The System

     If the tabloids and other scandal mongers are to be believed, President Kennedy's brother Robert had a torrid affair with Marilyn Monroe. The tabloids and other scandal mongers are, in fact, not to be believed. Bobby Kennedy was sometimes derisively called "the monk,” and his lifestyle was called "puritanical.” Of the three Kennedy brothers who lived long enough to enter politics, he exemplified what would come to be known as "family values.” If illicit trysts with Marilyn Monroe were not Bobby's purpose for his secretive visits to Los Angeles, we are left with two nagging questions: why did he make those trips, and why did he choose to make them in secret?
     I found the answer to both questions by evoking the Freedom of Information Act and getting the FBI to release its files related to the surveillance of Bobby Kennedy. President Kennedy’s brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, was one of the top members of a secret organization known as the System.
     That organization's main purpose was fouling up the lives of innocent people. Every person in America who may be deemed a failure is aware of the existence of the System, and each of him knows that the System is to blame for his failures. The System has managed, however, to keep its machinations a secret from almost everyone who is not a failure.
     That is, until now. My investigations have turned up the existence of the System and the Kennedys' part in it. I describe it in this book because their involvement in the System indirectly led to the fatal events in Dallas. On April 20, 1961, Bobby Kennedy strode into a large penthouse meeting room somewhere near Los Angeles.
     Approximately thirty men sat around a heavy oaken table just large enough to seat all of them. Though the table was illuminated by small overhead lights, most of the room was cast in shadows. Once Bobby's eyes became adjusted to the dark, he was able to make out a few paintings on the oak-wainscoted walls. One was a portrait of Lon Chaney, Sr. Another was of Bela Lugosi.
     None of the men at the table rose to greet Bobby. To do so would have revealed their faces. Bobby took his place at the table. The FBI is unsure of the names of the men whose voices were recorded by their listening device. For that reason, the FBI transcripts place their names in quotation marks. Rather than burden the reader with quotation marks around every name, I have removed the marks in this version of the transcript. I would caution the reader, though, that the names you see here are possibly not the real names of the men at the meeting. The men at the meeting may have been imitating the voices of the men the FBI thought they sounded like.
     "Now that we're all here," said Boris Karloff, who sat at the head of the table, "we can get down to business." He paused a moment and continued, "First of all, there's the situation pertaining to twelve year-old Tommy Hooker, in Wood River, New Jersey. At our last meeting, one of you reported sneaking into his house one night, whereupon you shredded his homework with our fake dog jaws and further marred it with fake dog spittle. That was a respectable effort. Once he explained to his teacher that the dog had eaten his homework, and she didn't believe him, that probably ruined his whole week. We agreed, however, that even a series of deeds of that nature that would not go very far in ruining his life. I trust you've done better since our last meeting?"
     "Yes, sir, I have," said Peter Lorre. "I hired some dwarfs disguised as circus clowns to climb into his window in the middle of the night, wake him up, snatch his homework from his book satchel, climb out the window and speed away in a funny-looking car. After he told that story to his teacher, he was remanded to the care of a child psychologist. And get this: the child psychologist is a behaviorist!"
     "Good, good!" exulted Boris Karloff. "I'm proud of you! If his psychiatrist is like most behaviorists, he'll do our work for us. In six months, he'll have little Tommy believing that all his problems are due to heredity and environment. Without any concept using his own free will to determine his behavior, his life will be fouled up for good. No matter how much harm he does to others, or to himself, he'll see himself as the victim rather than the perpetrator." Everyone at the table laughed gleefully.
     Turning to the next order of business, he said, "Then there is a Mrs. Emma Gaddy, in Sparks, Nevada. At our last meeting, one of you reported fouling up the joint account she has with her husband."
     "Yes," Vincent Price purred silkily. "I encouraged some of the people to whom her husband had written checks to wait a few weeks to deposit them. By that time, the Gaddys' bank statement had arrived, indicating they'd had much more money to cover checks than they really did cover. Then, when Mrs. Gaddy bought an expensive anniversary present for her husband, five of Mr. Gaddy's checks bounced. In one fell swoop, I messed up his anniversary and his bank account and undermined his credit rating."
     "Very good, and what have you done to follow up on that?"
     "Last week, she had an appointment at a beauty shop. I used my contacts to make sure that some of the other women with appointments that day were women with unhappy marriages. They convinced her that her husband's failure to communicate with her was the cause of those checks bouncing. They told her that, if their husbands had blamed them for something like that, they wouldn't stand for it."
     "Good, good!" Boris Karloff vigorously rubbed his hands together.
     "What about the husband?"
     "I had his barroom buddies convince him that his wife is an irresponsible spendthrift who needs to be taught the value of a dollar. I hope that next month, I'll be able to report that they're on their way to divorce court." He laughed maniacally.
     "That's the kind of report that warms the cockles of my heart," said Boris Karloff. "You could start a fight between Sears and Roebuck."
     He turned to the next order of business, "In Wink, Texas, there's a man named Fred Sadler, who, as I understand it, is having trouble finding a job."
