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Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968), commonly known by his initials RFK, was an American politician from Massachusetts. He served as a senator for New York from 1965 until his assassination in 1968. He was previously the 64th U.S. Attorney General from 1961 to 1964, serving under his older brother, President John F. Kennedy and his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1968 election.

After having served in the United States Naval Reserve as a Seaman Apprentice from 1944 to 1946, Kennedy graduated from Harvard College and the University of Virginia School of Law. Prior to entering public office, he worked as a correspondent to the Boston Post and as an assistant  counsel to the Senate committee chaired by Joe McCarthy. He gained national attention as the chief counsel of the Senate Labor Rackets Committee from 1957 to 1959, where he publicly challenged Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa over the corrupt practices of the union, and authored The Enemy Within, a book about corruption in organized labor.

Kennedy was the campaign manager for his brother John in the 1960 presidential election.  He was appointed Attorney General after the successful election and served as the closest adviser to the president from 1961 to 1963. His tenure is best known for its advocacy for the Civil Rights Movement, crusade against organized crime and the Mafia, and involvement in U.S. foreign policy related to Cuba. After his brother's assassination, he remained in office in the Johnson administration for a few months until leaving to run for the United States Senate in 1964 where he defeated Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating.

In 1968, Kennedy was a leading candidate  for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, appealing especially to poor, African-American, Hispanic, and Catholic voters. Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, after defeating Senator Eugene McCarthy in the California presidential primary, he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, and died the following day.

Early life

Robert F. Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the seventh child of businessman/politician Joseph P. "Joe" Kennedy, Sr. (1888–1969) and philanthropist Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1890–1995).  His older brothers were Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (1915–1944) and John F. "Jack" Kennedy (1917–1963), who was elected the 35th President of the United States in 1960. His younger brother was longtime United States Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy (1932–2009).  All four of his grandparents were the children of immigrants from Ireland. 

His father was a wealthy businessman, and a leading Irish Catholic figure in the Democratic Party. After he stepped down as ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1940, Joe, Sr. focused his attention on his first born, Joseph, Jr., planning that he would enter politics and be elected president. He also urged the younger children to examine and discuss current events in order to propel them to public service.  After Joseph, Jr. was killed during World War II, the senior Kennedy's hopes fell on his second son, John, to become president. Joseph, Sr. had the money and connections to play a central role in the family's political ambitions. 

Kennedy's older brother, John, was often bedridden by illness and as a result became a voracious reader. Although he made little effort to get to know his younger brother during his childhood, John would take him for walks and regale him with the stories of heroes and adventures he had read. One of their favorite authors was John Buchan, who wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps both Robert and John were influenced by the book. John sometimes referred to Robert as "Black Robert" due to his prudishness and disposition. 

Unlike his older brothers, Kennedy took to heart their mother Rose's agenda for everything to have "a purpose" which included visiting historic sites during family outings, visits to the church during morning walks, and games used to expand vocabulary and math skills.  He described his position in the family hierarchy by saying, "When you come from that far down, you have to struggle to survive." He frequently tried to get the attention of his older brothers as they were growing up, but wasn't often successful.

In September 1927, the Kennedy family moved to Riverdale, New York, a wealthy neighborhood in the Bronx, then two years later, moved 5 mi northeast to Bronxville, New York. Kennedy spent summers with his family at their compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and Christmas and Easter holidays at their winter home in Palm Beach, Florida, purchased in 1933. He attended public elementary school in Riverdale from kindergarten through second grade; then Bronxville School, the public school in Bronxville, from third through fifth grade. He repeated the third grade.  A teacher at Bronxville reflected that he was "a regular boy". She added, "It seemed hard for him to finish his work sometimes. But he was only ten after all."Hilty, pp. 23-24. He then attended Riverdale Country School, a private school for boys in Riverdale, for sixth grade. He would later recall of his childhood "going to different schools, always having to make new friends, and that I was very awkward...[a]nd I was pretty quiet most of the time. And I didn't mind being alone." He developed an interest in American history, decorating his bedroom with pictures of U.S. Presidents and filling his bookshelves with volumes on the American Civil War. He also became an avid stamp collector, once receiving a handwritten letter from Franklin Roosevelt, who was also a philatelist.

In March 1938, Kennedy sailed with his mother and his four youngest siblings to England to join his father who had begun serving as ambassador to the U.K. He attended the private Gibbs School for Boys in London for seventh grade, returning to the U.S. just before the outbreak of World War II in Europe. In April 1939, he gave his first public speech at the laying of a cornerstone for a youth club in England. According to embassy and newspaper reports, his statements were penciled in his own hand and were delivered in a "calm and confident" manner. 

St. Paul's and Portsmouth Priory

In September 1939,  Kennedy began eighth grade at St. Paul's School, an elite Protestant private preparatory school for boys in Concord, New Hampshire,  that his father favored.   However, after two months his mother, unhappy with their use of the Protestant Bible, took advantage of her Ambassador husband's absence from Boston and withdrew Kennedy from St. Paul's. She enrolled him instead in Portsmouth Priory School, a Benedictine Catholic boarding school for boys in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where there were morning and evening prayers along with mass three times a week and high mass on Sundays.  He attended Portsmouth for eighth through tenth grade. 

At Portsmouth Priory School, he was known as "Mrs. Kennedy's little boy Bobby" after he introduced his mother to classmates, who made fun of them. He was defensive of his mother and on one occasion chased a student out of the dormitory after the student commented on her appearance. He befriended Peter MacLellan and wrote to him when his brother John was serving in the U.S. Navy that he would be visiting his brother "because he might be killed any minute".  Kennedy blamed himself when his grades failed to improve. In letters to her son, Rose urged him to read more and strengthen his vocabulary. Rose also expressed disappointment and wrote that she did not expect him to let her down.Mills, pp. 34-35. He began developing in other ways, and his brother, John, noticed his increased physical strength, predicting that he "would be bouncing me around plenty in two more years".Hilty, p. 38.  Monks at Portsmouth Priory School regarded him as a moody and indifferent student. Father Damian Kearney who was two classes behind him reflected that he "didn't look happy" nor did he "smile much". According to Father Damian's review of school records, he was a "poor-to-mediocre student, except for history".

Milton Academy

In September 1942, Kennedy transferred to his third boarding school, Milton Academy, in Milton, Massachusetts, for eleventh and twelfth grades.Schlesinger (2002) [1978] p. 42. His father Joseph Kennedy, Sr. had wanted Kennedy to transfer to Milton, believing it would better prepare his son for Harvard. At Milton, he met and became friends with David Hackett. He invited Hackett to join him for Sunday mass. Hackett started accompanying him and was impressed when on one Sunday, Kennedy took it upon himself to fill in for a missing altar boy. Hackett admired Kennedy's determination to bypass his shortcomings and remembered him redoubling his efforts whenever something did not come easy to him, which included athletics, studies, success with girls and popularity. Hackett remembered the two of them being "misfits", a commonality that drew him to Kennedy along with an unwillingness to conform to how others acted even if doing so meant not being accepted.

Kennedy's grades improved and one of his first relationships was with a girl named Piedy Bailey. The pair were photographed together when he walked her home after chapel on a Sunday night. Bailey was fond of him and remembered him as being "very appealing". She recalled him being funny, "separate, larky; outside the cliques; private all the time". Soon after he transferred to Milton, he pressed his father to allow him to enlist, as he wanted to catch up to his brothers, who were both serving in the military. Kennedy had arrived at Milton unfamiliar with his peers and made little attempt to know the names of his classmates; he instead called most of the other boys "fella". For this, he was nicknamed "Fella". Most of the school's students had come in eighth or ninth grade and cliques had already been formed. Despite this, his schoolmates would later say the school had no prejudice. He had an early sense of virtue; he disliked dirty jokes and bullying, once stepping in when an upperclassman tried bothering a younger student.Thomas, pp. 37-40. The headmaster at Milton would later summarize that he was a "very intelligent boy, quiet and shy, but not outstanding, and he left no special mark on Milton".

Relationship with parents 

In Kennedy's younger years, his father dubbed him the "runt" of the family and wrote him off. Close family friend Lem Billings once remarked to Joe Sr. that he was "the most generous little boy" and Joe Sr. replied that he did not know where his son "got that". Billings commented that the only similarity between Robert and Joe Sr. was their eye color. As Kennedy grew, his father worried that he was soft on others, conflicting with Joe's ideology. In response, Kennedy developed a tough persona that masked his gentle personality, attempting to appease his father.Mills, pp. 18-19.  Biographer Judie Mills wrote that Joe, Sr.'s lack of interest in Robert was evident by the length of time it took for him to decide to transfer him to Milton Academy; both Joe, Jr. and John attended the exclusive Protestant prep school Choate from their freshman year while Robert was already a junior by the time he was enrolled at Milton. Despite his father's disdain, Kennedy continued to  seek his approval, requesting that Joe, Sr. write him a letter about his opinions on different political events and World War II.

As a child, Kennedy also strove to meet the expectations of his mother, to become the most dutiful, religious, affectionate and obedient of the Kennedy children, but there grew greater distance between him and his father. Rose found his gentle personality endearing, though this was noted as having made him "invisible to his father". She heavily influenced him and like her, he became a devout Catholic, practicing his religion more seriously than the other boys in the family throughout his lifetime.  He impressed his parents as a child by taking on a newspaper route, seeking their approval and wishing to distinguish himself. However, he had the family chauffeur driving him, so that he could make his deliveries, in a Rolls-Royce. His mother discovered this and the deliveries ceased.

Joe Sr. was satisfied with Kennedy as an adult, believing him to have become "hard as nails",  more like him than any of the other children while his mother believed he exemplified all she had wanted in a child. Mills wrote, "His parents' conflicting views would be echoed in the opinions of millions of people throughout Bobby's life. Robert Kennedy was a ruthless opportunist who would stop at nothing to attain his ambitions. Robert Kennedy was America's most compassionate public figure, the only person who could save a divided country."

Navy service (1944–1946)

Six weeks before his 18th birthday, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve as a Seaman Apprentice,  but was released from active duty until March 1944 when he left Milton Academy early to report to the V-12 Navy College Training Program at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His V-12 training was at Harvard (March–November 1944); Bates College in Lewiston, Maine (November 1944 – June 1945, where he graduated with a specialized V-12 degree from the college along with 15 other members of his service  ); and concluded his training at Harvard (June 1945 – January 1946).   While serving in Lewiston, he wrote a letter to David Hackett which reflected his feelings of inadequacy and frustration at being isolated from the action. "Things are the same as usual up here, and me being my usual moody self I get very sad at times." He added, "If I don't get the hell out of here soon I'll die." Aside from Hackett, who was serving as a paratrooper, more of his Parker Hall dorm mates went overseas and left him behind. One of them getting into combat before him was a thought that made him "feel more and more like a Draft Dodger or something". He was also frustrated with the shirker's mentality of some of the others serving in V-12 at Bates.

