The Roosevelt Campaign Train, September 23, 1932. Joseph Kennedy is in front row, fifth from the right with hand in pocket.
Forward with Roosevelt. Learn about Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, the New Deal and World War II. Our Museum features special interactives, immersive audio‐visual theaters, and rarely seen artifacts that convey the dramatic story of the Roosevelt era. https://www.fdrlibrary.org/
The patriarch of the Boston family though a Roman Catholic Irish heritage individual came from a social elite business and political family that had made it from the Boston Docks into business and politics. In the Industrial Age’s and Ford’s assembly lines production capabilities Jospej Kennedy Sr. like Macamara later and all industrialists will be part of the war effort of WWI that really gives rise the War Industries Board, The Walker and Bush family and the military industrial complex at the close of WWI.
Going into WWII Joseph Kennedy Sr. will be Ambassador to Great Britrian with whom he had allied in WWI at as shipyard working in tandem with Undersecretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt to get ships forged and into the Atlantic Ocean.
In WII and the Cold War Joseph Kennedy Sr. continues is USA role in the British Empire as England’s colonies has pilots training in the Royal Air Force in England. In England’s Finest Hour the cadets get in real planes and defend England from Nazi incoming bombers and fighters, in fact at times aided by RADAR to know the attacks are coming to get airborne in time.
The Roosevelts and the Kennedys retrieved from https://fdr.blogs.archives.gov/2013/11/22/the-roosevelts-and-the-kennedys/ and copied or modified to here
The ties between the Roosevelt and Kennedy families go back to World War I when Franklin D. Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In November 1917, Joseph P. Kennedy was the Assistant General Manager of the Fore River Shipbuilding Corporation in Quincy, Massachusetts, when a labor strike threatened the company’s contribution to the Navy’s shipbuilding program. Assistant Secretary Roosevelt appealed to Fore River’s management and to the striking workers “to sink all minor differences and to get together for the sake of the success of our country in this war at once.” The strike ended a few days later.
As New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt prepared to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for president at the convention in Chicago in July 1932, Joseph P. Kennedy—now working in Hollywood and New York—lent his support to FDR, both financially and politically.
Kennedy was one of those who were known as “WRBC”, or With Roosevelt Before Chicago. He donated to the campaign, met with Governor Roosevelt and his Brains Trust in Albany, and helped convince supporters of John Nance Garner to throw their delegates to Roosevelt at the convention. Kennedy continued to advise Roosevelt after he won the nomination, and in August Kennedy wrote to FDR: “As I told you over the phone unless they [the Republicans] can put two and one half million men back to work and get wheat up to twenty or twenty five cents a bushel the result will be overwhelming for Roosevelt.” Roosevelt even invited Kennedy along on the campaign train that fall.
The Roosevelt Campaign Train, September 23, 1932. Joseph Kennedy is in front row, fifth from the right with hand in pocket.
As the New Deal began to take shape, one of FDR’s early reforms was the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC was designed to protect investors from fraudulent and unethical practices in the stock market. FDR began to assemble his choices for the five-person Commission, and Joseph Kennedy was selected to be the first chairman.
As a June 15, 1934 memorandum indicates, FDR’s choice of Kennedy as chairman reflected the man’s “executive ability, knowledge of habits and customs of business to be regulated and ability to moderate different points of view…” Kennedy received a five year appointment, and although he resigned in September 1935 to return to private business, he received high praise for effectively working with both Washington and Wall Street to implement the new regulations.
Kennedy again supported FDR’s nomination for the presidency in 1936, and in 1937 returned to public service to become the first chairman of the newly created Maritime Commission that had been established to revitalize the United States shipping industry.
Then, in March 1938, Kennedy received the appointment he most wanted in Roosevelt’s government: Ambassador to the Court of St. James – the first Irish Catholic American to hold this prestigious diplomatic post. As the new U.S. Ambassador in London, Kennedy had a front row seat to the worsening international crisis in Europe. When war finally came in September 1939, Kennedy’s public support for American neutrality conflicted with Roosevelt’s increasing efforts to provide aid to Britain. Roosevelt and Kennedy met in October 1940 to try to iron out their differences, but it was clear the split could not be repaired. Kennedy resigned after FDR’s election to a Third Term in November.
