The Real Story Of JFK's Irish Inner Circle | Kennedy's Irish Mafia | Timeline

hi everybody welcome to this timeline documentary my name is dan snow and here i am in a lancaster bomber cockpit one of the few remaining lancasters from the second world war to tell you about my new history channel it's called history hit it's like netflix for history hundreds of history documentaries on there and interviews with many of the world's best historians follow the information below this film or just search online for history hit and make sure you use the code timeline to get a special introductory offer now enjoy this show ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country's as though something has happened in the motorcade route something i repeat has happened in the motorcade dallas texas the flash apparently official president kennedy died at 1 pm central standard my brother need not be idealized or enlarged in depth beyond what he was in life to be remembered simply as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to write it saw suffering and tried to heal it saw war and tried to stop it it is june 2013. the kennedys have returned to the homeland of their birth and the place from where president john f kennedy's great grandfather immigrated to the united states the legend of america's most extraordinary family begins here on the banks of the river barrow in a tiny hamlet called dunganstown the story of the elevation of the great grandsons of irish immigrants to the highest offices in the united states as well documented but the story of the backroom boys who helped them get there has remained just like them in the background they were devoted they were unswervingly loyal in life and in death but most of all they were irish [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] new ross county wexford 1848 patrick kennedy was leaving the safety of the family homestead for a new life on the east coast of the united states it was famine time uh wexford wasn't as badly hit as some places but it was still badly hit harvest had been failing the little crop was still failing or threatening to fail there was very little evidence of major recovery at that stage and uh basically young people who who were wondering what the future held said there's better future in america than there is here well it had to have been difficult because times were very difficult and the uncertainty of going to a new place and having to start all over again it's hard to imagine so they are transported from the the fairly steady stately pace of life in ireland into hustle and bustle there must be utter uncertainty and hope against hope that they will see a familiar face boston in the second half of the 19th century was a bustling busy and in many senses an unwelcoming place to be an irish immigrant was to find yourself at the lowest rung of the social economic structure in boston well boston at the time of patrick kennedy's arrival would have been a very sort of chaotic port city but it was very much a brahmana city it was very much sort of an anglo-protestant city in which these newcomers these famine irish would have been regarded as completely alien it was run by the brahmins the social and cultural elites of the city direct descendants of the original new england families who had settled america [Music] to get on the irish had to stick together as the century went on you start having a place that becomes full of people from everywhere and also involved in a whole range of activity you also are starting to have a permanent underclass here that is a population where day laborers and people who are scrambling to survive there was a lot of discrimination in boston against the irish i still have in my office at home a sign that says help wanted no irish need apply and so there was this who is going to be your friend somebody from your clan somebody from the home country and that was very important and so the irish had to make a place for themselves and that struggle was what formed the first part of the kennedy family's saga [Music] patrick kennedy had taken his coopering skills learned in new ross to boston and had also found work as a dock worker succumbing to cholera as a young man he was a stevedore he worked on the docks in east boston the transitional figure for the kennedys was pj's son also pj and pj had the strong back but he also had a keen mind he became a fine cooper and a man who saw that the real money was to be made by having a swoon along with his widowed mother pj went into the bar trade pj kennedy and and his mother bridget they were pretty good business people and they ran a fairly successful tavern as a consequence of being at the bar knowing a great many acquaintances hearing everybody's conspiracies confidences whatever he soon became a politician and that was the supreme occupation of the irish politics was and that's the great joy and fabulous part of democracy is that the immigrants realized that politics was where they were going to get their power and so they went into politics and they could get they could win the elections because they could organize and they could organize their friends and they could provide jobs and they could get the votes and it was a very legitimate way in america for immigrants to get power pj became the first kennedy politician when he was elected to the first of five one-year terms in the massachusetts house of representatives in 1884 this was followed by three two-year terms in the state senate by the turn of the century he'd established himself as one of boston's leading democratic figures pj kennedy um is an ambitious guy and he sees the path to prosperity through politics he he became a fairly prominent local politician in boston he became involved with politics because that was the mechanism to climb up in boston society and he became perfectly respectable this was an honorable profession over in boston's ninth district another son of irish immigrants john francis fitzgerald or honey fitz was also flexing his muscles in the democratic party when you think of what is an irish politician there's honey fits hugging people helping people giving people jobs being around at every party and every wake but within the highly political atmosphere of south boston the competition and rivalry amongst the irish was fierce honey fitz 2 was elected to congress in 1895 and became mayor of boston in 1906 the first american-born irish catholic to be elected to the office honey fitz was this became the the the mayor of boston he also was a congressman uh and he fought for some of the major issues that the irish were concerned about particularly immigration as an example when he was in congress but fundamentally he was the mayor of boston and that was a huge coup for his family by the turn of the century irish americans were installed in the upper echelons of massachusetts politics but even within the immigrant communities a class divide existed within the irish community there are divisions and sometimes those divisions can be overcome those there are political alliances that lead to sort of blood alliances and vice versa by 1910 a young man named joseph kennedy had come calling on honey fitzgerald's eldest daughter rose the fitzgerald sort of regarded the kennedys as up and coming rather than say they're powerful equals there were there are different types of irish politicians and some thought that they were better than others obviously honey fitz who became the mayor thought he was better than pj kennedy who just ran a bar joe knew that that was a good marriage for him to make and i think he set out to make that marriage happen the coming together of two powerful and politically focused families in 1914 was to create america's greatest political dynasty little were they to know just how important that irish connection would become as war broke out across europe rose fitzgerald and joe kennedy began their married life together but joe's plan didn't necessarily involve staying too close to his roots he moved out of boston because he didn't think it was doing well by him and he couldn't he couldn't grow to be the person he he