Lis­ten: One seg­ment

When John F. Kennedy, Jr. died in the crash of a pri­vate plane in July of 1999, media pun­dits rumi­nated at length about the reck­less­ness of the Kennedys and “the Kennedy curse”. This pro­gram explores the strik­ing con­tra­dic­tions between the offi­cial ver­sion of JFK, Jr.‘s death and the facts con­cern­ing his demise. The avail­able data sug­gest that JFK, Jr. may have been the vic­tim of foul play.

The pro­gram con­sists of an inter­view with vet­eran jour­nal­ist John Bryan, who worked for the San Fran­cisco Exam­iner (among other papers). John’s expe­ri­ence with the Exam­iner led him to begin ques­tion­ing the offi­cial ver­sion of the story. Famil­iar with the Examiner’s week­end pub­lish­ing prac­tices, John became con­vinced that the Exam­iner (for what­ever rea­son) was delib­er­ately with­hold­ing the story. (Kennedy’s plane crashed on a Fri­day evening.) Sens­ing a pos­si­ble cover-up, Bryan reli­giously combed the print and elec­tronic media for the truth about the deaths of Kennedy, his wife and sister-in-law.

Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of Kyle Brady (a vet­eran pilot who flew from the same air­port Kennedy departed from), Bryan relates Brady’s obser­va­tion that JFK, Jr.‘s pre­flight actions indi­cated that Kennedy seemed to feel that some­thing was wrong with the plane.

Next, Bryan dis­cusses the real­ity of the con­di­tions around Martha’s Vine­yard at the time of Kennedy’s dis­ap­pear­ance. Con­trary to news reports at the time, the weather was clear and the vis­i­bil­ity was from between two and five miles. Kennedy was about four min­utes from the air­port, was within visual con­tact radius of the island and had radioed the air­port to get per­mis­sion to land. He did not broad­cast a “May­day” dis­tress call. Eye­wit­nesses reported Kennedy’s plane approach­ing the air­port at an alti­tude of less than 100 feet. (This con­trasts markedly with the “radar track” which was leaked to the media, show­ing Kennedy’s plane begin­ning its “grave­yard spi­ral” at an alti­tude of 1800 ft. It is extra­or­di­nar­ily unlikely that Kennedy would have been at that alti­tude when com­ing in for a land­ing. Con­trary to press reports at the time of Kennedy’s death, he was an excel­lent pilot with over 300 hours of fly­ing time. Some reports erro­neously said he had as lit­tle as 35 hours.)

Mr. Bryan also reports eye­wit­ness reports of see­ing a “flash” or explo­sion over the water when Kennedy’s plane dis­ap­peared. Most impor­tantly, John recounts numer­ous obser­va­tions by media polit­i­cal pun­dits that Kennedy was going to be offered either the Pres­i­den­tial or, more likely, the Vice-Presidential nom­i­na­tion, in an attempt to assure vic­tory for the Democ­rats in the elec­tion of 2000. His death elim­i­nated that pos­si­bil­ity. In addi­tion, Mr. Bryan dis­cusses the extra­or­di­nary secrecy that sur­rounded the retrieval and dis­posal of the plane’s wreck­age and the bod­ies of the deceased. Reporters were not allowed to view the wreck­age or the autopsy. No autopsy pho­tographs were taken, in direct con­tra­ven­tion of Mass­a­chu­setts law. The bod­ies were cre­mated within 10 hours of dis­cov­ery and buried at sea. John points out that the Kennedys are Catholic and Catholics tra­di­tion­ally bury their dead. Cre­ma­tion was com­pletely for­bid­den by the Catholic Church until 1963, and since then only under cer­tain extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances. Scat­ter­ing ashes at sea is strictly for­bid­den. Bryan ques­tions this extra­or­di­nary secrecy and depar­ture from accepted pro­ce­dure and points out that the tail sec­tion of the plane appears to have disappeared.

The dis­cus­sion fea­tures sev­eral obser­va­tions by Mr. Emory, includ­ing the fact that the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion was back on the polit­i­cal front burner after Boris Yeltsin pub­licly gave Pres­i­dent Clin­ton the KGB files on Oswald (which demon­strated that they felt Oswald was prob­a­bly an Amer­i­can agent). Mr. Emory also points out that the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion was part of a law­suit that was pro­ceed­ing through the courts in 1999.

The pro­gram con­cludes with a read­ing of the obit­u­ary of Anthony Stanis­laus Radzi­will, JFK, Jr.‘s best friend. (They were best men at each oth­ers wed­dings.) Radzi­will died of can­cer about three weeks after the death of Kennedy. (The intel­li­gence com­mu­nity has been able to assas­si­nate peo­ple via can­cer for decades.) A broad­cast jour­nal­ist, Radzi­will had cov­ered the O.J. Simp­son case and had received a Peabody award for his work on the emer­gence of “neo”-Nazism in Amer­ica. (There are numer­ous evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries between the O.J. Simp­son case and the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, includ­ing the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion. The killing of Ron Gold­man and Nicole Brown Simp­son appears to have been the work of Nazi elements.