JFK's Pre-1960 Joe McCarthy Connection--Part 2

In the early 1960s--prior to his elimination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 from the world of U.S. power elite presidential politics--JFK was viewed as a politically liberal Democrat by most people in the USA and the world. Yet during the McCarthy Era of the late 1940s and 1950s, neither JFK nor his extremely wealthy father, Joseph P. Kennedy, expressed much political opposition to the activities of the demagogic right-wing Republican member of the U.S. Senate—Joe McCarthy—whose U.S. Senate committee violated the civil liberties of U.S. liberal and leftists during the early 1950s. As Thomas J. Whalen recalled in his 2000 book Kennedy Versus Lodge:

"....McCarthy also enjoyed close personal ties to the Kennedy family. A frequent visitor to the family's summertime retreat in Hyannis Port, McCarthy was known to participate in such time-honored family rituals as sailing, touch football, and softball....

"....`In case there is any question in your mind,' Joseph Kennedy informed a journalist in 1961, `I liked Joe McCarthy. I always liked him. I would see him when I went down to Washington and when he was visiting in Palm Beach he'd come around to my house for a drink. I invited him to Cape Cod.'

"As a personal favor, McCarthy would later help Kennedy's second-youngest son, Robert, attain a staff assistant's position on the Permanent subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Government Operations Committee, a committee the Wisconsinite chaired....

"....Much to the dismay of liberal Democratic leaders such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Kennedy declined to go on the record against the Wisconsin senator, refusing even to pair his vote with that of another absent senator in opposition to the censure....

"This refusal to censure McCarthy was not without political calculation. The Republican was still revered by Irish Catholics in Massachusetts for his staunch anti-communism, and the idea of publicly denouncing him, however, justified, risked alienating this all-important constituency group..."

JFK's Pre-1960 Joe McCarthy Connection--Part 1

In the early 1960s--prior to his elimination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 from the world of U.S. power elite presidential politics--JFK was viewed as a politically liberal Democrat by most people in the USA and the world. Yet during the McCarthy Era of the late 1940s and 1950s, JFK was apparently a close friend of the demagogic right-wing Republican member of the U.S. Senate—Joe McCarthy—whose U.S. Senate committee violated the civil liberties of U.S. liberal and leftists during the early 1950s. As Thomas J. Whalen recalled in his 2000 book Kennedy Versus Lodge:

"...There was little danger of Kennedy's criticizing [Joe] McCarthy or his politics. He had been on friendly terms with the Wisconsin senator for several years. According to McCarthy advisor Roy Cohen, this friendship began during World War II when the two men were stationed together in the Solomon Islands...

"After the war, Kennedy and McCarthy found themselves serving together once again, this time as legislators on Capitol Hill. McCarthy became a frequent guest at Kennedy's brownstone apartment in Georgetown, and the two bachelors were often seen together making the rounds at various Washington, D.C. cocktail parties.

"`I got the idea that Jack liked McCarthy,' recalled George Smathers, the veteran Florida politician who was a freshman congressman during this period. Kennedy `thought he was a pretty good guy...He was friendly all the way through.'

"The late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, a close Kennedy friend, confirmed this observation in an oral history conducted for the Kennedy Library. Douglas stated that whenever he tried to discuss McCarthy and his...red-baiting tactics with the Massachusetts legislator, the latter would cut off all conversation on the subject. `Well, he's an old friend,' he would usually say. `Known him for a long time.'

"...The two shared a strong sense of anti-communism. For Kennedy believed that McCarthy's overall goal of fighting communism at home was commendable, as befitted someone who had made an issue of domestic subversion during the Harold Christoffel investigation in 1947..."

JFK's Pre-1960 McCarthy Era Politics--Part 2

In the early 1960s--prior to his elimination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 from the world of U.S. power elite presidential politics--JFK was viewed as a politically liberal Democrat by most people in the USA and the world. Yet during the McCarthy Era of the late 1940s and 1950s, JFK was apparently both pro-capitalist and very anti-communist in his political rhetoric and voting record. As Thomas J. Whalen recalled in his 2000 book Kennedy Versus Lodge:

"...On January 25, 1949, Kennedy received permission to address the House for one minute and proceeded to condemn the Truman administration for `losing China'...Kennedy's intransigence deepened with the onset of the Korean War in 1950. He vigorously supported American military action against communist North Korea and denounced the trade of strategic materials between the United States and its allies with communist China as `trade in blood.'..."

