Every time you stand up for an ideal, you send forth a tiny ripple of hope.

Robert Kennedy was the third son of Joseph Kennedy. When John was elected president, their father insisted that Robert would be appointed Attorney General. Because of the effort the elder Kennedy put in to getting him elected, John went along with the idea.

As it turned out, Robert Kennedy did a pretty good job – perhaps too good. However, before they took office, there was considerable discussion about including Lyndon Johnson on the ticket. Because of Johnson's involvement in the firing of their father as Ambassador to the United Kingdom there was actually hatred toward the Texan. He even visited Johnson's hotel room during the Democrat Convention to try to talk him out accepting the position... unsuccessfully.

Neither brother was fond of this crude Senator, often calling him names like “Uncle Cornpone.” Many in the political establishment did not hold these two young rich guys in high esteem either. J Edgar Hoover from the FBI minimized his dealing with the new Attorney General, even though the FBI was part of the Justice Department, run by the Attorney General. The intelligence community went their own way. There was also a mutual distrust of the Secret Service and Robert was working on getting US Marshal protection for this brother, but it never materialized.

In spite of working against the strong head winds of apathy, Kennedy made it his business to put so many in organized crime out of business. This was a fateful decision. He had a measure of success – working against the very people the elder Kennedy convinced to help put his brother in office.

In one of the more extreme cases, when he was frustrated by legal maneuvers and delaying tactics, he had US Marshalls pick up Carlos Marcello from New Orleans and drop him off in the jungles of Guatemala in just his business suit and wingtips. Marcello made his way back to New Orleans mad as a hornet. So his fear that he may have been responsible for getting his brother killed may have had some basis.

Robert Kennedy was not taken in by news and intelligence reports.  At his brother's funeral, he pulled French President Charles de Gaulle aside and told him, "It Was a Coup d'Etat". He stayed on as Attorney General for a short while, but he was effectively neutered by a new president with differing values and concerns. Eventually he left the Justice Department and his relationship to his popular, deceased brother was elected to the Senate.

The younger Kennedy brother chose to run for president, against some of the advice from his family. He had much of John's charisma and he had just addressed an adoring crown after emerging victorious in the California primary. As he was leaving the crowd through a portion of the hotel's pantry, like his brother, his life was cut short by assassins bullets.

The official account is that Sirhan Sirhan was waiting for him and as he entered the room, got off one or two shots before he was tackled and wrestled to the floor all the while squeezing the trigger until his gun was emptied.

Since the was in Los Angeles, Medical Examiner to the stars Thomas Noguchi performed the autopsy even though it was pretty obvious what happened. His findings, while accurate were criticized and not accepted by investigators. They, like the Warren Commission, were looking for evidence to back up their claim that Sirhan was a lone shooter. Noguchi said the fatal shot entered Kennedy's head behind the right ear. A CIA connected temporary security guard named Thane Eugene Cesar was immediately behind Kennedy. He was never called as witness and left the country and moved to the Phillipines shortly thereafter. Witness who gave accounts differing from the official story were often bullied or ignored to the detriment to Sirhan Sirhan.

The Enemy Within Robert F. Kennedy
by Robert F Kennedy

Written right on the firing line in one of the hottest sectors of the fight for law and order, this book is a no-holds-barred report on the work of the McClellan Committee. Covering also the methods evolved by Committee investigators to dig out the facts; the threats, dodges and pressures used to balk them; the strains within the Committee itself, and within the staff, and the significant factors of press and public opinion, it is illuminated by firsthand knowledge and charged with the force of absolute honesty and the fire of personal conviction. Every member of the McC1ellan Committee knew he might be digging his political grave, but they all went ahead and uncovered a shocking story of venality, greed, corruption and mania for power in the ranks of both labor and management. Over the course of three years, hearing fifteen hundred witnesses and taking fourteen million words of testimony, the Committee proved that in a frightening number of cases labor leaders. management, the underworld and public officials, sometimes in combination, sometimes separately, had worked to cheat the rank-and-flle union members. Focusing on some of the highlights of the investigation, Kennedy tells, for example: how an anonymous telephone call sparked a major investigation and led to the exposure of a huge swindle; how a tip from the "friend of a friend" led to the downfall of Dave Beck; why Roy Underwood shot himself; how "democracy" actually operates in Hoffa's captive unions and what happens to the men who dare to stand up to him; how a reluctant witness was persuaded to testify; how two earlier Congressional committees dropped their investigations of the Teamsters Union; how Hoffa was tried on charges of attempting to plant a spy in the McClellan Committee: why an investigator crawled under a bed and another wore a postman's uniform; how unions are bought and sold - and sometimes stolen; how underworld racketeers infiltrate a union; how, to take the Fifth Amendment by proxy; why honest union leader refused to testify; what mistake the author made with a witness once, but never again; what lay behind the “get Reuther” investigation - and why it fizzled.