Kennedy's brother Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. was killed in action in August 1944,  after his bomber exploded during a volunteer mission known as Operation Aphrodite. Robert was most affected by his father's reaction to his eldest son's passing, who appeared completely heartbroken and it was commented by his peer Fred Garfield that Kennedy developed depression and questioned his faith for a short time. After his brother's death, Kennedy gained more attention, moving up higher on the family patriarchy.Thomas, p. 44. On December 15, 1945, the U.S. Navy commissioned the destroyer , and shortly thereafter granted Kennedy's request to be released from naval officer training to serve aboard Kennedy starting on February 1, 1946 as a seaman apprentice on the ship's shakedown cruise in the Caribbean.  On May 30, 1946, he received his honorable discharge from the Navy.  For his service in the Navy, he was eligible for the American Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.

Further study and journalism (1946–1951)

In September 1946, Kennedy entered Harvard as a junior, having received credit for his time in the V-12 program.  He worked hard to make the Harvard varsity football team as an end, was a starter and scored a touchdown in the first game of his senior year before breaking his leg in practice, earning his varsity letter when his coach sent him in for the last minutes of a game against Yale, wearing a cast.  His father spoke positively of him when he served as a blocking back and sometime receiver for the faster Dave Hackett. Joseph, Sr. attended some of Kennedy's practices and saw his son catch a touchdown pass in an early-season rout of the Western Maryland. His teammates admired his physical courage. He was five feet ten and 155 pounds, which made him too small for college football. Despite this, he was a fearless hitter and once tackled a 230-pound fullback head-on. Wally Flynn, another player, looked up in the huddle after one play to see him crying after having broken his leg. Disregarding the injury, he kept playing. 

Throughout 1946, Kennedy became active in the campaign of his brother John for the U.S. Representative seat vacated by James Michael Curley, joining the campaign full-time after his naval discharge. Biographer Schlesinger wrote that the election served as an entry into politics for both Robert and John.  Two years later in March 1948, Robert graduated from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in political science.   After graduating, he immediately sailed on the  with a college friend for a six-month tour of Europe and the Middle East, accredited as a correspondent for the Boston Post, for which he filed six stories.  Four of these stories, submitted from Palestine shortly before the end of the British Mandate, provided a first-hand view of the tensions in the land. He was critical of the British policy in Palestine and praised the Jewish people he met there, calling them  "hardy and tough". He held out some hope after seeing Arabs and Jews working side by side but, in the end feared that the hatred between the groups was too strong and would lead to a war. 

In September 1948, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville.  Kennedy adapted to the new environment, being elected president of the Student Legal Forum, where he successful produced outside speakers including James M. Landis, William O. Douglas, Arthur Krock and Joseph McCarthy and his family members Joe Sr. and John F. Kennedy. Kennedy's paper on Yalta, written during his senior year, is deposited in the Law Library's Treasure Trove.  On June 17, 1950, Kennedy married Ethel Skakel at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenwich, Connecticut. His brother John served as his best man. Kennedy graduated from law school in June 1951 and flew with Ethel to Greenwich to stay in his father-in-law's guest house. The couple's first child, Kathleen, was born on July 4, 1951.  Kennedy spent the summer studying for the Massachusetts bar exam.  During this time, his brother John tried to keep Joe, Sr. "at arm's length". The brothers rarely interacted until Robert was contacted by Kenny O'Donnell to repair the relationship of John and their father during John's Senate campaign. As a result of this, Joe, Sr. came to view Kennedy favorably as reliable and "willing to sacrifice himself" for the family.Thomas, pp. 58-59. 

In September 1951, he went to San Francisco as a correspondent for the Boston Post to cover the convention concluding the Treaty of Peace with Japan.  In October 1951, he embarked on a seven-week Asian trip with his brother John (then Massachusetts 11th district congressman) and their sister Patricia to Israel, India, Vietnam, and Japan.  Because of their age gap, the two brothers had previously seen little of each other—this 25000 mi trip came at the behest of their father and was the first extended time they had spent together, serving to deepen their relationship. On this trip, the brothers met Liaquat Ali Khan just prior to his death by assassination and India's prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. 

Senate committee counsel and political campaigns  (1951–1960)

JFK Senate campaign and Joseph McCarthy (1952–1955)

In November 1951, Kennedy moved with his wife and daughter to a townhouse in Georgetown in Washington, D.C., and started work as a lawyer in the Internal Security Section of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice; the section was charged with investigating suspected Soviet agents.  In February 1952, he was transferred to the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn to prosecute fraud cases. On June 6, 1952, Kennedy resigned to manage his brother Jack's successful 1952 U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts.  JFK's victory was of great importance to the Kennedy family, elevating him to national prominence and turning him into a serious potential presidential candidate, but his brother's victory was equally important to Robert, who felt he had succeeded in eliminating his father's negative perceptions of him. 

In December 1952, at the behest of his father, Kennedy was appointed by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy as assistant counsel of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.  McCarthy was a friend to the Kennedy family, and was the godfather of Robert's daughter Kathleen.  However, Kennedy disapproved of the senator's aggressive methods of garnering intel on suspected communists.  This was a highly visible job for him. He resigned in July 1953, but "retained a fondness for McCarthy".  The period of July 1953 to January 1954 saw him have "a professional and personal nadir" due to feeling that he was adrift while trying to prove himself to the rest of the Kennedy family.

After a period as an assistant to his father on the Hoover Commission, Kennedy rejoined the Senate committee staff as chief counsel for the Democratic minority in February 1954.  That month, McCarthy's chief counsel Roy Cohn subpoenaed Annie Lee Moss, accusing her of membership in the Communist party. Kennedy revealed that Cohn had called the wrong Annie Lee Moss and he requested the file on Moss from the FBI. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had been forewarned by Cohn and denied him access, referring to RFK as "an arrogant whipper-snapper".Hilty, pp. 86-87. When the Democrats gained the majority in the Senate in January 1955, Kennedy became chief counsel and was a background figure in the televised Army-McCarthy Hearings of 1954 into McCarthy's conduct.  The Annie Lee Moss incident turned Cohn into an enemy, which led to Kennedy assisting Democratic senators in ridiculing Cohn during the hearings. The animosity grew to the point of Cohn being restrained after asking RFK if he wanted to fight him. For his work on the McCarthy committee, Kennedy was included in a list of "Ten Outstanding Young Men of 1954", created by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce. His father had arranged the nomination, his first national award.Hilty, pp. 90-91.

Stevenson aide and focus on organized labor (1956–1960) 

Kennedy went on to work as an aide to Adlai Stevenson during the 1956 presidential election which would help him learn how campaigns worked, in preparation for a future run by his brother, Jack.  Unimpressed with Stevenson, he reportedly voted for incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Kennedy was also a delegate at the 1956 Democratic National Convention, having replaced Tip O'Neil under the request of his brother John and joining in what was ultimately an unsuccessful effort to help JFK get the vice presidential nomination.  Shortly after this, Kennedy tried making amends with J. Edgar Hoover, per instruction from his father.  There seemed to be some improvement in their interactions, which came to be seen as "elemental political necessity" by Kennedy. This later changed after Kennedy was appointed Attorney General, where Hoover saw him as an "unprecedented threat". 

He soon made a name for himself as the chief counsel to the 1957–59 Senate Labor Rackets Committee under chairman John L. McClellan.   Kennedy was given authority over testimony scheduling, areas of investigation and witness questioning by McClellan, a move done by the chairman to limit attention to him and allow outrage by organized labor to direct toward Kennedy.  In a famous scene, Kennedy squared off with Teamsters Union  President Jimmy Hoffa during the antagonistic argument that marked Hoffa's testimony.  During the hearings, Kennedy received criticism from liberal critics and other commentators for both his outburst of impassioned anger and doubts on the innocence of those who invoked the Fifth Amendment.  Senators Barry Goldwater and Karl Mundt wrote to each other and complained about "the Kennedy boys" as having hijacked the McClellan Committee by their focus on Hoffa and the Teamsters.  They believed Kennedy covered for Walter Reuther and the United Auto Workers, a union which typically would back Democratic office seekers. Amidst the allegations, Kennedy wrote in his journal that the two Senators had "no guts" as they never addressed him directly, only to the press.  He left the Rackets Committee in late 1959 in order to run his brother's presidential campaign.

JFK presidential campaign (1960) 

In 1960, Kennedy published the successful book The Enemy Within, describing the corrupt practices within the Teamsters and other unions that he had helped investigate, which he had drafted over the summer of the previous year. Biographer Evan Thomas wrote that the book was a bestseller and could have launched a political career on its own, but "family duty called",Thomas, pp. 88-89. and Kennedy went to work on the presidential campaign of his brother, John.  In contrast to his role in his brother's previous campaign eight years prior, Kennedy gave stump speeches throughout the primary season, gaining confidence as time went on.  His strategy "to win at any cost" led him to call on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. to attack Hubert Humphrey as a draft dodger; Roosevelt eventually did make the statement that Humphrey avoided service. 

Concerned that John Kennedy was going to receive the Democratic Party's nomination, some supporters of Lyndon Johnson, who was also running for the nomination, revealed to the press that JFK had Addison's disease, saying that he required life-sustaining cortisone treatments. Though in fact a diagnosis had been made, Kennedy tried to protect his brother by denying the allegation, saying that JFK had never had "an ailment described classically as Addison's disease".   After securing the nomination, John Kennedy nonetheless decided to offer Lyndon Johnson the vice presidency. This did not sit well with some Kennedy supporters and Robert tried unsuccessfully to convince Johnson to turn down the offer, leading Johnson to view Robert with contempt afterward.  RFK had already disliked Johnson since prior to the presidential campaign, seeing the latter as threatening to his brother's ambitions.   Despite Kennedy's attempts,  Johnson became his brother's running mate. 

Kennedy worked toward downplaying his brother's faith as a Catholic during the primary, but took a more aggressive and supportive stance during the general election. These concerns were mostly calmed after JFK delivered a speech in September in Houston where he said that he was in favor of the separation of church and state.  The following month, Kennedy was involved in securing the release of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. from a jail in Atlanta. Kennedy spoke with Georgia governor Ernest Vandiver and later Judge Oscar Mitchell after the judge had sentenced King for violating his probation when he protested at a whites-only snack bar. 