was you know if you're judged always by your parents who was your father he was the bar owner he was the ward healer people see you in a certain light so he had to he had to change he had to get out of out of there the union of joe and rose was to produce nine children four boys and five girls and while politics was a family business and something to be taken seriously joe kennedy believed you could do nothing without money joe kennedy was ultimately ambitious i mean that's the one thing you have to think about him here is a guy who had a plan perhaps not from the get-go he wasn't a great student in harvard but in the end think about where he ended up he understood some of the very basics of how to make money he had almost the golden touch those golden fingertips of how to make money whether whether or not it was on wall street or in hollywood and joe kennedy was able to catapult the kennedy's fortunes well about above what most irish catholics would were able to do partly through his sheer genius uh partly through his own sense of larceny in his heart uh but also um by understanding how the the various different mechanisms of wall street uh enough local power could be could be exercised as joe kennedy began to prosper he moved to the more affluent boston suburb of brookline it's here most of the children were born including in 1917 a rather sickly youth john fitzgerald kennedy and while the irish and catholic connection remained the center of family life kennedy was anxious for his family to assimilate more into the wider and still vehemently anti-irish brahmin community rose too was keen to overcome the anti-catholic discrimination he would describe what it was like to be the daughter of the first irish-born mayor of boston and how she wanted to be just as good as the protestants and how she wanted to prove that she could dress as well and be as sophisticated by 1914 joe had achieved an extraordinary amount for a man of his age at just 25 his substantial business interests extended to a number of different areas joe took over as a young man a small bank made himself president of the bank and then advertised himself in newspaper interviews and publicity that he was the youngest bank president in the united states at the age of 25. he made millions involving himself in the movie business in the 1920s but he was ready to profit from a big change in american lifestyle he knew and positioned himself in 1933 to be ready for the end of prohibition you have a shrewd businessman who sees that prohibition is unsustainable in america so in fact makes contracts gets the licenses to import liquor he is positioned to profit handsomely joe's wealth allowed him to build among other things an extensive summer house on cape cod's exclusive hyannis port waterfront and his expanding family began to enjoy long vacations there [Music] joseph p kennedy was getting rich behind the scenes another irishman was playing the central role in ensuring joe stayed that way he had a man of all work uh any war well eddie moore was his uh right hand and left hand anymore was his can do guy who got it done when joe met eddie moore he was looking for a man to help him take care of a few jobs by the mid 1920s moore was playing a pivotal role in the kennedy's affairs strategically and financially today you would call him a bag man he'd carry a bag full of money and more i would say is somebody who my grandfather could trust to get something done i mean you know when you have something that's a little difficult to get done you don't want to do it yourself you ask your friend and he knows how to get it done and you can do it with the wink of the eye and a grin he was the most trusted ally of joe kennedy moore could be trusted he was smart he was efficient more importantly he was loyal and he was irish my grandfather couldn't get anything done that he wanted to get done without having someone he could trust and eddie moore was the was the person he could trust by 1932 when joe and rose's last child a boy was born they named him edward moore kennedy so central had his namesake become to the family's fortunes throughout the 1920s joe kennedy had worked deciduously to cultivate his political connections with honey fitz and his father as veterans of the state democratic machine a role in massachusetts politics was a natural and available option but joe's business activities suggested he should ally himself with the republican i think my grandfather who as a successful businessman felt that in some ways his values were more quote republican but the republicans didn't want to accept him and so he came back into the fold of what he felt was comfortable and kennedy had set his sights higher than local politics in 1932 former new york governor franklin d roosevelt was seeking the democratic nomination for president against al smith a roman catholic like kennedy joe kennedy did not ally himself with alfred smith the catholic he went with the protestant why because roosevelt could win made his entry point into roosevelt's inner circle with his checkbook contributed millions of dollars that he had made in wall street and hollywood as a corporate reorganizer and an investor a capitalist and took his place behind the scenes rather than in front of the scenes he was not a performing irishman he was a conspiratorial irishman and i say that without any uh sense of censor joe made a tremendous impression on the roosevelt campaign by reaching out at a critical moment but roosevelt was close to the nomination reaching out to william randolph hearst then the most influential powerful publisher newspaper publisher magazine publisher in the united states and probably in the world hearst was also a significant figure in the democratic party hearst was a conservative democrat [Music] kennedy convinced him to release the delegates he controlled in the california delegation and elsewhere at the 1932 convention those delegates supported ftr fdr became the nominee and then the president the chairmanship of a newly constituted and powerful state watchdog was joe's reward a new agency the securities exchange commission is coming into play created to clean up the mess in wall street from which joe kennedy had personally profited some people were horrified liberals said oh my god you're sending the fox to guard the hen house and roosevelt said wait a minute it takes somebody who knows the game to establish the rules of the game and indeed it did elected for two terms roosevelt was faced with the unprecedented possibility of a third or a new candidate like joe kennedy could emerge joe kennedy believed he could be a nominee in 1940. many people whispered many influential columnists pundits they believe that kennedy would had had every reason to think he would be one of the people up there but roosevelt had other ideas for the ambitious millionaire london at the american embassy in princess gate ambassador joseph kennedy has been joined by part of his family mrs kennedy has come from the united states with five of their nine children these are cameramen not more children if this is an american invasion it certainly looks a happy one so in 1938 roosevelt bestows this great prize of london on an eager joe kennedy who doesn't realize immediately that he's sort of being put out out of the pit of power roosevelt wanted him away from america away from daily engagement in the power struggles that we're going to set it up so that roosevelt would be re-elected to a third term in 1940 and a fourth term in 44. in london believing he was now destined for even higher office joe began to speak out forcibly against the war just as appeasement and isolationism were becoming deeply unpopular we must stay out of this war this is not our war and pretty soon he was saying that the correspondence to audiences and he went from being a popular figure the envoy with nine children and great american great irish american to being an appeasing but the war he spoke out against was to bring his family tragedy on august 12 1944 joe jr the eldest of the kennedy sons was killed in action but while war had brought acute disappointment for joe and deep