The same book also indicated one reason that JFK--the son of ultra-rich Kennedy Dynasty founder Joseph P. Kennedy--may have been so pro-capitalist and anti-communist during the McCarthy Era:

"...Kennedy did not come by his stridency on the issue of communism by accident. He grew up listening to his father,...millionaire businessman Joseph P. Kennedy, deliver lectures on the evils of Marxism-Leninism. Stern and humorless, Joseph Kennedy lived with the fear that socialism might someday replace American capitalism, thereby eliminating all the material gains he had accumulated for himself and for his family.

"To help forestall the likelihood of such an event, the elder Kennedy adopted a militant anti-communist approach. He...contributed large sums of money to anti-communist causes such as Francisco Franco's successful attempt to overthrow the socialist-led Republic of Spain. As U.S. ambassador to Great Britain in the late 1930s, he even urged British prime minister Neville Chamberlain to appease Nazi Germany rather than seek an alliance with the Soviet Union. His reasoning was that such a policy would encourage Hitler to march eastward against Russia, thereby bringing down the final curtain on Soviet communism..."

JFK's Pre-1960 McCarthy Era Politics--Part 1

In the early 1960s--prior to his elimination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 from the world of U.S. power elite presidential politics--JFK was viewed as a politically liberal Democrat by most people in the USA and the world. Yet during the McCarthy Era of the late 1940s and 1950s, JFK was apparently both pro-capitalist and very anti-communist in his political rhetoric and voting record. As Thomas J. Whalen recalled in his 2000 book Kennedy Versus Lodge:

"On the anti-communism front Kennedy was...strident in his criticism of [then-U.S. Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in 1952 election campaign for Massachusetts' seat in U.S. Senate]...Kennedy...did not shy away from portraying his opponent as being `soft' on communism...

"...Winning votes and hitting the headlines were exactly what John Kennedy had in mind when he attempted to hang the soft-on communism label on Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in 1952. Indeed, he accused Lodge of having the `number one record among the Republicans' when it came to supporting the supposedly appeasing foreign policy of the Truman administration. Lodge, he further charged, had proven derelict in his duty as senator by failing to support legislation that would have `stopped' trade in war materials with communist China or Soviet Russia...

"Kennedy had been expressing such...views since the beginning of his public career. Running for Congress in 1946...he stressed the `Red Menace' in many of his campaign appearances. `The candidate's political stance was almost ultraconservative,' recalled Kennedy campaign secretary William Sutton. `Many of his speeches emphasized anti-communism as well as anti-collectivism.'

"In an October [1946] radio speech in Boston, Kennedy boasted about having told a group of `intellectual liberals' that the Soviet Union was `a slave state' run by `a small clique of ruthless, powerful and selfish men,' who were bent on world conquest...

"Kennedy continued to be an anti-communist hardliner after he became a congressman. In 1947, as a freshman member of the House Committee on Education and Labor, he publicly called for the perjury indictment of Harlold Christoffel, a United Auto Workers union official who was under suspicion of being a communist for having led a 1941 strike against the Allis-Chalmers Company in Milwaukee...

"Kennedy maintained a steady drumbeat against communism throughout his congressional career. In 1948 he broke with his own party and voted for the Mundt-Nixon Bill, which required the registration of domestic communist front organizations as well as communist organizations and their members. Although vetoed by President Truman, the main provisions of the bill were incorporated into the Communist Control Act of 1950, the so-called McCarren Act, which Kennedy also supported..."

Revisiting Kennedy Dynasty Wealth Again

Kennedy Dynasty members have apparently remained extremely wealthy since the 1990s. As Jonathan Slevin and Maureen Spagnolo observed in a 1990 book that they edited, Kennedys: The Next Generation:

"...A shroud of reticence covers the family's Park Agency company, which manages the family's business interests and financial affairs. The next generation benefits directly from the low-profile New York-based enterprise, which Stephen Smith ran until his death in August 1990. The staff provides the cousins with many perks and services, such as a travel agency, accounting and loans to finance political campaigns..."