Attorney General of the United States (1961–1964)

After winning the 1960 presidential election, President-elect John F. Kennedy appointed his younger brother Attorney General. The choice was controversial, with The New York Times and The New Republic calling Robert inexperienced and unqualified. He had no experience in any state or federal court, causing the President to joke, "I can't see that it's wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law."  However, Kennedy did have significant experience in studying and fighting organized crime.

According to Bobby Baker, the Senate Majority Secretary and a protégé of Lyndon Johnson, President-elect Kennedy did not want to name his brother as Attorney General. However, their father overruled the President-elect. At the behest of Johnson, Baker persuaded the influential Southern Senator Richard Russell to allow a voice vote to confirm the President's brother in January 1961, as Kennedy "would have been lucky to get 40 votes" on a roll-call vote.  Evelyn Lincoln wrote of that November 19, 1963, conversation just three days before Kennedy's assassination. 

Kennedy performed well in his confirmation hearing and chose what friend and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. called an "outstanding" group of deputy and assistant attorneys general, including Byron White and Nicholas Katzenbach.

Hilty concludes that Kennedy "played an unusual combination of roles—campaign director, attorney general, executive overseer, controller of patronage, chief adviser, and brother protector" and that nobody before him had such power.  His tenure as Attorney General was easily the period of greatest power for the office – no previous United States Attorney General had enjoyed such clear influence on all areas of policy during an administration.   To a great extent, President Kennedy sought the advice and counsel of his younger brother, with Robert being the president's closest political adviser. He was relied upon as both the president's primary source of administrative information and as a general counsel with whom trust was implicit. He exercised widespread authority over every cabinet department, leading the Associated Press to dub him "Bobby—Washington's No. 2-man".

The president once remarked about his brother that, "If I want something done and done immediately I rely on the Attorney General. He is very much the doer in this administration, and has an organizational gift I have rarely if ever seen surpassed." 

Berlin

As one of the president's closest White House advisers, Kennedy played a crucial role in the events surrounding the Berlin Crisis of 1961.  Operating mainly through a private backchannel connection to Soviet spy Georgi Bolshakov, he relayed important diplomatic communications between the American and Soviet governments.  Most significantly, this connection helped the US set up the Vienna Summit in June 1961 and later defuse the tank standoff with the Soviets at Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie in October. 

Organized crime and the Teamsters

As Attorney General, Kennedy pursued a relentless crusade against organized crime and the Mafia, sometimes disagreeing on strategy with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Convictions against organized crime figures rose by 800 percent during his term. Kennedy worked to shift Hoover's focus away from communism to organized crime; communism being seen by Hoover as a more serious threat. According to James Neff, Kennedy's success in this endeavor was due to his brother's position, giving the attorney general leverage over Hoover. Biographer Richard Hack concluded that Hoover's dislike for Kennedy came from his being unable to control him.  

He was relentless in his pursuit of Teamsters union President Jimmy Hoffa, due to Hoffa's known corruption in financial and electoral matters, both personally and organizationally.  The enmity between the two men was intense, with accusations of a personal vendetta - what Hoffa called a "blood feud" - exchanged between them.  In 1964 Hoffa was imprisoned for jury tampering. 

Civil rights

As Attorney General

Kennedy expressed the administration's commitment to civil rights during a 1961 speech at the University of Georgia Law School: 

He predicted during an interview in May 1961 that an African-American "can also achieve the same position that my brother has as President of the United States" over the course of the next thirty to forty years. Larry Sabato would later write that when RFK's family backed Barack Obama in 2008, they picked a candidate with great differences in upbringing from that of the privileged President Kennedy. 

In 1963, FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, who viewed civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. as an upstart troublemaker,  calling him an "enemy of the state",  presented Kennedy with allegations that some of King's close confidants and advisers were communists.  Concerned that the allegations, if made public, would derail the Administration's civil rights initiatives, Kennedy warned King to discontinue the suspect associations, and later issued a written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King's civil rights organization.  Although Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so",  Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy.  The wiretapping continued through June 1966 and was revealed in 1968, days before Kennedy's death. 

Kennedy remained committed to civil rights enforcement to such a degree that he commented in 1962 that it seemed to envelop almost every area of his public and private life, from prosecuting corrupt southern electoral officials to answering late night calls from Coretta Scott King concerning the imprisonment of her husband for demonstrations in Alabama.  During his tenure as Attorney General, he undertook the most energetic and persistent desegregation of the administration that Capitol Hill had ever experienced. He demanded that every area of government begin recruiting realistic levels of black and other ethnic workers, going so far as to criticize Vice President Johnson for his failure to desegregate his own office staff.

Although it has become commonplace to assert the phrase "The Kennedy Administration" or even "President Kennedy" when discussing the legislative and executive support of the civil rights movement, between 1960 and 1963 a great many of the initiatives that occurred during President Kennedy's tenure were as a result of the passion and determination of an emboldened Robert Kennedy, who through his rapid education in the realities of Southern racism underwent a thorough conversion of purpose as attorney general. Asked in an interview in May 1962, "What do you see as the big problem ahead for you, is it crime or internal security?" Kennedy replied, "Civil rights."  The president came to share his brother's sense of urgency on the matters at hand to such an extent that it was at the attorney general's insistence that he made his famous address to the nation.

Kennedy played a large role in the response to the Freedom Riders protests. He acted after the Anniston bus bombings to protect the Riders in continuing their journey, sending John Seigenthaler, his administrative assistant, to Alabama to attempt to secure the riders' safety there. Despite a work rule which allowed a driver to decline an assignment which he regarded as a potentially unsafe one, he also persuaded a manager of The Greyhound Corporation to obtain a coach operator who was willing to drive a special bus for the continuance of the Freedom Ride from Birmingham, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama, on the circuitous journey to Jackson, Mississippi. 

Later, during the attack and burning by a white mob of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, at which Martin Luther King, Jr. and some 1,500 sympathizers were in attendance, the Attorney General telephoned King to ask his assurance that they would not leave the building until the force of U.S. Marshals and National Guard he sent had secured the area. King proceeded to berate Kennedy for "allowing the situation to continue". King later publicly thanked him for his commanding of the force dispatched to break up an attack that might otherwise have ended King's life.  Kennedy then negotiated the safe passage of the Freedom Riders from the First Baptist Church to Jackson, Mississippi, where they were arrested.  He offered to bail the Freedom Riders out of jail, but they refused, which upset him, leading him to call any bandwagoners of the original freedom rides "honkers".

Kennedy's attempts to end the Freedom Rides early were tied to an upcoming summit with Khrushchev and De Gaulle, believing the continued international publicity of race riots would tarnish the president heading into international negotiations.  This attempt to curtail the Freedom Rides alienated many of the civil rights leaders, who at the time perceived him as intolerant and narrow minded.  In an attempt to better understand and improve race relations, Kennedy held a private meeting in New York City in May 1963 with a black delegation coordinated by prominent author James Baldwin.

In September 1962, he sent U.S. Marshals to Oxford, Mississippi, to enforce a federal court order allowing the admittance of the first African American student, James Meredith, to the University of Mississippi. The attorney general had hoped that legal means, along with the escort of U.S. Marshals, would be enough to force Governor Ross Barnett to allow the school admission. He also was very concerned there might be a "mini-civil war" between U.S. Army troops and armed protesters.  President Kennedy reluctantly sent federal troops after the situation on campus turned violent. 

Ensuing riots during the period of Meredith's admittance resulted in hundreds of injuries and two deaths, yet Kennedy remained adamant concerning the rights of black students to enjoy the benefits of all levels of the educational system. The Office of Civil Rights also hired its first African-American lawyer and began to work cautiously with leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Kennedy saw voting as the key to racial justice, and collaborated with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to create the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which helped bring an end to Jim Crow laws.

As U.S. senator and presidential candidate

Kennedy was to maintain his commitment to racial equality into his own presidential campaign, extending his firm sense of social justice to all areas of national life and into matters of foreign and economic policy. During a campaign speech at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, on April 4, 1968, he questioned the student body on what kind of life Americans wished for themselves, whether privileged Americans had earned the great luxury they enjoyed and whether such Americans had an obligation to those in U.S. society and across the world who had so little by comparison.  It has been argued that although this speech has been largely overlooked and ignored because of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it was one of the most powerful and heartfelt speeches Kennedy delivered. 

Kennedy undertook a 1966 tour of South Africa in which he championed the cause of the anti-apartheid movement. The tour was greeted with international praise at a time when few politicians dared to entangle themselves in the politics of South Africa. He spoke out against the oppression of the native population and was welcomed by the black population as though he were a visiting head of state. In an interview with Look magazine he said:

In South Africa, a group of foreign press representatives chartered an aircraft after the National Union of South African Students failed to make sufficient travel arrangements. Kennedy not only accommodated a suspected Special Branch policeman on board, but took with good grace the discovery that the aircraft had once belonged to Fidel Castro. 

U.S. Steel

Kennedy also used the power of federal agencies to influence U.S. Steel not to institute a price increase.  The Wall Street Journal wrote that the administration had set prices of steel "by naked power, by threats, by agents of the state security police".  Yale law professor Charles Reich wrote in The New Republic that the Justice Department had violated civil liberties by calling a federal grand jury to indict U.S. Steel so quickly, then disbanding it after the price increase did not occur.

Death penalty issues

During the Kennedy administration, the federal government carried out its last pre-Furman federal execution (Victor Feguer in Iowa, 1963)  and Kennedy, as attorney general, represented the government in this case. 

In 1968, Kennedy expressed his strong willingness to support a bill then under consideration for the abolition of the death penalty. 

Cuba

As his brother's confidant, Kennedy oversaw the CIA's anti-Castro activities after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. He also helped develop the strategy to blockade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis instead of initiating a military strike that might have led to nuclear war. He had initially been among the more hawkish members of the administration on matters concerning Cuban insurrectionary aid. His initial strong support for covert actions in Cuba soon changed to a position of removal from further involvement once he became aware of the CIA's tendency to draw out initiatives and provide itself with almost unchecked authority in matters of foreign covert operations.

Allegations that the Kennedys knew of plans by the CIA to kill Fidel Castro, or approved of such plans, have been debated by historians over the years. JFK's friend and associate, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., for example, expressed the opinion that operatives linked to the CIA were among the most reckless individuals to have operated during the period—providing themselves with unscrutinized freedoms to threaten the lives of Castro and other members of the Cuban revolutionary government regardless of the legislative apparatus in Washington—freedoms that, unbeknownst to those at the White House attempting to prevent a nuclear war, placed the entire U.S.–Soviet relationship in perilous danger.

