An Open Letter to Glenn Greenwald
Dear Mr. Greenwald:
Many observers of your writing have been puzzled by your recent association with Megyn Kelly. You began your journalistic career as, what many thought, a progressive. You were a staunch and acerbic critic of the George W. Bush/ Dick Cheney war on terror--which you perceived to be extreme, and conflicting with your beliefs in civil liberties, e.g., The Patriot Act. You also wrote extensively about the Valerie Plame affair. You published popular books on these subjects, like How Would a Patriot Act? and A Tragic Legacy.
You were also a strong critic of the Iraq War. You did most of your early writing at your blog, Unclaimed Territory. You then switched over to Salon, which had been founded by acclaimed JFK author and investigator David Talbot. In 2012, you moved over to The Guardian. There, you got involved with Edward Snowden. This led to you being featured in the Laura Poitras documentary Citizenfour. And two years later, you were played by actor Zachary Quinto in Oliver Stone’s 2016 film Snowden. Stone, whom you have interviewed, has also been a JFK investigator. You then were closely involved with the founding of The Intercept. Where you accused the MSM of “spreading patriotic state propaganda.” (5/21/17)
You left The Intercept in an editorial dispute. As an independent journalist, you established yourself on platforms like Substack and Rumble. Some observers have noted that you have gravitated of late to places like Fox News and hosts like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly. You hold out as an excuse that MSNBC has banned you. They say this is not true. We will probably never know what the facts are. (Article by Joe Concha, The Hill, 9/ 28/20) But the point is this: Does such a thing justify you going on tour with the likes of Megyn Kelly and playing patty cake with her? If I were to appear with Kelly, I would probably end up arguing with her or perhaps getting in a shoutfest.
Kelly was brought to fame and fortune by her association with the Fox network. She was there for a long time, from 2004 to 2017. One does not stay at Fox that long unless you toe the line most of the time. At first, in 2016, Kelly seemed to be critical of Donald Trump. She then, at her request, had a meeting with him at Trump Tower. Things seemed to evolve differently after that. She did not seem quite so critical, as willing to take Trump on straight ahead. This trend line then evolved further as time went on. It ended with her endorsing him in public in 2024 in Pennsylvania, and she campaigned for him there.
So here are my questions: Have you ever endorsed Trump? Would you consider campaigning for him?
Kelly’s Trump conversion has extended until today. For example, she has tended to discount the Epstein charges over an age issue. (NPR, 11/18/25, story by Ivy Buck) And she has done pretty much the same on the murder of Alex Pretti. According to her, he was protesting too vividly. (The Hill, story by Ashliegh Fields, 1/27/26)
Here is my question, Glenn: Does recording a violent act by ICE on your cell phone mean one is protesting too overtly? Does raising your left arm to protect another bystander from being attacked mean one is being too animated in protest? There is a minute-by-minute chronicle of what happened to Mr. Pretti. Please read it. (ABC News, 1/26/26, by Gaby Vinick)
The philosophy behind Fox News has been to appeal to the angry white working class and middle class. This whole strategy of hate was first formulated on the American political scene by George Wallace. It was then adapted by the Republican Party. The idea was to break apart the Franklin Roosevelt Democratic coalition by appealing to both racial issues and also to violent elements in American life--both at home and abroad. Let us never forget Bloody Sunday in Selma in 1965. Or that Wallace selected General Curtis Le May as his candidate for Vice President in 1968, the man who clashed with President Kennedy and wanted to invade Cuba during the Missile Crisis.
Kelly once said that somehow the presidency of Barack Obama was racially tinged, meaning that he somehow favored African-Americans. Both Jessie Jackson and Sabrina Salvati have disagreed with this and declared that Obama did little or nothing for this group. Jackson said this more than once. And in such extreme terms that he later apologized. (The Guardian,7/17/08, story by Lee Glendinning) But it’s convenient for Fox and Fox alumnae to use this as a trope because Obama was African-American.
And now we come to the point of this story. Kelly has also said that Bobby Kennedy was in Los Angeles on the day Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her bedroom. As we shall see, this is simply not true. But again, it fits a paradigm on the racial issue since the Kennedys were doing more for civil rights than FDR, Truman and Eisenhower combined.
Megyn Kelly went full-out bonkers on this angle when she had on her show, one Maureen Callahan. Callahan wrote a book called Ask Not. I hesitate to even call this a book because it is nothing but a hatchet job on not just JFK and RFK, but the entire Kennedy family, from Joseph Kennedy Sr. on down. Let us define what I mean by that term, hatchet job. When I say that, I have three criteria that I follow:
- The book finds either nothing or barely anything to praise about its subject
- It actively seeks out everything negative, no matter how big or small, to include in its text
- In pursuit of number 2, it does not mind if the sources for the negative material are dubious or spurious.