Despite their later policy differences, the ties between FDR and Joseph Kennedy extended to the next generation of Kennedys. In 1935, FDR learned that young Bobby Kennedy was a stamp collector and sent the boy some of stamps for his collection. In 1940, recent Harvard graduate John F. Kennedy sent an inscribed first edition of his recently published book, Why England Slept, to FDR for his book collection. As was his custom, FDR signed the flyleaf underneath Jack Kennedy’s signature. And in 1944, FDR was shocked to learn of the death of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., while on a combat bombing mission, and the President wrote a heartfelt condolence letter to the elder Joe Kennedy.
FDR’s own death in April 1945 brought an end to Joseph Kennedy’s years of collaboration with Franklin Roosevelt. But post-war America saw the rise of a new Kennedy to prominence, John F. Kennedy. As a leading figure in the Democratic Party, Eleanor Roosevelt saw JFK grow from a Congressman, to a United States Senator, then a potential nominee for vice president in 1956, and finally the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 1960.
John F. Kennedy touring the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library during his visit for the 25th Anniversary of Social Security, August 14, 1960.
A longtime supporter of the liberal Adlai Stevenson’s runs for the presidency, Eleanor Roosevelt had concerns about JFK’s commitment to some of the liberal causes that she held dear. During the 1950s, ER challenged John Kennedy to be more vocal in his opposition to McCarthyism. And in 1960, Mrs. Roosevelt feared that JFK’s caution on civil rights issues was an attempt to garner votes in the more conservative southern states that might backfire and cost him votes in the more liberal north.
On August 14, 1960, Kennedy came to Hyde Park to pay his respects to Mrs. Roosevelt and to gain her full support for his candidacy. After visiting the Roosevelt Library and the FDR Home to deliver a speech commemorating the 25th anniversary of Social Security, JFK had tea with Mrs. Roosevelt at her Val-Kill home where they talked over the issues and his campaign. Following the meeting, Eleanor Roosevelt threw her full support behind the Kennedy-Johnson ticket.
Great Britain will never forget these cadets.
In the Cold War again England and its facilities like Bermuda that helped USA and Great Brittian around the world overthrow countries like Guatamala.
In reading all this spy stuff it seems State Department officials are usually mostly aware of CIA activities the Station Chiefs in those areas are conducting but that system broke down under JFK who did not want to comply with JFK’s policies.
According to Wayne Madsen who cites CIA documents the Jospeh Kennedy Jr Foundation was part of CIA funding of a plan to groom Barrack Obama for Indonesia in a plan that utalized USIAD, the Peace Corp, and East-West Foundation in Hawaii among others.
As Jospeh Kenney Sr remained the close-knot family confidant of Senator John F. Kennedy, Senator Ted Kennedy, and President John F. Kennedy and his British contacts, his earlier contacts and life with Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, many many empires, etc., Joseph Kennedy Sr was in the British Cabal as necessity though not be easy choice.
Jospeh Kennedy Jr. his son that he hoped to become President was killed in a classified Radio Controlled Bomber progam called Aphrodite so secret ti reamins classified today.
Patrick Joseph Kennedy (January 14, 1858 – May 18, 1929) was an American businessman and politician from Boston, Massachusetts. He and his wife Mary were the parents of four children, including future U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair and U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Their grandchildren through Joseph include U.S. President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and longtime U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.
After cholera killed his father and brother, Kennedy was the only surviving male in his family. He started work at age fourteen and became a successful businessman, later owning three saloons and a whisky import house. Eventually, he had major interests in coal and banking as well. Kennedy was a major figure in the Democratic Party in Boston. Though he served in both the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the state Senate, he preferred to play a behind-the-scenes role as a party boss.
