Conspiracy: History’s Greatest Plots, Collusions and Cover-Ups (21 page)

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CONSPIRACY AGAINST ETHNIC MINORITIES
The fact that the study was conducted on black people led many to accuse the scientists who mounted it of racism. However, this was complicated by the fact that several of the staff in charge of the experiment were African-Americans. The experiment was also conducted under the auspices of one of America's most respected black universities, the Tuskegee Institute, set up by Booker T. Washington. The hospital of the university loaned medical facilities to the Public Health Service in order that they could conduct the experiment and local African-American doctors also became involved.

One of the central figures in the drama was a black nurse called Eunice Rivers. She had worked with the subjects for nearly forty years and was trusted by most of them. Defending her behaviour, she claimed that she was simply carrying out the orders of the doctors and was not in a position to diagnose the patients' illnesses.

Strangely, both black doctors and nurses felt that they were helping solve the problem of venereal disease in the Afro-American community, and they were deeply committed to health programmes that helped the poorest people in their area, Macon County. It was as if they simply could not see that human beings should not be treated in this way, as just a means to an end, even in the cause of supposedly extending medical knowledge.

Also perplexing is the way in which the study was set up. Once it had been dismantled, many questions were asked. Why, for example, had it been thought necessary to find out the differences between the progress of the disease on white people and black people? The study was set up to find out whether it was true that black people experienced cardiovascular problems as a result of syphilis infection, whereas white people were more susceptible to neurological malfunctioning. But how this information would have helped treat the disease remains unclear.

Not only that, but the scientific methodology in the study was flawed. The investigation was designed to show how the disease progressed when untreated but the subjects had already been treated – with contemporary treatments such as mercurial ointments – in the first few months of the programme, before it was decided to extend the study. The thinking behind the experiment was so unclear and the scientific gains were so questionable that one can only assume that an extraordinary level of, possibly unconscious, racism must have blinded the scientists to the fact that they were treating their subjects in a completely inhuman way.

In several later sociological studies the Tuskegee syphilis experiment was shown to have had an adverse effect on health programmes directed at African-Americans, who unsurprisingly increasingly mistrusted the public health authorities. The episode caused lasting damage and it is remembered as one of the most appalling conspiracies ever to take place in American history.

The three Kennedy brothers dominated the American political landscape during the 1960s and each one of them was involved in a sensational news story that in turn led to a whole range of conspiracy theories. In the case of the two elder brothers, John and Robert, the sensational events were their assassinations. However, their younger brother, Edward "Teddy" Kennedy, hit the headlines because of the death of a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne.

Mary Jo Kopechne was twenty-eight years old at the time of her death. She had worked in Washington since graduating from college, first as secretary to Senator George Smathers and then to Robert Kennedy. During Kennedy's presidential campaign she had become part of a devoted and hardworking team known as the "boiler room girls". Following Robert Kennedy's assassination in 1968 the "boiler room girls" had been busy closing up his office. As a way of thanking them for their hard work, Robert's brother Edward Kennedy, also a Senator, had invited them to spend a weekend at Martha's Vineyard. They would watch a yachting race at Edgartown on 18 July 1969 and then a party would be held in their honour on Chappaquiddick island.

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RASHED OVER BRIDGE
The party was a small affair. The six "boiler room girls" all attended – Kopechne, Susan Tannenbaum, Maryellen Lyons, Ann Lyons, Rosemary (Cricket) Keough and Esther Newburgh – and the other guests were six men, all of them married but without their wives in attendance. The men were Edward Kennedy, US Attorney Paul Markham, Joe Gargan (Kennedy's cousin and lawyer), Charles Tretter, Raymond La Rosa and John Crimmins. Gargan rented the venue, called Lawrence Cottage, and John Crimmins supplied the alcohol. He brought three half gallons of vodka, four fifths of scotch, two bottles of rum and two cases of beer – an ample amount for twelve people, when at least two of them were not drinking.

According to Kennedy's account, what happened next was that Kennedy offered to drive Kopechne home at around 11.15 p.m., a journey that involved catching the ferry from the island back to Edgartown. Unfortunately, instead of turning left on to the road to the ferry he turned right and found himself on an unfamiliar road that led him unexpectedly to a narrow bridge. The car crashed over the side of the bridge and fell into the water, turning over in the process.