I did a three-part review of Callahan’s work. Her book fits all those criteria, and then some. For instance, some of the sources she used were the proven fraud David Heymann, Newsmax contributor Ron Kessler, right-wing hit men Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Kitty Kelley, the discredited Dominick Dunne, and conservative smear artist Thomas Reeves. Not to mention Hustler and the National Enquirer. Glenn, if you are going to stoop to using those kinds of sources, does this not betray an agenda you had in advance? And if you had such an agenda, what is the result going to be? Let me demonstrate with a couple of examples with which you may be familiar.
On page 6, she says that the idea JFK was going to withdraw from Vietnam is a “post-assassination myth”. This is simply false. Because we now have the pre-assassination evidence, which demonstrates that this is just what Kennedy was planning for, e.g., the records of the May 1963 meeting in Hawaii held by Defense Secretary McNamara. The declassification of those records showed beyond doubt that the White House was ordering withdrawal schedules from every department in Vietnam: State, CIA, Pentagon. When the Assassination Records Review Board declassified them in 1997, they even convinced the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer that Kennedy was withdrawing at the time of his death. (Probe Magazine, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 18-21)
Therefore, Glenn, if that meeting took place over five months before Kennedy was killed, how could it be a “post-assassination myth”? I should add that McNamara initially requested this meeting in May of 1962, which is well over a year before the assassination. When he did make it, commanding General Paul Harkins was shocked. (James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pp. 119-21) This culminated with NSAM 263 of October 1963, which was underlined by the Taylor-McNamara Trip Report. These ordered the withdrawal of 1000 advisors by the end of the year and the rest by 1965. (ibid, p. 180). This was about six weeks before Kennedy was killed.
So here is my question, Glenn: How can actual and proven events that took place before the assassination be called a “post-assassination myth”? I would say only if one is writing a hatchet job. Callahan is trying to conceal the fact that Vice-President Lyndon Johnson then (knowingly) reversed Kennedy’s policy. That reversal ended with one of the worst debacles of 20th century American foreign policy. One that took the lives of 58,000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese. The record proves that sending American combat troops into Vietnam was something Kennedy would never consider, let alone do. And we know this from John Newman’s milestone book JFK and Vietnam.
That is bad enough. But then there is this: somehow, the terrifying Missile Crisis was an event of Kennedy’s making. (Callahan, p. 289). This is more ahistorical nonsense.
President Kennedy made it clear to Moscow that he would allow all defensive weapons—like surface-to-air missiles—to be imported into Cuba. But not offensive ones. (The Kennedy Tapes, edited by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, p. 35) The simple reason being that Cuba was only 90 miles from Florida. This was made clear to Moscow, and Nikita Khrushchev replied that he was cognizant of such and complying with it. (ibid, p. 34)
But secretly the Russians were installing all three arms of the atomic triad on the island: ICBMs, nuclear-armed submarines and bombers. What made it worse is that when Kennedy discovered this, he was lied to about it by Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. This was when Kennedy had photographic proof that the Russians were building platforms for the ICBMs. (May and Zelikow, p. 169)
What Kennedy did in the Missile Crisis was admirable. He took the least provocative path, the blockade, which gave both sides time and space in order to negotiate a way out. Which Kennedy did. In return for Khrushchev removing the atomic triad, Kennedy removed NATO missiles from Turkey and pledged there would be no invasion of Cuba.
Again, in doing this, Kennedy was swimming against the tide. Most everyone else wanted Kennedy to either invade or bomb the missile silos. This included many congressmen. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 64) Kennedy did an end run around these advisors. He had his brother meet with Russian representatives Georgi Bolshakov and Anatoly Dobrynin to settle the dispute. (ibid, p. 65) Only one person died during the two weeks of shattering tension, and that was an American pilot. Kennedy was supposed to retaliate for this according to the rules of engagement. He did not.
