Robert F. Kennedy Part II

 

U.S. Steel

At the president's direction, Kennedy used the power of federal agencies to influence U.S. Steel not to institute a price increase, and announced a grand jury probe to investigate possible collusion and price fixing by U.S. Steel in collaboration with other major steel manufacturers. The Wall Street Journal wrote that the administration had set prices of steel "by naked power, by threats, by agents of the state security police". Yale law professor Charles Reich wrote in The New Republic that the Justice Department had violated civil liberties by calling a federal grand jury to indict U.S. Steel so quickly, then disbanding it after the price increase did not occur.

Berlin

As one of the president's closest White House advisers, Kennedy played a crucial role in the events surrounding the Berlin Crisis of 1961. Operating mainly through a private, backchannel connection to Soviet GRU officer Georgi Bolshakov, he relayed important diplomatic communications between the U.S. and Soviet governments. Most significantly, this connection helped the U.S. set up the Vienna Summit in June 1961, and later to defuse the tank standoff with the Soviets at Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie in October. Kennedy's visit with his wife to West Berlin in February 1962 demonstrated U.S. support for the city and helped repair the strained relationship between the administration and its special envoy in Berlin, Lucius D. Clay.

Cuba

As his brother's confidant, Kennedy oversaw the CIA's anti-Castro activities after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba, which included covert operations that targeted Cuban civilians. He also helped develop the strategy during the Cuban Missile Crisis to blockade Cuba instead of initiating a military strike that might have led to nuclear war.

Allegations that the Kennedys knew of plans by the CIA to kill Fidel Castro, or approved of such plans, have been debated by historians over the years. The "Family Jewels" documents, declassified by the CIA in 2007, suggest that before the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the attorney general personally authorized one such assassination attempt. But there is evidence to the contrary, such as that Kennedy was informed of an earlier plot involving the CIA's use of Mafia bosses Sam Giancana and John Roselli only during a briefing on May 7, 1962, and in fact directed the CIA to halt any existing efforts directed at Castro's assassination. Biographer Thomas concludes that "the Kennedys may have discussed the idea of assassination as a weapon of last resort. But they did not know the particulars of the Harvey-Rosselli operation – or want to." Concurrently, Kennedy served as the president's personal representative in Operation Mongoose, the post–Bay of Pigs covert operations program the president established in November 1961. Mongoose was meant to incite revolution in Cuba that would result in Castro's downfall.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Kennedy proved himself to be a gifted politician with an ability to obtain compromises, tempering aggressive positions of key figures in the hawk camp. The trust the president placed in him on matters of negotiation was such that his role in the crisis is today seen as having been of vital importance in securing a blockade, which averted a full military engagement between the United States and the Soviet Union. On October 27, Kennedy secretly met with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. They reached a basic understanding: the Soviet Union would withdraw their missiles from Cuba, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also informally proposed that the Jupiter MRBMs in Turkey would be removed "within a short time after this crisis was over". On the last night of the crisis, President Kennedy was so grateful for his brother's work in averting nuclear war that he summed it up by saying, "Thank God for Bobby." Kennedy authored his account of the crisis in a book titled Thirteen Days (posthumously published in 1969).

Japan

At a summit meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda in Washington D.C. in 1961, President Kennedy promised to make a reciprocal visit to Japan in 1962, but the decision to resume atmospheric nuclear testing forced him to postpone such a visit, and he sent Robert in his stead. Kennedy arrived in Tokyo in February 1962 at a very sensitive time in U.S.-Japan relations, shortly after the massive Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty had highlighted anti-American grievances. Kennedy won over a highly skeptical Japanese public and press with his cheerful, open demeanor, sincerity, and youthful energy. Most famously, Kennedy scored a public relations coup during a nationally televised speech at Waseda University in Tokyo. When radical Marxist student activists from Zengakuren attempted to shout him down, he calmly invited one of them on stage and engaged the student in an impromptu debate. Kennedy's calmness under fire and willingness to take the student's questions seriously won many admirers in Japan and praise from the Japanese media, both for himself and on his brother's behalf.