Early life[edit]
Patrick Joseph Kennedy was born on January 14, 1858, in Boston, Massachusetts.[1] He was the youngest of five children born to Patrick Kennedy (1823–1858) and Bridget Kennedy (née Murphy) (1824–1888). His parents were Irish Catholic immigrants who were both from New Ross, County Wexford and emigrated together to America to flee the Great Famine in Ireland. The couple’s elder son John had died of cholera in infancy two years before Kennedy was born. Ten months after P.J. Kennedy’s birth, his father Patrick also succumbed to the infectious epidemic that infested the family’s East Boston neighborhood. As the only surviving male, Kennedy was the first family member to receive a formal education, attending Sacred Heart, a private Catholic school in Boston. His mother Bridget had purchased an East Boston stationery and notions store where she had worked. The business took off and expanded into a grocery and liquor store.[2]
At the age of fourteen, young Kennedy left school to help support his mother and three older sisters, Mary, Joanna, and Margaret, as a stevedore on the Boston docks. In the 1880s, with money he had saved from his modest earnings and help from his mother Bridget, he launched a business career by buying a saloon in the Haymarket Square neighborhood near downtown Boston. In time, he bought a second establishment by the East Boston docks. Next, to capitalize on the social drinking of upper-class Bostonians, Kennedy purchased a third bar in an upscale East Boston hotel, the Maverick House. Before he was 30, his growing prosperity allowed him to buy a whiskey-importing business.[3]
Marriage and children[edit]
On November 23, 1887, Kennedy married Mary Augusta Hickey.[1] The couple had four children and remained married until Hickey’s death on May 6, 1923.[4] His wealth afforded them a home on Jeffries Point in East Boston.[5]
Political career[edit]
Kennedy was “always ready to help less fortunate fellow Irishmen with a little cash and some sensible advice.” A sociable man able to mix comfortably with both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant elite, Kennedy moved successfully into politics. Beginning in 1884, he converted his popularity into service as a Democrat, a minority in the then Republican dominant power in the Massachusetts General Court. He served five consecutive one-year terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, followed by three two-year terms in the upper chamber in the Massachusetts Senate. Establishing himself as one of Boston’s principal Democratic leaders, he gave one of the seconding speeches for incumbent President Grover Cleveland at the party’s 1888 national convention of the party in St. Louis. However, he found campaigning, speech making, and legislative maneuvering, to be less appealing than the behind-the-scenes machinations that characterized so much of Boston politics in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. After leaving the Senate and the General Court after many terms in 1895, Kennedy spent the rest of his political career as an appointed elections commissioner, an appointed city fire commissioner, as the backroom boss of Boston’s Ward Two, and as a member of his party’s unofficial Board of Strategy.[6]
Death[edit]
By the time of his death in 1929, Kennedy held an interest in a coal company and a substantial amount of stock in a bank, the Columbia Trust Company.[5]
In his later years, Kennedy developed degenerative liver disease. In April 1929, he was admitted to Deaconess Hospital to receive treatment.[7] He died there on May 18 at the age of 71. His funeral was held at St. John the Evangelist Church in Winthrop, Massachusetts, on May 21. The Boston Globe reported that hundreds of mourners lined the streets to watch Kennedy’s funeral procession and businesses in East Boston closed to honor him.[8] Kennedy is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden, Massachusetts.[9]
Legacy[edit]
In 1914, P.J. Kennedy’s son Joseph married Rose Fitzgerald (July 22, 1890 – January 22, 1995), the eldest daughter of Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald (1863–1950).[10] Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. went on to become a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair[10] and a U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom.[11]
Joseph and Rose Kennedy had nine children, including World War II casualty Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., U.S. President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.[12]
The Story of Obama: All in The Company (Part I)
by Wayne Madsen
In 1967, Obama and his mother joined her husband in Jakarta. In 1965, Lolo Soetoro had been called back from Hawaii by General Suharto to serve as an officer in the Indonesian military to help launch a bloody CIA-backed genocide of Indonesian Communists and Indonesian Chinese throughout the expansive country. Suharto consolidated his power in 1966, the same year that Barack Obama, Sr.’s friend, Mboya, had helped to rally pro-U.S. pan-African support for the CIA’s overthrow of Nkrumah in Ghana in 1966.