But let us go to the personal: the Marilyn Monroe case. Again, Callahan uses sources that are questionable, like Donald Wolfe and Anthony Summers. Why do I say that? Because both men prolifically used a proven fraud as a source, namely, the late Robert Slatzer. Slatzer has been discredited as much as Heymann. But because of her agenda, Callahan wants to go down this ersatz trail anyway. So she writes things that have proven to be simply not accurate. Like Monroe’s house was wired, and her phone records disappeared. In his magisterial book on the Monroe case, Gary Vitacco Robles proved both of these to be false. (Icon, Chapter 24; pp. 535-36)
Callahan also says that Monroe had an abortion a month before she died. (p. 319) Again, Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy showed no evidence of a recent abortion. And gynecologist Leon Krohn said she had never had one. (Don McGovern, Murder Orthodoxies, pp. 523-24)
Callahan also used the late Jeanne Carmen as a witness. She is the female version of Slatzer. But Callahan uses her because she wants to get Robert Kennedy and Peter Lawford to Monroe’s house on the day she died. (Callahan, p. 209). Again, this is provably wrong. Bobby Kennedy was 350 miles north in the San Francisco area on that day. And Susan Bernard proved this with pictures and witnesses. As an attorney, you should understand how important this is forensically in a court of law. When you can get a picture, with a witness who took it, plus other witnesses in the pictures to attest to it, then you have proven your alibi. RFK was nowhere near Brentwood that day. (Susan Bernard, Marilyn: Intimate Exposures, pp. 184-88)
As per Lawford, there are about five witnesses who say he was not at Monroe’s that day. But he was worried about her because of her speech pattern when he invited her over for a dinner at his house with three other guests. The witness tally includes his agent, Milton Ebbins, and Monroe’s lawyer, Milton Rudin. In an unpublished interview, Ebbins told Summers that Lawford never mentioned RFK that day, or even after he told the actor that she had passed. (Vitacco Robles, pp. 394-413)
Three board-certified forensic pathologists all agreed that she was not murdered. The drugs Monroe took that day were ingested and not injected. (McGovern, pp. 494-45) These facts blow Callahan’s Jeanne Carmen off the stand.
Let us go to Callahan and Jackie Kennedy. Again, one of the books the author uses-- Bobby and Jackie—as a source on the First Lady is by David Heymann. And it is a book that Lisa Pease and others have shown to be fraudulent. (Click here https://www.kennedysandking.com/robert-f-kennedy-reviews/heymann-c-david-bobby-and-jackie-a-love-story)
Also, let me ask you this, Glenn: do you think that Jackie performed oral sex on her husband’s body after he died at Parkland Hospital? Because this is in Callahan’s book. Needless to say, there is no reference. (Callahan, p. 42)
At this rate, do I even have to mention what Callahan writes about John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette? She even trashes their wedding. (Callahan, p. 273, p. 275). Elizabeth Beller, in her book, shows this view, again, to be inaccurate. According to her, it was a joyous event. (Once Upon a Time, pp. 139-48.) Callahan even says that Carolyn was to be buried separately from her husband. Or in her words, “In death, as in life, they never considered Carolyn Bessette a real Kennedy.” (p. 284) Again, anyone can look this up. Along with Carolyn’s sister, all three victims of the plane crash were buried at sea. (Beller, p. 280)
I could go on and on in this vein. But I think my point is made. This book satisfies the three qualifications I set out as being a hatchet job. Due to Fox syndrome, I understand why Kelly would buy into it. Callahan is her soul sister since she worked for the New York Post even longer than Kelly did at Fox. So they had a mutual owner, since that tabloid is also owned by Rupert Murdoch.
But Glenn Greenwald? No, he would never fall for a book as bad as Callahan’s. I was wrong. You can imagine my shock when I read the following:
Nobody is a more knowledgeable, scathing and unflinching expert on the horrors of the Kennedy family than the very smart and funny Maureen Callahan. Her book "Ask Not" is about them.
Glenn Greenwald
As I have proven in spades, this book is not really about the Kennedys. It fits into a right-wing paradigm that arose about the time of the Church Committee. An almost maniacal effort to trash the Kennedys in every way in order to conceal and disguise what happened to America after they were killed. So the public would not think that anything had changed when, in fact, a lot had been altered. Just ask the people in Vietnam and Congo for two examples. Or look up the reactions of Castro and Khrushchev when they learned of JFK's death.
In this open letter to you, let me close with the words of deceased Yale lawyer Allard Lowenstein:
“Robert Kennedy’s death, like the President’s, was mourned as an extension of the evils of senseless violence; events moved on and the profound alterations that these deaths…brought in the equation of power in America was perceived as random….What is odd is not that some people thought it was all random, but that so many intelligent people refused to believe that it might be anything else. Nothing can measure more graphically how limited was the general understanding of what is possible in America.”
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For Jim's three part comprehensive, in-depth expose of Callahan's book, click here.