sadness for his family it was ironically to prove the turning point in the family's political fortunes [Music] as the second world war drew to a close joe kennedy's appeasement antics as they were seen in the united states had left him outside the center of the democratic party and his own dreams of high political office however fanciful lay in tatters once his feelings on isolationism sort of get out there and he essentially is disgraced then he's essentially set it up for his children with his namesake and eldest son now dead as a result of a war which he had spoken so vigorously against kennedy now invested his energies and his considerable wealth in the political advancement of his second son jack jack was now the direct mail heir and the man who must continue the family business as it were jack will be the one jack will be the really the the font of all of joe's stunted dreams all of his denied ambitions which included the presidency the congressional seat of the massachusetts 11th district was identified and the incumbent james curley an old political adversary of honey fitz was persuaded to accept the position of mayor of boston by joe and to stand aside joseph kennedy reaches across and bankrolls this effort of curly to run for mayor of boston again thereby opening up the congressional seat that curley has held so that john f kennedy can begin his [Music] political career in a safe political district here in the boston metropolitan area so here i support the campaign of my family's former enemy in order to advance the career of my son old kennedy hands including eddie moore and on the ground irish supervisors were drafted into the campaign and with the help of his father jack had already begun to assemble his own group of loyal irish operatives jack would tell his father who he was bringing in if his father raised no objection or question that was okay the fellow was on board these were brilliant ambitious people but they didn't have the sort of pedigree that a lot of the that a lot of the other people in the democratic intelligentsia would have had i think this made them hungry i think they knew that they would this means this meant they could fight you know um and they also uh kept their head about them they were able to go about this at times with a sense of humor that it wasn't life and death um but i think above all they were fighters and they were loyal and they bought into the kennedy way of doing things from somerville ted reardon a roommate of joe juniors at harvard and mark dalton an impressive on the ground organizer most significant however was to be a young man called dave powers an air force war veteran from charlestown the oldest part of boston well you know uh i i knew dave powers the best my whole life i love to go up to the kennedy library and listen to his stories and all the wonderful tales of irish ward politics in boston and and uh chasing votes in congressional elections and senate elections you know dave powers i think was the sort of man that made things happen you know and one of the things one of the i think many brilliant things about john kennedy one of them is that he was he was able to recognize talent and recognize people who were able to get things done affable and trustworthy within months dave powers had become john kennedy's closest confidant dave uh you know was was jack's friend i mean he was not only just sort of somebody you advised somebody was somebody jack trusted completely dave's many roles in kennedy's life could also extend to managing his boss's wardrobe kennedy had to face a protestant group of ministers in houston he was getting dressed in his blue suit and he couldn't find his black shoes so he said to dave powers where are his shoes his black shoes and they said oh i think i've left them in ohio where you were yesterday when you were attending the cuyahoga county fair so kennedy put on his brown shoes and went down and did a bravo job before these protestant ministers when it was over they were going up to the room again and kennedy started to break dave powers and dave said senator i'm sorry it'll never happen again but i got to tell you that was a brown shoe crowd if ever i saw one he was a loyalist a deep true blue loyalist and he could be trusted with any of his secrets he was unquestionably loyal there was no doubt to whom dave powers owed his loyalty power's strength lay in his understatement dave powers had a way of making you think he wasn't as significant as he was but i want to tell you something he was very smart and sharp along with a hand-picked group of volunteers and paid staff powers used his contacts from his days as the local paper boy to penetrate the tightly knit neighborhoods of the 11th district powers could be a go-between between the different factions in the massachusetts party and say look i know you're i i know their elbows are sharp those kennedys but keep in mind they're going to do this and this and this down the road so that's one great skill a guy like powers had was to act as a go-between between different factions and the keen eye of joe kennedy was never far away one morning very early in the morning outside a factory gate joe kennedy with eddie moore is watching jack across the street shaking hands giving out leaflets running the same political campaign that honey fitz or pj kennedy would have run 30 and 40 years ago and this delights jill because even though jack is gaunt from his malaria and his addison's disease which was never admitted he's courageous he's standing there giving the best he can giving the old kennedy charge to this drive for victory another irish democratic veteran mark dalton who ran the campaign was instantly impressed with the young candidate and i spent hours with mark a boston lawyer very respected political figure and mark said you know here is a rich kid starting into politics in a tough congressional race where there were two or three other kennedys who had entered because they could use the name and then confusion about which one was joe kennedy's son and the cambridge liberals and others wondering well is he another pro nazi another appeaser like his father was he said jack stood up for himself he stood up against his father he stood up against the liberals he stood up against everybody he had to and he came through with the political goodwill of honey fitz and his irish ward connections still very much in evidence and a reputed quarter of million dollars in cash handed out by eddie moore jack kennedy won the congressional seat in december 1946 having placed his son on the political ladder joe was eyeing a greater prize for jack and the united states senate seat of the brahmin henry cabot lodge was the next step that was the senate race against henry cavett lodge which most of uh i think the establishment the political establishment in massachusetts assumed was simply for the sake of the record it was really merely an exercise to advance jack kennedy's name and it was totally unrealistic to anticipate or expect that he could beat henry cavett lodge they identified all over the state of massachusetts what they called kennedy secretaries and identified these people who for one reason or another felt an attraction to jack kennedy and to the into the kennedy name and organized them into these uh into these work teams throughout the state of massachusetts and and and did that really without the republican party and henry cavett lodge noticing much or paying much attention to it in effect uh my understanding is kind of assuming it away as uh basically uh an irrelevancy that was not going to affect the result uh in the election that that henry cabot lodge was you know virtually uh invincible the kennedys employed the same tactics that had seen jack win his congressional seat in 46. when my mother and the women in the family had all these teas and so that we would go to lots of teas and that's as you know henry cabot lodge said that he when he lost the election against john kennedy he was drowned in a sea of teas to elevate the young kennedy to the level of the sentence the candidate needed more help and a stronger team central