The modern media landscape can make it seem like there are no more secrets. But when you're a Kennedy, the usual rules don't apply. From philandering husbands to deadly accidents, these are some of the family's biggest secrets.
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00:00The modern media landscape can make it seem like there are no more secrets. But when you're
00:04a Kennedy, the usual rules don't apply. From philandering husbands to deadly accidents,
00:09these are some of the family's biggest secrets.
00:12When she was born, Rosemary Kennedy may have seemed like a healthy baby. Yet the details
00:16of her 1918 birth contain hints that something went wrong. Her mother Rose's doctor was unable
00:21to get to the Kennedys' Brookline, Massachusetts home to assist with the birth. A midwife allegedly
00:25told Rose to delay pushing for two hours, which may have led to oxygen deprivation and
00:30Rosemary's subsequent developmental delays.
00:32The Kennedys included Rosemary in their many activities, including a 1938 presentation
00:37to King George VI and the future Queen Elizabeth. But with their family politically ascendant,
00:42Rosemary's intellectual delays and sometimes violent behavioral issues were considered
00:46liabilities.
00:47You cannot underestimate Joseph Kennedy's ambition in 1938.
00:53Would people elect a Kennedy if they knew about Rosemary, who made the family look as
00:57if they contained a hidden genetic flaw? Even decades later, Rose would only vaguely mention
01:02her daughter's condition, telling an interviewer,
01:04"[Rosemary's mind is gone completely. That was due to an accident, which I don't really
01:08discuss."
01:09That so-called accident happened in 1941, when Rosemary's father, Joseph Kennedy, arranged
01:14for her to receive a lobotomy, cutting into the frontal lobe of her brain. The procedure,
01:18which effectively cut off communication between Rosemary's frontal lobe and the rest of her
01:22brain, was meant to make her easier for the family, specifically her father, Joe, to control.
01:27Instead, it stole 23-year-old Rosemary's ability to walk or communicate. Until her 2005 death,
01:32she was confined to institutions and was largely ignored by her family until her final years.
01:37As to the extent of Rosemary's so-called intellectual disabilities, that's controversial in itself.
01:42At the very least, a lobotomy was an extreme measure to fix whatever Joe Kennedy thought
01:46was wrong with his daughter.
01:49When Jacqueline Bouvier married John F. Kennedy in September 1953, it seemed like a fairy
01:53tale. But the reality was complicated. Numerous accounts indicate that not only was JFK routinely
01:58unfaithful to his wife, but that Jackie was keenly aware of it. But the Bouvier and Kennedy
02:02families came from powerful society circles where a husband's infidelity was often considered
02:07a given. In that world, it was often deemed better to maintain privacy and dignity. That
02:11doesn't mean Freudian slips aren't allowed.
02:13You're pretty much in love with him, aren't you?
02:15Oh, no. I said no, didn't I?
02:17Author J. Randy Terraborelli told People magazine that Jackie considered divorcing JFK on at
02:22least two occasions, including when JFK stayed away after she suffered a traumatic stillbirth,
02:27but was dissuaded by her own family. Another unconfirmed rumor maintains that Joe Kennedy
02:31offered Jackie a $1 million bribe to stay, with Jackie purportedly replying that the
02:35amounts would have to hit $20 million if JFK brought home an STD from one of his mistresses.
02:42While many people would argue that being descendant from immigrants and working-class folks is
02:44nothing to be ashamed of, that wasn't the world in which the Kennedy family moved. Perhaps
02:48that's why Jackie's paternal family, the Bouviers, engaged in some creative genealogy. Her grandfather,
02:54Major John Venu Bouvier Jr., published a 1940 family history titled Our Forebears, in which
02:59he claimed the Bouviers were descended from a line of French aristocrats. However, it
03:03appears that he got his Bouviers mixed up.
03:05The family's true progenitors, also named Bouvier, were working-class businesspeople.
