In Memory Of Bobby

Forty Years Later, Jeff Greenfield Recalls The Remarkable Life And Tragic Death Of A Political Icon

(CBS)  Robert Francis Kennedy … RFK … was assassinated 40 years ago this coming week. Few Americans will ever forget the shock of that night, and what it would mean. Among those working in Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign was Jeff Greenfield, now our Senior Political Correspondent. He offers a very personal recollection of a man who spoke to so many in so many different ways.

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He has been gone almost as long as he was alive, and from a distance of four decades, Robert Kennedy is often seen as a player in a pageant: heir to a murdered President from America's most famous political family … a tumultuous presidential campaign in a tumultuous political year that ended on the floor of a hotel kitchen in Los Angeles.

But why, so many years later, are the memories still so sharp, the loss still so painful?

Photographer Bill Eppridge said, "I don't know of a single person who affected me the way he did."

Veteran CBS News correspondent Roger Mudd said, "There was about Robert Kennedy a perpetual sense of outrage. As a reporter, it was something to behold."

"He had the ability to speak out of his soul, out of his gut," said Congressman John Lewis, D-Ga., "and people believed in him."

… including a 24-year-old speechwriter fresh out of law school.

I make no pretense of neutrality; I worked on Kennedy's Senate staff and on his presidential campaign, and still regard him as the most remarkable political figure of my lifetime.

But the question you're entitled to ask of people who believe as I do is, why?

He came from a family of wealth and privilege with a reputation for toughness, even ruthlessness, that began with his campaign against labor boss Jimmy Hoffa in the late 1950s. It was a reputation he could not or would not explain.

"Why do people think you're ruthless?" Mudd asked Kennedy in an interview?

His response? "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know."

"All we knew was that Bobby Kennedy was just a tough cookie," Mudd said. "The ruthless label got on him and couldn't come off, and never came off."

That's a view shared by one of the Kennedy's major adversaries. Monica Crowley worked for Richard Nixon during the last years of his life.

"He said to me one time that Bobby Kennedy was the most brilliant of the Kennedy boys and he was also the most ruthless," Crowley said. "And as somebody who was not unfamiliar with ruthlessness himself, that's something that also quite impressed Richard Nixon."

But after John F. Kennedy's death in 1963, as a war in Vietnam and racial unrest darkened the national mood, something seemed to change or shift in Robert Kennedy.

The freshman Senator from New York was becoming a very different kind of politician, looking at America with a radically original mind.

"Robert Kennedy always had an instinct for the outsider," said Peter Edelman, who was one of Kennedy's key Senate aides. "And it turned out that what he really cared about was people all over this world who don't have a fair shake."

"He saw the anguish," said Lewis, who was a young civil rights worker when he first met Kennedy. "He saw the predicament that black people, that poor people were faced with. And he made a commitment to do something about it, not just as the attorney general. Not just as Senator Kennedy for the presidency. But as a human being."

He went to the Mississippi Delta, where blacks were literally going hungry, to eastern Kentucky, where white people had been without jobs for years, and to the migrant labor camps of California.

And out of this came a sense that there was a fundamental failure of conventional liberal thinking.

[dogrunner78]

You people that are railing about Hillary are the ones with no class. It is true that she made a major gaff, but to attribute some kind of sinister purpose to her remarks is nothing more than ridiculous. The fact that Ted''s just diagnosed condition was at the top of her mind, that she''s seen the precautions taken to protect the President and presidential candidates first hand, that she was strung out from the campaign--these factors could easily combine to cause her to make such an error. Everyone sees or does such things from time to time, our brains are simply not always sharp, nor ever perfect. So how about giving the rest of us a break from this absurd rhetoric.

[dolgoat]

NOT remembering Bobby Kennedy!!!!

Once again there was no mention, and certainly no video, of Bobby Kennedy''s saying that he would send American troops to Israel.

This video was banned from evidence at Sirhan Sirhan''s trial. Kennedy''s assination was the first act of terrorism on American soil.

Why not call it (or even show why) instead of simply stating that his death was unfortunate?

[credibility2]

When I awoke on June 6th (my birthday) to ready myself to go to my college for classes, my mother told me that "...they shot Bobby Kennedy and he''s dead..." I couldn''t believe it. RFK was going to restore hope and bring about change to the wounded nation. The nation had just began to try and heal itself from the King assassination and the inexcusable rioting, looting and torching of major cities. The assassinations of JFK, King and now RFK was a lot to have to accept and try to digest in less than a decade of time. A few months later (the summer of 1968), our nation would see mayhem in the parks and streets of Chicago, my home town, at events leading up top and during the Democratic National Convention. The sixties were dark and troubling and nothing I reflect upon favorably.

[mcvet]

Watch closely the stronger obama gets the closer he comes to ending up like the kennedy brothers.all the ghouls come out when the gop gets p----sed.


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Posted by tootall10142 at 07:32 AM : Jun 02, 2008
+ report abuse

Let''s just hope the Secret Service has learned since Bobby! You are right though.

[mcvet]

f course the Kennedy''''s were killed by this country and others. They would have and almost did kill and entire species of people. John was much more a hot head than Bobby but both were exterminated by their own people. We''''ll find out the truth in say 250 years or so but by then Big Brother will be screening all our correspondence. I retired from a career in Law Enforcement. I''''ve seen far more of mankind than any man should have to witness or know. Trust me on this one. We have met the enemy and he is us.