to this was the arrival of two young american irishmen who along with dave powers were to form the nucleus of the kennedy political team for the next two decades larry o'brien and kenny o'donnell o'brien the older of the two was from springfield in western massachusetts where his father also larry was a local leader of the democratic party it was definitely an element in my father's thinking about whether this would be a worthwhile enterprise to sign a board kennedy approached him and struck up this dialogue and tried to develop this relationship my father approached that as a professional i think trying to assess whether whether in fact jack kennedy potentially had a future uh whether he had the uh the goods you know as they say which i think he concluded very quickly that he did but also he viewed him and used to talk about it quite a bit uh he really viewed jack kennedy as a paragon of some sort as a somebody who could take the irish community in the state of massachusetts to another level of acceptability and impact at 35 the same age as jack kennedy he was already a political veteran having been recruited by his father aged just 11 to serve as a volunteer in the 1928 presidential campaign the second new boy kenneth p o'donnell or kenny had roomed with bobby kennedy at harvard at 22 he'd had some exposure to politics beside bobby during jack's congressional campaign now aged 28 he was getting properly involved and what he lacked in experience he made up for in toughness bobby used to talk incessantly about his older brother jack and jack was going to run for congress and jax this and that and they used to make fun of bobby because he so idolized his brother and he was always trying to get my dad to meet jack and my dad you know wasn't that interested and um because he just assumed that he was sort of just one of these rich guys who thought he was going to run for office jack and my dad really hit it off it was the war they started talking about where my dad realized that jack had different views he was a different kind of guy and he wasn't going he was serious and he wasn't going to just be another one of these faker political guys and that was what turned it for my dad with bobby reporting into joe larry o'brien running the show as campaign manager and o'donnell and powers playing vital operational and strategic roles the backbone of the kennedy machine was in place the o'donnells the the powers these guys were okay behind the scenes this was their great strength behind the scenes put jack kennedy with his with his smile out there put jack kennedy with his speech making ability and his war record put him out there behind the scenes however we need the powers we need the o'donnells to to build coalitions to mend fences and and to get votes out uh to do this sort of grunt work at the street level at the precinct level and this youthful energetic group soon realized that joe kennedy needed just as much management as the candidates jack had an array of guys already around him mark dalton and these other people that um couldn't handle joe kennedy the the father and you know my dad recognized immediately two things one was that they were gonna have to go because if you couldn't handle joe kennedy you couldn't work for jack kennedy and the other thing my dad recognized is they needed bobby who was down in washington and having made the connection between my dad and jack was sort of off having his own life but my dad realized that jack couldn't win without bobby because nobody could stand up to joe kennedy but bobby i was a freshman in politics so therefore my views were weighed only as a friend of the family at this time so therefore bobby was the weapon we fought it through we would sit down with bobby and discuss it in a logical fashion explain our views and bobby carried our views to the court and dave powers was a great helping us because dave as a statistician was excellent and when we would say i don't believe there are that many italians or french or polox or whatever there is in chicopee they would go to dave and dave would say well they're right this is what the percentages are and they invariably came out because we were we just wanted to win the election we're not interested in uh establishing our own personal positions i don't think we just wanted to win but the influence of john f kennedy's irish confidants would go way beyond statistics in 1952 the first real test for jack kennedy's largely irish electoral management team was a resounding success the taking of henry cabot lodge's safe senate seat positioned kennedy as the new political force in his home state and a fresh and dynamic face on the national landscape so much so that by 1956 he was being actively promoted as a candidate for the vice presidency well i think the 56 uh turn of events astonished everybody they had talked about that convention and it talked about whether whether jack kennedy should try to position himself uh potentially as a vice presidential candidate and and literally off the floor of the convention this groundswell developed about this young fellow jack kennedy in it and it it took off enough to really elevate kennedy's profile in terms of national media in a very positive way but my father always said thank the lord it didn't take off quite enough to get him on the ticket kenny o'donnell witnessed john kennedy's rapidly growing popularity firsthand in a bar close to the convention center and we went across the street we were having a drink and it was a i'd say well populated and well populated with what one normally would find in a middle class truck driver's bar with the bar was loaded a lot of delegates and also a lot of people off the street two or three policemen and the very strange thing happened every time that john kennedy's name was mentioned the place would everybody would raise and cheer raise their glasses and shout and pound the lead by the bartender and whenever they mention anyone else's name they would boo and pound their glasses and so he obviously had scored to joe the truck driver joe the policeman and joe the bartender the press too were also noticing the emergence of a major political superstar i think it permeated throughout the country even through people who weren't going to vote for kennedy but he and that terribly attractive wife and later on those terribly attractive children uh signaled something to america that something new was going on while kennedy didn't make the ticket the whole exercise firmly established him as a national player and a potential candidate for the 1960 presidential election to round out this exciting political package jfk had in his wife jacqueline the right blend of sophistication allure and electoral attractiveness well she was an exotic working beautiful woman who looked like a high-fashion model but she was everything that she needed to be to walk into a room and cause gasps jacqueline bouvier was a daughter of the new york stockbroker john blackjack bouvier dubbed the debutant of the year in 1947 she had been educated at vassar and the sorbonne in paris working for the washington times herald in washington dc she attended some of the same social events as jack kennedy but the two were only formally introduced in may 1952 by their mutual friend the journalist charlie bartlett kennedy was busy running for the senate but after his election in november the relationship grew more serious the two were married to the following september in what was considered the social event of the year jackie loved and appreciated art music and fashion she spoke fluent french and was an expert horse woman what might have seemed like the very polar opposites of kennedy's interests were soon things she began to introduce her husband to her style and beauty was instantly in addition to the kennedy camp marrying into the kennedy family though presented a new challenge for jackie learning the game of politics when she first married jack she had didn't really have a political bone in her body but she was a very decent person uh one-on-one i mean just a just a very kind of a warm uh gracious individual and so she worked at it and