President Obama’s own work in 1983 for Business International Corporation, a CIA front that conducted seminars with the world’s most powerful leaders and used journalists as agents abroad, dovetails with CIA espionage activities conducted by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960s post-coup Indonesia on behalf of a number of CIA front operations, including the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Ford Foundation. Dunham met and married Lolo Soetoro, Obama’s stepfather, at the East-West Center in 1965. Soetoro was recalled to Indonesia in 1965 to serve as a senior army officer and assist General Suharto and the CIA in the bloody overthrow of President Sukarno.
Barack Obama, Sr., who met Dunham in 1959 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii, had been part of what was described as an airlift of 280 East African students to the United States to attend various colleges – merely “aided” by a grant from the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation, according to a September 12, 1960, Reuters report from London. The airlift was a CIA operation to train and indoctrinate future agents of influence in Africa, which was becoming a battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union and China for influence among newly-independent and soon-to-be independent countries on the continent.
The airlift was condemned by the deputy leader of the opposition Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU) as favoring certain tribes – the majority Kikuyus and minority Luos – over other tribes to favor the Kenyan African National Union (KANU), whose leader was Tom Mboya, the Kenyan nationalist and labor leader who selected Obama, Sr. for a scholarship at the University of Hawaii. Obama, Sr., who was already married with an infant son and pregnant wife in Kenya, married Dunham on Maui on February 2, 1961 and was also the university’s first African student. Dunham was three month’s pregnant with Barack Obama, Jr. at the time of her marriage to Obama, Sr.
KADU deputy leader Masinda Muliro, according to Reuters, said KADU would send a delegation to the United States to investigate Kenyan students who received “gifts” from the Americans and “ensure that further gifts to Kenyan students are administered by people genuinely interested in Kenya’s development.’”
The CIA allegedly recruited Tom M’Boya in a heavily funded “selective liberation” programme to isolate Kenya’s founding President Jomo Kenyatta, whom the American spy agency labelled as “unsafe.” Mboya received a $100,000 grant for the airlift from the Kennedy Foundation after he turned down the same offer from the U.S. State Department, obviously concerned that direct U.S. assistance would look suspicious to pro-Communist Kenyan politicians who suspected Mboya of having CIA ties. The Airlift Africa project was underwritten by the Kennedy Foundation and the African-American Students Foundation. Obama, Sr. was not on the first airlift but a subsequent one. The airlift, organized by Mboya in 1959, included students from Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland.
Reuters also reported that Muliro charged that Africans were “disturbed and embittered” by the airlift of the selected students. Muliro “stated that “preferences were shown to two major tribes [Kikuyu and Luo] and many U.S.-bound students had failed preliminary and common entrance examinations, while some of those left behind held first-class certificates.”
CIA-airlifted to Hawaii, Barack Obama Sr., with leis, stands with Stanley Dunham, President Obama’s grandfather, on his right. Obama, Sr. was a friend of Mboya and a fellow Luo. After Mboya was assassinated in 1969, Obama, Sr. testified at the trial of his alleged assassin. Obama, Sr. claimed he was the target of a hit-and-run assassination attempt after his testimony.
Obama, Sr., who left Hawaii for Harvard in 1962, divorced Dunham in 1964. Obama, Sr. married a fellow Harvard student, Ruth Niedesand, a Jewish-American woman, who moved with him to Kenya and had two sons. They were later divorced. Obama, Sr. worked for the Kenyan Finance and Transport ministries as well as an oil firm. Obama, Sr. died in a 1982 car crash and his funeral was attended by leading Kenyan politicians, including future Foreign Minister Robert Ouko, who was murdered in 1990.