Assassination of John F. Kennedy

When President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963, Robert Kennedy was at home with aides from the Justice Department. J. Edgar Hoover called and told him his brother had been shot. Hoover then hung up before he could ask any questions. Kennedy later said he thought Hoover had enjoyed telling him the news. Shortly after the call from Hoover, Kennedy phoned McGeorge Bundy at the White House, instructing him to change the locks on the president's files. He ordered the Secret Service to dismantle the hidden taping system in the Oval Office and cabinet room. He scheduled a meeting with CIA director John McCone and asked if the CIA had any involvement in his brother's death. McCone denied it, with Kennedy later telling investigator Walter Sheridan that he asked the director "in a way that he couldn't lie to me, and they [the CIA] hadn't".

An hour after the president was shot; Robert Kennedy received a phone call from the newly ascended President Johnson before Johnson boarded Air Force One. Kennedy remembered their conversation starting with Johnson demonstrating sympathy before stating his belief that he should be sworn in immediately; Robert Kennedy opposed the idea since he felt "it would be nice" for President Kennedy's body to return to Washington with the deceased president still being the incumbent. Eventually, the two concluded that the best course of action would be for Johnson to take the oath of office before returning to Washington. In his 1971 book We Band of Brothers, aide Edwin O. Guthman recounted Kennedy admitting to him an hour after receiving word of his brother's death that he thought he would be the one "they would get" as opposed to his brother. In the days following the assassination, he wrote letters to his two eldest children, Kathleen and Joseph, saying that as the oldest Kennedy family members of their generation, they had a special responsibility to remember what their uncle had started and to love and serve their country. He was originally opposed to Jacqueline Kennedy's decision to have a closed casket, as he wanted the funeral to keep with tradition, but he changed his mind after seeing the cosmetic, waxen remains.

The ten-month investigation by the Warren Commission concluded that the president had been assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and that Oswald had acted alone. On September 27, 1964, Kennedy issued a statement through his New York campaign office: "As I said in Poland last summer, I am convinced Oswald was solely responsible for what happened and that he did not have any outside help or assistance. He was a malcontent who could not get along here or in the Soviet Union." He added, "I have not read the report, nor do I intend to. But I have been briefed on it and I am completely satisfied that the Commission investigated every lead and examined every piece of evidence. The Commission's inquiry was thorough and conscientious." After a meeting with Kennedy in 1966, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote: "It is evident that he believes that [the Warren Commission's report] was a poor job and will not endorse it, but that he is unwilling to criticize it and thereby reopen the whole tragic business." According to Soviet archives, William Walton was sent to the Soviet Union by Robert Kennedy in the days after the assassination of his brother. He was to go there for the purposes of cultural diplomacy but was also told to meet with Russian diplomat Georgi Bolshakov and deliver a message. Walton told Bolshakov that Robert and Jackie Kennedy believed there was a conspiracy involved in the killing of President Kennedy and informed him that Robert Kennedy shared the views of his brother in his approach to peace with the Soviet Union.

The assassination was judged as having a profound impact on Kennedy. Michael Beran assesses the assassination as having moved Kennedy away from reliance on the political system and to become more questioning. Larry Tye views Kennedy following the death of his brother as "more fatalistic, having seen how fast he could lose what he cherished the most."

1964 vice presidential candidate

The "Bobby problem"

In the wake of the assassination of his brother and Lyndon Johnson's ascension to the presidency, with the office of vice president now vacant, Kennedy was viewed favorably as a potential candidate for the position in the 1964 presidential election. Johnson faced pressure from some within the Democratic Party to name Kennedy as his running mate, which Johnson staffers referred to internally as the "Bobby problem." It was an open secret that they disliked each other, and Johnson had no intention of remaining in the shadow of another Kennedy. At the time, Johnson privately said of Kennedy, "I don't need that little runt to win", while Kennedy privately said of Johnson that he was "mean, bitter, vicious—an animal in many ways." An April 1964 Gallup poll reported Kennedy as the vice-presidential choice of 47 percent of Democratic voters. Coming in a distant second and third were Adlai Stevenson with 18 percent and Hubert Humphrey with 10 percent.