     "I've been working hard on that one," said Christopher Lee. "Every night before a job interview, Sadler carefully lays out his clothes for the next day and then goes to bed early to get enough rest for his interview the next day. While he's asleep, I sneak into his house and put on his clothes and a ski mask. Then I go over to his prospective employer's house, where I beat him up, rob him, and terrorize his family. Then I carefully return Sadler's clothes to his house. The next day, when he applies for a job, the prospective employer thinks he recognizes Sadler as the man who had beaten him up and all those other nasty things. He's not sure of it, which is why he doesn't call the police. Still, his animosity is such that poor Fred Sadler doesn't get the job. Quite naturally, his family doesn't believe Sadler's excuse that he can't get a job because all his prospective employers hate him. After a few more interviews like that, he'll stop trying to get a job. He'll be evicted from his home, and his life will be utterly ruined."
     There was an embarrassed silence. Finally, Boris Karloff sympathetically said to him, "My dear boy, you work entirely too hard. As our newest member, you have a great deal to learn. It time, I trust you will learn how to foul up someone's life without so much risk to your own person."
     "I shall certainly try."
     "Good. With time and patience, I know you will succeed. I, too, have been busy, gentlemen. I have convinced the producers of the television series `Route 66' to guest star several of us in this year's Halloween segment of their program. The guest stars will be Lon Chaney, Jr., Peter Lorre, and me. One of the show's stars, George Maharis, is somewhat of a health enthusiast. If all goes well, I will help him to supplement his diet with some kelp seasoned with the hepatitis-B virus. In a matter of months, he'll be off the show, and they'll replace him with someone of lesser talent. What is our motto, gentlemen?"
     All together, they chanted, "No good deed goes unpunished!"
     "Speaking of which," Boris Karloff continued, "I hear that someone in rural Maine, is afraid of the dark."
     "Submitted for your approval," Rod Serling began, "a little boy named Stephen King, who thinks he has monsters in his closet and hidden passageways under his bed. That is because he really does have monsters in his closet and hidden passageways under his bed. I also have him believing he's in danger of being torn apart by a mad dog or getting run over by a psychopathic automobile. Of course, they're real, but who is going to believe a kid? Nobody. That should cause him to lose all confidence in parents and other authority figures. By the time I'm through with him, he'll be so messed up, he'll never amount to anything."
     Everyone at the table expressed approval.
     "Someone here," Boris Karloff smiled, "has been working with a chronic alcoholic named Charles S. "Bubba" Langston, of Eastover, South Carolina. You did an admirable job of driving him to drink, but his family was too clever for you. After keeping a log of things he did as evidence of his drinking problem, they talked him into seeking treatment. That was very careless of you to allow them to get away with keeping that log. Now that the man has been released from the center, is there any hope for him?"
     "The man's family offers us a lot of hope," said Lon Chaney, Jr. "People tend to adjust to whatever situation they happen to be in. So, while Bubba Langston was building his life around booze, his family built their lives around having to live with a boozer. Even though they never liked living with a boozer, they became adjusted to having him depend on them for things he should have been doing for himself. Now that he's on the wagon, he's more independent of them. If they don't learn to adjust themselves to that, he'll soon be back on the bottle. I'm doing all I can to convince them that Bubba is the only person in the family who has to change."
     "You mustn't gamble on that," Boris Karloff admonished. "If they were clever enough to know how to convince an alcoholic to seek treatment, they must have been receiving some kind of professional advice. If so, they'll certainly know that the whole family must change in order to defeat his drinking problem. You must come up with some means to violate their trust in him."
     "If I may make a suggestion," sighed Victor Buno.
     "Yes, you may," Boris Karloff responded.
     "I would suggest that you slip into his house and hide half-empty liquor bottles in various places. If he has a garage, you should hide at least two there. His family will never believe that he doesn't know from where those bottles came."
     "Excellent!" said Boris Karloff. "That will violate their trust in him, undermining their support for his efforts to conquer the bottle, crushing his spirit and driving him back to the bottle."
     He turned to Bobby Kennedy and smiled, "We've always admired the work you've done accusing innocent Italian businessmen of being involved in—he raised his hands and described quotation marks with his fingers—“the mafia. You have done such an admirable job that many Americans are unable to look at an Italian-American without thinking of gangsters. I couldn't begin to estimate how you’re your efforts have gone toward preventing decent, hard-working Americans with Italian surnames from getting good jobs. Now that you're the new attorney general, what have you been doing?"
     Bobby Kennedy laughed uncontrollably for a moment and regained his composure. "I've been having some real fun," he crowed. "On April 4, I ordered the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport an innocent man named Carlos Marcello on the grounds that he's a—ha-ha—a Mafiosi. Though his parents were Sicilian, and he was born in Tunisia, he has a Guatemalan passport. We took him totally by surprise. Just snatched him up, hauled him to the airport and flew him to Guatemala City with no luggage and very little money. Soon after that, his friends started sending him money to live on, but the Guatemalans didn't want him, either. They dragged him across the border and dropped him off in some little jungle village in El Salvador. That fat little grease ball had to climb over mountains for more than a day to get to the nearest town of any size. Along the way, he passed out three times and almost got robbed and killed by banditos. There's no telling what the Salvadorans will do to him."
     Speaking in his slow, deliberate manner, Alfred Hitchcock warned, "You had better make sure the Salvadorans do something to keep him there. I'm sure he is very angry."