mistaking him for Jack: Thomas, p. 42.
“the father of our hero, our own hero”: Matthews, Jack Kennedy, p. 62.
“We don’t have any losers around here”: Schlesinger, p. 14.
“By God, I’ll show them”: Nigel Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 640.
Joseph Kennedy associate: Krock, p. 348.
The lieutenant’s assigned target was: Hamilton, pp. 659–60.
“I can quite understand how you feel”: Nasaw, p. 569.
“Children, your brother Joe has been lost”: Adam Clymer, Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography (New York: William Morrow, 1999), p. 15.
went for a walk alone on the beach: Thomas, p. 43.
“Success was so assured”: Schlesinger, p. 56.
In November of 1944: Thomas, p. 44.
“usual moody self”: RFK letter to Dave Hackett, January 1945, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
“more and more like a draft dodger”: Ibid.
“Your brother is a jerk”: Thomas, p. 44.
“It looks like I will fly like a bird”: RFK letter to Dave Hackett, March 13, 1945, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
By month’s end: Parmet, p. 131.
“Am not going to fly”: RFK letter to Dave Hackett, May 4, 1945, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
“My heart is with it”: Joan Blair and Clay Blair, The Search for JFK (New York: Putnam, 1976), p. 473.
Without telling his father, Bobby headed: Schlesinger, p. 60.
It was then, in early 1946: Blair and Blair, p. 518.
“a lot of something a lot of those guys”: Schlesinger, p. 60.
“The war makes less sense to me now”: JFK letter to war buddies, in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 88.
“I had never lived very much in the district”: Presidential recordings, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
“I didn’t realize how Bobby worshipped him”: KOD interview.
“Black Robert”: Thomas, p. 41.
“It’s damned nice of Bobby”: Paul B. Fay, Jr., The Pleasure of His Company (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 145.
“One picture of the two”: Schlesinger, p. 63.
“From his expression”: Fay, pp. 145–46.
He’d chosen three wards: Parmet, p. 157.
On a group skiing trip: Schlesinger, p. 66.
“He asked me to work on the campaign”: KOD interview.
“I couldn’t believe this skinny”: Thomas P. O’Neill, Man of the House: The Life and Political Memories of Speaker Tip O’Neill (New York: Random House, 1987), p. 73.
Locating another Joe Russo: Joe Russo newspaper ad, Boston Magazine, June 1993.
But when it came to getting his: Fay, p. 147.
“Then, very quietly, the candidate”: Ibid.
In The New Yorker for June: O’Neill, p. 77.
“He was as thin as a straw”: Kevin Cullen, “A Loyalty Much Richer than Any Bank Account,” Boston Globe, November 7, 2010.
“His real field of”: Schlesinger, p. 67.
“I read in the Boston Post”: Stein, p. 38.
They shared, incidentally, an antipathy: Thomas, p. 50.
But upon seeing Spee reject another: Ibid.
“Bobby began to meet other kinds”: Ibid.
“None of us liked him”: Ibid.
“I remember being kind of”: Ibid.
“He had a broken leg”: Ethel HBO documentary, Moxie Firecracker Films, 2012.
5. COMMITMENT
“For anyone to achieve something”: “Kennedy Children Groomed for Careers in Politics,” United Press International, August 7, 1969.
“responsive to the will of the people”: “Joint Statement with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin on the Yalta Conference,” Miller Center, University of Virginia, February 11, 1945.
The spring of 1947: This account first appeared in Christopher Matthews, Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
Two tragedies: Ibid.
A grieving Bobby made his way to London: Thomas, p. 56.
“the new type of Catholic”: Dominic Sandbrook, Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), p. 22.
Bobby became especially vehement: Schlesinger, p. 81.
“We can look back over the last four or five years”: Robert Kennedy article in the Boston Advertiser.
The one who held his heart: Thomas, p. 57.
“The responsibility for the failure”: Congressional Record, January 29, 1949.
second trial for perjury: William R. Conklin, “Hiss Guilty on Both Perjury Counts; Betrayal of U.S. Secrets Is Affirmed; Sentence Wednesday; Limit 10 Years,” New York Times, January 22, 1950.
