THE KENNEDY CASE: MORE QUESTIONS

ON the little island of Chappaquiddick last week, tourists gawked at the scene, and souvenir hunters chipped pieces of wood away from Dike Bridge. For a time the car that Senator Edward Kennedy had driven off the bridge the night of July 18-19 was left unprotected, and some people went so far as to take bits of shattered glass and strips of chrome from it. Those curious about what happened that night meanwhile continued to chip away at Kennedy's patchy story of the accident that took the life of Mary Jo Kopechne.

So far, nearly all of the investigators have been reporters exploring the gaps in Kennedy's account. Though a woman died, Massachusetts authorities have questioned no one who could tell them directly what happened the night of the accident.

Kennedy himself escaped questioning by pleading guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident. Still, District Attorney Edmund Dinis was apparently so annoyed by criticism of his office's handling of the case that last week he belatedly sought an inquiry, taking the unusual step of asking the state superior court to begin a formal inquest. Normally the lower district court conducts inquests.

Twin Rebuffs. Even that effort was misdirected. G. Joseph Tauro, chief justice of the superior court--and a Republican appointee--said that the district court was Dinis' proper forum. Turning to Judge Kenneth Nash, administrative head of the district courts, Dinis was once again rebuffed; the responsibility for holding an inquest, Judge

Nash said, lay with Judge James Boyle, presiding jurist of the area in which the accident occurred. By week's end Boyle had not said anything about his intentions. Since Boyle had presided over the proceeding at which Kennedy pleaded guilty, however, the judge could probably be expected to disqualify himself on the question of an inquest.

How the procedural difficulties would be resolved--if at all--was impossible to say. The fact is that a full inquiry is long overdue. So far, the lapse in time has served only to open new doubts about what really happened. > The question of the time of the accident has been raised again.

There are new indications that it did not take place shortly after 11:15 p.m., as Kennedy said, but sometime after 12:40 a.m. Dr. Donald R. Mills, the associate medical examiner, said that Mary Jo could have died anywhere from five to eight hours before 9:30 a.m., when he looked at the body. Even using a very outside limit of nine hours, that would have placed the moment of death no earlier than 12:30 a.m. Dr. Mills admitted that a judgment based on the degree of rigor mortis is "at best inexact"; there was no autopsy. Still, Mills' statement either casts doubt on Kennedy's account as to the time of the accident or, even worse for the Senator, raises anew the possibility that Mary Jo remained alive for a time after the car sank in Poucha Pond.

> Deputy Sheriff Christopher Look Jr. persisted in his statement that he had seen a black car, like Kennedy's black 1967 Oldsmobile, go down the dirt road toward the bridge at 12:40 a.m. At that hour, Look was returning home from his weekend job as guard at the Edgartown Yacht Club. He insisted that the car, which, like Kennedy's, had a license plate beginning with the letter L, came out of School Road, which leads to the cottage where Kennedy's party had taken place. The car then crossed the intersection, drove onto a farmer's dirt lane on the other side, and hesitated for a minute. Thinking the driver might be lost, Look, still dressed in his uniform, stepped from his own vehicle and walked toward the black car, which was about 70 ft. away. The driver of the car thereupon backed out of the lane onto the main road and drove the other way--toward Dike Bridge. Look says that a man was driving the car and that a woman was on the front seat beside him. He is uncertain whether or not there was still a third person in the car.

Look had told the same story to Edgartown police even before Kennedy's car was brought out of the water. After the Senator's television statement, it seemed logical to assume that Look had not seen Kennedy's car but a second automobile that Kennedy and his two friends had taken to return to the scene in their attempt to rescue Mary Jo. Edgartown police believe that there were only two cars available to the Kennedy party: a white Valiant and a larger black car. If Kennedy's car went over the bridge when he said that it did, then the white Valiant would have been the only car that the men could have used. Look maintains that it was not by any means the Valiant he saw at 12:40. "I know black from white," he said indignantly.

>There is even more reason to doubt Kennedy's explanation for his dangerous swim from Chappaquiddick to Martha's Vineyard after the accident. Though regular ferry service stops at midnight, a 100 phone call from the Chappaquiddick dock will bring the ferry out at any time in response to any kind of emergency. A sign is visible for anyone to see, and the cost is only slightly higher than during regular hours (500 per passenger v. 150). "We come out after midnight for any legitimate reason," says Gared Grant, the ferry operator. "It doesn't have to be a case of accident or injury. Our contract with the town of Edgartown requires us to respond to calls after midnight." There is, however, one hitch. When a caller asks for special ferry service, the telephone operator routinely switches the call to the Edgartown police department, which asks if any injury is involved in the request. The question then might be: What do you tell the police operator when you think a woman may have drowned and you have neglected to report it?

None of this constitutes proof that Kennedy was not telling the truth, and a full explanation by the Senator--or a real investigation by the authorities --might answer many questions. Until that time, it remains legitimate to wonder about the large and little mysteries that surround the case.

