The Kennedys are one of the most well-known families in American history, but we still have more questions than answers regarding their complicated legacy... like why is JFK's brain missing?
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00:00Why is JFK's brain missing? Bugging the White House? The lobotomy? None of this makes sense.
00:07It's not like Joe Kennedy Sr. produced three senators by accident. Accounts make it clear
00:11that the Kennedys bluntly pushed their sons to take political office. So why was Joe Sr.'s
00:16political career such a dud? At first, it seemed promising. After rising in the business
00:21world, he got in good with FDR and was appointed chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission,
00:26then head of the Maritime Commission. By 1938, he had become the ambassador to Great Britain.
00:31But tensions already high as attempts to connect with German officials were poorly received.
00:36The same went for his later statements advocating for American isolationism as the war began to
00:40ravage the rest of the globe. During the London bombing, Kennedy retreated to the countryside,
00:45which had Winston Churchill liking Kennedy to a daffodil — as in yellow, as in chicken.
00:51After being relieved of his duties, he returned to the U.S. and dropped this doozy.
00:56Democracy is finished in England. It may be here.
01:00It turns out sympathizing with the Nazis and predicting the downfall of democracy
01:04is bad for your political ambitions. The mystery lies in Kennedy's motivations.
01:08Surely he understood that his statements were controversial and made for a pretty poor picture,
01:13especially as war came to dominate international relations. Why didn't
01:16he refine the political art of keeping one's mouth shut? Well, there's a conspiracy about that.
01:22Don't worry, we have a whole section of Kennedy conspiracies coming up. Keep watching.
01:27You probably know the basics of Rosemary Kennedy. She's been described as slow,
01:31but also as a wild child. What we can state for sure is that she may have been denied oxygen at
01:36birth, and that can indeed lead to difficulties later in life. At first, the Kennedys did what
01:41many affluent families did at the time — they just sent Rosemary away. But Rosemary snuck out
01:46of the convent she had been sent to and reportedly caroused with men in nearby bars. Her father was
01:51horrified and, by 1941, had decided that a lobotomy was the only course of action.
01:56At just 23 years old, Rosemary underwent the surgery. If a lobotomy goes well,
02:01what it's supposed to do is, quote,
02:03"...reduce tension, agitation, and impulsive or violent behavior."
02:07What Rosemary's did was leave her with the inability to walk and talk.
02:10The part that doesn't make sense is simply this. Did Rosemary Kennedy need a lobotomy?
02:15In today's age, the answer is a flat-out no. But remember,
02:19lobotomies were performed up until the 1960s, so this was a reasonable procedure at the time.
02:24It's pretty safe to say that Rosemary did have developmental delays,
02:27but a lobotomy to fix that is like cutting your arm off because you have a hangnail.
02:33Kick, as she was known, was born Kathleen, the second daughter to Rose and Joe Kennedy Sr.
02:38With her eight siblings, she moved to England when her father became ambassador to Great Britain,
02:42though most of the family returned to the U.S. in 1939 as World War II broke out.
02:46After a couple years of more schooling and a brief stint at DC's Times-Herald newspaper,
02:51Kick traveled to London to volunteer with the Red Cross. By May 1944,
02:55she had married an old friend, William Billy Cavendish, the Marquess of Hardington.
02:59Now Lady Hardington, Kick became isolated from her family.
03:03Only her eldest brother, Joe Jr., attended the simple civil ceremony.
03:07The problem was that Billy was a Protestant. This was a big deal.
03:10Like, much bigger than you could imagine. You see, the Kennedys were the sort of
03:15influential Catholic family who got in pretty close with Pope Pius XII.
03:19Rose was reportedly so aghast that she told her daughter,
03:22hell-awaited her. Of course, the moralizing becomes all the stranger when you consider
03:26the many infidelities of Joe Sr. and other Kennedy men. When Billy died in action mere
03:31months later, Kick was widowed. Years afterward, she began a relationship with another Protestant,
03:36Earl Peter Wentworth Fitzwilliam, who was also married.
03:39Rose suggested that Kick would be cut off from her family completely.
03:42So Rose is ticked off her daughter is running around with a married man,
03:46but her own husband is attending Hollywood premieres with his girlfriend?
03:49Nobody said that the Kennedys weren't complicated.
03:52In 1948, just days before Kick was set to speak with Joe Sr. in Paris, she was killed in a plane
03:57crash. While her father attended a mass set for her, none of the Kennedys were at her funeral.
04:03So the entire Kennedy clan was so disappointed in Kick for running
04:06around with Protestants that they skipped out on her funeral. Wow.