The "Family Jewels" documents, declassified by the CIA in 2007, suggest that before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the attorney general personally authorized one such assassination attempt.   However, ample evidence exists disputing that fact, specifically that Kennedy was only informed of an earlier plot involving the CIA's use of Mafia bosses Santo Trafficante, Jr. and John Roselli during a briefing on May 7, 1962, and in fact directed the CIA to halt any existing efforts directed at Castro's assassination.  Concurrently, Kennedy served as the president's personal representative in Operation Mongoose, the post-Bay of Pigs covert operations program established in November 1961 by the president.  Mongoose was meant to incite a revolution within Cuba that would result in the downfall of Castro, not Castro's assassination.  

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy proved himself to be a gifted politician with an ability to obtain compromises tempering aggressive positions of key figures in the hawk camp. The trust the president placed in him on matters of negotiation was such that his role in the crisis is today seen as having been of vital importance in securing a blockade, which averted a full military engagement between the United States and Soviet Russia. His clandestine meetings with members of the Soviet government continued to provide a key link to Nikita Khrushchev during even the darkest moments of the Crisis, in which the threat of nuclear strikes was considered a very present reality. 

On the last night of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy was so grateful for his brother's work in averting nuclear war that he summed it up by saying, "Thank God for Bobby." 

Assassination of President John F. Kennedy 

At the time of the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, RFK was at home with aides from the Justice Department when J. Edgar Hoover called and told him his brother had been shot. Before he could ask any questions, Hoover hung up, showing no empathy. Kennedy later said he thought Hoover had enjoyed telling him the news.  Kennedy then received a call from Tazewell Shepard, a naval aide to the president, who told him that his brother was dead. Shortly after the call from Hoover, Kennedy phoned McGeorge Bundy at the White House, instructing him to change the locks on the president's files. He ordered the Secret Service to dismantle the Oval Office and cabinet room's secret taping systems. He scheduled a meeting with CIA director John McCone and asked if the CIA had any involvement in his brother's death. McCone denied it, with Kennedy later telling investigator Walter Sheridan that he asked the director "in a way that he couldn't lie to me, and they [the CIA] hadn't". 

An hour after the assassination, he received a phone call from Vice President Johnson while the vice president boarded Air Force One. RFK remembered their conversation starting with Johnson demonstrating sympathy before the Vice President stated his belief that he should be sworn in immediately; RFK opposed the idea since he felt "it would be nice" for President Kennedy's body to return to Washington with the deceased president still being the incumbent.  Eventually, the two concluded that the best course of action would be for Johnson to take the oath of office before returning to Washington.  In his 1971 book We Band of Brothers, aide Edwin O. Guthman recounted Kennedy admitting to him an hour after receiving word of his brother's death that he thought he would be the one "they would get" as opposed to his brother.  In the days following the assassination, he wrote letters to his two eldest children, Kathleen and Joseph, saying that as the oldest Kennedy family members of their generation, they had a special responsibility to remember what their uncle had started and to love and serve their country.   He was originally opposed to Jacqueline Kennedy's decision to have a closed casket, as he wanted the funeral to keep with tradition, but he changed his mind after seeing the cosmetic, waxen remains. 

Kennedy was asked by Democratic Party leaders to introduce a film about his late brother at the 1964 party convention. When he was introduced, the crowd, including party bosses, elected officials and delegates, applauded thunderously and tearfully for a full 22 minutes before they would let him speak.  He was close to breaking down before he spoke about his brother's vision for both the party and the nation and recited a quote from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (3.2) that Jacqueline had given him:

The ten-month investigation by the Warren Commission of 1963–1964 concluded that the president had been assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and that Oswald had acted alone. On September 27, 1964, Kennedy issued a statement through his New York campaign office: "As I said in Poland last summer, I am convinced Oswald was solely responsible for what happened and that he did not have any outside help or assistance. He was a malcontent who could not get along here or in the Soviet Union."   He added, "I have not read the report, nor do I intend to. But I have been briefed on it and I am completely satisfied that the Commission investigated every lead and examined every piece of evidence. The Commission's inquiry was thorough and conscientious." After a meeting with Kennedy in 1966, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. wrote: "It is evident that he believes that [the Warren Commission's report] was a poor job and will not endorse it, but that he is unwilling to criticize it and thereby reopen the whole tragic business."  Jerry Bruno, an "advance man" for JFK who also worked on RFK's 1968 Presidential campaign, would later state in 1993: "I talked to Robert Kennedy many times about the Warren Commission, and he never doubted their result."  In a 2013 interview with CBS journalist Charlie Rose, son Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stated that his father was "fairly convinced" that others besides Oswald were involved in his brother's assassination and that he privately believed the Commission's report was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship". 

Vice presidential candidate 

In the wake of the assassination of his brother, Lyndon Johnson's ascension to the presidency and the office of Vice President now vacant, Kennedy was viewed favorably as a potential candidate for the position in the 1964 presidential election. Several Kennedy partisans called for him to be drafted in tribute of his brother, national polling showing that three of four Democrats were in favor of him as Johnson's running mate. Democratic organizers were supportive of his being a vice-presidential write-in candidate in the New Hampshire primary, 25,000 Democrats writing in Kennedy's name in March 1964, only fewer by 3,700 than the number of Democrats who wrote in Johnson's name as their pick for president.

Despite the fanfare within the Democratic Party, President Johnson had no inclination to have Kennedy on his ticket. The two men intensely disliked one another, with feelings often described as "mutual contempt" that went back to their first meeting in 1953, and had intensified during JFK’s presidency.   Johnson instead chose Hubert Humphrey to be his running mate.

During a post-presidency interview with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Johnson claimed that Kennedy "acted like he was the custodian of the Kennedy dream" despite Johnson being seen as this after JFK was assassinated, arguing that he had "waited" his turn and Kennedy should have done the same. Johnson recalled a "tidal wave of letters and memos about how great a vice president Bobby would be" being swept upon him, but knowing that he could not "let it happen" as he viewed the possibility of having Kennedy on the ticket as making it such that he would never know if he could be elected "on my own".

In July 1964, Johnson issued an official statement ruling out all of his current cabinet members as potential running mates, judging them to be "so valuable were they in their current posts". In response to the statement, angry letters poured in directed towards both Johnson and his wife Lady Bird, expressing disappointment at Kennedy being dropped from the field of potential running mates. Johnson worried that delegates at the convention would draft Kennedy onto the ticket, which led to his ordering the FBI to monitor Kennedy's contacts and actions there and to make sure that Kennedy would not speak until after Hubert Humphrey was confirmed as the running mate.

Senator from New York

1964 election 

Nine months after his brother's assassination, Kennedy left the cabinet to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate representing New York,  announcing his candidacy on August 22, 1964, two days before that year's Democratic National Convention. He had considered the possibility of running since early spring,  but also giving consideration to leaving politics altogether after the plane crash and injury of his brother, Ted, in June, two months prior to his announcement. Positive reception in Europe convinced him to remain in politics.  Kennedy was lauded during concurrent trips to Germany and Poland, the denizens of the latter country's greetings to Kennedy being interpreted by Leaming as evaporating the agony he had sustained since his brother's passing.Leaming, Barbara (2014). Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: The Untold Story. Macmillan. pp. 178-179. ISBN 9781250017642. Kennedy was given permission to run by the New York State Democratic Committee on September 1, amid mixed feelings in regards to his candidacy. 
Despite their notoriously difficult relationship, Johnson gave considerable support to Kennedy's campaign. His opponent in the 1964 race was Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating, who attempted to portray Kennedy as an arrogant carpetbagger.  Kennedy won the November election, helped in part by Johnson's huge victory margin in New York.Leaming, Barbara (2014). Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: The Untold Story. Macmillan. pp. 189-190. ISBN 9781250017642.

Tenure

Kennedy drew attention in Congress early on due to being the brother of President Kennedy, which set him apart from other senators. He drew more than fifty senators as spectators when he delivered a speech in June 1965 in the Senate on nuclear proliferation.  However, he also saw a decline in his power, going from the president's most trusted advisor to one of a hundred senators, and his impatience with collaborative lawmaking showed. Though fellow senator Fred R. Harris expected to not like Kennedy, the two became allies, Harris even calling them "each other's best friends in the Senate".  Kennedy's younger brother Ted Kennedy was his senior there. Robert saw his brother as a guide on managing within the Senate and the arrangement worked to deepen their relationship. Senator Harris noted, Kennedy was intensive about matters and issues which concerned him.  Kennedy gained a reputation in the Senate of being well prepared for debate, however his tendency to speak to other senators in a more "blunt" fashion caused him to be "unpopular... with many of his colleagues".

While serving in the Senate, Kennedy advocated for gun control. In May 1965, he co-sponsored S1592, proposed by President Johnson and sponsored by Senator Thomas J. Dodd, that would put federal restrictions on gun sales. Speaking in support of the bill, Kennedy noted that "For too long we dealt with these deadly weapons as if they were harmless toys. Yet their very presence, the ease of their acquisition and the familiarity of their appearance have led to thousands of deaths each year...the passage of this bill...would save hundreds of thousands of lives in this country and spare thousands of families...grief and heartache..."  In May 1968, while on a campaign swing through Oregon, Kennedy defended his gun control policy as keeping firearms away from "people who have no business" with them, elaborating that they were criminals, individuals with mental issues, and the underage.  

On February 8, 1966, Kennedy urged the United States to pledge that it would not be the first country to use nuclear weapons against countries that did not have the same artillery, Kennedy also mentioning that China had pledged and the Soviet Union indicated it was willing to do so also. 

In June 1966, he visited apartheid-era South Africa accompanied by his wife, Ethel, and a few aides. At the University of Cape Town he delivered the Annual Day of Affirmation speech. A quote from this address appears on his memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. ("Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.") 

During his years as a senator, he helped to start a successful redevelopment project in poverty-stricken Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn in New York City.  Schlesinger wrote that Kennedy had hoped Bedford-Stuyvesant would become an example of self-imposed growth for other impoverished neighborhoods. Kennedy had difficulty securing support from President Johnson, whose administration was charged by Kennedy as having opposed a "special impact" program meant to bring about federal progress that he had supported. Robert B. Semple, Jr. repeated similar sentiments in September 1967, writing the Johnson administration was preparing "a concentrated attack" on Robert F. Kennedy's proposal that Semple claimed would "build more and better low cost housing in the slums through private enterprise". Kennedy confided to journalist Jack Newfield that while he tried collaborating with the administration through courting its members and compromising with the bill, "They didn't even try to work something out together. To them it's all just politics." 

