The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups by Lewis Jon E

Author:Lewis, Jon E. [Lewis, Jon E.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Robinson
Published: 2009-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

ROBERT F. KENNEDY

The existence of a second gunman remains a possibility. Thus, I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy.

Thomas Noguchi, coroner

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, the hopes of liberal America turned to his younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy. The third of Joe and Rose Kennedy’s sons, Bobby Kennedy had much of JFK’s white-toothed handsomeness and charisma and, if anything, was more of a political idealist. His favourite quote was: “Some men see things as they are and say, Why? I dream of things that never were and say, Why not?”

In the end it was politics that got Bobby Kennedy assassinated.

After education at Harvard and Virginia University Law School, Bobby Kennedy was called to the Massachusetts bar in 1951, but his powerful and ambitious father pulled strings that ensured he was lifted almost immediately to higher things. A stint in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department under Senator Joe McCarthy was followed by the very high-profile role of chief counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field. Top of Kennedy’s hit list was Jimmy Hoffa, head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the truckers union, America’s largest and richest labour organization. Hoffa was, Kennedy considered, the chief malefactor in a nationwide “conspiracy of evil”; he had tied the truckers in to the Mob and used the union’s pension fund as his private bank account. Hoffa, the belligerent poor boy made good, and Kennedy, the Harvard-educated rich boy, hated each other. An obsessive rivalry ensued; when Hoffa was waiting at a federal court to be charged with bribery and conspiracy, he delighted in informing Kennedy that “I can do fifty one-handed push-ups. How many can you do?” RFK went home immediately and practised until he could do a hundred.

A lull in the Kennedy–Hoffa battle occurred when RFK became campaign manager for his brother John’s successful run at the White House in 1960. RFK’s reward was the post of Attorney General in the new administration, where he immediately made an enemy of FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover wanted the FBI to focus exclusively on the old enemy, the Communists; Kennedy wanted to use the Bureau to smash gangland, and Hoffa in particular. Hoover and RFK developed a mutual detestation. “A psycho,” said Kennedy of Hoover. “That sneaky little son of a bitch,” said Hoover of Kennedy. Their opinions were well known to each other, because Hoover phone-tapped Kennedy, and vice versa. To get at RFK, Hoover at some point in the early 1960s gave Hoffa the files he had created on Kennedy’s indiscriminate adulterous affairs. The stratagem did no good, and Hoffa went to the penitentiary anyway. In 1967 Hoffa told an informant that he had a contract out on RFK.

The Attorney General continued to make enemies. He energetically intervened in civil liberties, and supported desegregation in the South, thus alienating white Dixie (and the ultra-racist Hoover); he banished CIA officer William Harvey after Harvey sent illegal

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.