Ken Burns, the JFK Library and the Pretty Packaging of American History

 What the hell is wrong with the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum? Operated by a federal agency -- the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration – the JFK Library is aimed more at covering up the truth about the Kennedy presidency than revealing it. The latest JFK Library whitewash is tied to the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick documentary series about Ernest Hemingway, which aired this week on PBS. I liked the televised biography enough to watch all six hours of it, particularly admiring the insights into Hemingway’s literary innovations by fellow writers like Mario Vargas Llosa, Tobias Wolff and Edna O’Brien. But Burns (sponsored by the Bank of America and a host of PBS corporate underwriters) has an institutional talent for packaging American history in intriguing (to a point) but ultimately safe ways. The Burns-Novick Hemingway series was another good example of this canned Americana.

Where, for instance, was the explosive material about the FBI’s long surveillance of Hemingway, which ran for decades, until he finally took his own life in 1961? The FBI’s top commissar, J. Edgar Hoover, became suspicious of Hemingway’s anti-Franco writing and fundraising during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s — and Hemingway latter extended his anti-fascist activism through World War II, even attempting to set up a spy network to catch Nazi agents called the Crook Factory.

During the Cold War, Hoover’s FBI continued snooping on Hemingway because of his growing sympathies for Fidel Castro’s revolution. (Hemingway said the revolution “was the best thing that ever happened to Cuba.”) The great writer, who lived outside Havana in a manor he called Finca Vigia (Lookout Farm), met the revolutionary leader only once, at a 1960 fishing competition. But that was enough for secret policeman Hoover to conclude that Hemingway was a dangerous Fidelista.

The Burn-Novick documentary presents Hemingway in his final years descending into a well of mental and physical anguish before finally making his inevitable rendezvous with death at his own hand. It’s true that Hemingway was always haunted by death – particularly after the suicide of his father – and struggled with alcoholism and other demons for most of his life. But his final suffering was undeniably aggravated by the relentless snooping of FBI agents – deepening fears of surveillance that Burns and Novick simply dismiss as the feverish paranoia of a man descending into madness.

Near the end of their epic biography, the filmmakers do put A. E. Hotchner, Hemingway’s friend and travel companion, on camera. Before he died, Hotchner wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine on the 50th anniversary of Hemingway's death, stating he believed that the FBI's surveillance "substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide,” and adding that he had "regretfully misjudged" his friend's fear of the security organization. None of this is in PBS’s Hemingway.

Now back to the JFK Library. Through a quirk, many of the Hemingway papers are housed there. I know from personal experience, researching both Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years and The Devil’s Chessboard, in which I made the case that Allen Dulles’s CIA carried out the assassination of JFK and its coverup, that the library’s directors stand in the way of researchers who are exploring uncomfortable historical truths. And so, once again, we have the JFK Library merrily promoting the Burns-Novick documentary of Hemingway, giving the filmmakers a platform to honor winners of the PEN/Hemingway Awards. Instead, the JFK Library should be filling in the gaps of the documentary, examining why the FBI considered Hemingway a national security threat and discussing the over 100 pages of FBI surveillance documents on the writer. But like Ken Burns, the JFK Library exists mainly to sugarcoat history not expose its disturbing truths.

One final howl about the JFK Library. Its curators just announced this year’s winner of the Profile in Courage Award. What brave freedom fighter did the library choose to honor after this year of living dangerously? None other than Senator Mitt Romney, because he voted to impeach Donald Trump. Romney also embarrassingly groveled before Trump in an unsuccessful effort to be named his secretary of state. And he voted against President Biden’s pandemic relief bill and opposed Biden’s efforts to expand Obamacare (despite his own extensive public health program when he was Massachusetts governor), raise the minimum wage to $15, rebuild U.S. infrastructure to join the 21st Century, protect voting rights for Black Americans, and other progressive initiatives.

 This…this is the winner of the 2021 Profile in Courage Award? John F. Kennedy is again spinning in his Arlington grave because of the useful idiots at the JFK Library.

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