04:10In 1973, when the public learned of President Richard Nixon's secret White House recording
04:15system, the JFK-Kennedy Presidential Library revealed that JFK himself had tapes made of
04:20White House conversations during his term.
04:22I want to find out if we've paid for that version.
04:24All right, sir.
04:24Then I want that fellow's incompetent who had his picture taken next to Mrs.
04:28Kennedy's bed, if that's what it is. I mean, he's a silly bastard.
04:31Turns out all presidents since FDR had done so in one way or another.
04:35But it's not entirely clear why JFK began secretly recording White House goings-on.
04:40Some in his administration speculated that he had wanted a reliable record for a future memoir.
04:45Others wondered if the president, stung by backtracking advisors after the disastrous
04:49Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, wanted something concrete to hold them to their word.
04:54But without an explanation from Kennedy himself,
04:56we can't be sure exactly why he bugged his own workplace.
05:00Nixon reportedly worried that he would be misrepresented or misquoted,
05:03and wanted the tapes as a definitive record. Obviously, it was those tapes,
05:07notably 18 and a half minutes missing, that did it Nixon.
05:11Did JFK never fear anything being said coming back to bite him?
05:15There are certainly many stories of JFK taking on mistresses,
05:18but there is also evidence Jackie wasn't exactly pleased with JFK's infidelity.
05:22When Kennedy's longtime friend, Kurt Lemoine Billings, pulled Jackie aside to delicately
05:27inform her of her fiancé's need to remain available to other women, she seemed to be
05:30fine with it. But in an oral history interview, Billings told the JFK Library that Jackie
05:35eventually recalled,
05:36"...when you discussed that with me, I realized all that, and I thought it was a challenge."
05:40So why did she stay? Why didn't she just nix the whole thing right then and there?
05:45There are folks out there in the know that allege that Jackie considered divorce,
05:48perhaps because of JFK's distant reactions to her miscarriages and a traumatic stillbirth.
05:53Yet, her own family discouraged divorce, in part because the Kennedys were powerful and rich.
05:58Joe Sr. allegedly met with Jackie and offered her a significant payout to stay married.
06:03But this is an unconfirmed rumor, leaving the question of why Jackie stayed with JFK.
06:08It could be that the two had enough money and influence that they could fall back on
06:11mutual respect and a shared image to maintain, though neither Jack nor Jackie ever made their
06:16motivations clear.
06:17The details of how JFK met his very sudden and public end are fairly well known. However,
06:22the motivations of his assassin are far less clear and make it easy for some to delve into
06:27conspiracy theories. You know Lee Harvey Oswald's backstory, but let's look at this simplistically.
06:32Was he just an attention seeker? He went to Russia, was anti-Castro, then pro-Castro,
06:37but that wasn't nearly enough. Maybe JFK, riding in an open vehicle in Dallas,
06:41was simply the most famous person that Oswald had easy access to harm.
06:45But given that Oswald was himself assassinated just two days after Kennedy's death,
06:49we may never understand his quasi-sensical targeting of a member of the Kennedys.
06:54Or he was a CIA plant, and all the conspiracy theories are right.
06:58In the chaotic aftermath of JFK's assassination, it's understandable that some details would slip
07:03by unattended. But when it came out that the president's brain had mysteriously disappeared,
07:08things got strange. The generally accepted course of events is that the president's
07:12brain was removed shortly after the assassination, during an autopsy at
07:15Dallas' Parkland Memorial Hospital. It was then placed in a stainless steel container and given to
07:20Secret Service agents, who ferried it to the White House. In 1965, Senator Robert F. Kennedy
07:25had it moved to the National Archives. Yet, by 1966, a review of materials related to the Kennedy
07:31assassination showed that no such brain was in the Archives' possession. If you're pro-second
07:35shooter theory, you know that the brain was hidden away because it would show that another assassin,
07:39standing ahead of the president, dealt the killing shot.
07:42There's another plausible conspiracy often overlooked. In End of Days, the assassination
07:47of John F. Kennedy, James Swanson suggests that Robert F. Kennedy knowingly took the brain. Why?
07:53To hide just how ill his brother had been, or just how medicated JFK had been at the end of his life.
07:58The president did have quite the lengthy list of secret health struggles. But until someone
08:03can find that brain, this will remain another strange and confusing story about the Kennedys.
08:07There's another theory. They just lost it. Things go missing all the time in the National
08:12Archive. I'm not just saying that. The Wright brothers' patent? Photos from the first moon
08:17landing? The lost brain might just be human error. We all know what happened November 22, 1963.