CIA files indicate that Mboya was an important agent-of-influence for the CIA, not only in Kenya but in all of Africa. A formerly Secret CIA Current Intelligence Weekly Summary, dated November 19, 1959, states that Mboya served as a check on extremists at the second All-African People’s Conference (AAPC) in Tunis. The report states that “serious friction developed between Ghana’s Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah and Kenyan nationalist Tom Mboya who cooperated effectively last December to check extremists at the AAPC’s first meeting in Accra.” The term “cooperated effectively” appears to indicate that Mboya was cooperating with the CIA, which filed the report from field operatives in Accra and Tunis. While “cooperating” with the CIA in Accra and Tunis, Mboya selected the father of the president of the United States to receive a scholarship and be airlifted to the University of Hawaii where he met and married President Obama’s mother.
An earlier CIA Current Intelligence Weekly Summary, secret, and dated April 3, 1958, states that Mboya “still appears to be the most promising of the African leaders.” Another CIA weekly summary, secret and dated December 18, 1958, calls Mboya the Kenyan nationalist an “able and dynamic young chairman” of the People’s Convention party who was viewed as an opponent of “extremists” like Nkrumah, supported by “Sino-Soviet representatives.”
In a formerly Secret CIA report on the All-Africa Peoples Conference in 1961, dated November 1, 1961, Mboya’s conservatism, along with that of Taleb Slim of Tunisia, are contrasted to the leftist policies of Nkrumah and others. Pro-communists who were elected to the AAPC’s steering committee at the March 1961 Cairo conference, attended by Mboya, are identified in the report as Abdoulaye Diallo, AAPC Secretary General, of Senegal; Ahmed Bourmendjel of Algeria; Mario de Andrade of Angola; Ntau Mokhele of Basutoland; Kingue Abel of Cameroun; Antoine Kiwewa of Congo (Leopoldville); Kojo Botsio of Ghana; Ismail Toure of Guinea; T. O. Dosomu Johnson of Liberia; Modibo Diallo of Mali; Mahjoub Ben Seddik of Morocco; Djibo Bakari of Niger; Tunji Otegbeya of Nigeria; Kanyama Chiume of Nyasaland; Ali Abdullahi of Somalia; Tennyson Makiwane of South Africa, and Mohamed Fouad Galal of the United Arab Republic. …
Joseph Kennedy Sr in 1926 and 1927
Jen Moore talked about a person she did not name as being an owner of theaters I had thought that must have been the Kutschera;s since Franz Kutchera was a propogandist and use the Von Trapp Whitehead singers.
But was the theaters owners Jospeh Kennedy who brought the Von Trapps and Norma Jean into the USA?
Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. retrieved from Wikipedia and copied or modified to here
Hollywood[edit]
In March 1926, Kennedy moved to Hollywood to focus on running film studios. (and watching over Norma Jean?] [36] At that time, film studios were permitted to own exhibition companies, which were necessary to get their films on local screens. With that in mind, he bought controlling shares in Keith-Albee-Orpheum Theaters Corporation (KAO), which had more than 700 vaudeville theaters across the United States that had begun showing movies.[37] In October 1928, he formally merged his film companies FBO and KAO to form Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO)[38] and made a large amount of money in the process. Kennedy had no interest in vaudeville; he just wanted the theaters, which he planned to convert to movie houses for the film booking interests he ran in cooperation with Radio Corporation of America (RCA).[39] As the developer of photophone, a sound system for the new “talkies“, RCA needed to forge a connection with Hollywood to sell its product. At the same time Kennedy knew that he needed to compete in the new market of sound films and to do so he would have to have access to a technology that was not proprietary.[40]
Kennedy generated windfall profits from reorganizing and refinancing several Hollywood film studios. He began with film distribution in New England (buying first movie theaters in Massachusetts)[31] but quickly moved on to industry-wide arrangements and production.[32][33] While still at Hayden, Stone & Co., Kennedy boasted to a colleague, “Look at that bunch of pants pressers in Hollywood making themselves millionaires. I could take the whole business away from them.”[34] One small studio, Film Booking Offices of America (or FBO), specialized in Westerns produced cheaply. Its owner was in financial trouble, and asked Kennedy to help find a new owner. Kennedy formed his own group of investors and bought it for $1.5 million.[35]
