...say they returned to the bridge to try and rescue Mary Jo. (If the Edgartown constable who believes he saw Kennedy was accurate, this was impossible.)...
How ??? the alibi 'time request' back at the inn ???
Kennedy dove into the water and swam across the sound to Edgartown himself.
what are we talkin here ??? 100 yds ??? 1/4 mile ???
what distance would you allow your cousin to swim in dark currents after flippin a car ???
thanks in advance...
Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick statement
Edward Kennedy presents his side of the Chappaquiddick incident in this address.Photograph by: Screen grab, YouTubeThe following is an edited and abbreviated transcript of Edward Kennedy’s statement following the Chappaquiddick controversy:
There is no truth, no truth whatever, to the widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct that have been leveled at my behavior and hers regarding that evening. There has never been a private relationship between us of any kind. I know of nothing in Mary Jo’s conduct on that or any other occasion and the same is true of the other girls at that party that would lend any substance to such ugly speculation about their character.
Nor was I driving under the influence of liquor.
Little over one mile away, the car that I was driving on an unlit road went off a narrow bridge which had no guard rails and was built on a left angle to the road. The car overturned in a deep pond and immediately filled with water. I remember thinking as the cold water rushed in around my head that I was for certain drowning. Then water entered my lungs and I actual felt the sensation of drowning. But somehow I struggled to the surface alive.
I made immediate and repeated efforts to save Mary Jo by diving into the strong and murky current, but succeeded only in increasing my state of utter exhaustion and alarm. My conduct and conversations during the next several hours, to the extent that I can remember them, make no sense to me at all.
Although my doctors informed me that I suffered a cerebral concussion, as well as shock, I do not seek to escape responsibility for my actions by placing the blame either on the physical and emotional trauma brought on by the accident, or on anyone else. I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately.
Instead of looking directly for a telephone after lying exhausted in the grass for an undetermined time, I walked back to the cottage where the party was being held and requested the help of two friends, my cousin, Joseph Gargan and Phil Markham, and directed them to return immediately to the scene with me this was sometime after midnight in order to undertake a new effort to dive down and locate Miss Kopechne. Their strenuous efforts, undertaken at some risk to their own lives, also proved futile.
All kinds of scrambled thoughts all of them confused, some of them irrational, many of them which I cannot recall, and some of which I would not have seriously entertained under normal circumstances went through my mind during this period. They were reflected in the various inexplicable, inconsistent, and inconclusive things I said and did, including such questions as whether the girl might still be alive somewhere out of that immediate area, whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys, whether there was some justifiable reason for me to doubt what had happened and to delay my report, whether somehow the awful weight of this incredible incident might in some way pass from my shoulders. I was overcome, I’m frank to say, by a jumble of emotions: grief, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion, and shock.
Instructing Gargan and Markham not to alarm Mary Jo’s friends that night, I had them take me to the ferry crossing. The ferry having shut down for the night, I suddenly jumped into the water and impulsively swam across, nearly drowning once again in the effort, and returned to my hotel about 2 a.m. and collapsed in my room.
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Kennedy+Chappaquiddick+statement/1932129/story.html
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/chappaquiddick.htm
See two 2.5 mb and 3mb pdf FBI file:
http://foia.fbi.gov/chappaquiddick/chappaquiddick_pt01.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/chappaquiddick/chappaquiddick_pt02.pdf