How ex-MP Jonathan Aitken unknowingly saved the lives of JFK's daughter Caroline

[Robert Reeves]

On October 23, 1974, the then 16-year-old Caroline Kennedy narrowly avoided the fate that had befallen both her father and uncle – thanks only to a well-timed phone call.

The daughter of assassinated US President John F. Kennedy, who is now a diplomat, was a student in London when she came within a whisker of succumbing to the so-called 'Kennedy Curse'.

While in the capital, she was staying with the historian Lady Antonia Fraser and her Tory MP husband Sir Hugh Fraser – who were friends of the Kennedy family - at their home near Holland Park.

On the morning of the 23rd, Sir Hugh was set to drive to the House of Commons and drop Caroline off at Sotheby's auction house – where she was studying an arts course – on the way.

Just after he walked out of the door, Sir Hugh's fellow Tory MP Jonathan Aitken called him, prompting the politician to duck back into the house to answer the phone.

As he was speaking, a powerful bomb which had been laid by the IRA and intended for Sir Hugh exploded under the car, killing friend and neighbour Professor Gordon Hamilton Fairley, who had been walking his dog.

Caroline, who was still upstairs, was thrown onto her bed by its force. A photo taken shortly afterwards showed her observing the scene from the Frasers' balcony.

Now aged 63, Ms Kennedy is set to become current President Joe Biden's ambassador to Australia.

Speaking to the Daily Mail on Friday ahead of her expected appointment, Mr Aitken recalled how the blast left Ms Kennedy 'badly shaken'.

He added: 'I spoke to her recently and she was still immensely grateful that I had saved her life. I wish her all the best.'

Of course, most sensible people will remember Jonathan Aitken for his thoroughly dishonest scumbag antics.

Aitken wrote a highly confidential letter to Thatcher in early 1980, dealing with allegations that the former Director-General of MI5, Sir Roger Hollis, had been a double agent also working for the Soviet Union. This information had come to Aitken from retired CIA spymaster James Angleton. Espionage historian Chapman Pincher obtained a copy of the letter, and used former MI5 officers Peter Wright and Arthur Martin as his main additional secret sources, to write the sensational book Their Trade is Treachery in 1981. This matter raged full of controversy throughout the 1980s, and led to Wright eventually publishing his own book Spycatcher in 1987, despite the government's prolonged Australian court attempts to stop him from doing so

Aitken became Minister of State for Defence Procurement under prime minister John Major in 1992.[15] He was later accused of violating ministerial rules by allowing an Arab businessman to pay for his stay in the Paris Ritz, perjured himself and was jailed (see below).[15]

Aitken had previously been a director of BMARC, an arms exporter, from 1988 to 1990.[15] In 1995, a Commons motion showed that while a Cabinet minister he had signed a controversial Public Interest Immunity Certificate (PIIC) in September 1992 relating to the Matrix Churchill trial, and that the 'gagged' documents included ones relating to the supply of arms to Iran by BMARC for a period when he was a director of the company

He became Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1994, a Cabinet position, but resigned in 1995 following the allegations that he had violated ministerial rules.

During this time it emerged that when Aitken was being encouraged to resign, he was chairman of the secretive right wing think-tank Le Cercle,[19] alleged by Alan Clark to be funded by the CIA.[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Aitken

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9977865/How-ex-MP-Jonathan-Aitken-saved-lives-Caroline-Kennedy-Sir-Hugh-Fraser-phone-call.html

[Tom Scully]

Thank you, Robert! An interesting incident I was entirely unaware of. I'm guessing the bomb was detonated by a mechanical timer set up to trigger before the vehicle was driven off the property to minimize collateral blasr damage. I'd like to think the IRA bombers were unaware Caroline Kennedy was a guest of the Fraser's at that time.

Looking into the background of Sir Hugh Fraser after reading your post, I was very surprised to learn he was Roman Catholic and I wanted to find out more. My father's parents were Scots and emigrated to Connecticut just over 100 years ago.

I found that the Fraser ancestral home figured into the Battle of Culloden, the last "pitched battle" fought
on English soil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Culloden
 and sir Hugh's ancestor came to practice catholicism as a result of his on, off, on support of the Stuarts / Jacobites.

Sir Hugh's father :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Fraser,_14th_Lord_Lovat

The explanation of the family's Roman Catholicism is linked to their ancestral home. :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_Castle,_Scotland

When Charles II was restored to the English throne eleven years after the 1649 execution of his father, Charles I, he went after the 59, or some say as many as 75 "regicide judges" who had sentenced his father to death. One was living under an assumed name in colonial Connecticut,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dixwell
...when two others, Goffe and Whaley, arrived there in summer, 1661. I've been to Judge's cave where they hid for a month until "a panther" scared them out of the wilderness and into a more enduring arrangement.

Photos :
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/judges-cave

This book, published in 1837 describes what happened.

Connecticut Historical Collections: Containing a General ..., Volume 2