He also visited the Mississippi Delta as a member of the Senate committee reviewing the effectiveness of 'War on Poverty' programs, particularly that of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.  Marian Wright Edelman detailed Kennedy as "deeply moved and outraged" by the sight of the starving children living in the economically abysmal climate, changing her impression of him from "tough, arrogant, and politically driven".  Edelman furthered that the senator requested she call on Martin Luther King, Jr. to bring the impoverished to Washington, D.C., to make them more visible, leading to the creation of the Poor People's Campaign. 

Kennedy worked on the Senate Labor Committee at the time of the activism of Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in support of workers' rights and flew out to Delano, California, to investigate the situation.  Although the first two hearings in March 1966 for a legislation to amend the National Labor Relations Act to include farm workers received little attention, Kennedy's attending of the third hearing, at the request of Walter Reuther, brought media coverage.  Biographer Thomas wrote that Kennedy was moved after seeing the conditions of the workers, which he deemed were being taken advantage.  Chavez stressed to Kennedy that migrant workers needed to be recognized as human beings, the latter afterward engaging in an exchange with Kern County sheriff Leroy Galyen where he critiqued the sheriff's deputies taking photographs of protesters engaging in civil disobedience. 

As senator, he was popular among African Americans and other minorities such as Native Americans and immigrant groups. He spoke forcefully in favor of what he called the "disaffected",  the impoverished  and "the excluded",  thereby aligning himself with leaders of the civil rights struggle and social justice campaigners, leading the Democratic party in a pursuit of a more aggressive agenda to eliminate perceived discrimination on all levels. He supported desegregation busing, integration of all public facilities, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and anti-poverty social programs to increase education, offer opportunities for employment and provide health care for African Americans. Consistent with President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, he also placed increasing emphasis on human rights as a central focus of U.S. foreign policy.

Vietnam

The JFK administration had backed U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world in the frame of the Cold War, but Kennedy was not known to be involved in discussions on the Vietnam War when he was Attorney General.   According to historian Doris Kearns, before choosing to run for the Senate, Kennedy had sought an ambassadorship to South Vietnam.  Entering the Senate, Kennedy initially kept private his disagreements with President Johnson on the war. While Kennedy vigorously supported his brother's earlier efforts, he never publicly advocated commitment of ground troops. Though bothered by the beginning of the bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965, Kennedy did not wish to appear antipathetic to the president's agenda.Mills, p. 359. By April, Kennedy was advocating a halt to the bombing to Johnson, who acknowledged that Kennedy played a part in influencing his choice to temporarily cease bombing the following month.  Kennedy cautioned Johnson against sending combat troops as early as 1965, but Johnson chose to instead follow the recommendation of the rest of his predecessor's still intact staff of advisers. In July, after Johnson made a large commitment of American ground forces to Vietnam, Kennedy made multiple calls for a settlement through negotiation. The next month, John Paul Vann, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, wrote that Kennedy "indicat[ed] comprehension of the problems we face", in a letter to the senator. 

In April 1966, Kennedy had a private meeting with Philip Heymann of the State Department's Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs to discuss efforts to secure the release of American prisoners of war in Vietnam. Kennedy wanted to press the Johnson administration to do more, but Heymann insisted that the administration believed the "consequences of sitting down with the Viet Cong" mattered more than the prisoners they were holding captive.  On June 29, 1966, Kennedy released a statement disavowing President Johnson's choice to bomb Haiphong, but he avoided criticizing either the war or President Johnson's overall foreign policy, believing that it might harm Democratic candidates in the 1966 midterm elections. 

In the early part of 1967, Kennedy traveled to Europe, where he had discussions relating to the Vietnam conflict with leaders and diplomats. A story leaked to the State Department that Kennedy was talking about seeking peace while President Johnson was pursuing the war. Johnson became convinced that Kennedy was undermining his authority. He voiced this during a meeting with Kennedy, who reiterated the interest of the European leaders to pause the bombing while going forward with negotiations. Johnson declined to do so.  On March 2, 1967, Kennedy outlined a three-point plan to end the war which included suspending the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam and eventual withdrawal of American and North Vietnamese soldiers from South Vietnam; this plan was rejected by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who believed North Vietnam would never agree to it.   On May 15, 1967, Kennedy debated Governor of California Ronald Reagan about the Vietnam War.   On November 26, 1967, during an appearance on Face the Nation, Kennedy asserted his view that the Johnson administration had deviated from his brother's policies in Vietnam, his first time contrasting the two administrations in their polices on the war, and said the view that Americans were fighting to end communism in Vietnam was "immoral".   

On February 8, 1968, Kennedy delivered an address in Chicago, Illinois, where he critiqued Saigon "government corruption" and expressed his disagreement with the Johnson administration's stance that the war would determine the future of Asia.  On March 14, Kennedy met with Johnson administration defense secretary Clark Clifford at the Pentagon regarding the war. Clifford's notes indicate that Kennedy was offering to not enter the ongoing Democratic presidential primary if President Johnson would admit publicly to having been wrong in his war policy and appoint "a group of persons to conduct a study in depth of the issues and come up with a recommended course of action";  Johnson rejected the proposal.  In late May 1968, shortly before he was assassinated, Kennedy called the war "the gravest kind of error" in a speech in  Corvallis, Oregon.  In an interview on June 4,  hours before he was shot, Kennedy continued to advocate a change in policy towards the war in Vietnam. 

Presidential candidate

In 1968, President Johnson prepared to run for reelection. In January, faced with what was widely considered an unrealistic race against an incumbent president, Kennedy stated he would not seek the presidency.  After the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, in early February 1968, he received a letter from writer Pete Hamill that said poor people kept pictures of President Kennedy on their walls and that Kennedy had an "obligation of staying true to whatever it was that put those pictures on those walls". 

Kennedy traveled to Delano, California, to meet with civil rights activist César Chávez, who was on a 25-day hunger strike showing his commitment to nonviolence.  It was on this visit to California that Kennedy decided he would challenge Johnson for the presidency, telling his former Justice Department aides, Edwin Guthman and Peter Edelman, that his first step was to get lesser-known Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota to leave the presidential race. 

The weekend before the New Hampshire primary, Kennedy announced to several aides that he would attempt to persuade McCarthy to withdraw from the race to avoid splitting the antiwar vote, but Senator George McGovern urged Kennedy to wait until after that primary to announce his candidacy. Johnson won a narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary on March 12, 1968, against McCarthy, but this close second-place result dramatically boosted McCarthy's standing in the race. 

After much speculation and reports leaking out about his plans,  and seeing in McCarthy's success that Johnson's hold on the job was not as strong as originally thought, Kennedy declared his candidacy on March 16, 1968, in the Caucus Room of the old Senate office building, the same room where his brother declared his own candidacy eight years earlier.  He stated, "I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can." 

McCarthy supporters angrily denounced Kennedy as an opportunist, believing that McCarthy had taken the more courageous stand by opposing a sitting president of his own party and that his surprising result in New Hampshire had earned him the mantle of being the anti-war candidate. Kennedy's announcement thus split the anti-war movement in two.  On March 31, 1968, Johnson stunned the nation by dropping out of the race. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a champion of labor unions and supporter of civil rights, entered the race with the money and backing of the party "establishment", including most members of Congress, mayors, governors, "the south" and labor unions.  He entered the race too late to enter any primaries, but had the support of the president.   Kennedy, like his brother before him, planned to win the nomination through popular support in the primaries.

Kennedy ran on a platform of racial and economic justice, non-aggression in foreign policy, decentralization of power and social change. A crucial element of his campaign was an engagement with the young, whom he identified as being the future of a reinvigorated American society based on partnership and equality. His policy objectives did not sit well with the business world, where he was viewed as something of a fiscal liability, opposed as they were to the tax increases necessary to fund social programs. At one of his university speeches (Indiana University Medical School) he was asked, "Where are we going to get the money to pay for all these new programs you're proposing?" He replied to the medical students, about to enter lucrative careers, "From you." 

It was this intense and frank mode of dialogue with which he was to continue to engage those whom he viewed as not being traditional allies of Democratic ideals or initiatives. In a speech at the University of Alabama, he argued, "I believe that any who seek high office this year must go before all Americans, not just those who agree with them, but also those who disagree, recognizing that it is not just our supporters, not just those who vote for us, but all Americans who we must lead in the difficult years ahead."  He aroused rabid animosity in some quarters, with J. Edgar Hoover's Deputy Clyde Tolson reported as saying, "I hope that someone shoots and kills the son of a bitch." 

Kennedy's presidential campaign brought out both "great enthusiasm" and anger for people. His message of change caused hope for some and "fear" to others. Kennedy wanted to be a bridge across the divide of American society. His bid for the presidency saw not only a continuation of the programs he and his brother had undertaken during the president's term in office, but also an extension of Johnson's Great Society, as well. 

Kennedy visited numerous small towns and made himself available to the masses by participating in long motorcades and street-corner stump speeches, often in troubled inner-cities. He made urban poverty a chief concern of his campaign, which in part led to enormous crowds that would attend his events in poor urban areas or rural parts of Appalachia. 

On April 4, 1968, Kennedy learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and gave a heartfelt impromptu speech in Indianapolis's inner city, calling for a reconciliation between the races. The address was the first time Kennedy spoke publicly about the killing of his brother.  Riots broke out in 60 cities in the wake of King's death, but not in Indianapolis, a fact many attribute to the effect of this speech.  He attended King's funeral, accompanied by Jacqueline and Ted Kennedy. He was described as being the "only white politician to hear only cheers and applause". 

Kennedy won the Indiana Democratic primary on May 7 and the Nebraska primary on May 14, but lost the Oregon primary to McCarthy on May 28.  If he could defeat McCarthy in the California primary, the leadership of the campaign thought, he would knock McCarthy out of the race and set up a one-on-one against Hubert Humphrey  at the Chicago national convention in August.

Assassination

Kennedy scored a major victory in winning the California primary. He addressed his supporters shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in a ballroom at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California.  Leaving the ballroom, he went through the hotel kitchen after being told it was a shortcut to a press room,  despite being advised to avoid the kitchen by his bodyguard, former FBI agent Bill Barry. In a crowded kitchen passageway, Kennedy turned to his left and shook hands with busboy Juan Romero just as Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian,   opened fire with a .22-caliber revolver. Kennedy was hit three times and five other people were wounded.