“The conspiracy would have”: Richard Nixon speech, U.S. House of Representatives, Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon, p. 68.
“most traitorous”: Joseph McCarthy speech, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950.
In fact, the official assessment: National Security Council Report No. 68, April 12, 1950.
“Bobby turned and saw the person in trouble”: Author interview with Ethel Kennedy.
“the Dinosaur Is Dead”: Thomas, p. 55.
Bobby’s response was an eloquent five-page letter: “Robert F. Kennedy and the Desegregation of the 1951 Ralph J. Bunche Lecture,” Andrew McCanse Wright, Savannah Law Review 2, no. 1, 2015.
It was the “safest place”: Author interview with Ethel Kennedy.
“the final step from which”: Schlesinger, p. 82.
6. BROTHER
This and the succeeding chapter’s account of the 1952 Senate race are drawn heavily from Kenneth O’Donnell’s interviews with Sander Vanocur (KOD interview).
“Every politician in Massachusetts”: Schlesinger, p. 214.
As Jack had recently pointed out: Meet the Press, NBC, December 3, 1951.
“a pain in the ass”: Robert Hilty, Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), p. 64.
“We flew to the military hospital”: John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), Foreword.
“He was a war veteran”: KOD interview.
But O’Donnell’s assessment: Ibid.
Speaker Tip O’Neill, Jr.: Author conversation with Tip O’Neill, which first appeared in Matthews, Jack Kennedy.
“He started getting our attention”: KOD interview.
“I’m seriously considering running”: Ibid.
He was afraid to take even: Ibid.
“I knew Bobby was the one with”: Ibid.
“Well, that’s fine”: Ibid.
7. THE KENNEDY PARTY
The bulk of this chapter is based on the oral history of Kenneth O’Donnell (KOD interview).
“anything to distract you”: Author interview with Ethel Kennedy.
“I told him you’ve got to”: KOD interview.
For O’Donnell, this was a window: Ibid.
Bobby was annoyed at Ken: Ibid.
“He just made it very clear”: Ibid.
Now came the task of convincing: Ibid.
Jack didn’t like hearing: Ibid.
“Why don’t you come up”: Ibid.
“His brother asked him”: Author interview with Ethel Kennedy.
“It was a very tough thing”: Ibid.
Handling their father was at the top: Stein, p. 43.
Ethel would defend her husband’s: Author interview with Ethel Kennedy.
build a total political network: KOD interview.
Joe’s ties to Senator Joe McCarthy: Nasaw, p. 667.
“How dare you compare”: Parmet, p. 245.
“trying to ruin my”: Nasaw, p. 667.
McCarthy never
entered the state: David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 242.
On the night before the election: KOD interview.
When he got Bobby on the phone: Ibid.
“He went town by town”: Ibid.
Outside the window: Ibid.
ability to make decisions: Author interview with Ethel Kennedy.
“What a bunch of bums”: KOD interview.
8. CLAN
“What are you going to do now?”: Stein, p. 45.
“I’m tired of it”: Helen O’Donnell, The Irish Brotherhood: John F. Kennedy, His Inner Circle, and the Improbable Rise to the Presidency (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2015), p. 89.
Joe Kennedy was working to convince: Nasaw, p. 671.
One morning in the Senate cafeteria: Caro, The Passage of Power, pp. 61–62.
“It’s about Roosevelt and his father”: Ibid.
“Did you ever see two dogs”: Caro, The Passage of Power, p. 63.
a subcommittee assignment: Nasaw, p. 672.
Liberal columnist Doris Fleeson: Shesol, p. 18.
According to The Boston Post: Schlesinger, p. 102.
Bobby gave notice: Nasaw, p. 672.
“I was particularly impressed”: Schlesinger, p. 107.
Joe McCarthy’s wedding gift: Author conversation. The cigarette box is in the possession of Robert Shrum, a professor at the University of Southern California.
