Published June 15, 2010
Newly released FBI files show the frequency and range of death threats against Sen. Edward M. Kennedy over four decades. This person fixated on the death of Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick island.
“Mary Jo will haunt you to death.” It was scrawled over and over again on anonymous death threats for years after that fateful night.
Mary Jo did haunt him. In his 2009 memoir, Sen. Kennedy wrote that he “made terrible decisions” on Chappaquiddick. Decisions that haunted him for four decades, he said. You almost wonder if the sender doubted that.
It must have been a little less worrisome that the sender seemed crazy. Law enforcement eventually gave up searching. But the Mary Jo obsessor was only one of many people who wanted the senator dead, the documents show. The possible threats were endless, and they came from everywhere. The man who killed Bobby. The Ku Klux Klan. Even the Mafia, maybe, although those reports seem to have been a hoax.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, the famed historian and longtime Kennedy friend, told WBUR today she was surprised by the range of threats the senator faced.
“I remember, in 1980, when we were talking with him about the question of whether he would run for the presidency, and he noted to us that his children were concerned about whether or not there would be an attack on him as there had been on his brothers.
“But he just said, at a certain point you have to decide, almost by a matter of will, that you will not allow yourself to be afraid. And he talked about the fact that life would be diminished if you allowed yourself to live that way.”
Imagine, watching the assassination of your two brothers and then being the subject of a letter like this:
To Whom It May Concern, A warning to the Kennedys. John Kennedy, No. 1, assassinated; Robert Kennedy, No. 2, assassinated; Ted Kennedy, No. 3, to be assassinated on a set date of October 25, 1968. The Kennedy residence must be well protected on that date.”
Then there was Sirhan Sirhan, the RFK assassin. A prison cellmate told the authorities that Sirhan offered him a $1 million “death contract” to assassinate Sen. Kennedy. The FBI investigation was brief and seems to have been inconclusive.
And there was the Michigan woman who threatened to kill Sen. Kennedy and President Reagan in 1985, about four years after the attempt on Reagan’s life. The government decided not to prosecute, because psycholinguistics experts deemed “the author is merely ventilating her frustrations and projecting her inadequacies.”
If nothing else, the documents show the FBI’s unflagging commitment, over several decades, to protect Sen. Kennedy’s life — despite their complicated relationship. Doris Kearns Goodwin told us she thinks the senator shielded his family from the barrage of threats.
In another WBUR interview today, Adam Clymer, the Kennedy biographer, said: “I don’t think anyone outside his closest staff and family members had any idea of the frequency of them. I lost count. There are dozens. Sometimes there are three or four in a month. This is why he kept a Kevlar vest in his hall closet for a time. I don’t know what it would be like to be the target of that many.”