Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (No Series) (88 page)

Bobby and trusted aide Walter Sheridan (center) spar with their long-time nemesis, Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa. Sheridan was Kennedy’s “avenging angel” in his war on organized crime. Later, he would enlist Sheridan in the most secret and urgent investigation of their lives—to find the truth about the assassination of President Kennedy.
Courtesy Nancy Sheridan

White House press secretary Pierre Salinger (left) chats with Kenny O’Donnell, JFK’s political aide. O’Donnell, whose life was entwined with that of the Kennedy brothers, never recovered from their assassinations. Without the Kennedys, said one old Boston friend, “O’Donnell was the music without the harp.”
Courtesy JFK Library

Bobby confers with family friend William Walton during a break from the 1960 presidential primary campaign on the back roads of West Virginia. After JFK’s assassination, Bobby and Jackie Kennedy would entrust Walton with a stunning secret mission—to visit Moscow and assure Soviet authorities that the Kennedys did not suspect them of plotting the crime. The president, Walton confided, was the victim of a powerful domestic conspiracy.
Courtesy JFK Library, photo by Robert Lerner

Kennedy speechwriter Theodore Sorensen brought a soaring poetry to JFK’s efforts to articulate a post-Cold War future, a visionary quest that culminated in the president’s historic “Peace Speech” at American University in June 1963. Sorensen, who was raised in a pacifist Unitarian family, drew the ire and suspicion of Washington hawks.
Courtesy Getty

Edwin Guthman (second from left), walking with Ethel and Bobby Kennedy, was one of RFK’s “band of brothers”—a crusading newspaper reporter who put his career on hold to join the Kennedys’ New Frontier. Guthman, who knew how many enemies Bobby had made during his own crusading career, pleaded in vain with his friend to surround himself with more protection during his public appearances.
Courtesy JFK Library

Robert F. Kennedy confers with John Seigenthaler during the 1960 presidential campaign. “What a rich little prick!” Seigenthaler thought when he met Bobby. But he later put his body on the line for RFK’s civil rights battles.
Courtesy John Seigenthaler, photo by Jacques Lowe

White House aide Richard Goodwin antagonized hardliners by urging a hands-off policy on Cuba and by meeting with Che Guevara at a Uruguay dance party in August 1961. In later years, Goodwin confided his suspicions about JFK’s assassination to Bobby, a plot that the Kennedy aide thought had grown out of the CIA-Mafia war on Castro.
Courtesy Getty

The Kennedy clan and advisors gather in the family’s Hyannis Port compound to nervously await the official outcome of the presidential race the morning after the election, which had still not been conceded by Richard Nixon. Waiting with JFK, from the left, are Walton, Salinger, Ethel, Bobby, RFK’s secretary Angie Novello, and campaign aide William Haddad. JFK’s whisper of a victory gave the young president-elect a tenuous hold on the machinery of government.
Courtesy Woodfin-Camp NYC, photo by Jacques Lowe

Bobby warily eyes FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover during a meeting at the bureau. The attorney general came to view Hoover as a “menace to democracy,” whose poisonous power over politicians came from his voluminous secret files. The Kennedys, who compiled their own compromising information on Hoover, thought they could control him. But as soon as President Kennedy was cut down in Dallas, Hoover made it clear to the attorney general that he would no longer defer to him.
Courtesy Woodfin-Camp NYC, photo by Jacques Lowe

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev greets President Kennedy at the Vienna summit in June 1961. Despite their jousting over Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam, and other Cold War hot spots, the two leaders came to develop an appreciation for one another as they tried to steer their nations from the nuclear abyss. Hearing the news from Dallas, Khrushchev broke down and sobbed in the Kremlin. Khrushchev was convinced that Kennedy was killed by militaristic forces in Washington bent on sabotaging the two leaders’ efforts to reach détente. Less than a year later, the Soviet leader was forced out of power by his own hardliners in a bloodless coup.
Courtesy JFK Library, photo by Look/Stanley Tretick