08:24What you might not know is that the conspiracy theories started up by the time Kennedy was
08:28lowered into his grave. Yes, we've delved deep into the plethora of Kennedy conspiracy theories,
08:33but if you think these are all just fringe members of society, you're mistaken.
08:37Some Kennedy family members may believe in these conspiracies. At least, we can be certain that
08:41RFK Jr. does, as he has publicly expressed doubts over the killings of both his uncle
08:46and his own father, and has even hinted that perhaps the CIA was involved in JFK's death.
08:51Congress found that, yeah, it was a plot. It was a conspiracy. There were multiple people involved.
08:58He also claimed that his father, RFK, was likewise suspicious of the circumstances
09:02surrounding the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. However,
09:06RFK never publicly expressed those thoughts before his own assassination.
09:10As the RFK assassination itself, the conspiracy theory is almost mainstream. The big question is
09:15who else besides Sirhan Sirhan hid RFK? Robert Kennedy Jr. certainly thinks Sirhan didn't kill
09:21his father. Speaking of fathers, remember that whole Joe Kennedy Sr. thing from earlier? There's
09:26a couple of theories as to why he was so soft on the Germans. One such theory posits Joe Sr. as a
09:31fascist at worst. You can't really have the ambassador to the UK being a fascist while
09:36England is fighting fascists. The other theory might not be that much of a theory anymore.
09:40Documents show that Kennedy approved of the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis.
09:44Yes, that's very, very bad on paper. Just to be fair, the exact date of the document isn't clear,
09:51so the extent and knowledge of the concentration camps may not have been known to Kennedy. But
09:55still, none of this is a good look, and the information was suppressed for decades.
10:00At first, the circumstances of Mary Jo Kopechny's death on Chappaquiddick Island in
10:04Massachusetts seemed straightforward. Late on July 18, 1969, Kopechny,
10:09a political aide and speechwriter who had previously worked on Robert F. Kennedy's
10:13presidential campaign, was riding in a car driven by RFK's younger brother, Senator Edward Kennedy.
10:18The car went off a bridge and into a pond. Kennedy escaped the car. Kopechny didn't.
10:23Kennedy told authorities that he attempted to save Kopechny but was defeated by low visibility
10:28and a strong current. He then allegedly brought a cousin and another political aide to help,
10:32but they failed as well. Then, Kennedy returned to his hotel without informing the police.
10:38He later blamed a concussion and shocked for this lapse.
10:41Because he waited until 10 a.m. the next morning to contact authorities,
10:44there was no way to test his blood alcohol level for the previous night.
10:48By the time Kennedy appeared in court, his team had found a way to make a deal beforehand.
10:52Kennedy would plead guilty to the charge of leaving the scene of an accident after
10:56knowingly causing injury. Subsequently, he received a two-month suspended sentence
11:01and was briefly banned from driving.
11:03It's suspended sentence.
11:06Perhaps the most confusing thing about this is the effect the Chappaquiddick incident had on
11:10Edward Kennedy's career — or the effect it didn't have, thanks to the cultural and political acumen
11:15of the family. Kennedy came within a scant few votes of winning the Democratic nomination in
11:201980 over sitting President Jimmy Carter. He remained in the Senate for decades,
11:25known positively as the liberal lion for his positions,
11:28only ending his 47-year career after dying of a brain tumor in 2009.
11:32Chappaquiddick was a mere blip on his resume.
11:35Sometimes, when attempting to do something big, you may find your own family isn't supportive.
11:40And by not supportive, we mean publicly supporting the other guy.
11:44So why did RFK Jr. insist on becoming the fourth Kennedy to run for president
11:48when his own family repeatedly — and sometimes very vocally — wouldn't get on board?
11:53Criticism from the outside is one thing, but it's more difficult to understand why
11:56RFK Jr. continued his campaign when his own family was skeptical. Speaking to Vanity Fair,
12:01some Kennedys claimed they privately urged RFK Jr. to drop out. So on one hand,
12:06he listened to his family and dropped out. And on the other, he endorsed Republican
12:10candidate and former president Donald Trump, drawing the ire of family members,
12:14including his own sister Carrie. She signed onto a joint statement that read, in part,
12:19Our brother Bobby's decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father
12:23and our family hold most dear. But based on what we know about the Kennedys,
12:28maybe this isn't surprising? They put religion over blood, and then politics over blood.
12:34It's a simple way to look at it, but given RFK Jr.'s public stances,
12:37there's likely a lot more going on here, and it'll never make any sense.