Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (No Series) (80 page)

278
“I want to tell you why Kennedy died”: Quoted in Max Holland,
The Kennedy Assassination Tapes: The White House Conversations Regarding the Assassination, the Warren Commission, and the Aftermath
. 236.

278
“The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin”: Quoted in Schlesinger, 615.

278
“I know of no credible evidence”: RFK letter, August 4, 1964, Attorney General papers, JFK Library.

279
his brother’s assassination was the work of a solitary “misfit”:
Washington Post
, June

29,
1964.

280
“I have not read the report”:
New York Times
, September 28, 1964.

280
he seemed “subdued”:
New York Times
, September 29, 1964.

280
nothing more than a public relations exercise: Thomas,
Robert Kennedy
, 284.

280
“He always stood by the Warren Commission in public”: Author interview with Mankiewicz.

281
Their report would “completely explode” these men’s theories: Quoted in
New York Times
, June 1, 1964.

281
the subject [was] “very painful to me personally”: Quoted in
Village Voice
, March 12, 1992.

281
“You’re my man…period”: Quoted in Holland, 151.

282
“I think someone else worked with him on the planning”: Quoted in McKnight, 297.

282
which echoed the new president’s own sentiments: Ibid, 19.

283
“just like the fly fisherman flick over the water”: Quoted in Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones,
The CIA and American Democracy
, 140.

283
the CIA official flatly denied it to the president’s face: Katzenbach testimony, HSCA, September 21, 1978.

283
“We don’t know whether this is a worldwide conspiracy”: Quoted in Holland, 14.

283
“hiding in the toilet…muttering ‘Conspiracy’”: HSCA interview with Godfrey McHugh, May 11, 1978.

283
grew agitated when he saw the bloodred rug: DeLoach oral history, LBJ Library.

283
“they’re more likely to get me killed”: Quoted in Holland, 261.

284
“Could it have been the CIA?”: DeLoach oral history.

284
“The assassination weighed on him as heavily as did the war”: Holland, xxi.

284
“What do you think of this Oswald fellow?”: Author interview with Howard.

285
Abe Fortas…poured cold water on the theory: Holland, 408.

285
“it had a very high purpose”: Author interview with James Galbraith.

285
“Johnson was weighed down by a lot of guilt feelings”: Author interview with Katzenbach.

286
“they were either telling a lie”: Author interview with Ray Marcus.

287
“Where are the experts?”: Quoted in the
New Yorker
, June 10, 1967.

287
“I can’t look and won’t look”: Author interview with Marcus; also “Truth vs. Political Truth,” self-published monograph by Marcus, August 2001.

288
“the Kennedys were trying to do a wonderful service”: Author interview with Courtney Evans.

288
“It was a time we believed government”: Author interview with Goldfarb.

288
“he knew damn well we would”: Author interview with Herbert Miller.

289
“He would have chosen Walter Sheridan”: Author interview with Goldfarb.

289
“I had to read the entire Warren Report”: Author interview with Symington.

289
“It’s unbelievable some of the stuff they concealed from the commission”: Katzenbach testimony, HSCA.

290
“I’d say the Cubans probably had the worst judgment”: Author interview with Katzenbach.

290
“there was more to it than we’ve gotten”: Author interview with Fred Dutton.

290
“I would have put my dad in the [conspiracy] camp”: Author interview with Daley.

290
“he thought it was for the good of the country”: Author interview with Carol Bundy.

291
“I have made no effort to find out”: Author interview with McNamara. McNamara’s reluctance to focus his considerable intellectual energies on the assassination was made clear in an earlier interview, with JFK researcher Noel Twyman. But the former defense secretary, who agreed to talk with Twyman at his Georgetown house in October 1994 after meeting him on a hiking trek in the high Sierras, did grapple with the idea of a Dallas conspiracy in the course of their long dinner conversation. While McNamara insisted that it was impossible for top CIA officials like Allen Dulles and Richard Helms to have been involved in the assassination, he conceded that rogue agents might have played a role. “I absolutely don’t think the CIA assassinated Kennedy, although I don’t rule out some renegades,” he told Twyman.

291
“He’s an agnostic, but I’m not”: Quoted in Eric Hamburg,
JFK, Nixon, Oliver Stone & Me: An Idealist’s Journey from Capitol Hill to Hollywood Hell
, 272.

