Edward Kennedy: More threats on FBI files

Newly-released FBI documents have revealed that threats against the late US senator Edward Kennedy continued long after the assassinations of his brothers.

One of the alleged threats to Sen. Kennedy came before a planned January 1972 visit to Ocala, Florida, just four years after Sen. Robert Kennedy was murdered in Los Angeles in 1968 and nine years after President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas in 1963.

The FBI obtained two letters warning Edward Kennedy against speaking publicly in Ocala.

“It will not be safe for you,” one of the letters reads. “Some of us are for you, but big majority are against you. It will only stir the mess you were in with Mary Joe.”

The reference is apparently to Sen. Kennedy’s car accident on Chappaquiddick Island off the coast of Massachusetts in July 1969 that killed Mary Jo Kopechne, a young woman who had been a worker in Robert Kennedy’s campaign.

According to a subsequent report in the FBI files, Sen. Kennedy arrived in Ocala by private plane and stayed at the home of George Steinbrenner, identified in the report as the owner of the Kinsman Stud Farm.

Mr Steinbrenner, who would go on to buy the New York Yankees the following year, hired “eight to 10 men from the Pinkerton Detective Agency to guard Kennedy and party”, according to a report sent to the FBI by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office at the time. The sheriff’s office also assigned two officers to help protect Sen. Kennedy.

The report also warns that “two Ocala women have been attempting to polarise action against Kennedy in the form of a demonstration”. One of the women had lost a son in the Vietnam War and held the late President Kennedy responsible, the report said.

The more than 1,400 documents made public by the FBI also include a June 25, 1968 report of a threat called in from a pay phone at a Coral Gables, Florida, restaurant. The call was overheard by a waitress.

The caller, who identified himself as Sonny Capone, allegedly stated that “If Edward Kennedy keeps fooling around, he was going to get it too”.