she applied herself she really actually she wanted to be helpful the the will the spirit was always there but she found it difficult at first and over time when you by the time you got into the 60 campaign she was a tremendous asset jackie's relationship with her husband's irish confidance and in particular dave powers also strengthened over time she brought a whole other aspect up to jack kennedy's life but she would look a scance that uh i think it's some of the uh some of the folks that were part of jack's political world i think that you know her upbringing was such that she she may not have known what to make of these products of you know boston ward politics uh they certainly were very different uh than than she i'm not sure she always appreciated the things that they were willing to cover up and the things they were willing to sweep under the rug and the things they were willing to lie about but bear in mind a fellow like dave powers she saw him as a very dear friend and somebody who after jack kennedy's death she relied upon so the stage was set and jack kennedy's determined march towards the white house began with the sons and grandsons of irish immigrants at his side everyone is voting for jack because he's got what all the rest lack everyone wants to back jack jack is on the right track cause he's got high hopes he's got high hopes 1960's d's the year for [Music] [Applause] to all americans i say that uh the next four years are going to be difficult and challenging years for us all the election may have been a close one but i think that there is general agreement by all of our citizens that a supreme national effort will be needed in the years ahead to move this country safely through the 1960s so now uh my wife and i prepare for a new administration and for a new baby thank you [Music] in the autumn of 1960 john fitzgerald kennedy whose great-grandfather patrick kennedy had left ireland a little more than a century previously achieved what no other catholic had done in america's history by becoming its 35th president you have to understand the triumph of president kennedy's win in the context of his father and mother and their generation's struggle and in the context of his grandparents struggle it really is remarkable that he achieved that great victory as president but really it represented a victory for his whole family and all irish catholics so the election of jack kennedy in 1960 was for several generations of irish americans a a source of rejoice rejoicing it was confirmation that they had broken through themselves that they were now truly american and that their children would have as many opportunities as any other americans to to even wind up in the white house keen to set the right tone and to indicate to american voters that as his inaugural address had stated the torch had been passed to a new generation of americans kennedy set about assembling a cabinet and a group of advisors with the right mix of experience intellect and dynamism his choices included robert mcnamara president of the ford motor company as his secretary of defense and ted sorensen as special adviser and chief speechwriter he wanted to have a balanced view of the situations that he was going to face and balanced advice when he was president of the united states certainly ted sorensen and myself larry o'brien and people of this to all would approach things a little differently but he operated i think from a central viewpoint that he wanted to have a lot of people around him who had different opinions but he wanted to be accessible to all of them so you have these tensions you have the brain trust the egghead intellectuals in the kennedy administration often budding heads with the realists the irish boston massachusetts guys and it it really rubs some of these sort of worldly fellows the wrong way why are these machine irish guys why are they at the center of power they're at the center of power because kennedy knew who he could trust the president's irish loyalists who had been with him since his early campaigns dave powers kenny o'donnell and larry o'brien found themselves right in the center of the action too and in charge of giving out the jobs the three of them kenny and and my father in particular but also dave were handed this book by kennedy basically kennedy said look we got a lot of people around the country who really pitched in and helped out here we got thousands of jobs to hand out not not a a uniquely irish instinct but but you know kind of a kind of bit of an old school thought larry o'brien so significant in his strategic management of the 1960 campaign became a special assistant to the president kennedy asked my father to be a head of legislative affairs which is the chief interface point between the white house and the congress you know his job was to get to know all these senators and members or as many as he could and develop these productive working relationships with them very time consuming powers was appointed special assistant to the president and deputy appointment secretary dave was sort of a you know a staffer without portfolio dave remained dave dave's role me remained what dave's role always had pretty much had been dave's actual job description was unclear but what was clear was that the president relied heavily on his counsel and particularly on his friendship the central role went to kenny o'donnell officially white house appointment secretary o'donnell's job was to evolve into the pivot around which kennedy's life revolved there was no chief of staff uh in that white house structure but he made uh he made kennedy the appointment secretary sorry the guardian of the door that's who would get in and out which which particular time you know and that sort of little gatekeeper thing the appointment secretary even in the campaign he's not much different he has the power of access to the president you live with him you get up with him in the morning he talks to you you're there all the time there and you're talking to him obviously you can color or not color your conversation and the and this concerned the president very much that he to a degree was at the mercy of any small group which could deny access of a counter viewpoint in time everything went through kenny and the president did little without consulting him or bobby beyond the day-to-day of the schedule which was just you know controlling who got to see kennedy would you know got to see the president which was critical there wasn't a decision that jack kennedy made that my dad wasn't a key player in jack always knew when he looked to my dad and asked him a question he was going to get the unvarnished truth it didn't mean jack always felt that he was right but he knew he'd never get any bull this somewhat unusual group of men bonded together by their irishness and their loyalty to john kennedy were now occupying the highest unelected positions in the land there was the inner circle of these irish guys and and that later you know famously sandra van ocker dubbed the irish mafia these guys were tough guys too these these guys were combat trained political operatives and they could be as nice as the days long but they they uh with the expression they didn't take prisoners they were in it to win it so you know calling him the mafia there was i think it was meant to be somewhat jocular but there was also an element there too of uh of these guys being pretty pretty tough kenny o'donnell larry o'brien and dave powers because i thought they were smart i.e they were irish and the mafia came they were tough but just after i've said they're irish i don't need to say anymore they were just as smart as anything i'd ever covered in politics you were either in that inside group there was no one outside let in the one exception to this was perhaps jack kennedy's closest advisor he was irish but he was also his brother jack kennedy probably the last thing that he needed was to have his brother as the attorney general and i think there was reluctance on both the part of bobby and jack to see his brother become attorney general jack kennedy with his great wit was able to say well you know