Barbara Gibson’s 1993 book, The Kennedys: The Third Generation also observed:

"…Caroline is rich, as are all the Kennedy children. They were millionaires at birth, and their incomes have increased year after year. In addition, Caroline gained income from the Onassis estate, adding to her wealth. She and John were willed an additional $500,000 each at his death...Most of Caroline's time is spent at home in the 12-room apartment…bought at 78th Street and Park Avenue. The co-op is expensive, reportedly in excess of $2.5 million at the time of purchase..."

In his 2003 book, Sweet Caroline, Christopher Andersen indicated how the mother of U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy apparently increased the family’s wealth by marrying a Greek billionaire named Aristotle Onassis in 1968:

"...Through a series of highly questionable business deals, Onassis had parlayed an initial stake...into a half-billion-dollar shipping empire...Jackie could not overlook the fact that Onassis ranked only behind Howard Hughes and John Paul Getty as the world's richest man...Ari owned his own airline—Olympic Airways…”

According to the same book, a pre-nuptial agreement between U.S. Ambassador to Japan Kennedy’s mother and Aristotle Onassis [who died in 1975) provided for "3 million for Jackie and a $1 million trust fund each for Caroline and [her and JFK’s now-deceased son] John,” “under Maurice [Tempelsman]'s guidance” Ambassador Kennedy’s “mother had amassed a $150 million fortune,” and “the bulk of the estate was divided up between Caroline and John." And when 1,195 lots from Jackie Onassis’s estate were auctioned off in April 1996, “the...auction...poured another $34,461,495 into Caroline and John's coffers..."

J. Randy Taraborielli’s 2012 book After Camelot also recalled:

“…His [Aristotle Onassis's] father, Socrates, was a prosperous shipping owner with ten ships in his fleet and extensive real estate holdings...[Ari Onassis] forged simultaneous long-term alliances at fixed prices with such competing oil companies as Mobil, Socony, and Texaco...under the duty-free flag of Panama...As his coffers grew, so did his holdings--shares that guaranteed his control of 95 multinational businesses on 5 continents: gold processing, airlines, and real estate investments in South America, a chemical company in Persia; a castle, apartments, a skyscraper in Manhattan; Olympic Airways,..; ownership of Greek islands in the Aegean...; the luxury yacht Christina; and 17 banks throughout the world..."

"...Each of the Kennedy children received $1 million when they turned twenty-one...She [Jackie Onassis] would also receive $150,000 a year for the rest of her life. John and Caroline would each also receive $50,000 a year until they turned 21. At that time, $100,000 a year would be added to Jackie's annuity..."

"By 1985, Jackie (Onassis) had become fully committed to...Maurice Templesman...At 16, he began working for his father, who was a diamond merchant...He joined his father in the diamond merchant business--Leon Tempelsman and Sons, Inc...Tempelsman would take complete control of Jackie's finances and build her $25.5 million settlement from Onassis into a fortune that would be estimated at between $100 and $200 million..."

"...It was Caroline Kennedy who first spoke to Ted about endorsing Obama...The Kennedys support of Obama was a crushing blow to...Hillary Clinton...

"...In January 1998, Merchandise Mart and several other commercial properties owned by the Kennedys were sold to Vorrado Realty, a real estate investment bank, for $625 million. It was a deal Christopher [Kennedy] helped to broker, and one that guaranteed much of the third generation of Kennedys (Smith and Shrivers included) millions of dollars in yearly annuities--as per the provisions in their grandfather's will should the company be sold--instead of hundreds of thousands, and for the rest of their lives...Of Ted's children, Ted Jr. continues his work with the Marwood Group, advising corporations..."