George Plimpton, former decathlete Rafer Johnson, and former professional football player Rosey Grier are credited with wrestling Sirhan Sirhan to the ground after Sirhan shot the senator.  As Kennedy lay wounded, Juan Romero cradled his head and placed a rosary in his hand. Kennedy asked Romero, "Is everybody okay?" and Romero responded, "Yes, everybody's OK." Kennedy then turned away from Romero and said, "Everything's going to be okay."   After several minutes, medical attendants arrived and lifted the senator onto a stretcher, prompting him to whisper, "Don't lift me", which were his last words.   He lost consciousness shortly thereafter.  He was first rushed to Los Angeles's Central Receiving Hospital and then to the city's Good Samaritan Hospital where he died early the next morning.  Sirhan later said that he felt betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War, which had begun exactly one year before the assassination. 

Kennedy's body was returned to New York City, where it lay in repose at Saint Patrick's Cathedral from approximately 10:00 p.m. until 10:00 a.m. on June 8.   A high requiem mass attended by members of the extended Kennedy family, President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife Lady Bird Johnson and members of the Johnson cabinet was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral at 10:00 a.m. on June 8.  Kennedy's  brother, Ted, the only surviving Kennedy brother, said the following:

The requiem mass concluded with the hymn "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", sung by Andy Williams.  Immediately following the mass, Kennedy's body was transported by a special private train to Washington, D.C. Thousands of mourners lined the tracks and stations along the route, paying their respects as the train passed. The train departed New York at 12:30 p.m.  The normally four-hour trip took more than eight hours because of the thick crowds lining the tracks on the 225 mi journey. 

When the train arrived in Elizabeth, New Jersey, an eastbound train on a parallel track to the funeral train hit and killed two spectators after they were unable to get off the track in time, even though the eastbound train's engineer had slowed to 30 mph for the normally 55 mph curve and had blown his horn continuously and rang his bell through the curve.    Scheduled to arrive at about 4:30 p.m.,   sticking brakes on the casket-bearing car also contributed to delays, and the train arrived at 9:10 p.m. on June 8.

Burial

Kennedy was buried close to his brother, John, in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia (just outside Washington, D.C.). Although he had always maintained that he wished to be buried in Massachusetts, his family believed he should be interred in Arlington next to his brother.  The procession left Union Station and passed the New Senate Office Building, where he had his offices, and then proceeded to the Lincoln Memorial, where it paused. The Marine Corps Band played The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The funeral motorcade arrived at the cemetery at 10:24 p.m. As it entered the cemetery, people lining the roadway spontaneously lit candles to guide the motorcade to the burial site.

The 15-minute ceremony began at 10:30 p.m. Cardinal Patrick O'Boyle, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington, officiated at the graveside service in lieu of Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston, who fell ill during the trip. Also officiating was Archbishop of New York Terence Cooke. John Glenn presented the folded flag on behalf of the United States to Senator Ted Kennedy, who passed it to Robert's eldest son, Joe, who passed it to Ethel Kennedy. The Navy Band played The Navy Hymn.

Arlington National Cemetery officials say that Kennedy's burial was the only night burial to have taken place at the cemetery.  (The re-interment of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who died two days after birth in August 1963, and a stillborn daughter, Arabella, both children of President Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, also occurred at night. After the president was interred in Arlington Cemetery, the two infants were buried next to him on December 5, 1963, in a private ceremony without publicity.)

On June 9, President Lyndon B. Johnson assigned security staff to all U.S. presidential candidates and declared an official national day of mourning.  After the assassination, the mandate of the U.S. Secret Service was altered by Congress to include Secret Service protection of U.S. presidential candidates.  

Personal life

Family

On June 17, 1950, Kennedy married socialite Ethel Skakel, the third daughter of businessman George and Ann Skakel (née Brannack), at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenwich, Connecticut. The couple had eleven children; Kathleen (born 1951), Joseph (born 1952), Robert Jr. (born 1954), David (1955–1984), Courtney (born 1956), Michael (1958–1997), Kerry (born 1959), Christopher (born 1963), Max (born 1965), Douglas (born 1967), and Rory (born 1968). Rory was born the December after her father's assassination.

Kennedy owned a home at the well-known Kennedy compound on Cape Cod in Hyannis Port, but spent most of his time at his estate in McLean, Virginia, known as Hickory Hill, located west of Washington, D.C. His widow, Ethel, and their children continued to live at Hickory Hill after his death. She now lives full-time at the Hyannis Port home.

Attitudes and approach

Kennedy was said to be the gentlest and shyest of the family as well as the least articulate orally. By the time he was a young boy, his grandmother, Josie Fitzgerald, worried he would become a "sissy". His mother had a similar concern, as he was the "smallest and thinnest", but soon after the family discovered "there was no fear of that".  Family friend Lem Billings met Kennedy when he was eight years old and would later reflect that he loved him, adding that he "was the nicest little boy I ever met". Billings also said he was barely noticed "in the early days, but that's because he didn't bother anybody". Luella Hennessey, who became the nurse for the Kennedy children when Kennedy was 12, called him "the most thoughtful and considerate" of his siblings.Schlesinger, pp. 21-23.

Kennedy was teased by his siblings, as in their family it was a norm for humor to be displayed in that fashion. He would turn jokes on himself or remain silent.Thomas, pp. 30-31. Despite his gentle demeanor, he could be outspoken, once engaging a priest in a public argument that horrified his mother, who later conceded that he had been correct all along. Even when arguing for a noble cause, his comments could have "a cutting quality". 

Despite the fact that his father's most ambitious dreams centered around his older brothers, Kennedy maintained the code of personal loyalty that seemed to infuse the life of the Kennedy family. His competitiveness was admired by his father and elder brothers, while his loyalty bound them more affectionately close. A rather timid child, he was often the target of his father's dominating temperament. Working on the campaigns of older brother Jack, he was more involved, passionate and tenacious than the candidate himself, obsessed with detail, fighting out every battle and taking workers to task. He had always been closer to John than the other members of the family.

Kennedy's opponents on Capitol Hill maintained that his collegiate magnanimity was sometimes hindered by a tenacious and somewhat impatient manner. His professional life was dominated by the selfsame attitudes that governed his family life, a certainty that good humor and leisure must be balanced by service and accomplishment. Schlesinger comments that Kennedy could be both the most ruthlessly diligent and yet generously adaptable of politicians, at once both temperamental and yet forgiving. In this he was very much his father's son, lacking truly lasting emotional independence and yet possessing a great desire to contribute. He lacked the innate self-confidence of his contemporaries and yet found a greater self-assurance in the experience of married life, an experience that he stated had given him a base of self-belief from which to continue his efforts in the public arena.

Upon hearing yet again the assertion that he was "ruthless", Kennedy once joked to a reporter, "If I find out who has called me ruthless I will destroy him." He also confessed to possessing a bad temper that required self-control: "My biggest problem as counsel is to keep my temper. I think we all feel that when a witness comes before the United States Senate, he has an obligation to speak frankly and tell the truth. To see people sit in front of us and lie and evade makes me boil inside. But you can't lose your temper; if you do, the witness has gotten the best of you." 

Religious faith and Greek philosophy

Central to Kennedy's politics and personal attitude to life and its purpose was his Catholicism, which he inherited from his family. He was easily the most religious of his brothers. He approached his duties with a Catholic worldview. Throughout his life, he made reference to his faith, how it informed every area of his life and how it gave him the strength to re-enter politics following the assassination of his elder brother. His was not an unresponsive and staid faith, but the faith of a Catholic Radical, perhaps the first successful Catholic Radical in American political history. 

In the last years of his life, he also found great solace in the metaphysical poets of ancient Greece, especially the writings of Aeschylus,  suggested to him by Jacqueline after his brother's death.    In his Indianapolis speech on April 4, 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby slightly misquoted  these lines from Aeschylus:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. 

Electoral history

1964 New York United States Senatorial Election

Legacy 

Kennedy was the first sibling of a President of the United States to serve as U.S. Attorney General. Biographer Evan Thomas wrote that he misused his powers at times by "modern standards", but concluded "on the whole, even counting his warts, he was a great attorney general".  Walter Isaacson commented that Kennedy "turned out arguably to be the best attorney general in history", praising him for his championing of civil rights and other initiatives of the administration.  Some of his successors as Attorney General have been unfavorably compared to him, as not displaying the same level of poise in the profession.   Near the end of his time in office as Attorney General under Barack Obama,  Eric Holder cited Kennedy as the inspiration for his belief that the Justice Department could be "a force for that which is right". 

Kennedy has also been praised for his oratory abilities,  commentators being favorable of what they perceived as his skill to create unity.  Joseph A. Palermo of The Huffington Post summarized that his words "could cut through social boundaries and partisan divides in a way that seems nearly impossible today".  Longtime labor activist Dolores Huerta said Kennedy differed from other politicians who "pander to what people want to hear" due to his desire to instead be "very direct" in his speech.  That blunt sincerity was said by associates to be authentic, Frank N. Magill writing that his oratorical skills lent their support to minorities and other disenfranchised groups who began seeing him as an ally. 

Kennedy's assassination was a blow to the optimism for a brighter future that his campaign brought for many Americans who lived through the turbulent 1960s.   Juan Romero, the busboy who shook hands with Kennedy right before he was shot, later said, "It made me realize that no matter how much hope you have it can be taken away in a second."  Kennedy's death has been cited as a significant factor in the Democratic Party's loss of the 1968 presidential election.  Since his passing, Kennedy has become generally well-respected by liberals  and conservatives, which is far from the polarized views of him during his lifetime.  John Ashcroft,  Tom Bradley,  Mark Dayton,   John Kitzhaber,  Max Cleland,  Tim Cook,   and Phil Bredesen  have acknowledged Kennedy's influence on them.

Honors

Numerous roads, public schools, and other facilities across the United States were named in memory of Robert F. Kennedy in the months and years after his death.

The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights  was founded in 1968, with an international award program to recognize human rights activists.

The sports stadium D.C. Stadium in Washington, D.C., was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.  

In 1978, the United States Congress awarded Kennedy its Gold Medal of Honor. 

In 1998, the United States Mint released a special dollar coin that featured his image on the obverse and the emblems of the United States Department of Justice and the United States Senate on the reverse.

On November 20, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft dedicated the Department of Justice headquarters building in Washington, D.C., as the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, honoring Kennedy on what would have been his 76th birthday. They both spoke during the ceremony, as did Kennedy's eldest son, Joseph. 

In a further effort to remember Kennedy and continue his work helping disadvantaged, a small group of private citizens launched the Robert F. Kennedy Children's Action Corps in 1969, which today helps more than 800 abused and neglected children each year.

A bust of Kennedy resides in the library of the University of Virginia School of Law, from where he obtained his law degree. 

On June 4, 2008, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of his assassination, the New York State Assembly voted to rename the Triborough Bridge in New York City the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge. New York State Governor David Paterson signed the legislation into law on August 8, 2008.  The bridge is now commonly known as the RFK-Triborough Bridge.