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Posted by maxify55 at 05:33 AM : Jun 02, 2008

You statement say''s MORE about your fascist mentality that ANYONE could. YOU have NOT seem more of mankind than anyone else. You do NOT have any idea what people are like at all. YOU are just a preverse little person who spent to much time with the RESULTS of failure in society. Now stand... let everyone hear ya!! SIEG HEIL RUSH!!

[tootall10142]

Watch closely the stronger obama gets the closer he comes to ending up like the kennedy brothers.all the ghouls come out when the gop gets p----sed.

[cbsblogger]

Sirhan Sirhan / MKULTRA project


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Posted by MagicMerlin8 at 08:07 PM : Jun 01, 2008
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If the truth was really known we''d likely find our very own Josef Mengeles in the CIA. Our country is about interests not principles...and that is a huge difference. Abiding by principles of good gives one the right to wear a white hat.

[o_nolan1]

Okay, I''ll answer that. I believe he would have supported John Edwards because of his committment to end poverty in America and his intelligence and dedication to issues that would serve all Americans. John Edwards is the finest leader in the democratric party and in America as far as I''m concerned and he best represents the hopes that Bobby Kennedy never had the chance to see to fruition.

[o_nolan1]

Who would Bobby Kennedy have endorsed this election year?

[tryhonesty]

I was ten years old, born and raised in Southern Califoria, 35 miles away from where RFK was killed. The memory seems not that long ago. Very nice article. I think the people of this country today want the sense of HOPE much like they did then. I think of what could of been...how history would have been so different...that our country would be so much better today had Bobby lived and possibly been elected President of the United States...again I try to keep HOPE alive this election year.

[nanging3]

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/removable-of-father-michael-pfleger

LINK TO PETITION TO REMOVE PFLEGER !!

[mb450sl]

Robert Francis Kennedy died on my 20th birthday. I would not have been able to vote for him that year, but I have never found a presidential candidate since then who I could vote for with a happy heart. Instead, I have always had to vote for some who was only better than the alternative.

[sistatee-2009]

Yawn.............

[coco0331]

Ten days before John Kennedy was assassinated he gave a speech at Columbia University, One of his ideas was to anull the C.I.A. This would of been a devastating blow to the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. The state of Texas right in the middle of it with money, oil. and big wheels with money. These men knew where to pump up the volume at. It is my belief that Bobby made the connection to the C.I.A. The C.I.A. will make it look good, make it sound good. But it''s actually a weapon of special interest with foreign interest, or special private interest looking for valuable foreign interest by pilfering the American government into exploring the world for valuble foreign interest. This was possibly the Kennedy connection. Bad news is you''ll never prove it.

[pepperwood2]

I wonder if Hillary called Senator Ted Kennedy & Family to express her condolances and apologize for her remarks she made concerning Bobby assanination in 1968 while running for president. Implying that same thing could happen to Senator Obama just so, All About Me Hillary, would get the nomination? She is such a Classless Act.

[omaar-101]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/ne
wsnight/6169006.stm


Sir Han Sir Han My A!!

The (Jihadist) FBI & CIA Assasinated Robert F. Kennedy.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Evidence That the CIA Murdered RFK

A new BBC documentary supports the conclusion that the CIA planned and executed the assassination of Robert Kennedy. The new video and photographic evidence -- the result of a three year long investigation --"puts three senior CIA operatives" at the scene of the murder.

Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA''''s Miami base for its Secret War on Castro.

David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a *** and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little ***."

Gordon Campbell was Chief of Maritime Operations and George Joannides was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations.

Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the Congressional investigation into the JFK assassination. Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is assassinated.

[omaar-101]

http://www.nbc30.com/news/15712020/detail.html

MASHANTUCKET, Conn. -- New forensics evidence presented Tuesday during a symposium at Foxwoods suggests Sirhan Sirhan DID NOT FIRE the FATAL SHOTS that KILLED Sen. Robert Kennedy in 1968.

Experts from all over the world met Wednesday to discuss problems in crime solving during the annual symposium, hosted by the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science. This year%u2019s event was about conspiracies and solving complex crimes.

Dr. Robert Joling, Determined that the FATAL SHOTS must have come FROM BEHIND the Senator.


Sirhan, however, was (4 To 6 feet In Front) of Kennedy and NEVER got CLOSE enough to SHOOT Kennedy from BEHIND, the Investigator said.

The other evidence was the Pruszynski recording. This is the ONLY AUDIO RECORDING of the Assassination. Another scientist analyzed it and concluded that at least 13 SHOTS were FIRED from 2 DIFFERENT GUNS.

Philip Van Praag, a forensic engineer, said he made 3 discoveries.

The first 2 DEMONSTRATE that there MUST BE MORE than ONE SHOOTER, he said. The 3rd conclusion is that the SHOTS FIRED by the 2nd SHOOTER MATCHED the FIREARM a Security Guard BEHIND Kennedy CARRIED.

Joling and Van Praag presented their findings together, although the two investigated the Kennedy shooting independently. They had never met until last year. During a seminar, they realized their separate findings were perfectly wed.

Sirhan Sirhan remains jailed in California.

[eroosevelt08]

I remember when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. When he was killed, we felt like we had lost hope because there was no other candidate we wanted.

[usmcvn2]

I was seven months into my first tour in Vietnam in 6/68. But not old enought to vote or drink yet. Us
guys over there were also shocked when Bobby was killed.

I had wanted Bobby to go all the way.

Rest in Peace Bobby.

[nanging3]

WHO GIVES A BLEEP ABOUT THE CROOKED LIBERAL KENNEDYS ..I DON''T !