we felt he needed a little bit of experience and what better than being attorney general of the united states um and you know and he kidded the press that way about it but robert kennedy took that to to be a criticism and at one point the president said to his brother come on bobby you know they everybody was laughing and bobby said yes they were laughing at me but there was never any doubt that robert kennedy was going to have an important role to play in his brother's administration the person most excluded from this irish circle was ironically the man who would one day become their boss vice president lyndon johnson who had a difficult relationship with the kennedys from the start lyndon could not dominate john kennedy either in the senate or in the presidency or he was always the junior partner i suppose he fell he was 13 14 years older and had much more experience in these problems he did not dominate john kennedy and he would have to and he did not i think he perhaps resented the junior role i would think there was no uh on the president's part there was a total effort to involve lyndon johnson as much as he could not totally unselfishly because he wanted linden to be a participant in the decisions good bad or indifferent lyndon johnson for a peculiar region chose to withdraw as much as possible we would go for months at a time where he wouldn't even say anything and where the president would say what do you think about that bill going up to that committee and he'd say i don't know he chose to not be involved but there was one area of the administration in which the vice president took an interest jobs for his friends back home the only conversations i participated in with lyndon johnson was on patronage in texas that he involved himself totally and actively the vice president would complain once a month about patronage and when he wanted to see the president uh he would wall jenkins would call me and it was almost be a demand upon this occasion he would go see the going to see the president the president would buzz me and i would go in and the conversation would go something like this i thought i told you all patronage and i had an agreement with lyndon when he took the vice presidency that all patronage would be cleared through him and i would say yes sir you did and he said well lyndon tell them what the problem is and london would tell me 99 of the time it's not accurate and my dad and it used to be an act the president would give me hell and i would apologize and i'll check it and take care of him after he left people sort of chuckle about it jfk's advisors soon realized that jackie kennedy was proving a real asset to the administration her sense of style and her huge public appeal compared to the relative frumpiness of previous first ladies was having a big impact on the president's popularity she was a great national asset when she did something uh the beautifying of the white house or the really introduction of some culture under the dinners at the white house these were national contributions and although they didn't look political and certainly looking back they were setting the character really in the style of the kennedy administration to a very great degree but the president has suddenly realized what he's got and he was attempting to use it i think he was taking them back with the way she was received when she traveled and particularly the image that she portrayed of the united states and foreign countries he should have suspected we all should have suspected but to see it was something new so i think this all rather fit into a sudden realization of the great asset he had everywhere jackie went she attracted huge media attention remember when jack and jackie went to paris and that was on their way to vienna and jackie had made a great impression especially on de gaulle and kennedy said i do not uh think it all together inappropriate to introduce myself to this audience i am the man who accompanied jacqueline kennedy to paris and i've enjoyed it [Applause] the kennedy dream had become a reality and while the next three years would be full of achievement and triumph they would also bring great tragedy and the irish mafia would be right at the center of it all [Music] [Music] in the autumn of 1962 the kennedy administration faced its greatest test race relations across the country particularly in the deep south and an increasingly confrontational scenario in the eastern asian nation of vietnam had already caused the administration some headaches but a significant threat from eastern europe began to become evident in the early days of october when u s intelligence identified a buildup of soviet missiles on cuba less than 200 miles from the american mainland this government as promised has maintained the closest surveillance of the soviet military buildup on the island of cuba within the past week unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island the purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the western hemisphere as the tension rose the united states was taken to the brink and kennedy and his advisors were faced with a real life or death scenario there are a host of of um debates that were held within the administration and jack relied heavily on his brother and he relied on uh powers and o'donnell um often at times when he felt the what they call the so-called egghead members of the of the cabinet of the administration wanted to make a point wanted to go all out in terms of military response not thinking things completely through as the tension continued to rise kennedy's generals favored a military strike kennedy was criticized vociferously for appeasing communists russia the alternative though as the powers as bobby as jack eventually decided the alternative was too grave it was too grim but it took kennedy's irish friends to tell it as it was the kennedys and a lot of their inner circle saw this as life and death they're all doing this debating back and forth discussion what should we do what should we do so powers finally gets a chance to stop and eat a meal and they're all sort of taking a break and and jack looks at bobby and goes look at look at power's there he's eating like it's the last supper and powers looks up and says the way you guys are talking this could very well be and there's this mixture of black comedy and and truth in that and i think that helped that matched kennedy better than i think a lot of other people on the cabinet and that's why he trusted them so much when the most uh dramatic moments of the kennedy presidency happen during the cuban missile crisis in which we could all have wound up being vaporized by nuclear war it's really bobby kennedy who provides the most sober advice the one who decides who advises his brother not necessarily to take the advice of the generals and to immediately respond with a nuclear weapon but rather to give it some time and he actually winds up providing the most sage advice to his brother that winds up saving our world as we know it i went home that evening and my late wife said is there going to be war i said please get me a drink she got the drink and she brought it in the doorbell rang downstairs i went down there was a western union wire through the door i took it up put it down had another drink and my wife said for god's sakes open it i opened it smiled at her and said it's not going to be a war she said is that in the telegram i said no that's an invitation from unison sarge shriver for saturday night for dinner for the duke and duchess of devonshire and eunice would never allow world war iii to interfere with her social plans after 13 days the crisis was averted but not before the u.s had been brought to the verge of nuclear war events in 1963 showed just how close kennedy had grown to his irish confidance in the spring of that year a visit to europe was proposed and jfk suggested the inclusion of ireland as a stop well this was a personal trip that president kennedy made this was not for political reasons clearly his closest advisors were opposed to the visit kenny o'donnell is among the people looking at it very practically telling