McCarthy’s honeymoon in the: Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), p. 513.
“coddling Communists”: Donald Crosby, God, Church, and Flag: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the Catholic Church, 1950–1957 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), p. 147.
Sixty-two percent of Republicans: Reeves, p. 534.
When it came to Catholics: Crosby, p. 148.
“He had a lot of frustration”: LeMoyne Billings quote in Stein, p. 48.
“many people formed their ideas about him”: Ibid.
Democratic members boycotted: Schlesinger, p. 109.
McCarthy agreed to give the: Ibid.
“Put your mind at rest”: Stein, p. 50.
“You can’t believe it”: Author interview with Ethel Kennedy.
Ken O’Donnell saw his friend’s conflict: Stein, p. 49.
1,200 men at a St. Patrick’s Day dinner: Crosby, p. 152.
“Tell Jackson we’re going to get”: Oshinsky, p. 478.
“We’ve got letters he wrote”: Shesol, p. 19.
“half my voters in Massachusetts”: Crosby, p. 206.
“To understand the situation”: Ibid.
given the last rites of the Catholic Church: KOD interview.
“Why do you reporters”: Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 10.
9. HAIL MARY
“Well, I guess you could call it a Hail Mary”: Jarrett Bell, interview with Roger Staubach, “Origins of ‘Hail Mary’: Cowboys Legend Roger Staubach Remembers How It Stuck,” USA Today, January 13, 2017.
Bobby Kennedy his chief counsel: James Neff, Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy Versus Jimmy Hoffa (New York: Little, Brown, 2015), p. 38.
Bobby’s thoughts began shifting: Thomas, p. 72.
The strategy was to make: Parmet, p. 366.
gathered the data and wrote: Harris Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980), p. 31.
“To me, he was a self-important”: David Pietrusza, 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2008), p. 63.
Stevenson’s public justification: Parmet, p. 375.
“Call Dad and tell him”: O’Donnell, p. 147.
He was calling him: Parmet, p. 376.
“Whew!” Bobby said: Ibid.
despite frantic attempts: KOD interview.
“What can you do”: Ibid.
he thought his brother would: Ibid.
now had to be candid: Ibid.
“find out who has the power”: Ibid.
“Why are you against my brother?”: Thomas Oliphant and Curtis Wilke, “When JFK Won by Losing,” Politico, May 14, 2017.
The first ballot had: Larry J. Sabato, The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 38.
Southerners were out in force: Nasaw, p. 711.
“The second ballot”: Reeves, p. 466.
“Texas proudly casts its vote”: Wofford, p. 31.
“Forget it!”: Thomas Oliphant and Curtis Wilkie, The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year Campaign (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), p. 49.
he instead recognized Edmondson: Stein, p. 65.
“He was very depressed”: Author interview with Jean Kennedy Smith.
“It’s the best thing”: Ibid.
The outlook now was: Nasaw, p. 708.
it left him seething: Barbara Leaming, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: The Untold Story (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2014), p. 83.
they had to create from scratch: Shesol, p. 25.
Jack Kennedy headed to: Nasaw, p. 708.
It was Bobby who: Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent (New York: Vintage, 1991), p. 234.
finally heard her husband’s: Leaming, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, p. 84.
Bobby set off to join: Parmet, p. 385.
“I came out of our”: Ibid.
“You wouldn’t believe it”: O’Donnell, p. 161.
Kennedy thought Stevenson quite simply spent too: Stein, p. 66.
Bobby had watched his brother: RFK wedding reception interview.
“After the traditional Thanksgiving”: Edward Kennedy, True Compass, p. 116.
acting as a bridge between: Thomas, p. 73.
“It was understood”: Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Times to Remember, p. 307.
10. IRISH COP
Edwin Guthman met Robert Kennedy as he began his investigation of crooked labor leaders on the Senate Rackets Committee. A dedicated investigative reporter, he joined Kennedy as a top aide at the Justice Department. His memoir, We Band of Brothers, 1971, has served as a personal, inspiring, credible guide to these years. While I had only a single encounter with Guthman, I have gained the highest respect for him.
