
The FBI released 2,200 pages of documents Monday from its files on Edward Kennedy detailing death threats made against the late senator in the decades after the assassinations of his two brothers.
The murders of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Senator Bobby Kennedy nearly five years later gave ominous weight to the repeated threats against their younger brother.
The declassified documents also touch on Ted Kennedy's 1969 car crash that killed a young woman, rumors of a Mafia plot to compromise him that was said to involve Marilyn Monroe, and the FBI's relations with his father Joseph Kennedy.
But they reveal little that was not already known.
"At no point do these files suggest that the FBI investigated Senator Kennedy for a criminal violation or as a security threat," the FBI said. "The bulk of this material concerns FBI investigation of threats of violence and other extortion claims against Senator Kennedy and other public officials."
Although Kennedy made an unsuccessful run at the presidency in 1980, fears that he too would be killed were ever present, and may have prompted his decision not to run again in 1984.
"These threats originated from multiple sources, including individuals, anonymous persons, and members of radical groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, 'Minutemen' organizations, and the National Socialist White People?s Party," the FBI said.
The documents also refer to threats from individuals angered by Kennedy's stance on Northern Ireland, and allegations of an alleged Mafia plot to kill the three Kennedy brothers.
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