Politics after Chappaquiddick

"For me," Edward Kennedy had said in his attempt to explain his actions at Chappaquiddick, "this will be a difficult decision to make." Yet he considered the question of his political future for just four days before announcing last week that he would return to the Senate, seek another term next year and eschew any presidential bid in 1972. Although he had invited his state and, in effect, the nation, to participate in his decision, Kennedy made the choice quite privately. Then, instead of holding a briefing or press conference, he had the announcement mimeographed in his Boston office. Some skeptics doubted that resignation had ever been a real and serious consideration in Senator Kennedy's mind.

Subdued Greetings. Kennedy's return to the Senate might have seemed a welcome opportunity to plunge back into his duties. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield greeted him: "Come in, Ted. You're right back where you belong." But Kennedy sat seemingly distracted and depressed at his front-row Senate desk as summer tourists crowded the galleries for a glimpse of him and his colleagues offered subdued and embarrassed greetings.

The implication in his back-to-work announcement was that he carried a kind of renewed mandate. To be sure, the people of Massachusetts, from Pittsfield to Boston, had responded to Kennedy's testing of their faith with a sort of spontaneous plebiscite, an outpouring of letters and telegrams affirming their confidence. But, said the Boston Globe: "It is a bit like an umpire turning about in Fenway Park to ask the audience whether Carl Yastrzemski is safe at the plate."

The rest of the nation was more skeptical than Bay Staters. Yet the country was ambivalent. A Louis Harris poll commissioned by TIME revealed much sympathy for Kennedy. At the same time, the national survey found widespread doubts about Kennedy's explanation (see box, page 17).

Perhaps the most critical judgments of Kennedy's behavior in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne came from the nation's editorial writers and columnists. Many editorialists agreed with the Tulsa World, which wrote: "We can honestly feel for the Senator in his time of terrible anguish, but our Presidents must be elected for their reliable strengths, not out of sympathy for their misfortunes." The essence, said the New York Post's Max Lerner, was that "at a crisis moment in his life, when another human life was at stake, Senator Kennedy was either thrown into confusion or stunned into insensitivity and inaction."

James Reston of the New York Times concluded that the real question "is not whether the voters of Massachusetts can live with the Senator's account of the tragedy, but whether he can." To Columnists Frank Mankiewicz and Tom Braden, the case was tragic "in the Shakespearean sense of a puzzlement of the will, of judgment suspended and flawed at a crucial moment."

Although Kennedy had hinted long before the death of Mary Jo that he might not run in 1972, no one took his privately expressed doubts very seriously. Aside from his name, vigor, personal attractiveness and political aggressiveness, Kennedy also seemed the leader best equipped to unite his party's major factions. He is probably the only Democrat of national stature who has both a strong following among blacks and young people and firm ties with many Old-Politics professionals. He has become an increasingly articulate spokesman on major issues, most recently the ABM.

The first party problem posed by his eclipse is what one Republican leader calls a "glamour vacuum." Another, potentially more serious threat is that Kennedy's removal from presidential politics --at least for now--could encourage the party's far left to consider founding an independent movement. This could take the form of either a McCarthy-like revolt within the party or an effort to form a new party. At the same time, the prospects of other possible candidates are in flux: sbHUBERT HUMPHREY. Now that Eugene McCarthy has renounced ambition for another Senate term, Humphrey will almost surely seek his seat in Minnesota next year and enjoy a new national platform. By tradition, Humphrey should be the titular head of the party.

But he is not, and at 58, with the close but bitterly divisive 1968 campaign behind him, Humphrey probably could not run for the presidency again without reducing the party to a shambles, splitting off the younger, activist wings that barely tolerated him last year. sbEDMUND MUSKIE. In the first six months of this year, Muskie crisscrossed the nation on lecture tours that built his popularity among both regular and irregular Democrats. Last week he said he will resume his travels in the fall. In some ways, he is the most promising Democratic prospect--and doubtless the one who benefits most from Kennedy's troubles. He has few enemies, has done nothing to antagonize any important segment of the party. His understated style invites confidence. On the other hand,

Muskie has so far failed to establish himself as a forceful or inspiring leader on any major issues.

sb GEORGE McGOVERN. The South Dakota Senator seems considerably less than galvanic, but in his brief bid for the nomination last summer as a stand-in for Robert Kennedy, it was clear that he was gifted with more outspoken political courage than either Muskie or Ted Kennedy. (He was one of the first Senators, for one thing, to oppose the Viet Nam war--in 1963.) He might yet find an impressive constituency among the young, this time as the substitute for another Kennedy. His appeal to the middle and right of the party, however, would almost certainly be small.

Each of the Democrats now being discussed has serious drawbacks as a potential candidate. This, together with the fact that the party is far from united, increases the chance that the Democrats' next nominee will be someone completely unthought of now. Should a dark horse get the nomination, he may owe it to an incomprehensible night on Chappaquiddick Island in the summer of 1969.

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