Sections of White House tapes made during John F. Kennedy's presidency were erased in a situation "just as scandalous" as the gaps in the Watergate tapes, according to a controversial Kennedy biographer.
"There is no doubt the tapes have been tampered with, and important parts have been erased," said Nigel Hamilton, author of the recently published "JFK: Restless Youth."U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, through a spokesman, declined to comment on the charges. The senator and other members of his family have attacked Hamilton as a "reckless biographer" whose book distorted their family's relationships.
Hamilton's comments in the Boston Sunday Herald expanded on a column he wrote for Friday's New York Times suggesting that research material connected with Kennedy's life had been withdrawn, tampered with or concealed.
"This is just as scandalous as Richard Nixon's erasing part of his White House tapes," said Hamilton, who teaches history at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. "Yet there's been no public outcry about it. Why not? Because this whole thing has been hushed up.
"I don't believe that the American public has any idea how the Kennedy family has controlled, and is still seeking to control, recent American history."
Kennedy Library Director Charles U. Daly called the charges "lies, exaggerations and half-truths" and declined to rebut them point-by-point.
But he said: "Anybody who thinks I'm in thrall to the Kennedys should tell them. They don't often think so."
Hamilton said the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston had sealed "hundreds of letters" from public view and "sanitized" thousands of documents about the Kennedy family.
He said he compared transcripts of several tape recordings from Kennedy's presidency with telephone logs and diaries of callers who spoke with Kennedy on specific dates about specific topics.
"These would include conversations with certain people or intermediaries . . . and it's quite possible that they are related to the attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro," Hamilton said.
"In one case, the whole conversation was missing, all of it just gone," he said.