddy also called Katherine Meyer Graham, lawyers, etc. Jackie called the Pope on Teddy’s behalf, who assigned Cardinal Cushing to help. The next morning, the first person Teddy tried to call after deciding he’d have to take the rap himself was a lawyer, Burke Marshall, Onassis’s friend in the US Liberty Ships deal back in the forties and also the designated custodian for JFK’s brains after Dallas (the brains have since disappeared).

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In the panic of trying to cover up Teddy’s guilt at Chappaquiddick, many things came unglued. The JFK murder threatened to creep out of the woodwork again […]

September 1969: «Gemstones», with histories, had been released around the globe for several years. In 1969, Roberts gave a Gemstone with history to Mack, head of California CREEP, for Nixon, with the proposition: the Presidency in return for wiping out the Mafia. The «history» included Teddy’s phone calls to and from the Lawrence Cottage on Chappaquiddick billed to Teddy’s home phone in Hyannisport. Nixon, being Mafia himself, wasn’t interested; but kept the information to use on Teddy whenever it seemed advantageous.

4 May 1970: Charlotte Ford Niarchos called her ex-husband Stavros, worried about the Ford Foundation’s involvement in the Chappaquiddick cover-up. Eugenie Livanos Niarchos, in bed with her husband, overheard the conversation. Stavros was forced to beat her to death; he ruptured her spleen and broke the cartilage in her throat. Cause of death was listed as «overdose of barbiturates», though autopsy showed these injuries.

NOTE: L. Wayne Rector was hired around 1955 by the Carl Byoir PR Agency (Hughes’ L. A. PR firm) to act as Hughes double. In 1957 when Onassis grabbed Hughes, Rector continued to act as his stand-in. Rector was the Hughes surrogate in Las Vegas; Robert Maheu actually ran the show; Maheu got his orders from Onassis; the six «nursemaids», called the «Mormon Mafia», kept Rector sealed off from prying eyes.

17 June 1969: Bobby Kennedy knew who killed his brother; he wrote about it in his unpublished book, The Enemy Within. When he foolishly tried to run for President, Onassis had him offed, using a sophisticated new technique. Hypnotized, Sirhan Sirhan shot at him from the front, «security guard» (from Lockheed Aircraft) Thane Cesar shot from two or three inches away from Bobby’s head from the rear. Sirhan’s shots all missed. Evelle Younger, then the L. A. District Attorney, covered it all up including the squawks of the L. A. Coroner Thomas Noguchi. Younger was rewarded with the post of California Attorney General later. His son, Eric Younger, got a second generation Mafia reward; a judgeship at age 30. (See Ted Charach, L.A. author and director, The Second Gun, a documentary film on the RFK murder, bought and suppressed by Warner Brothers for more details.) After Bobby’s death, Teddy knew who did it. He ran to Onassis, afraid for his life, and swore eternal obedience. In return, Onassis granted him his life and said he could be President, too, just like his big brother, if he would behave himself and follow orders.

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