“I thought Teamster meant mob”: Author interview with Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, March 4, 2016.
returning to the Senate’s: Nasaw, p. 710.
“He did his investigations”: Neff, p. 31.
Bobby could do exactly: Edwin Guthman, We Band of Brothers (New York: Harper & Row: 1964), p. 4.
This meant taking on: Thomas, p. 74.
Mollenhoff told Kennedy: Neff, p. 33.
“A young lawyer from”: Guthman, p. 96.
“Can you trust him”: Thomas, p. 74.
Mollenhoff was the perfect man: Guthman, p. 4.
digging into the activities: Neff, p. 31.
Bobby informed his father: Nasaw, p. 710.
“the worst ever”: Thomas, p. 76.
Two days after Christmas: Ibid.
To accommodate that: Ibid.
McClellan as chairman: Neff, p. 38.
Among the Republicans were: Ibid.
“Bobby wanted me on that committee”: Thomas, p. 76.
“If the investigation flops”: Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David E. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (New York: Open Road Media, 2013), p. 132.
Kennedy declared two rules: Thomas, p. 85.
“If we allowed witnesses”: Guthman, p. 32.
“The most important advantage”: Ibid.
“more concerned with what the”: Shesol, p. 20.
Bobby received a call: Thomas, p. 78.
Hoover instructed him: Neff, p. 46.
met face-to-face with Hoffa: Thoma
s, p. 77.
“Here’s a fella thinks he’s doing me a favor”: Neff, p. 47.
“spoiled jerk”: Ibid., p. 55.
“Bob, who had an underlying”: Steel, p. 52.
FBI sting operation: Thomas, p. 79.
“It was Ethel Kennedy who roused”: Guthman, p. 57.
“He stared at me for three minutes”: Neff, p. 61.
“I’ll jump off the Capitol”: Thomas, p. 79.
Rackets Committee turned its attention: Neff, p. 69.
raised $76,000 in contributions: Guthman, p. 64.
“Bob kept his word”: Ibid., p. 56.
the most cooperative Republican: Ibid., p. 24.
“Drunk the last three times”: Schlesinger, p. 172.
“It was typical of Bobby”: Ibid., p. 173.
That May, Bobby’s former boss: Ibid.
“I was in the car with Daddy”: Author interview with Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
“It was all very difficult for me”: Steel, p. 49.
The burial took place the next day: Neff, pp. 41–42.
Representing him was a rising: Thomas, p. 80.
two thirds of whom were African American: Ibid.
arrange for former heavyweight champion: Ibid.
Louis offered a warm greeting: Schlesinger, p. 155.
A record company hired Louis: Robert F. Kennedy, The Enemy Within: The McClellan Committee’s Crusade Against Jimmy Hoffa and Corrupt Labor Unions (New York: Harper, 1960), p. 61.
The dramatic evidence: Thomas, p. 80.
“I’m going to send Bobby Kennedy”: “Labor: Out of the Trap,” Time, July 29, 1957.
“He divided everyone up”: Neff, p. 150.
“driven by a conviction”: Ibid., p. 91.
Kennedy called Hoffa before: Guthman, pp. 66–67.
“Don’t you know I could have you”: Robert F. Kennedy, The Enemy Within, p. 160.
“Since you’ve been with the Teamsters”: Neff, p. 93.
claiming the Fifth Amendment right: Ibid., p. 96.
“was glaring at me across the counsel”: Ibid., p. 97.
“It would drive the bastard”: Thomas, p. 80.
Again and again, the Teamster: Neff, p. 103.
Finally, the chairman had it: Ibid., p. 104.
could see what was driving: Guthman, pp. 29–30.
“With McClellan and Bob”: Ibid., p. 30.
he was elected to replace: Robert F. Kennedy, The Enemy Within, p. 118.
“You have carried a candle”: Neff, p. 127.
“This year seems to”: Shesol, p. 22.