Although Johnson confided to aides on several occasions that he might be forced to accept Kennedy in order to secure a victory over a moderate Republican ticket such as Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney, Kennedy supporters attempted to force the issue by running a draft movement during the New Hampshire primary. This movement gained momentum after Governor John W. King's endorsement and infuriated Johnson. Kennedy received 25,094 write in votes for vice president in New Hampshire, far surpassing Senator Hubert Humphrey, the eventual vice-presidential nominee. The potential need for a Johnson–Kennedy ticket was ultimately eliminated by the Republican nomination of conservative Barry Goldwater. With Goldwater as his opponent, Johnson's choice of vice president was all but irrelevant; opinion polls had revealed that, while Kennedy was an overwhelming first choice among Democrats, any choice made less than a 2% difference in a general election that already promised to be a landslide.

During a post-presidency interview with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Johnson claimed that Kennedy "acted like he was the custodian of the Kennedy dream" despite Johnson being seen as this after JFK was assassinated; arguing that he had "waited" his turn and Kennedy should have done the same. Johnson recalled a "tidal wave of letters and memos about how great a vice president Bobby would be," but felt he could not "let it happen" as he viewed the possibility of Kennedy on the ticket as ensuring that he would never know if he could be elected "on my own." In July 1964, Johnson issued an official statement ruling out all of his current cabinet members as potential running mates, judging them to be "so valuable ... in their current posts." In response to this statement, angry letters poured in directed towards both Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, expressing disappointment at Kennedy being dropped from the field of potential running mates.

Democratic National Convention

As the Democratic National Convention approached, Johnson feared that delegates, still swept with lingering emotion over the assassination of JFK, might draft his brother onto the ticket as the vice-presidential nominee. Johnson ordered the FBI to monitor Kennedy's contacts and actions at the convention, and made sure that Kennedy did not speak until after Hubert Humphrey was confirmed as his running mate.

On the last day of the convention, Kennedy introduced a short film, A Thousand Days, in honor of his brother's memory. After Kennedy appeared on the convention floor, delegates erupted in 22 minutes of uninterrupted applause, causing him to nearly break into tears. Speaking about his brother's vision for the country, Kennedy quoted from Romeo and Juliet: "When he shall die, take him and cut him out into the stars, and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that the entire world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun."

Kennedy's political future

In June 1964, Kennedy offered to succeed Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. as U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. President Johnson rejected the idea. Kennedy considered leaving politics altogether after his brother, Ted Kennedy, suffered a broken back in the crash of a small plane near Southampton, Massachusetts, on June 19. Positive reception during a six-day trip to Germany and Poland convinced him to remain in politics.

In search of a way out of the dilemma, Kennedy asked speechwriter Milton Gwirtzman to write a memo comparing two offices: 1) governor of Massachusetts and 2) U.S. senator from New York, and "which would be a better place from which to make a run for the presidency in future years?" Biographer Shesol wrote that the Massachusetts governorship offered one important advantage: isolation from Lyndon Johnson. However, the state was hobbled by debt and an unruly legislature. Gwirtzman informed Kennedy that "you are going to receive invitations to attend dedications and speak around the country and abroad and to undertake other activities in connection with President Kennedy" and that "it would seem easier to do this as a U.S. senator based in Washington, D.C. than as a governor based in Boston."

U.S. Senate (1965–1968)

1964 election

On August 25, 1964, two days before the end of that year's Democratic National Convention, Kennedy announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate representing New York. He resigned as attorney general on September 2. Kennedy could not run for the U.S. Senate from his native Massachusetts because his younger brother Ted was running for reelection in 1964. Despite their notoriously difficult relationship, President Johnson gave considerable support to Kennedy's campaign. The New York Times editorialized, "there is nothing illegal about the possible nomination of Robert F. Kennedy of Massachusetts as Senator from New York, but there is plenty of cynical about it, ... merely choosing the state as a convenient launching‐pad for the political ambitions of himself."