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TATE OF SHOCK
At first Kennedy thought he was going to drown but then the door burst open and he was carried to the surface. He looked around for Kopechne but he could not see her. Although he dived down the current was too strong and he was unable to get into the car to save her. Suffering from concussion and shock, he made his way back to the cottage where he enlisted the help of Gargan and Markham. They returned to the car and tried again to dive down, still without success. Still in a state of shock, Kennedy returned to the ferry landing and swam across to the mainland, where he returned to his hotel. It was only in the morning that he came to his senses and called the police to report the accident.

This account was more or less accepted by the police. Kennedy was summoned to court to answer the charge of either failing to remain at the scene of an accident he had caused or at least failing to report it. He was let off with a two months' suspended sentence for this crime, despite the fact that the law appeared to state that the offence should carry a mandatory jail sentence. Throughout the proceedings, Kennedy maintained that he had not been drunk at the time of the accident. By the following day, of course, it was impossible to check whether he was telling the truth or not.

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N AFFAIR?
Unsurprisingly, many people had a hard time believing Kennedy's version of events and before long evidence began to appear that magnified those doubts. A local Deputy Sheriff, Christopher "Huck" Look, had returned home a little after 12.30 on the night in question and had remembered seeing a car with a man and a woman in it parked close to the point at which the road to the cottage met the main road. Look thought that the occupants might be lost so he got out of his car to offer help. As he approached, the car reversed fast and headed down the road, actually little more than a dirt track, that led to the fateful bridge.

If the car was indeed Kennedy's then the incident casts immediate doubt on the story that he was driving Kopechne to the ferry, because the last boat had left by then. What many suspect is that Kennedy had rather more in mind than a simple lift home for Kopechne and that they were in fact deliberately heading down the dirt road to the nearby beach for a romantic assignation. According to this theory, what then happened was that the appearance of the Sheriff panicked Kennedy, who might well have been intoxicated. This perhaps caused him to drive too fast down the dirt road so that he ploughed straight off the side of the bridge.

Further doubts have been cast over Kennedy's story that he was too shocked to report the accident. For instance, there were houses near the bridge where he could have asked for help. Instead he made his way to the cottage and called on the assistance of the two men most likely to be discreet, Gargan and Markham. According to Gargan's subsequent testimony, the first thing on Kennedy's mind, even before the fate of Kopechne, was how to cover up his role in the accident. He allegedly told Gargan that they should say that Kopechne herself had been driving the car alone. After Gargan had told him that the plan was potentially disastrous an angered Kennedy then swam off back to his hotel. There he went to bed. He emerged the next day looking fit and well dressed and not at all like a man in shock. It was only when Gargan and Markham came over on the ferry that morning that they persuaded him that he did indeed have to report the accident.

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UFFOCATED NOT DROWNED
By that time the sunken car had been spotted and diver John Farrar had found the dead body of Kopechne inside. Chillingly, he reported that her posture suggested that she had been caught in an air pocket and had suffocated when the air had run out. She had apparently not drowned. This judgement was allegedly supported by the undertaker who worked on her body, although no autopsy was performed that would have verified the cause of her death. If Farrar was right, however, and Kopechne had been held in an air pocket, it is possible that she may have remained alive for as long as two hours after the crash. In that case it is conceivable that Kennedy's failure to raise the alarm may have brought about her death.

It is harsh, but not unreasonable, to suspect that Kennedy may have valued his career rather more than Kopechne's life. If so, he was only partially successful. The scandal was not enough to force him to resign his Senatorship but it did put paid to his chances of ever becoming president, his greatest ambition.

There are definite elements of conspiracy in the events surrounding the prosecution of the affair. In particular, Kennedy's history of driving offences was mysteriously absent from the records that were given to the court. There are also those who see a larger conspiracy here. These theorists believe that the whole business was a set-up that was designed to discredit Kennedy. According to this theory, the CIA (or perhaps a shadowy organization known as the Power Control Group) had already assassinated John and Robert Kennedy, but realized that it would look too suspicious if they assassinated Edward as well. However, by setting up the Kopechne debacle they might be able to ruin his reputation instead.

The theories get frankly sketchy when a method needs to be found. In essence, they suggest that Kennedy was either drugged at the party or waylaid and knocked out. Then he was taken back to his hotel room unconscious – which explains why he never reported the accident. Meanwhile the CIA drugged or knocked out Kopechne, positioned the car near the bridge, wedged the gas pedal down and launched her to her watery grave. The main problem with this theory is the role of Kennedy himself. On waking up the next morning why wouldn't he have revealed what really happened?