03:09When ancestor Michel Bouvier made it to Philadelphia in 1815, he at least made good money as an
03:14importer and cabinetmaker, bringing cash if not ancient prestige to the family name. Meanwhile,
03:19members of Jackie's maternal line, the Lees, reportedly claim they came from the high-class
03:23Lees of Virginia. They were actually descended from Irish immigrants who arrived in the country
03:28considerably after the other colonial-era Lees. Later on, as the press made the Bouvier-Kennedy
03:33marriage out to be a union of aristocrats, writer Gore Vidal sniffed,
03:37I mean, they were somehow Plantagenets and Tudors. It was just nonsense. They were pretty lowly born."
03:43Even today, over 50 years later, the reality of what happened in Ted Kennedy's car on the
03:47island of Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts is muddled, at least in part because the Kennedy
03:51family attempted to keep it under wraps. The basic outline of the incident is as follows.
03:55On the night of July 18, 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy's car went off the dike bridge on
04:00Chappaquiddick. Inside were Kennedy and aide Mary Jo Kopechny.
04:05Mary Jo was one of the most devoted members of the staff of Senator Robert Kennedy.
04:10She worked for him for four years."
04:12You pretty much know the story from here, and all those decades later,
04:15we're nowhere closer to finding out what went down. Because Kennedy didn't contact authorities
04:20until around 10 a.m. the next day, there was no way to test his blood alcohol level at the time
04:24of the accident, so he was only charged with leaving the scene of an accident, received a
04:28two-month suspended sentence, and was briefly banned from driving. The accident effectively
04:33ended his immediate presidential ambitions, but eventually public support for him actually grew
04:37thanks to the efforts of the Kennedy legal and public relations teams, so much so that he came
04:41very close to unseating sitting President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Democratic primary.
04:47For people like Rose and Jackie Kennedy, it was understood that their spouses were going to be
04:51unfaithful. With a focus on maintaining their own dignity and the image of the family,
04:55things simply had to be kept private for the good of the Kennedy name.
04:58If Jackie didn't know that she wasn't just marrying a person but a family before the
05:03wedding, she definitely learned during the planning process.
05:06That didn't mean Jackie always played by the rules. While in France,
05:10Jackie is said to have rather bluntly introduced White House staffer Priscilla Ware as
05:14the girl that's sleeping with my husband — to a reporter, no less.
05:17Where sex was concerned, John F. Kennedy thought he was untouchable, invulnerable.
05:22In a 1964 oral history interview at the JFK Library,
05:25longtime JFK friend Kirk Lemoine Billings recalled pulling Jackie aside on the night
05:30of President Eisenhower's first inaugural ball, saying,
05:32"...I felt I should prepare her a little bit for what I felt were some of the problems that
05:36Jack might have in marrying at 35. She was going to have to be very understanding at the beginning,
05:40that he had never really settled down with one girl before."
05:43He concluded that Jackie had understood,
05:45though plausible deniability meant he didn't have to outright admit that JFK was having affairs.
05:50President Kennedy's assignations later came to allegedly include Marilyn Monroe,
05:54Marlena Dietrich, the possible mob-connected Judith Exner, and White House interim Mimi Alford.
06:00Though he may have presented himself as a vibrant young president,
06:03the truth is that JFK dealt with health issues for many years. Even while still a child,
06:07he experienced the first symptoms of what would be lifelong digestive issues,
06:10as well as a host of other ailments, including a duodenal ulcer.
06:14He also had a serious illness as a toddler.
06:16When Jack is two years old, he contracts scarlet fever, and
06:21he is basically sick for the rest of his life."
06:24His back proved to be so painful that he underwent four back surgeries between 1944 and 1957.
06:30But far from helping him, these procedures introduced even more problems, including
06:33bone infections and abscesses. While his spinal issues were debilitating, there was an even more
06:38serious issue, Addison's disease. The adrenal condition meant that JFK couldn't produce
06:42stress-managing hormones and had a difficult time managing his sodium, potassium, and glucose.
06:48He was so ill that his father had put cortisone treatments in safe deposit boxes around the
06:53country if he ever needed them because of his Addison's disease.