His opponent, Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating, attempted to portray Kennedy as an arrogant "carpetbagger" since he did not reside in the state and was not registered to vote there. Kennedy was a legal resident of Massachusetts, and, under New York law, was not eligible to vote in the election. His wife Ethel made light of the criticism by suggesting this slogan: "There is only so much you can do for Massachusetts." Kennedy charged Keating with having "not done much of anything constructive" despite his presence in Congress during a September 8 press conference. During the campaign, Kennedy was frequently met by large crowds where he encountered multitudes of hecklers carrying signs that read: "BOBBY GO HOME!" and "GO BACK TO MASSACHUSETTS!". In the end, New York voters ignored the carpetbagging issue and Kennedy won the November election with a comfortable 700,000 vote margin, helped in part by Johnson's huge 2½ million vote victory margin in the state. With his victory, Robert and Ted Kennedy became the first brothers since Dwight and Theodore Foster to serve simultaneously in the U.S. Senate. Frequent appearances during this campaign period would help Kennedy refine his style, and he would give more than 300 speeches throughout his time in the Senate.

Tenure

Kennedy drew attention in Congress early on as the brother of President Kennedy, which set him apart from other senators. He drew more than 50 senators as spectators when he delivered a speech in the Senate on nuclear proliferation in June 1965. But he also saw a decline in his power, going from the president's most influential advisor to one of a hundred senators, and his impatience with collaborative lawmaking showed. Though fellow senator Fred R. Harris expected not to like Kennedy, the two became allies; Harris even called them "each other's best friends in the Senate". Kennedy's younger brother Ted was his senior there. Robert saw his brother as a guide on managing within the Senate, and the arrangement worked to deepen their relationship. Harris noted that Kennedy was intense about matters and issues that concerned him. Kennedy gained a reputation in the Senate for being well prepared for debate, but his tendency to speak to other senators in a more "blunt" fashion caused him to be "unpopular ... with many of his colleagues".

While serving in the Senate, Kennedy advocated gun control. In May 1965, he co-sponsored S.1592, proposed by President Johnson and sponsored by Senator Thomas J. Dodd that would put federal restrictions on mail-order gun sales. Speaking in support of the bill, Kennedy said, "For too long we dealt with these deadly weapons as if they were harmless toys. Yet their very presence, the ease of their acquisition and the familiarity of their appearance have led to thousands of deaths each year. With the passage of this bill we will begin to meet our responsibilities. It would save hundreds of thousands of lives in this country and spare thousands of families ... grief and heartache." In remarks during a May 1968 campaign stop in Roseburg, Oregon, Kennedy defended the bill as keeping firearms away from "people who have no business with guns or rifles". The bill forbade "mail order sale of guns to the very young, those with criminal records and the insane", according to The Oregonian's report. S.1592 and subsequent bills, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy himself, paved the way for the eventual passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968.

As a senator, he was popular among African Americans and other minorities, including Native Americans and immigrant groups. He spoke forcefully in favor of what he called the "disaffected", the impoverished, and "the excluded", thereby aligning himself with leaders of the civil rights struggle and social justice campaigners. Kennedy and his staff had employed a cautionary "amendments–only" strategy for his first year in the Senate. He added an amendment to the Appalachian Regional Development Act to add 13 low-income New York counties situated along the Pennsylvania border. His work the first year included proposing funding for drug treatment and reform in the financing of social security. He succeeded in amending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to protect U.S. educated non-English speakers (mainly Puerto Ricans in New York City) from unfair imposition of English-language literacy tests and added an evaluation requirement to the new federal program to help educationally disadvantaged children. In 1966 and 1967 they took more direct legislative action, but were met with increasing resistance from the Johnson administration. Despite perceptions that the two were hostile in their respective offices to each other, U.S. News reported Kennedy's support of the Johnson administration's "Great Society" program through his voting record. Kennedy supported both major and minor parts of the program, and each year over 60% of his roll call votes were consistently in favor of Johnson's policies.

On February 8, 1966, Kennedy urged the United States to pledge that it would not be the first country to use nuclear weapons against countries that did not have them noting that China had made the pledge and the Soviet Union indicated it was also willing to do so.

