FBI files: Ted Kennedy may have taken part in 'sex parties' with ...

The New York Daily News has unearthed thousands of declassified documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that portray the Camelot element of the Kennedy brothers as licentious sexaholics. The documents are real enough. The question is: were these documents plants of propaganda of hate of toward the Kennedy clan for an agenda that did not please organized crime or Communist thugs? You read, you decide.

JRH 6/17/10 (Hat Tip: Soda Head)
*************************************
FBI files: Ted Kennedy may have taken part in 'sex parties' with Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra

BY Brian Kates, Robert Gearty AND Helen Kennedy
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Tuesday, June 15th 2010, 4:00 AM
New York Daily News

Secret FBI files claim Ted Kennedy may have taken part in wild "sex parties" with Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra at a swank New York hotel.

The declassified reports also delve into rumors of a mob plot to put him in "compromising situations" with a variety of women - and detail scores of death threats against the late Massachusetts senator, who died last summer.

- A July 12, 1965, FBI memo said a woman named Jacqueline Hammond "has considerable information concerning sex parties" at Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel.

Hammond claimed the sexcapades involved Monroe, Sinatra, the three Kennedy brothers, Kennedy brother-in-law and actor Peter Lawford and his wife - and Sammy Davis Jr.

It's unclear how Hammond, described as "very wealthy to the extent of several million dollars," knew about the sex romps.

- An Aug. 3, 1965, report cites a "reliable" Milwaukee snitch claiming the Cosa Nostra was hatching a plot to use Sinatra's mob associates to arrange for "women to be placed in compromising situations" with Teddy, Robert and Lawford.

The motive was revenge for "the attacks of the former Attorney General Robert Kennedy against organized crime," according to the report.

A followup report on the same day called the source's tip "nebulous and vague" but noted that "talk of such a plot among the Italian hoodlum element would not be an unusual expectation."

The newly released 2,352-page file shows the FBI spent a lot of time tracking a vast barrage of assassination threats from hundreds of cranks, drunks and maniacs - all vowing to send Kennedy to join his slain brothers.

One of the most surprising revelations was that assassin Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Kennedy's brother Bobby in 1968, allegedly wanted to go after Ted, too.

A fellow inmate in California claimed in 1977 Sirhan offered to pay him "a million dollars and a car" to kill his target's younger brother. Sirhan's mom would have the money, the inmate said.

"He advised he declined the contract," the report states.

The seriousness of the threat, and the reliability of the inmate informant, were never determined.

The documents show the feds dutifully catalogued every barroom mutter, misspelled postcard and anonymous phone call - and there were many.

Many letters refer to the "murder" of Mary Jo Kopechne.

"Your two brothers were killed unjustly but when you get murdered it will be a blessing," read a 1969 letter. "Someone will get you. I only wish I could."

J. Edgar Hoover responded to many letters asking him to investigate Chappaquiddick by saying it did not involve the violation of any federal law. And he was upset by a Village Voice report that the FBI was probing the drowning.

"Nail this lie," Hoover demanded in a memo.

The Nixon White House went fishing for information about Kopechne.

In one October 1969 memo, Justice Department lawyer John Dean asked the bureau to "discreetly find out" if Kopechne had visited Greece the previous summer, and provided agents with her passport number. The answer is redacted.

Many of the threats to Kennedy involved news clippings scribbled with obscenities and photos of the senator drawn over with devil beards and horns - or bullet holes.

'Bullet in your head'

"You son of a bitch. Switch from being a communist to support of America within one month of the above date or you will get a bullet in your head," read a letter dated April 12, 1971.

"Get your pine box ready...Bullet in your neck," read one from 1974.

The files indicate that each letter was sent to an FBI lab for fingerprint and handwriting analysis. But through the terms of three directors - Hoover, L. Patrick Gray and Clarence Kelly - the FBI apparently never identified any of the senders.

Some of the memos are funny, like the one from the self-described psychic who insisted his "feelings" had a "96.1 accuracy rate," or the prostitute who said she would kill Kennedy for being "an immoral man."

Various reports came in to the FBI of elaborate assassination conspiracies involving the mob, the Black Panthers and Cuba - in at least one case, all three.

In 1961, before he entered the Senate, Kennedy took a fact-finding trip to Mexico, Central and South America. He kept a detailed diary, which the FBI found - and copied - after he left it on a plane.

Tucked amid page after page of entries on the threat of communism in South America, agricultural production figures and details on U.S. aide programs, is this July entry indicating that Kennedy's meetings were not all work-related:

"11:30 - Return to hotel. See (redacted name.) She asks me to go on the program in the fall. We have a nightcap and hit the sack at 12:00."

hkennedy@nydailynews.com
____________________________
New York Daily News