John F. Kennedy document hoax

In 1997, a cache of documents were discovered, purportedly proving an affair between President John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, as well as other illicit relationships, but were later determined to have been part of an elaborate hoax.[1] Lawrence X. "Lex" Cusack had forged the documents under the guise that they had belonged to his father, an attorney who represented Monroe's mother Gladys Baker Eley[2] as well as the Archdiocese of New York.[3] Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh had vouched for the authenticity of the documents, with the original manuscript of his 1997 book The Dark Side of Camelot including many statements that were sourced from them. After the hoax came to light, Hersh removed the material shortly before publication. Before the scandal broke, there were also plans for an ABC-backed TV special or film.[4]

Hoax

The original manuscript of Hersh's book made a number of controversial assertions about the former president, including that:

  • Though Jacqueline Bouvier officially was his first wife, his actual first marriage was to a woman named Durie Malcolm, which was never legally terminated, and was hushed up by his father Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.
  • He had been a semi-regular user of a prescribed pharmaceutical amphetamine-related drug, receiving injections from Dr. Max Jacobson.
  • He had had a close working relationship with American Mafia boss Sam Giancana that supposedly included vote fraud in one or two crucial states in the 1960 presidential election.
  • In 1958, when he was a member of the United States Senate, he had an extramarital affair with "an attractive aide in [his] Senate office," Pamela Turnure. This was three years before she became First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy's press secretary. In 1958, Turnure's landlady Florence Kater took a photograph of the senator leaving Turnure's apartment in the middle of the night, a photograph that Kater tried repeatedly to bring to public attention to ruin the senator's presidential campaign.[5]
  • "On May 14, 1960," says The Dark Side of Camelot, "just four days after Kennedy won the West Virginia primary, [Florence Kater] approached him at a political rally at the University of Maryland carrying a placard with an enlarged snapshot of the early-morning scene outside Pamela Turnure's apartment. Kennedy ignored her, but a photograph of the encounter was published in the next afternoon's Washington Star, along with a brief story describing her as a heckler."[6]
  • The reels of microfilm for The Washington Star that cover the month of May 1960 indicate that the newspaper, then known as The Evening Star of Washington, D.C. and The Sunday Star, never published an article about Florence Kater, nor did the article about Kennedy's campaign appearance at the University of Maryland mention a heckler.

For many of these allegations, Hersh relied only on hearsay collected decades after the event. In a Los Angeles Times review, Edward Jay Epstein cast doubt on these and other assertions, writing, "this book turns out to be, alas, more about the deficiencies of investigative journalism than about the deficiencies of John F. Kennedy."[7] Responding to the book, historian and former Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called Hersh "the most gullible investigative reporter I've ever encountered".[8]

A month before the publication of The Dark Side of Camelot, newspapers, including USA Today, reported Hersh had announced the removal from the galleys at the last minute a segment about legal documents allegedly containing JFK's signature.[9] The documents supposedly signed by John F. Kennedy included a provision, in 1960, for a trust fund to be set up for the institutionalized mother of Marilyn Monroe.[10][11] A paralegal named Lawrence X. "Lex" Cusack had shared them with Hersh and encouraged the author to discuss them in the book.[10] Doubts were raised among ABC investigators about inconsistencies in the documents, which included the use of typefaces created well after they were allegedly written, and the use of ZIP codes before their introduction on July 1, 1963 (a year after Monroe's death). Led by Peter Jennings, ABC employees confronted Cusack with these inconsistencies on live television, but Cusack maintained the documents were authentic, and launched legal action (which subsequently collapsed).

Shortly before Hersh's announcement that he had removed all references to Cusack's documents, federal investigators began probing Cusack's sale of the documents.[10] Cusack was arrested, and a grand jury indicted him on 13 fraud and forgery charges.[12] He was convicted on all counts by a jury and sentenced to nine years and seven months in federal prison: Judge Denise L. Cote also ordered Cusack to forfeit the forged documents and $7 million in proceeds from their sale.[13] In 1997, the Kennedy family also denied Cusack's claim that his late father had been an attorney who had represented JFK in 1960.[10]

Later coverage

The story was featured on the February 11, 2011, episode of This American Life.[3]

References
  1. Randolph, Eleanor (September 26, 1997). "JFK-Monroe 'Affair' Papers Faked, ABC Reports". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 25 February 2011.
  2. Wald, Jonathan (March 9, 2004). "Forged Monroe-JFK letters sought". CNN. Retrieved 25 February 2011.
  3. "427: ORIGINAL RECIPE".
  4. "The Jfk-Marilyn Hoax". Newsweek. Retrieved 25 February 2011.
  5. "John F. Kennedy 'Secret File' Senate Extortion Letter and Candids". iCollector.com Online Auctions.
  6. Hersh, Seymour (1997). The Dark Side of Camelot. Little, Brown and Company. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-31-619136-4.
  7. "Hersh's Dark Camelot", Los Angeles Times, December 28, 1997
  8. "Hersh's History", Barbara Comstock, National Review, May 20, 2004
  9. Moore, Martha T. "Disputed Kennedy Papers Investigated – Documents Called Forgeries Subject of Criminal Probe." USA Today October 16, 1997, p. 2A.
  10. Grove, Lloyd. "Was The Writing On The Wall? The Long Tangled Tale of Seymour Hersh and the Forged JFK Papers." The Washington Post October 27, 1997, p. C1
  11. "Original Recipe". This American Life. February 11, 2011. Retrieved November 12, 2013.
  12. Assassination Records Review Board (September 30, 1998). "Chapter 6, Part I: The Quest for Additional Information and Records in Federal Government Offices". Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board (pdf). Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. p. 109. Retrieved May 15, 2013.
  13. Katsoulis, Melissa (2009). Literary hoaxes : an eye-opening history of famous frauds. New York: Skyhorse Pub. pp. 102–108. ISBN 978-1-60239-794-1. lex cusack 10 years.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.