the president there's no political gain here he didn't want him to go to ireland because he just thought you can do this later right now politically it doesn't make any sense it's not going to hurt you but it's not going to help you so it's clear that he's determined to make this trip and it's you know i think it goes back to his trip in 45 and 47 particularly the trip in 47 when he's a young congressman and he's in dublin with his sister kathleen but he goes off on his own and goes to wexford to find his roots and i think that trip made such a powerful impression on him that when the time comes when he's president united states he's going to ireland and it was more than sentiment i believe it was and it certainly was not about political calculation the president's mind was made up and the irish mafia packed their bags he wanted these guys to go with them they were more than happy to go the visit to ireland was preceded by a trip to germany [Music] in berlin kennedy was cheered by thousands his visit to checkpoint charlie and the berlin wall was reported all over the world [Laughter] it appeared nothing could top his speech of the 26th of june as a free man i take pride in the words ich bin eine kennedy arrived in ireland the next afternoon with his loyalists at his side it was a riotously you know fun trip it was highly emotional emotionally charged hugely nostalgic it was really one of the high points of being with kennedy and working in the white house [Music] the irish visit was a triumph all over the country tens of thousands turned out to see the young president his visit seen as a transformational moment in irish history ireland had struck a chord that he probably couldn't even explain himself except that he did say isn't it amazing after all of these decades to come back to come to a place like this and feel as though you're home kennedy was accompanied by his sisters gene smith and eunice shriver well i mean you know you have to know in my house there were probably two dozen photographs of that trip in room after room in my mother's bedroom in the library in the living room in the family rooms there were pictures of the motorcades and pictures of the meetings and pictures of the speeches and pictures of the tarmac greetings john f kennedy when he visited here as president really felt at home uh dave powers said it was uh among the happiest times that he ever saw the president as president because he felt that he was relaxed relaxed and of course that was reflected in all of his speeches here that is the shannon brightly glancing stream brightly gleaming silent in the morning beam oversight in transit thus returned from travel laws years of exile years of pain to see old shannon's face again all the water's lasting well i'm going to come back and see all shannon's face again [Applause] and as president kennedy climbed the steps of air force one at shannon airport dave powers always at his side recorded some final memories on his movie camera [Music] the absence of jackie kennedy while noted was understood her pregnancy had kept her in washington to await the arrival of the baby in september but there was to be a sad ending to her pregnancy and once again kennedy leaned on his irish friends he came out to me i was at the desk and he said they've taken jackie to the hospital now jackie had a history of troubles with children and we left every now just those who were there the helicopter came we ordered the helicopter we took off and we talked about it for and he was uh he was frightened he was deeply concerned as any husband would be obviously over the baby but obviously first over jackie but the death of baby patrick on the 9th of august was to be a precursor to the tragedy which would follow in november [Music] a long planned trip to mend some political fences in texas began with visits to san antonio houston and fort worth on the 21st of november in houston kennedy spoke passionately about his vision for the race to space and the role that the city would play in its future in texas and the nation change has been the law of life growth has meant new opportunities for this state progress has meant new achievements and we dare not look back now in 1990 the age of space will be entering its second phase and our hopes in it to preserve the peace to make sure that in this great new sea as on earth the united states is second to none your old men shall dream dreams your young men shall see visions the bible tells us and where there is no vision the people perish at breakfast in fort worth the following morning jackie again stole the show the breakfast party awaits the arrival of mrs kennedy [Music] mrs kennedy's entrance draws another comment from the president two years ago i said that uh introduced myself in paris by saying that i was the man who had accompanied mrs kennedy to paris i'm getting that somewhat that same sensation as i travel around texas at 11 40 on friday 22nd the president arrived at dallas municipal airport love field it was a strictly political trip to mend fences and the big deal about that trip was that jackie was going to come because she hadn't been campaigning with them it was meant to be a trip in preparation for the re-election he'd flown into the storm and he had been part of a a motorcade that day that looked like uh they did love him that you know there was this throngs of people who who would who welcomed kennedy to the city as the presidential motorcade traveled downtown through dealey plaza shots were fired and kennedy was fatally wounded it appears as though something has happened in the motorcycle something i repeat has happened in the motorcade route there's numerous people running up the hill alongside elm street there by the summons freeway when the president was killed my dad was with dave in the back of car and he you know famously there's a picture of him crossing himself he knew instantly just from his experience in the war that that that was it the president was gone it's hard to imagine what was going through the minds of dave powers and kenny o'donnell but they knew something awful had happened and from the time that those shots rang out so the time that they got to parkland hospital it must have seemed like a lifetime at the hospital realizing the president was dead o'donnell and powers were forced to make unprecedented decisions johnson was now president and was being moved to the safety of air force one we have now a an assassinated president what do we do with the body do we go for an immediate autopsy do we get it back to washington dc and there's all this push and pull there was still the concern about that the body of jack kennedy should be on that plane as well going back to washington that they didn't want to leave jack kennedy's shattered body in dallas and so the plane waited and waited and waited kennedy's brain trust had the family in mind they had delicacy in mind they basically had to take the body out of that that hospital i recall i'm talking about that that the coroner out there refused to release the body and jackie wouldn't hear of it she wanted she wanted out of there and i believe they were doing what they had done their whole life which was sort of protecting the kennedy family and the kennedy legacy at love field the irish mafia manhandled their leader's coffin onto the plane they took the body and uh got it back to the plane and had to physically by hand hoisted onto air force one there was no lift or anything to get it on the damn plane and it was obviously a nightmare it was a complete and utter nightmare he was their friend and here he is cut down in his prime in a you know a few terrible seconds in dallas and i think that that gesture of accompanying the body uh from the hospital to the airplane to air force one really is extraordinary fearing a plot from unknown conspirators and unsure of the constitutional position johnson insisted on being sworn in aboard air force one lyndon johnson wanted to be sworn in as president there was a there was a feeling that should he should lbj be sworn in immediately should this be delayed and there's a feeling that the business of