Personal items and documents from his office in the Justice Department Building are displayed in a permanent exhibit dedicated to him in the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. Papers from his years as attorney general, senator, peace and civil rights activist and presidential candidate, as well as personal correspondence, are also housed in the library. 

Kennedy and King

Several public institutions jointly honor Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.
* In 1969, the former Woodrow Wilson Junior College, a two-year institution and a constituent campus of the City Colleges of Chicago, was renamed Kennedy–King College. 
* In 1994, the City of Indianapolis erected the Landmark for Peace Memorial in Robert Kennedy's honor near the space made famous by his oration from the back of a pickup truck the night King died. The monument in Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Park depicts a sculpture of RFK reaching out from a large metal slab to a sculpture of King, who is part of a similar slab.  This is meant to symbolize their attempts in life to bridge the gaps between the races—an attempt that united them even in death. A state historical marker has also been placed at the site.  A nephew of King and Indiana U.S. Congresswoman Julia Carson presided over the event; both made speeches from the back of a pickup truck in similar fashion to RFK's speech. 

Writings

Kennedy wrote extensively on politics and current events:
* The Enemy Within: The McClellan Committee's Crusade Against Jimmy Hoffa and Corrupt Labor Unions (1960)
* Just Friends and Brave Enemies (1962)
* The Pursuit Of Justice (1964)
* To Seek a Newer World, essays (1967)
* Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, published posthumously (1969)

Media

Documentaries

Documentary filmmaker DA Pennebaker made several films featuring Kennedy. His short film Jingle Bells (1964) follows Kennedy and his children as they celebrate Christmas in New York City with local school children and Sammy Davis, Jr. His later film Hickory Hill documents the 1968 Annual Spring Pet Show at Hickory Hill, the Kennedy Virginia estate.

In 1970 ABC-TV presented the David L. Wolper film The Journey of Robert F. Kennedy, narrated by John Huston.

The 2008 film A Ripple of Hope is a documentary that retells his call for peace during a campaign stop in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968, the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  

The 2010 film RFK in the Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope is a documentary that follows his five-day visit to South Africa in June 1966, during which he made his famous Ripple of Hope speech at the University of Cape Town. 

The 2012 documentary film Ethel about the life of Ethel Kennedy recounts many of the major personal and political events of Kennedy's life, through interviews with family members including Ethel herself, and news footage.  

Films and television

Kennedy's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis has been dramatized by Martin Sheen in  the 1974 TV play The Missiles of October and by Steven Culp in Thirteen Days (2000).

He is portrayed by John Shea in the 1983 TV miniseries Kennedy. 

The 1985 three part TV mini-series Robert Kennedy & His Times stars Brad Davis and is based on the book of the same title by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

He was portrayed in Hoffa (1992) by Kevin Anderson,   and by Željko Ivanek  in the 1998 HBO film The Rat Pack.

The 2002 made-for-TV movie RFK portrays his life from the time of his brother's assassination to his own death. He is played by Linus Roache. 

The 2006 film Bobby is the story of multiple people's lives leading up to the RFK assassination. The film employs stock footage from his presidential campaign, and he is briefly portrayed by Dave Fraunces.

Barry Pepper won an Emmy for his portrayal of Kennedy in The Kennedys, an 8-part 2011 miniseries.  
 
In the 2011 biographical movie J. Edgar, RFK is played by Jeffrey Donovan. 

He will be played by Peter Sarsgaard in the upcoming film about Jacqueline Kennedy, Jackie.  

The arts

In 1967, Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko met with Kennedy and in 1968 wrote a poem about him, "" ("I was shot by an epoch").

Robert Lowell wrote several poems about Kennedy, his elegy for him included the line 'doom was woven in your nerves'.

The Rolling Stones began recording the song "Sympathy for the Devil" on June 4, 1968, continuing into the next day, with overdubs done on the 8th, 9th and 10th.   The original lyrics had the line "I shouted out 'Who killed Kennedy?'", and this was changed to "I shouted out 'Who killed the Kennedys?'" 

The British playwright Roy Smiles' play about RFK's 1968 presidential campaign, The Last Pilgrim, was staged in London in 2010.  It was shortlisted for Best Play at the Off West End Awards in the UK in 2011. The assassination of Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy, a United States Senator and brother of assassinated President John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, took place shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, California, during the campaign season for the 1968 presidential election.

After winning the California and South Dakota primary elections for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, Kennedy was fatally shot as he walked through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel and died in the Good Samaritan Hospital twenty-six hours later. Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian/Jordanian immigrant, was convicted of Kennedy's murder and is serving a life sentence for the crime. The shooting was recorded on audio tape by a freelance newspaper reporter, and the aftermath was captured on film.

Kennedy's body lay in repose at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York for two days before a funeral Mass was held on June 8. His body was interred near his brother John at Arlington National Cemetery. His death prompted the protection of presidential candidates by the United States Secret Service. Hubert Humphrey later went on to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency, but ultimately lost the election to Republican Richard Nixon.

As with his brother John's death, Kennedy's assassination and the circumstances surrounding it have spawned a variety of conspiracy theories. Kennedy remains one of only two sitting United States Senators to be assassinated, the other being Huey Long.

Background

Kennedy visited the British Mandate of Palestine in 1948 and wrote dispatches at the time for the Boston Post about his trip and the effect it had on him when he was twenty-two years old.  During his stay, he wrote that he grew to admire the Jewish inhabitants of the area. As a Senator, he later became a strong supporter and advocate for Israel. 

Kennedy was United States Attorney General from January 1961 until September 3, 1964, when he resigned to run for election to the United States Senate. He took office as Senator from New York on January 3, 1965.

The run up to the 1968 presidential election saw the incumbent president, Lyndon B. Johnson, serving during a period of social unrest. There were riots in the major cities despite Johnson's attempts to introduce anti-poverty and anti-discrimination legislation, and there was significant opposition to the ongoing military action in Vietnam.

The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968 led to further riots across the US.
Kennedy entered the race for the Democratic Party's nomination for president on March 16, 1968—four days after Senator Eugene McCarthy received a large percentage of the vote in the New Hampshire primary against the incumbent President (42% to Johnson's 49%). Two weeks later, a demoralized Johnson announced he was no longer seeking re-election. One month later, Vice President Hubert Humphrey announced he would seek the presidency. Humphrey did not participate in any primaries but he did obtain the support of many Democratic Party delegates. Following the California primary, Kennedy was in second place with 393 delegates compared to Humphrey's 561 and McCarthy’s 258. 

Assassination

The 1968 presidential primary elections in California were held on Tuesday, June 4. The statewide results gave Kennedy 46% and McCarthy 42%.  Four hours after the polls closed in California, Kennedy claimed victory in the state's Democratic presidential primary. He spoke by phone with South Dakota Senator George McGovern. At approximately 12:10 a.m. PDT on , he addressed his campaign supporters in the Ambassador Hotel's Embassy Room ballroom, in the Mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles. At the time, the government provided Secret Service protection for incumbent presidents but not for presidential candidates. Kennedy's only security was provided by former FBI agent William Barry and two unofficial bodyguards, former professional athletes.  During the campaign, Kennedy had welcomed contact with the public, and people had often tried to touch him in their excitement. 

Kennedy had planned to walk through the ballroom when he had finished speaking, on his way to another gathering of supporters elsewhere in the hotel.  However, with deadlines fast approaching, reporters wanted a press conference. Campaign aide Fred Dutton decided that Kennedy would forgo the second gathering and instead go through the hotel's kitchen and pantry area behind the ballroom to the press area. Kennedy finished speaking and started to exit when William Barry stopped him and said, "No, it's been changed. We're going this way." Barry and Dutton began clearing a way for Kennedy to go left through swinging doors to the kitchen corridor, but Kennedy, hemmed in by the crowd, followed maître d'hôtel Karl Uecker through a back exit. 

Uecker led Kennedy through the kitchen area, holding Kennedy's right wrist but frequently releasing it as Kennedy shook hands with those he encountered. Uecker and Kennedy started down a passageway narrowed by an ice machine against the right wall and a steam table to the left. Kennedy turned to his left and shook hands with busboy Juan Romero just as Sirhan Sirhan stepped down from a low tray-stacker beside the ice machine, rushed past Uecker, and repeatedly fired what was later identified as a .22 caliber Iver-Johnson Cadet revolver. 

After Kennedy had fallen to the floor, Agent Barry saw Sirhan holding a gun and hit him twice in the face while others, including maîtres d' Uecker and Edward Minasian, writer George Plimpton, Olympic gold medal decathlete Rafer Johnson and former  professional football player Rosey Grier of the Los Angeles Rams, forced Sirhan against the steam table and disarmed him as he continued firing his gun in random directions. Five other people were also wounded: William Weisel of ABC News, Paul Schrade of the United Auto Workers union, Democratic Party activist Elizabeth Evans, Ira Goldstein of the Continental News Service and Kennedy campaign volunteer Irwin Stroll.

After a minute, Sirhan wrestled free and grabbed the revolver again, but he had already fired all the bullets and was subdued.  Barry went to Kennedy and laid his jacket under the candidate's head, later recalling: "I knew immediately it was a .22, a small caliber, so I hoped it wouldn't be so bad, but then I saw the hole in the Senator's head, and I knew".  Reporters and photographers rushed into the area from both directions, contributing to the confusion and chaos. As Kennedy lay wounded, Juan Romero cradled the senator's head and placed a rosary in his hand. Kennedy asked Romero, "Is everybody OK?" and Romero responded, "Yes, everybody's OK." Kennedy then turned away from Romero and said, "Everything's going to be OK."   Captured by Life photographer Bill Eppridge and Boris Yaro of the Los Angeles Times, this moment became the iconic image of the assassination.   There was some initial confusion in who was shot, one witness believing that the primary victim was Kennedy's campaign manager, Stephen Edward Smith. This was quickly realized to be untrue. 

Kennedy's wife Ethel stood outside the crush of people at the scene, seeking help. She was soon led to her husband and knelt beside him. He turned his head and seemed to recognize her.  Smith promptly appeared on television and calmly asked for a doctor. After several minutes, medical attendants arrived and lifted Kennedy onto a stretcher, prompting him to whisper, "Don't lift me..." which were to become his last words.   He lost consciousness shortly thereafter.  Kennedy was taken a mile away to Central Receiving Hospital, where he arrived near death. One doctor slapped his face, calling, "Bob, Bob", while another doctor manually massaged Kennedy's heart. After obtaining a good heartbeat, doctors handed a stethoscope to Ethel so she could hear her husband's heart beating, much to her relief.