The wealthy diamond merchant business owner who took “complete control of” Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s “finances” after Aristotle Onassis’s 1975 death, Maurice Tempelsman, was the subject of a cover-story profile in People magazine’s July 11, 1994 issue. According to People magazine, "the secretive Tempelsman” was "a major, major player in Africa," was "CEO of Lazare Kaplan International" which is "one of the U.S.'s oldest diamond firms," was "a former chairman of the...African-American Institute," "has donated over $150,000 to Democratic candidates and the party" and "was especially active in 1988 when a proposed embargo of South African diamonds threatened his business," during South Africa's apartheid era. And according to Lawrence Baraebibai Ekpebu’s 1989 book, Zaire And The African Revolution:

"...The Southern Africa Group for Education [SAGE [was]] headed by a Randall Porter and late President Kennedy's son, John F. Kennedy, Jr. [and was]…said to be financed by a `close' friend and business associate of Mobutu, millionaire Tempelsman! Mr. Tempelsman [was]…said to have helped Mobutu bring foreign investors from the United States, France, Japan and South Africa to form a second Zairean mining organization [Tenka fungurume Mining Society]...Both he and Mobutu [were]…said to be `reaping substantial earnings from the gem diamond trade'...”

Coincidentally, according to United States Foreign Policy Toward Africa by Peter Schrader, during the 1970s former CIA Chief of Station in Kinshasha Lawerence Devlin also "took up duty as the local representative of Maurice Tempelsman, a powerful U.S. businessperson with significant economic investments in Zaire."

Is U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy Worth Over $500 Million?

The member of the Kennedy Dynasty that the Obama White House, coincidentally, appointed as U.S. Ambassador to Japan in 2013 is apparently a lot richer than the typical U.S. or Japanese worker or career diplomat.  As Meghan Keneally observed in an Aug. 16, 2013 London Daily Mail article:

“Caroline Kennedy has been forced to reveal her net worth by submitting financial statements in order to be considered as the next American ambassador to Japan, and it is believed she may be worth up to $500 million.

"The former first daughter's wealth has been a closely-guarded secret for decades, but now that President Obama has nominated her to represent the United States abroad, she has to list the sources of her massive income.

“'She’s very rich, probably worth between $250 million and $500 million,' said one legal expert who had seen the financial disclosure forms. 

“Caroline, who is the sole surviving member of former President John F. Kennedy's immediate family, has avoided calls to publicly release her financial statements in the past, but as the Senate must now approve her appointment to be an Ambassador, she has no choice…

“'I understand that a heightened prospect of a conflict of interest could exist as to companies that maintain a presence in Japan,' she wrote in a letter accompanying her disclosure statements.

“According to The New York Post, said conflicts could include a number of board and trustee positions that she holds with Harvard University's Kennedy school, her husband Edwin Schlossberg's foundation, and the arts foundation created by her mother and father.

“The biggest source of her income is from the extensive trusts that her grandfather Joe established for each of his children and grandchildren.

“The untimely deaths in her family have led to a piling up of respective estates, as her mother Jackie inherited her father's trusts after he was assassinated in 1963.

“After leaving the White House, Jackie Kennedy married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968…When he passed away, Jackie…agreed to accept a $26million settlement from her late-husband's daughter Christina in return for giving up all claims to the family fortune in the future.

“People Magazine reports that her later relationship with financial planner Maurice Tempelsman helped her build that payout from the Onassis family into an estimated fortune of anywhere between $100 million and $200 million, though it is unclear where that money went exactly as her final estate that was passed on to her children was significantly lower…She left her children an estimated $43.7million, including several pricey properties including her 15-room apartment on Fifth Avenue which had a view of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as the 366-acre Kennedy estate on Martha's Vineyard. 

“In May of this year [2013], Caroline listed 90 waterfront acres of the property for sale- with no homes included- for $45 million though it does not appear to have sold yet. She is still holding on to three lots of land for herself and her children, two that pay off the cost of estate expenses, and one that has been designated as open space. The Boston Herald reports that the lots she is keeping for her family include the home that her mother lived in and designed.

“This isn't the first time that Caroline has made a parcel off her mother's property. Jackie bought the 15th floor of her Fifth Avenue apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 1964 following the president's assassination, she paid $250,000. It sold for $9.5 million in 1995 after her death to billionaire David Koch… 

“On top of her own piece of the Kennedy pie, Caroline also inherited her brother John Jr.'s trusts when he died in a plane crash in 1999.

