So As I Was Saying . . .: My Somewhat Eventful Life (22 page)
Read So As I Was Saying . . .: My Somewhat Eventful Life Online
Authors: Frank Mankiewicz,Joel L. Swerdlow
Kennedy began by asking what an appropriate response would be to questions challenging our position supporting a military dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. The assistant secretary of state, who was presiding over the meeting, replied, “You could say what your brother said about Communism in the Caribbean.” Now, even casual readers of a newspaper knew Robert Kennedy always referred to John F. Kennedy as “the president” and never, in public at least, as “my brother” or, worse, “Jack.” The official’s choice of words, even to me, a novice at such meetings, seemed intentional. “And just which statement of President Kennedy did you have in mind?” RFK asked. The State Department official had no answer. Next, Senator Kennedy asked how he should respond if asked particular questions and gave some examples related to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and other Latin American countries then in the news. The State Department briefers began to suggest answers, convoluted, obtuse, and self-righteous. At one point, RFK interrupted to say, “I hope you’re not using any statement of President Kennedy’s to justify what we’re doing in the Dominican Republic.” Needless to say, my admiration grew.
The briefing went from bad to worse. The official line was given that we were threatening to suspend all aid to Peru over the dispute concerning the contract with Standard Oil. The dispute concerned a contract giving Standard the right to extract oil for a very minimal royalty, a contract negotiated by a previous military government. The present government wanted a more just royalty, claiming the contract was obtained by fraud and corruption, and Standard preferred not to pay at all. The climax (at least to my ear) came when the conversation turned to Brazil, where a military group had recently taken over the government, exiled the elected president, dissolved the parliament, and outlawed political parties. They did not even bother to hide the widespread torture of journalists and anyone else who dared ask questions about their actions. Kennedy asked what his stance should be, and a State Department desk officer rose and started to read from an eight-by-five card. “You could say,” he began, “while we regret a great power has temporarily seen fit to suspend—” RFK cut him off, sharply, with words I will never forget: “I don’t talk that way.” The briefing ended shortly afterward, with Senator Kennedy summing up: “So, are you telling me, if you get into an argument with an American oil company, we’ll cut off all aid, but if you expel the president, dissolve the Congress, and outlaw political parties, that’s okay?” To which one of the State Department officials replied, “That’s about the size of it.”
A week or so later, I found myself at a meeting of my country directors in Panama and saw in the local newspaper that Senator Kennedy would be in Panama that evening—from one to four
A.M.
, actually, for refueling. This was in the pre-jet era. Flights from Miami to South America had to stop to refuel, and the most common stop-off point was Panama, where the United States still “owned” the Canal Zone. So I headed for the airport somewhat after midnight to see how things were going.
There were two or three local reporters at the airport. They asked me when Senator Kennedy would come down for a press conference, and I agreed to find out for them. I went to the gate and climbed the steps to the plane. There was no security. All I had to be was an American who acted as though he knew what he was doing.
Kennedy’s schedule had no press conference, and he had not planned on leaving the plane. It was, after all, two
A.M.
, the middle of the night. Kennedy was in his pajamas; planes on long flights then had some made-to-order berths much like sleeping cars on trains. The senator asked me who would be most damaged if he didn’t come out—the reporters or their publishers. When I assured him the answer was the reporters, he agreed at once to get dressed and hold the press conference. Someone suggested he stay in bed on the plane and bring the reporters on board. When he asked me what I thought of that idea, I replied I thought it was what General de Gaulle would do. (De Gaulle, then president of France, was famous worldwide for pompous and aloof attitudes.) Robert Kennedy agreed and, with me as interpreter, promptly got dressed, went down the steps from the airplane, greeted the reporters, and held the press conference.
* * *
When Robert Kennedy came to Peru, Peace Corps volunteers were quick to show him the truths of the
barriadas,
the organizations in the “slums,” and to tell him stories of often-ugly U.S. actions in the local economy. This kind of information was almost always the result of solid confidences, required after two years of working with local officials and conducting investigations.
After returning to Washington, D.C., RFK and I spoke a few times about his trip; by then, I knew the voice on the phone really belonged to him. He spoke favorably of the Peace Corps projects he’d seen. And then, to my surprise, he called me at home a week or so later to say his press secretary had just resigned, and did I want the job? I accepted (after, of course, checking with my wife) without knowing my salary or having any idea what a press secretary does. What had he seen in me that prompted him to make the offer? I thought at the time, and still think, it was likely the “de Gaulle” answer.
* * *
I now often refer to RFK as Bob, a name that rolls off my tongue so smoothly that I don’t often think about how jarring it might be to some people.
In those days, I always called him “Senator.” “Bob” was for his friends and staff who’d become friends; a few staff people from the Justice Department days like John Seigenthaler would use “Bob,” but certainly not I. Indeed, I was afraid
Bob
was going to fire me before I even showed up for my first day working for him.
* * *
Before flying to Washington, D.C., to begin my new responsibilities, I had delivered a commencement address at California State College at Los Angeles. A
Los Angeles Times
story about this speech carried the headline “Graduates Hear U.S. Policy Hit, ‘Beatniks’ Hailed.” The story began, “American foreign policy was condemned for ‘unbelievable smugness and blandness,’ while ‘student agitators’ were praised as ‘real leaders’ in a commencement address yesterday.”
According to the newspaper, I also told the thirty-three hundred graduates,
I’m afraid that unless some of the faint stirrings now apparent become deeper rumbles, you are not going to be the leaders of tomorrow, but followers, and rather docile ones at that. But, if that slice of campus society which takes ideas seriously and is willing to conduct its politics in the streets of our nation and the world can strengthen and grow, then there is a chance—a narrow chance but one worth trying—that the ancient revolutionary ideas that are the basis of our society can once against inspire and light the world.
