By Peter Barry Chowka
Highly recommended is a series of programs on the Fox News channel that continues on Sunday, December 9 from 8-9 P.M. E.T./P.T. It’s the second episode of the second season of the occasional documentary series Scandalous. Season two, which continues for two more Sundays after December 9, concerns lingering questions about the 1969 scandal involving the late Sen. Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy (D-Mass.) that essentially short-circuited his seemingly inevitable path to the presidency. Not well remembered now, the scandal a half-century ago was also depicted in a dramatic feature film, titled Chappaquiddick, that premiered in theaters last April and bombed at the box office (only $18 million in ticket sales versus a $34-million budget).
The story of Kennedy’s actions resulting in the death of 28-year-old campaign aide Mary Jo Kopechne more than merits the new, detailed look that Scandalous: Chappaquiddick is giving it. Last winter, season one of Scandalous presented seven hour-long episodes about the scandals of Bill and Hillary Clinton leading up to the 42nd president’s impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial in the Senate in 1999. It was a serious, hard-hitting, compelling, and mostly objective production featuring 45 new interviews with many of the principals and journalists who covered the events, a wealth of archival video, and excellent narration by Bruce McGill. The first season of Scandalous performed well in the ratings.
The story of Chappaquiddick seems like a logical follow-up to the Clinton scandals. As a news release emailed to journalists by Fox News on November 28 noted:
This second season will spotlight the personal tragedy and political drama that enveloped the United States in the summer of 1969, turning the island of “Chappaquiddick” into a household name. The program will chronicle the perspective of many of those involved, along with the journalists who covered the puzzling accident that left the political career of the late Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy tarnished and led to the death of campaign strategist Mary Jo Kopechne. Through archival footage, records and never-before seen photos, the series will revisit the daily twists and turns of the drama that first captivated the world nearly 50 years ago.
The first episode of Scandalous: Chappaquiddick, “The Bridge,” which premiered in December 2, was excellent. It was a riveting, factually-based chronological review of the day and night of the 1969 accident that almost ended Sen. Edward Kennedy’s political career. Parts 2-4 beginning with the December 9th 8 PM ET/PT showing of part 2, promises to advance the story in a dramatic and compelling way.
On December 6th, a representative of Fox News provided a description of Scandalous: Chappaquiddick, Season 2 Episode 2:
FOX News Channel’s (FNC) docu-series Scandalous: Chappaquiddick continues with episode two entitled, “A Tiger by the Tail” on Sunday, December 9th at 8PM/ET. This week’s episode will dive deep into the aftermath of the summer night that led to the discovery of Senator Ted Kennedy’s car and campaign strategist Mary Jo Kopechne’s body submerged in the water off a small one-lane bridge. With the Kopechne family grieving the loss of Mary Jo, Kennedy’s team of advisors work to devise a plan to save the Senator’s career and his presidential aspirations all while keeping the media in the dark. With pressure mounting, Kennedy breaks his silence by addressing the American public in a live speech on national television, however the controversial speech led to an official investigation into Mary Jo’s death. An extended director’s cut version containing additional footage and longer guest interviews will be available on FOX Nation [the new online subscription service that complements the Fox News channel], Sunday at 8:05PM/ET.
The Background
In the early 1970s, I made the first of many trips to Martha’s Vineyard, when the Chappaquiddick story was still fresh in the minds of local residents, even though the rest of the country had largely moved on. Most of the Vineyarders whom I spoke with over 45 years ago were of the opinion that Kennedy had gotten away with murder.
Late on the evening of Friday, July 18, 1969, a party at a small rented cottage on the remote, rural island of Chappaquiddick, separated by a churning 500-foot wide body of water from the main island of Martha’s Vineyard, was winding down. The partygoers were six single women in their twenties who had worked for Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.), who had been assassinated the year before; six older men, including Ted Kennedy; and several male Democratic campaign strategists.
Around midnight, Kennedy left the party with Kopechne, who, he said later, wanted a ride back to her hotel in Edgartown on the Vineyard. But Kopechne left her hotel key and purse behind at the cottage. The other attendees at the party were planning on spending the rest of the night at the rented cottage.
Supposedly taking a wrong turn from the two-lane paved road on the way to the ferry, Kennedy wound up heading in the opposition direction along a one-lane dirt road toward an isolated beach. Approaching the beach, the Oldsmobile sedan Kennedy was driving veered off the small Dyke Bridge and became submerged in the Poucha Pond below. Kennedy escaped and said later that he repeatedly dove into the water in search of Kopechne, who remained trapped inside the vehicle. Inexplicably, after giving up, Kennedy did not report the accident, but instead walked back to the cottage, where he conferred privately with several of his closest aides, who also failed to report the accident.
Without informing the other partygoers about what had just happened, the aides drove Kennedy back to the accident scene, where they said they made additional unsuccessful attempts to locate and free Kopechne from the still submerged car. They then drove Kennedy to the deserted and now closed Chappaquiddick ferry landing, and he wound up swimming across the channel back to the Vineyard and spent the rest of the night at his hotel. The next morning, after making a series of calls from pay phones to confer with some of his top political advisers or fixers around the country, Kennedy finally reported the accident to police. By the time rescuers reached the car, Kopechne had expired – but not from drowning.
According to People magazine (December 29, 2017):
“I know she suffocated when her oxygen ran out,” the diver [who removed Kopechne’s body from Kennedy’s car], John Farrar, said in Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-up, a 1988 book about the incident by Leo Damore. “She didn’t drown.”
Farrar claimed that Kopechne could have been alive for some time after the accident and alleges that she could have been saved if Ted had summoned the police earlier. “She could have lived a good while after the car went off the bridge,” Farrar said in Senatorial Privilege.
The district attorney’s request for a belated autopsy was opposed by Ted’s camp and by Kopechne’s parents at the time. It was rejected by a Pennsylvania judge following a hearing.
A Slap on the Wrist
The subsequent legal proceedings and a variety of journalistic accounts over the years also suggested that if the accident had been reported in a timely manner, Kopechne might have survived. Incredibly, Kennedy was not charged criminally with vehicular manslaughter; instead, he was given a slap on the wrist – allowed to plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident causing personal injury, a misdemeanor for which he received a two-month suspended jail sentence and had his driver’s license suspended for six months.
This account is a bare-bones summary of an outrageous and tragic event and its aftermath that were essentially wrapped (or covered) up in little more than one week. Meanwhile, the country was preoccupied with and distracted by the breaking news about the first successful landing of two American astronauts on the Moon that was occurring at the same time. The questions that the Chappaquiddick incident raised about Kennedy’s character and behavior that night in July 1969, however, dogged him for the rest of his life. The incident further embellished his reputation as an out-of-control womanizer, and he was unsuccessful in his only serious try at the presidency, when he challenged incumbent President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Party’s nomination in 1980.
Although he never made it to the Oval Office, Kennedy’s career in the U.S. Senate lasted for over 40 more years until the day he died from a brain tumor in 2009. Over time, the details of the 1969 incident at Chappaquiddick largely faded, and Kennedy – in life and after his death – was lauded by Democrats and Republicans alike, constantly celebrated and honored as the “Lion of the Senate.” Hopefully, Scandalous: Chappaquiddick‘s new four-hour-long deconstruction of the events almost a half-century ago will add some much needed clarity to the hagiographic, airbrushed revision of the real history that has dominated political discourse ever since.
Peter Barry Chowka writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications. Follow him on Twitter at @pchowka.