government must go on so lbj is sworn in uh as quickly as possible despite his intense loyalty to jack kennedy kenny o'donnell knew his role had changed in an instant he saw his job from that point forward is to um you know get johnson out of there and to protect jackie so that those became you know that became his focus you can't imagine one one finds it difficult to imagine what it must have been like on that plane with um with jackie which with these guys who've been with uh jack kennedy their whole life um the emotions must have been crippling and it's hard to imagine being there the three people in dallas who happened to be with her in dallas were kenny pop and dave powers they flew back with her with the coffin and the trip back was extraordinarily upsetting i had a friend that was murdered happened to be the president of the united states for the irish mafia the the focal point was jackie kennedy and she said something about well you're irish and he loves you the president was dead the dreams of his irish confidants were shattered but the political reality soon set in i think there was a there were a number of people like powers who knew that they were gone that it was over the new president conscious of the effectiveness of the kennedy's team however prevailed on some to remain on people like kenny o'donnell [Music] were kind of at least for the time being used by lyndon johnson and they were kept on in the white house but eventually o'donnell found it impossible to stay because once uh jack was dead and and uh bobby decided that he couldn't stand johnson uh he already knew that but they couldn't stay any longer uh that that though o'donnell decided to leave so it was really over uh once dallas happened jfk was gone but the question remained could another kennedy take his place and would the irish mafia be there to witness it just nine months after the assassination of his brother bobby kennedy left the cabinet to successfully contest a seat in the united states senate robert kennedy's campaign for the senate from new york in 1964 was in many ways a referendum on his brother's legacy the vietnam war had not really started it was some battle but not in earnest the civil rights campaign of course was was beginning to gather steam but it too had not reached critical mass so in in a sense it was it was an issue-less campaign kennedy sort of campaigned as as as a kennedy you know as as the fallen president's brother but by 1967 when the senator from new york was contemplating a run for president he was a changed man you know bobby kennedy was uh in the 50s a a virulent anti-communist fighter he's changing he's he's crippled he's again seen two brothers die already by 1968 he's had an epiphany very much prompted by the the assassination of his brother that made bobby kennedy look at some of the deepest aspects of his of his soul bobby kennedy's transformation by 1968 is one of the most remarkable transformations of any politician in american politics in the 20th century he becomes a man very much devoted to the poor he becomes a man devoted to the underprivileged the really the the people without any power in the period since jfk's death the irish mafia had drifted somewhat powers and o'donnell had left the white house but rejoined the campaign team kenny at the helm a behind the scenes operator he was quite ruthless as just about any campaign manager has to be but he had also changed and yes of course he's still a politician and yes he finds himself still playing the game of politics larry o'brien had the hardest decision to make my father at that point was in in johnson's cabinet as a postmaster general and he resigned from that position to join bobby kennedy's campaign and he did that that was not an easy thing to do and president johnson who had enormous issues with bobby kennedy i think felt personally hurt and aggrieved at that which my father very much regretted uh feeling that way and that was not the intention but had he felt a high degree of residual loyalty to the kennedy family and that and that and that related to bobby as well but he wasn't uh he felt obligated to do it the dream of another kennedy presidency ended on the night of june 6 1968 when bobby was gunned down in the kitchens of the ambassador hotel in los angeles my brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life to be remembered simply as a good and decent man we saw wrong and tried to write it saw suffering and tried to heal it saw war and tried to stop it those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world [Music] for ted the remaining kennedy politician the future was full of uncertainty well i think he was enormously confused and emotionally bereft having lost his his other brother to such a violent act and then the feeling that he had to be there for his nieces and nephews so he was not only my father but he was father to all my cousins and so he was really the patriarch and i think that this was an enormous stress and responsibility to put on someone not only to be the public uh standard bearer but to be the personal and private standard bearer for the family by the time he's in the prime of life he's lost three brothers one in the war the president and his brother bobby and then he has his own demons of course war weary from two decades of intense political activism and shattered by the death of bobby the troika of powers o'donnell and o'brien went their separate ways dave powers became the founding director of the jfk library and presided at its dedication by president carter in 1979. larry o'brien stayed in politics for a while as chairman of the democratic national committee his office was the primary target of the notorious watergate break-in in 1972. he later served with distinction as commissioner of the national basketball association things did not end as happily for kenny o'donnell he never came to terms with the deaths of jack and bobby and struggling with alcohol he died in 1977 aged just 54. [Music] as for the kennedys they continue to intrigue and fascinate and to play a significant role in irish-american relations for 47 years ted kennedy represented massachusetts in the u.s senate ted kennedy was probably the best politician of the kennedys by far he became a very good politician much like honey fitz his grandfather morse much more so than his two brothers jack and bobby ted knew how to work the levers of power in the senate and he was arguably the greatest legislator certainly one of the greatest legislators of the 20th century in america he subsequently agitated positively for irish affairs in the united states right up to his death in 2009 i mean the contribution he made to ireland beginning in the 1970s when he's collaborating with tip o'neill and hugh carey and daniel patrick moynihan uh in the 70s and 80s and then of course the role that he played in the irish peace process is historic and in a wonderful sort of end to a story that begins with famine immigrants and ends with you know senator kennedy coming to ireland's rescue in its hour of need there's a wonderful poetry to that gene kennedy smith as u.s ambassador to ireland played a key behind-the-scenes role in the ira ceasefire and subsequent irish peace process but what was it about the irish mafia jack and bobby's friends and confidants that made them so important to america's first family there was such a deep sense of loyalty and friendship and almost a family-like love that those men shared these guys set aside their lives in devotion to jack kennedy and they did it happily that was a very very powerful bond these were insiders these were people who could be trusted with their secrets he could trust them and they were loyal in the tough times none of those people none of them ever broke ranks with the president they were there at the beginning they were there at the end [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, american history, irish history, jfk, assasination of jfk, kennyd documentary, irish mob, patrick bet david, irish mafia, organized crime

Id: 2pUmLlg6tcs

Length: 84min 39sec (5079 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021