The account in the
Los Angeles Times
was accurate, so soon Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee known as Mr. Conservative, was on the Senate floor demanding Robert Kennedy not put a person like Frank Mankiewicz on the Senate payroll. The columnist William F. Buckley, for decades the nation’s best-read conservative columnist, joined in.
I thought my Senate career might be over before it began. But Robert Kennedy laughed and told me not to do it again and not to worry about it.
* * *
Sargent Shriver died at ninety-five; newspapers carried the news on their front pages. Catholic funerals are often designed not to be sad but to celebrate that the recently deceased person has gone to heaven and is united with Christ.
“Age ninety-five, surrounded by family who love you and people who admire you, is a good way to go,” said a friend at the funeral.
“You won’t think that when you’re ninety-four,” I thought.
Some staff had, at the last minute, suggested to Robert Kennedy on primary election night in California that he spare himself the tiring prospect of working his way through the crowded ballroom and exit via the kitchen.
There is, of course, speculation that even if Robert Kennedy had not decided to exit the Ambassador Hotel’s ballroom through the kitchen that night—if he’d exited, as planned, through the crowd and out through the ballroom—then Sirhan Sirhan or someone else still would have assassinated him, especially given the emotions of the times and the absence of effective security.
I don’t think Sirhan, Fate, or the Lady in the marketplace would have found him somewhere else. What happended was a fluke. Robert F. Kennedy would have lived, and he might have been elected president.
It’s difficult to know what would be different. A lot of powerful people and powerful interests were aroused against the things in which he believed. He was worried that people, especially those who were his strongest supporters, might be disappointed in him. The political and economic realities of the country, the institutional momentum to do certain things, such as continue the war in Vietnam and fracture much of the country into what the Kerner Commission called “two nations, separate and unequal,” were very strong. We know that now looking back; he certainly sensed it then. (The Kerner Commission, named after its chairman, Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois, had been appointed by President Johnson during the summer of 1967 to investigate the causes of riots in Detroit, Newark, New Jersey, and other American cities.)
* * *
Friends who teach tell me young people today often lean forward when they hear the words “Robert Kennedy.” The name still grabs their imagination and triggers their questions.
From a practical perspective, Robert Kennedy didn’t accomplish much as a senator. But I suspect his impact comes from his hold on people’s imaginations. He may even rival in historical staying power his brother John. The truth is, except for a few—too few—years as attorney general, Robert Kennedy never exercised power. In the Senate, he had no power. He was, one might say, all potential.
I had thought I would be with him the rest of my life; it felt right, as though everything that had preceded had been preparation for what we would do. He and I, furthermore, were the “old men” in an office filled with mostly young people. Indeed, R. W. Apple, the chief political correspondent for
The New York Times,
wrote when I joined RFK’s staff, “Senator Kennedy has found a playmate his own age.” And I recognize until now I’ve never
written
anything about him. I’ve told stories, and I’ve given interviews to countless journalists, academics, and others writing about him. But to actually sit down and write about what it was like to work with him and be with him on a daily basis? I’ve never considered doing that, never even thought about it. Maybe it’s easy to deflect things by telling stories, especially the stories I’ve told over and over. Or maybe for me, looking at Bob is a bit like looking at the sun. If you notice, the Impressionists and other painters always depict the sun rising or setting; they never show the sun directly up in the sky unless it is obscured, say, by a cloud. They know the human eye simply cannot look directly at the sun when it is high in the sky. Maybe it is still that way for me and RFK.
* * *
Academic literature on RFK can be divided into roughly two groups: books by people who knew him personally (the definitive one by far is by the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.), and ones by authors who have memories of RFK as a figure in the news during their childhood. Those of us who were with him during those Senate years, which turned out to be the final years, knew his life would wind up as the subject of books. Though we never talked or thought much about it, we assumed we were living in one of the early chapters. His life had been full but was just beginning.
* * *
Thanks to Robert Kennedy, I’m certified.
I know the tape clips people talk about. People always tell me they remember seeing me on television, standing on a car and saying, “Senator Robert F. Kennedy is dead. He was forty-two years old.” But that’s wrong. Standing on the car in the hospital’s parking lot was what I did right after we first arrived at the hospital. I did deliver a bulletin about RFK while standing on the roof of a car. And I did, the next day, tell everybody he had died. But not the two events together. A number of people apparently have, throughout their entire lives, conflated the most dramatic part of two very different memories.
Here are all the
New York Times
pieces that printed my full statements on his medical condition and death:
2:30
A.M.
, June 5
A team of six neurosurgeons will start to operate on Senator Kennedy in about five or 10 minutes. He has one superficial shoulder wound and one very critical wound—the bullet which entered the right mastoid bone on the right ear and has gone to the mid-line of the skull. That bullet is lodged in his brain and they will operate within a very few minutes in an attempt to remove it.
His breathing is good and unassisted. His heart is good. He’s unconscious and the doctors describe his condition as very critical. And that’s all I can tell you.
4:45
A.M.
, June 5
I have a very short announcement to make. The doctors now say that the surgery will take another hour or perhaps two. But Senator Kennedy’s life signs remain good—respiration, pulse, blood pressure. And that’s all they say.
He’s in surgery. Mrs. Kennedy is with him. Senator Ted Kennedy has arrived at the hospital and the doctors now say that the surgery will add another hour and perhaps two.
7:20
A.M.
, June 5
The surgical team has now completed their work—approximately three hours of surgery. The team—including Dr. Maxwell Andler, the UCLA School of Medicine; Nat Downs Reid and Dr. Henry Cuneo of the University of Southern California School of Medicine—have completed their surgery.