Word: gargan
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...doubtful how much clarity an inquest could now bring to the case. The ten other surviving members of the Chappaquiddick party could be subpoenaed. It would be extremely difficult, however, for the court to compel those out of state to appear. Kennedy's friends Paul Markham and Joseph Gargan, both lawyers, might attempt to avoid the witness chair on the ground that they had acted as Kennedy's counsel...
...inquest might determine at what time Kennedy and Mary Jo left the Chappaquiddick party and how much they had had to drink. But it is problematic whether such a hearing could legally consider some of the larger lacunae in Kennedy's account. Why did Gargan and Markham not report the accident and why did they permit Kennedy, clothed and presumably dazed, to plunge into the channel to swim from Chappaquiddick to Martha's Vineyard? Was Kennedy trying to establish an alibi when he appeared fully and dryly clothed before a hotelman in Edgartown and pointedly asked the time...
Columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson became the first to publish a widely circulated notion that Kennedy, immediately after the accident, had Joe Gargan, his cousin, agree to "admit to driving the car." The columnists said that Ted Kennedy, Markham and Gargan returned to the Dike Bridge "to make certain that Gargan would be totally familiar with the circumstances surrounding 'his' unfortunate accident." But "in the cold light of dawn," say Pearson and Anderson, the Senator "decided to face the consequences himself." Whatever its implausibilities, the story would explain why Kennedy might have wished to establish an alibi...
Americans are inclined to accept many of the details of Kennedy's explanation: that he took the wrong turn onto the bridge road by mistake, that he dived several times in an effort to rescue Mary Jo Kopechne, that he returned later with Paul Markham and Joseph Gargan in an effort to reach the girl. By a plurality of 44% to 31%, those interviewed also accept his statement that he impulsively swam from Chappaquiddick to Martha's Vineyard...
...that he had seen three people in a car headed toward the bridge at 12:40 a.m.?almost an hour and a half after Kennedy had said that he had left the party?was a mine of burning gossip. The three people, of course, were most likely Kennedy, Gargan and Markham. (See the most memorable quotes by Senator Kennedy...