This a letter from JFK to the publisher of the Washington Post, Phil Graham, regarding my Pop
Thanks to his initial assistance from President Roosevelt, back in the days when W.R. Hearst was alive, and before there was television, Pop always had his general interest column syndicated across the country. He wrote about everything and anything. As you can imagine, his was a most influential position.
He always attended the national political conventions. He interviewed kings, presidents, movie stars, convicted murderers and leaders of industry among others. He also attended the Kentucky Derby, World Series, Super Bowl and Championship Boxing events for his popular sports column that had the most appeal for the average person on the street.
Sometimes people tried to influence the things he wrote about. They tried to bribe him, and if that didn’t work some people resorted to worse measures. To that end he was forced to carry a diminutive 32 caliber Beretta. He had badges in many cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, and in the District of Columbia. He was a General on the staff of the Governor of Kentucky. But he was not a scary guy. He was a good man.
By 1962, the great power of the press had been significantly eroded by television. W.R. Hearst Jr. was closing down papers left and right. So Pop used his friendship with JFK to get his column back on the Washington Post, where he had once contributed at the start of his career. For a short time he was overjoyed to return to his roots in Washington. But then a few things went slightly wrong…
I've looked at the JFK/Graham letter in my files before and it never rang a bell. That’s because I had amnesia, or more correctly put, I suffered TBI or traumatic brain injury when I was a very young man on a job in Italy. It is a good thing I was young, because youth helped me to recover. The brain is a wonderful thing. There ought to be a non-profit organization for the care of TBI victims, and it should be run by people with first-hand experience of TBI.
Anyway, regarding the JFK/Graham letter, a nice man recently contacted me out of the blue and came to my home to see about taking these kinds of files away to be placed in a university archive. It took his comment about the letter for my brain to recall that Graham was the outspoken publisher of the Post, and that not long after this letter was written he had reportedly killed himself, after being dosed with a powerful hallucinogenic, and taken away in a straight jacket by men in white coats, to a place deceptively called Chestnut Lodge. The established story about publisher Phillip Graham, a long time friend of the Kennedy family, and veteran OSS agent and CIA operative, was that he suffered from depression, and that while on stage during a newspaper convention he purportedly blurted out something about JFK’s alleged affair with Mary Pinchot Meyer.
That odd story first, has the effect of defaming the president, and secondly it makes it look like, if there was something sinister going on, which there was, the president would have wanted to silence Graham. But it just does not add up. When thinking about who might be behind things that happen sometimes, I always like to look first, at who profited.
For instance, if anyone was getting close to completely dominating media control of the public mind through newspaper and television station aquisition, it was Phillip Graham. But his obligation to manipulate the reporting of the news was starting to get to his conscience. Further, Eisenhower/Nixon era elements within the CIA were independently working to influence news media in a different direction to favor the political and economic agendas of those who stood to lose as a result of the increasing Kennedy Democrat popularity. Those elements shared objectives with, and were aided and abetted by wealthy individuals who sought to disrupt the international trade, central banking and military industrial complex reforms that were underway. Inter-party rivals, leaders and operatives of the win at all costs wars between Republicans and Democrats, that politicians bombastically proclaim to be behind them each election day, became pawns fomenting indelible hatreds, capturing minds, even justifying deeds that were ultimately against the interests of Democracy. Those same kind of quiet tactics; spreading propaganda, bribing, ruining financially, or assassinating reputations, and worse, were not only used as leverage to gain power within the government and the political parties themselves, but as tools for organizations that were ultimately the sworn enemies of America... and as such, the disparate parties behind these agendas, both patriots and foreign enemies, became unwitting comrades.
I might be wrong in my assesment on the death of Phil Graham. I wasn't there. Maybe Graham did have a nervous breakdown like they said. But I would feel better about the story if he hadn't been hospitalized in a facility with a known MK Ultra wing. Nor am I certain that Graham was silenced because he had too much information. He coulld never have enough info.
At any rate, Pop never got to publish much on the Post after Phil Graham was neutralized, and America never got to read much more of his kind of journalism. And when JFK was killed, Pop lost the most powerful supporter he had for his project AMERICA, a project based upon conversations he recorded with famous Americans like Conrad Hilton, and Martin Luther King Jr.. Each individual was given the same 20 questions to tell, not so much How they achieved their measure of personal success in America, but Why Amercia made it possible for them. A few extra questions were targeted at each individual's own experience.
Each segment in this expensive and unprecedented dramatic series was slated to use different A list actors and directors for every episode, and deal with a major point in each famous person's life that led them to success - backed up by the never-before-heard interviews recorded, with people such as John Wayne and John Steinbeck.
I mentioned Steinbeck to emphasize that this show is not necessarily about capitalism. It deals with personal success. It gives valuable insight into how America can help people succeed. But coincidentally, with the loss of JFK, the project AMERICA was shelved by the studios and the media. They said it was too corny. So Pop turned his attention to writing his tell-all novel CYNTHIA, which (aside from being about his fiance who died on the eve of their wedding and haunted him the rest of his life), is essentially his autobiography.
The novel reveals, among many other things, suppressed information from his mother's side of the family, beginning before there was a Washington D.C., and brings to light for the first time, additional names of people and motives behind the Lincoln assassination. It describes what it was like growing up as the youngest of a humble Irish family during turn of the century District of Columbia, two blocks from his friend J. Edgar Hoover; how he and his pals started pro football; his confidential service for President Roosevelt while living with each of the commanding generals in their various theaters of combat during World War II; his relationship with socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean who once gave him the Hope Diamond to hold during a dinner party (it remained in his pocket the whole evening, curse and all); his relationship with William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies and their hidden daughter Patricia Lake; the behind the curtain dealings of Howard Hughes; his relationship with the people who made eight U.S. presidents; and particularly his personal insights regarding the private lives, motivations and agendas of America's highest leaders during the turbulent years surrounding the Kennedy assassinations.
As one might imagine, there was great interest in this book, initially from major publishers and from the studios. But then the book was also suppressed. Paramount Pictures passed on it with the comment that it was not cinematic because it followed the extraordinary exploits of the protagonist throughout his entire life. Later they made a picture called Forrest Gump, similar in scope, but lacking historical significance. So far it has grossed over 700 million.
Today, it is a little frightening, and sobering, to think that the message of my Pop, one of the greatest writers of all time, has been suppressed, and his writings have been mostly forgotten... as if they never existed.
Continue on to Part V: An American boy rembers the years after the Kennedy assassinations
or:
Part VIII: An American boy remembers the years after the Kennedy assassinations
Part III: An American boy remembers the years after the Kennedy assassinations
Part II: An American boy remembers the years after the Kennedy assassinations
Part I: An American boy remembers the years after the Kennedy assassinations
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