Kennedy increased emphasis on human rights as a central focus of U.S. foreign policy. He criticized U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965 and concluded that Johnson had abandoned the reform aims of President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress. He warned after a trip to Latin America in late 1965, "If we allow communism to carry the banner of reform, then the ignored and the dispossessed, the insulted and injured, will turn to it as the only way out of their misery." In June 1966, he visited apartheid-era South Africa accompanied by his wife, Ethel, and a few aides. The tour was greeted with international praise at a time when few politicians dared to entangle themselves in the politics of South Africa. Kennedy spoke out against the oppression of the native population and was welcomed by the black population as though he were a visiting head of state. In an interview with Look magazine he said:

At the University of Natal in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. "But suppose God is black", I replied. "What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?" There was no answer. Only silence.

At the University of Cape Town he delivered the annual Day of Affirmation Address. A quote from this address appears on his memorial at Arlington National Cemetery: "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope." South Africa was considered in the United States to be an anti-communist ally, a position he critiqued, asking "What does it mean to be against communism if one’s own system denies the value of the individual and gives all the power to the government—just as the Communists do?".

During his years as a senator, he helped to start a successful redevelopment project in poverty-stricken Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Schlesinger wrote that Kennedy had hoped Bedford-Stuyvesant would become an example of self-imposed growth for other impoverished neighborhoods. Kennedy had difficulty securing support from President Johnson, whose administration was charged by Kennedy as having opposed a "special impact" program meant to bring about the federal progress that he had supported. Robert B. Semple Jr. repeated similar sentiments in September 1967, writing the Johnson administration was preparing "a concerted attack" on Robert F. Kennedy's proposal that Semple claimed would "build more and better low-cost housing in the slums through private enterprise". Kennedy confided to journalist Jack Newfield that while he tried collaborating with the administration through courting its members and compromising with the bill, "They didn't even try to work something out together. To them it's all just politics." In spite of a public awareness campaign, the Bedford–Stuyvesant Corporation only received modest support from private businesses. Investments from IBM (which already considered the move independently), Xerox, and U.S. Gypsum notwithstanding, most corporate executives believed there was little profit in poorer communities and were concerned about hostile working environments. Most of the residents of Bedford–Stuyvesant were initially skeptical of the project's intentions. In the long run, however, the project did become a prototype for community development corporations that sprang up across the country. By 1974, there were 34 federally funded and 75 privately funded corporations.

He visited the Mississippi Delta in April 1967 and eastern Kentucky in February 1968 as a member of the Senate committee reviewing the effectiveness of "War on Poverty" programs, particularly that of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Marian Wright Edelman described Kennedy as "deeply moved and outraged" by the sight of the starving children living in the economically abysmal climate of Mississippi, changing her impression of him from "tough, arrogant, and politically driven". Edelman noted further that the senator requested she call on Martin Luther King Jr. to bring the impoverished to Washington, D.C., to make them more visible, leading to the creation of the Poor People's Campaign. He also toured Native American reservations and was so outraged by the deplorable conditions he found that he created a Senate subcommittee on Indian Education and served as its chairman. In a forceful speech to a congress of native leaders in North Dakota, Kennedy said that their treatment by the federal government was a "national disgrace". Kennedy sought to remedy the problems of poverty and urban decay through legislation (i.e., a 1966 amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act) to encourage private industry through tax breaks to locate in poverty-stricken areas, thus creating jobs for the unemployed, and stressed the importance of work over welfare. According to Kennedy, government welfare and housing programs ignored the unemployment and social disorganization that caused people to seek public assistance in the first place, and often become bogged down in bureaucracy and lack flexibility.

Kennedy worked on the Senate Labor Committee at the time of the workers' rights activism of Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). At the request of labor leader Walter Reuther, who had previously marched with and provided money to Chavez, Kennedy flew out to Delano, California, to investigate the situation. Although little attention was paid to the first two committee hearings in March 1966 for legislation to include farm workers by an amendment of the National Labor Relations Act, Kennedy's attendance at the third hearing brought media coverage. Biographer Thomas wrote that Kennedy was moved after seeing the conditions of the workers, who he deemed were being taken advantage of. Chavez stressed to Kennedy that migrant workers needed to be recognized as human beings. Kennedy later engaged in an exchange with Kern County sheriff Leroy Galyen who admitted to arresting strikers who looked "ready to violate the law". Kennedy shot back, "May I suggest that during the luncheon period of time that the sheriff and the district attorney read the Constitution of the United States?"