Keen to buy the Pantages Theatre chain, which had 63 profitable theaters, Kennedy made an offer of $8 million (equivalent to $136.3 million in 2022). It was declined. He then stopped distributing his movies to Pantages. Still, Alexander Pantages declined to sell.[41] However, when Pantages was later charged and tried for rape, his reputation took a battering, and he accepted Kennedy’s revised offer of $3.5 million (equivalent to $59.6 million in 2022). Pantages, who claimed that Kennedy had “set him up”, was later found not guilty at a second trial. The girl who had accused Pantages of rape, Eunice Pringle, confessed on her deathbed that Kennedy was the mastermind of the plot to frame Pantages.[42][43]
Many estimate that Kennedy made over $5 million (equivalent to $85.2 million in 2022) from his investments in Hollywood. During his three-year affair with film star Gloria Swanson,[45] he arranged the financing for her films The Love of Sunya (1927) and the ill-fated Queen Kelly (1928). The duo also used Hollywood’s famous “body sculptor”, masseuse Sylvia of Hollywood.[45] Their relationship ended when Swanson discovered that an expensive gift from Kennedy had actually been charged to her account.[46]
Political career[edit]
SEC Chairman (1934–1935)[edit]
In 1932, Kennedy supported Franklin D. Roosevelt in his bid for the presidency. This was his first major involvement in a national political campaign, and he donated, lent, and raised a substantial amount of money for the campaign.[56]
In 1934, Congress established the independent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to end irresponsible market manipulations and dissemination of false information about securities.[57] Roosevelt’s brain trust drew up a list of recommended candidates for the SEC chairmanship. Kennedy headed the list, which stated he was “the best bet for Chairman because of executive ability, knowledge of habits and customs of business to be regulated and ability to moderate different points of view on Commission.”[58]
Kennedy sought out the best lawyers available giving him a hard-driving team with a mission for reform. They included William O. Douglas and Abe Fortas, both of whom were later named to the Supreme Court.[59] The SEC had four missions. First was to restore investor confidence in the securities market, which had collapsed on account of its questionability, and the external threats supposedly posed by anti-business elements in the Roosevelt administration. Second, the SEC had to get rid of penny-ante swindles based on false information, fraudulent devices, and get-rich-quick schemes. Thirdly, and much more important than the frauds, the SEC had to end the million-dollar maneuvers in major corporations, whereby insiders with access to high-quality information about the company knew when to buy or sell their own securities. A crackdown on insider trading was essential. Finally, the SEC had to set up a complex system of registration for all securities sold in America, with a clear set of rules, deadlines and guidelines that all companies had to follow. The main challenge faced by the young lawyers was drafting precise rules. The SEC succeeded in its four missions, as Kennedy reassured the American business community that they would no longer be deceived and taken advantage of by Wall Street. He trumpeted for ordinary investors to return to the market and enable the economy to grow again.[60] Kennedy’s reforming work as SEC Chairman was widely praised on all sides, as investors realized the SEC was protecting their interests. He resigned from the SEC in September 1935.[61]
Chairman of U.S. Maritime Commission (1937–1938)[edit]
In 1936, Roosevelt sought Kennedy’s help on the campaign, and Kennedy responded with his book I’m for Roosevelt, which he had published and made sure was widely distributed. The book presented arguments for why businessmen should support Roosevelt and the New Deal, told from the perspective of Kennedy’s own personal endorsement. The book had significant impact in the business community and after his re-election, Roosevelt appointed Kennedy as Chairman of the U.S. Maritime Commission,[62] which built on his wartime experience in running a major shipyard. Kennedy spent only ten months at the Commission.[63]
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