“He left his $50 million to his relatives and a few charities...

“'From the figures, it looks like she earns between $12 million and $30 million a year from her trust and from her investments,' an unidentified legal expert told The Post.

“The interest yielded from those funds is hefty, but the 55-year-old has not just been resting on those laurels.

“She has stakes in banks like Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, JP Morgan and two oil companies that her family's assets own.

“On top of those eight-figure sums, she also brings in an additional $1 million from paid speeches and book royalties on a yearly basis…”

Why Did Obama Appoint Caroline Kennedy As U.S. Ambassador To Japan?

Joseph P. Kennedy’s granddaughter and JFK and Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s daughter—Caroline Kennedy—neither spoke much Japanese nor possessed much diplomatic experience in 2013 Yet in June 2013 Caroline Kennedy was appointed by Democratic President Obama to be the U.S. government’s Ambassador to Japan.

A June 26, 2013 RT News article, however, indicated why the Democratic Obama White House may have felt that it was politically appropriate to name Caroline Kennedy to be its Ambassador to Japan:

“Since Obama’s reelection, top diplomatic posts in Spain, Belgium, Italy and the UK have been given to top donors. According to Bloomberg no fewer than 26 of the administration’s serving and nominated ambassadors were major Democratic campaign contributors….

“More recently, the announcement this week of Caroline Kennedy as Ambassador to Japan also indicates a preference for using prestigious diplomatic appointments as rewards for help on the campaign trail. As the only surviving child of former president John F. Kennedy and the torchbearer of that political dynasty, Caroline Kennedy’s early 2008 endorsement of Obama helped propel his campaign forward against his formidable challenger, former first lady and later secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

“It was Caroline Kennedy’s 2008 piece for The New York Times entitled 'A President Like My Father' which lent Obama major support from the family, along with an endorsement from former Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy…”

But the same RT News article also noted:

“…Although Ms. Kennedy is trained as a lawyer, her lack of political experience has led some critics to question whether she is up to the task…Clyde Prestowitz, the current president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington and the man who led US trade negotiations with Japan, questioned why the administration chose to appoint both Kennedy and her predecessor John Roos, a technology lawyer and a top Obama donor, neither of whom speak Japanese…David J. Rothkopf, the CEO and Editor-at-large of Foreign Policy magazine, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a scathing review of her appointment on Thursday.

“`The Kennedy nomination is perhaps the first time in history that an individual has been nominated for a top ambassadorial post primarily for having written an opinion column,’“ wrote Rothkopf.

“Likewise, members of the foreign service have previously expressed irritation that top diplomatic missions have gone to`“campaign bundlers’ rather than career diplomats.

“`Now is the time to end the spoils system and the de facto “three-year rental” of ambassadorships,’ the group's governing board wrote in a 2012 statement.

“`The appointment of non-career individuals, however accomplished in their own field, to lead America’s important diplomatic missions abroad should be exceptional and circumscribed, not the routine practice it has become over the last three decades,’ they added.”

According to the all-gov website, “Caroline Kennedy has contributed more than $55,000 to party candidates and organizations, including $5,500 to the Democratic National Committee, $5,000 to Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, $4,600 to his 2008 campaign, $4,600 to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential primary run, and $5,000 to her 2006 senatorial campaign.” And according to a 2011 Center for Public Integrity website article, “the American Foreign Service Association…believes these appointments should go mostly to career diplomats;” and “the organization cites the 1980 Foreign Service Act, which states that appointees should have a `useful knowledge of the language … and understanding of the history, the culture, the economic and political institutions and the interests of that country.’”

The same Center for Public Integrity website article also noted:

"The 1980 federal law...states that political contributions `should not be a factor' in picking ambassadors, though presidents of both parties have all but ignored that.

"Passing over career diplomats in favor of mega-donors amounts to `selling ambassadorships,' said Susan Johnson, president of the American Foreign Service Association. She said it runs contrary to the law and is unethical, yet,`“That hasn’t stopped anybody.'”