291
“We played tennis with him”: Author interview with Hamburg.

292
“a man who is a fabulous gardener is not going to kill off a president”: Author interview with Marie Ridder.

292
“It’s terribly painful”: Author interview with Sorensen.

293
“We saw pieces of bone and brain tissue”: O’Donnell and Powers, 27.

294
“That’s not what you told the Warren Commission”: Tip O’Neill,
Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O’Neill
, 178.

294
Hoover himself pressured O’Donnell: Waldron, 902.

294
“they didn’t want to know”: Author interview with Kenny O’Donnell Jr.

295
He couldn’t get the “sickening sound” out of his head: Quoted in Melanson, 76.

295
“He seemed to step forward into human company”: Helen O’Donnell, 339.

295
“the music without the harp”: Quoted in
Washington Post
, September 30, 1977.

297
America’s military prowess must be coupled with “the inner strength and wisdom”: Quoted in
New York Times
, September 30, 1964.

297
“a
lot
of people would have taken a bullet for Bob Kennedy”: Author interview with Guthman.

298
“They’re for him”: Quoted in Guthman, 294.

298
“he wanted a vice president who could help the country”: Quoted in Helen O’Donnell, 346.

298
“let’s go form our own country”: Quoted in Schlesinger, 661.

298
“We are not going to let Bobby and Jackie Kennedy steal this”: Quoted in Helen O’Donnell, 349.

299
Kennedy’s voice suddenly cracked: Thomas,
Robert Kennedy
, 298.

299
“God damn, Bob, be yourself”: Ibid., 299.

300
“Everybody says I’m so ruthless”: Author interview with Justin Feldman.

300
“We quietly cried together”: Joe Tydings oral history, JFK Library.

300
“He didn’t see it as a real action place”: Salinger oral history, JFK Library.

301
the visiting U.S senator could not escape official supervision:
Direccion Federal de Seguridad
memos, November 16 and 17, 1964, courtesy of Jefferson Morley.

301
Scott noted…that playwright Elena Garro de Paz: John Newman,
Oswald and the CIA
, 382.

302
Bobby also agreed to meet…with Penn Jones Jr.: Author interviews with Penn Jones III, Gary Shaw and David Wrone; also
Dallas Morning News
, November 22, 1992.

302
“a small shrine to President Kennedy”:
New York Times Magazine
, June 20, 1965.

302
“He always forgot the damn overcoat”: Author interview with Ronnie Eldridge.

302
“My first husband was killed in World War II”: Author interview with Ridder.

303
“We know the CIA was involved, and the Mafia”: Author interview with Goodwin.

303
“I feel strongly that I am doing a service”: Goodwin letter, undated, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy papers, JFK Library.

303
“I wish you wouldn’t”: Quoted in Goodwin, 254.

304
“he doesn’t have the intellectual depth of his brother”: Ibid., 299.

304
the closest personal relationship: Ibid., 433.

304
Goodwin was “the first member of the late president’s inner circle”:
New York Times
, July 24, 1966.

304
help get him a copy of a thirty-three-page letter written by Jack Ruby: Goodwin letter, March 2, 1966, Senator Robert F. Kennedy papers, JFK Library.

305
Over nightcaps in Kennedy’s living room: Goodwin, 463.

306
Walinsky [found] the Warren Report…“completely tortured and strange”: Author interview with Adam Walinsky.

306
And so Kennedy bided his time: According to Walinsky, Kennedy knew how to be patient. Once Walinsky relayed some disturbing information to RFK that he had learned about high-ranking CIA officials. The Kennedy aide had been informed by a close friend—a psychiatrist at the National Institutes of Mental Health who treated “the top CIA wives”—that the upper ranks of the intelligence agency were filled with sexually deviant personalities. “[My friend] came to me,” Walinksy recalled in an oral history for the JFK Library, “and he said, ‘Listen, I want you to know that the people who are running the CIA are really very, very, very sick and disturbed individuals. I mean, like they’re the kind of people who make their wives tie them up to the bed and beat them with whips at night…I mean, you know, real fetishes and crazy sado-masochistic behavior…. He was talking about the
very
top level people.” When Walinksy reported this to Kennedy, the senator made it clear to him that it was “just something you’ve got to tuck away and wait…until you get the levers of power.”