06:56At the time, treatment for adrenal issues included steroids,
06:59which may have given JFK osteoporosis and exacerbated his back problems.
07:03Kennedy was basically a walking pharmacy when you consider his many medications,
07:07including painkillers, sleeping pills, amphetamines, antibiotics, hormones, and more.
07:12If the public knew how many medical problems he had,
07:15I think it would have destroyed his presidential ambitions."
07:20Yet, somehow, Kennedy managed to hide most of this from the public. In fact,
07:23he was careful to present himself as physically active. To voters,
07:26JFK was a smiling, suntanned young father who established the President's Council on Physical
07:31Fitness. Exercise actually helped manage some of his symptoms, which further built up his vital
07:35image. On occasion, he even outright denied having Addison's disease, such as when then-rival Lyndon
07:41Johnson brought it up on the 1960 campaign trail.
07:44When Jackie gave birth to a stillborn daughter in 1956, JFK may well have been on a yacht with
07:50a mistress, as Jackie's friend Carly Simon suggested to NBC News.
07:54"'Jack couldn't be reached for a couple of days, and it was Bobby who went to the hospital.'"
08:01The reality was that JFK learned from his father how to treat women — and that would be poorly.
08:06Joe infamously carried on with actress Gloria Swanson,
08:09and his wife Rose appeared to look the other way. The Kennedy boys were just taken after
08:13dear old dad. Author Maureen Callahan told The Guardian that women who proved inconvenient to
08:18the family were often dismissed or publicly ridiculed in an attempt to keep up the Kennedy image.
08:23"'I can at this time emphatically state that my relationship with Jack Kennedy
08:28was of a close, personal nature.'"
08:30These included former White House intern Mimi Alford Beardsley, who wrote a 2011 account of
08:35her alleged affair with JFK and was scorned by some book critics as a result,
08:39although her books sold well. This carried on to the following generation of Kennedys as well.
08:44Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, the wife of JFK Jr.,
08:46was also often painted as a troubled and unreliable woman who tarnished her husband's image.
08:51"'He was this crown prince and the sexiest man alive, and therefore,
08:57she needed to do everything he said.'"
09:00Bessette's family later sued the Kennedy estate for damages over her and her sister's deaths in
09:04the 1999 plane crash that also killed JFK Jr.
09:08The legacy of Robert Kennedy's children is something of a tragedy — premature deaths,
09:13substance abuse, and bears. The Kennedy in the spotlight is Robert Kennedy Jr.
09:17It's no secret that RFK Jr. dealt with 14 years of substance use issues,
09:21beginning when he was just 15, which included an arrest for heroin possession in the 1980s.
09:26"'I was an addict for 14 years, starting right after my dad died, until I was 28 years old.'"
09:33Kennedy's subsequent recovery has undoubtedly inspired many, as do other facts about the man.
09:38But if you thought that meant that his powerful family would support his
09:40presidential aspirations, well, you just don't know politics.
09:44"'He's trading in, on Camelot, celebrity,
09:47conspiracy theories, and conflict for personal gain and fame.'"
09:50Maybe the family just didn't want the bear story to get out.
09:53Kennedy himself posted an August 2024 admission on his ex account,
09:57admitting that he had left the remains of a bear cub in New York City's Central Park
10:01in October 2014. RFK Jr. claimed that he'd witnessed another car strike the animal upstate.
10:06Intending to use the fur and meat, he retrieved the remains. But with a busy day,
10:10and with a pending flight, he didn't have time to go home for us to drop off his roadkill.
10:14That's when it got weird.
10:16"'I said, let's go put the bear in Central Park,
10:18and we'll make it look like he got hit by a plane. It'll be fun, funny for people.'"
10:23That's right. Egged on by drunk friends, Kennedy dumped the dead cub beneath a bush in Central Park,
10:28and he went nearly 10 years before confessing. If anything, RFK Jr. missed out on capitalizing
10:33on the cocaine bear craze of 2023 to reveal his own dead bear pranks. Timing in politics is everything.