After about 30 minutes, Kennedy was transferred several blocks to the Hospital of the Good Samaritan for surgery. A gymnasium near the hospital was set up as temporary headquarters for the press and news media to receive updates on the senator's condition. Surgery began at 3:12 a.m. PDT and lasted three hours and 40 minutes.   Ten and a half hours later, at 5:30 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, spokesman Frank Mankiewicz announced that Kennedy's doctors were "concerned over his continuing failure to show improvement"; his condition remained "extremely critical as to life". 

Kennedy had been shot three times. One bullet, fired at a range of about 1 in, entered behind his right ear, dispersing fragments throughout his brain.  The other two entered at the rear of his right armpit; one exited from his chest and the other lodged in the back of his neck.   Despite extensive neurosurgery at the Good Samaritan Hospital to remove the bullet and bone fragments from his brain, Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. PDT on June 6, nearly 26 hours after the shooting.

After receiving word of Senator Kennedy's death, his spokesman Frank Mankiewicz left the hospital and walked to the gymnasium where the press and news media were set up for continuous updates on the situation.  At 2:00 AM PDT on June 6, Mankiewicz approached the podium, took a few moments to compose himself and made the official announcement:  I have, uh, a short..... I have a short announcement to read, which I will read, uh..... at this time. Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 AM today, June 6, 1968. With Senator Kennedy at the time of his death were his wife Ethel, his sisters Mrs. Stephen Smith, Mrs. Patricia Lawford, his brother-in-law Mr. Stephen Smith, and his sister-in-law Mrs. John F. Kennedy. He was 42 years old. Thank you.

Perpetrator

Sirhan Sirhan was a Palestinian Arab with Jordanian citizenship, born in Jerusalem, who held strongly anti-Zionist beliefs.  A diary found during a search of Sirhan's home stated for the entry on May 19: "My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more and more of an unshakable obsession. RFK must die. RFK must be killed. Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated..... Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 68."  It has been suggested that the date of the assassination is significant, because it was the first anniversary of the start of the Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors.  When Sirhan was booked by police, they found in his pocket a newspaper article that discussed Kennedy's support for Israel, and at his trial, Sirhan testified that he began to hate Kennedy after learning of this support.   In 1989, he told David Frost: "My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians".  Some scholars believe the assassination was one of the first major incidents of political violence in the United States stemming from the Arab–Israeli conflict in the Middle East. 

The interpretation that he was mostly motivated by Middle Eastern politics has been criticized as an oversimplification that ignores Sirhan's deeper psychological problems.  During his trial, Sirhan's lawyers attempted to use a defense of diminished responsibility, while their client tried to confess to the crime and change his plea to guilty on several occasions. Sirhan testified that he had killed Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought". The judge did not accept this confession and it was later withdrawn. 

Sirhan pleaded guilty on April 17, 1969, and six days later, he was sentenced to death.  The sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972 after the California Supreme Court, in its decision in California v. Anderson, invalidated all pending death sentences imposed in California prior to 1972. Since that time, Sirhan has been denied parole fifteen times and is currently confined at the  Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in southern San Diego County.  Sirhan's lawyers have claimed that he was framed, and Sirhan claims to have no memory of his crime. 

Media coverage

As the shooting took place, ABC News was signing off from its electoral broadcast, while the CBS broadcast was already over. It was not until 21 minutes after the shots that CBS's coverage of the shooting would begin. The reporters who had been present to report on Kennedy's win in the primary ended up crowding into the kitchen where he had been shot and the immediate aftermath was captured only by audio recording and cameras that had no live transmission capability. ABC was able to show scant live footage from the kitchen after Kennedy had been transported but unlike CBS and NBC, all of ABC's coverage from the Ambassador was in black and white.  CBS and NBC shot footage in the kitchen of the shooting's aftermath on color film, which could not be broadcast until it was developed two hours after the incident.

Reporter Andrew West of KRKD, a Mutual Broadcasting System radio affiliate in Los Angeles, captured on audio tape the sounds of the immediate aftermath of the shooting but not the actual shooting itself. Using his reel-to-reel tape recorder and attached microphone, West had just recorded the senator's victory speech. With the audio still rolling, West asked the Senator the following question:
Andrew West: "Senator, how are you going to counter Mr. Humphrey and his backgrounding you as far as the delegate votes go?"
Senator Kennedy: "It just goes back to the struggle for it."

After this brief exchange, West turned off his tape recorder and followed Kennedy and his entourage to the kitchen pantry.  Just a few minutes later, seconds after Kennedy was shot, West turned his recorder on again and started reporting the sudden developments.....
Andrew West: "Senator Kennedy has been shot! Senator Kennedy has been shot; is that possible? Is that possible? It's.....is it possible, ladies and gentlemen? It is possible, he has.....not only Senator Kennedy, oh my God. Senator Kennedy has been shot, and another man, a Kennedy campaign manager, and possibly shot in the head."

Several seconds later, West gave an on-the-spot account of the struggle with Sirhan in the hotel kitchen pantry, shouting at Rafer Johnson to "Get the gun, Rafer, get the gun!" and telling others to "get a hold of [Sirhan's] thumb and break it, if you have to! Get his thumb!  Hold him, hold him! We don't want another Oswald!"  

Over the following week, NBC devoted 55 hours to the shooting and aftermath, ABC 43, and CBS 42, with all three networks preempting their regular coverage and advertisements to cover the story.

Conspiracy theories

As with the 1963 assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's death has been the subject of widespread analysis. Some individuals involved in the original investigation and some researchers have suggested alternative scenarios for the crime, or have argued that there are serious problems with the official case. 

CIA involvement theory

In November 2006, the BBC's Newsnight program presented research by filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan alleging that several CIA officers were present on the night of the assassination.  Three men who appear in films and photographs from the night of the assassination were positively identified by former colleagues and associates as former senior CIA officers who had worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's main anti-Castro station based in Miami.  They were JMWAVE Chief of Operations David Morales, Chief of Maritime Operations Gordon Campbell and Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations George Joannides. 

The program featured an interview with Morales's former attorney Robert Walton, who quoted him as having said, "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." O'Sullivan reported that the CIA declined to comment on the officers in question. It was also alleged that Morales was known for his deep anger toward the Kennedys for what he saw as their betrayal during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. 

Second gunman theory

The location of Kennedy's wounds suggested that his assailant had stood behind him, but some witnesses said that Sirhan faced west as Kennedy moved through the pantry facing east. This has led to the suggestion that a second gunman actually fired the fatal shot, a possibility supported by coroner Thomas Noguchi who stated that the fatal shot was behind Kennedy's right ear and had been fired at a distance of approximately one inch.  Other witnesses, though, said that as Sirhan approached, Kennedy was turning to his left shaking hands, facing north and so exposing his right side. During a re-examination of the case in 1975, the Los Angeles Superior Court ordered expert examination of the possibility of a second gun having been used, and the conclusion of the experts was that there was little or no evidence to support this theory. As recently as 2008, eyewitness John Pilger asserted his belief that there must have been a second gunman.

In 2007, analysis of an audio tape recording of the shooting made by freelance reporter Stanislaw Pruszynski appeared to indicate, according to forensic expert Philip Van Praag, that thirteen shots were fired, even though Sirhan's gun held only eight rounds.  Van Praag states that the recording also reveals at least two cases where the timing between shots was shorter than physically possible. The presence of more than eight shots on the tape was corroborated by forensic audio specialists Wes Dooley and Paul Pegas of Audio Engineering Associates in Pasadena, California, forensic audio and ballistics expert Eddy B. Brixen in Copenhagen, Denmark,   and audio specialist Phil Spencer Whitehead of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.  Some other acoustic experts, however, have stated that no more than eight shots were recorded on the audio tape. 

On February 22, 2012, Sirhan's lawyers, William Pepper and Laurie Dusek, filed a court brief in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles claiming that a second gunman fired the shots that killed Kennedy. It was the fourth and final in a series of federal briefs filed under the writ of habeas corpus by Pepper and Dusek beginning in October 2010.  Judge Beverly Reid O'Connell denied the petition in 2015. 

Aftermath and legacy

Memorial

Following the autopsy on June 6, Kennedy's body was returned to New York City, where he lay in repose at St. Patrick's Cathedral, viewed by thousands, until a funeral mass on the morning of June 8.

Kennedy's younger brother, Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy, eulogized him with the words:

Immediately following the mass, Kennedy's body was transported by a slow-moving train to Washington, D.C., and thousands of mourners lined the tracks and stations, paying their respects as the train passed by.

On the way to the cemetery, the funeral procession passed through Resurrection City, a shantytown protest set up as part of the Poor People's Campaign. The procession stopped in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where residents of Resurrection City joined the group and sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".

Kennedy was buried near his older brother John, in Arlington National Cemetery, in the first burial ever to take place there at night; the second was the burial of his younger brother Ted.

After Kennedy's assassination, Congress altered the Secret Service's mandate to include protection for presidential candidates. The remaining candidates were immediately protected under an executive order issued by Lyndon Johnson, putting a strain on the poorly resourced Secret Service. 

1968 election

At the time of his death, Kennedy was substantially behind Humphrey in convention delegate support,  but many believe that Kennedy would have ultimately secured the nomination following his victory in the California primary.  Only thirteen states held primaries that year, meaning that most delegates at the Democratic convention could choose a candidate based on their personal preference. Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and others have argued that Kennedy's broad appeal and charisma would have been sufficiently convincing at the 1968 Democratic National Convention to give him the nomination.  Historian Michael Beschloss believed, however, that Kennedy would not have secured the nomination.  Humphrey, after a National Convention in Chicago marred by violence in the streets, was far behind in opinion polls but gained ground. He ultimately lost the general election to Republican Richard Nixon by the narrow popular vote margin of 43.4% to 42.7%. Nixon won by a more decisive 301-191 margin in the electoral vote.

Cultural and societal impact

Kennedy's assassination was a blow to the optimism for a brighter future that his campaign brought for many Americans who lived through the turbulent 1960s.   Juan Romero, the busboy who shook hands with Kennedy right before he was shot, later said, "It made me realize that no matter how much hope you have it can be taken away in a second." 

Jack Newfield, a reporter that had been traveling with the campaign, expressed his feelings on the effect of the assassination, closing his memoir on Kennedy with:

Artifacts, museums and locations today

After the failed campaign of preservationists to preserve the Ambassador Hotel where Kennedy was shot, the hotel was demolished in 2005–2006, with the last section of the Ambassador falling in January 2006, leaving only the annex that housed the hotel entrance, a shopping arcade, the coffee shop, and the historic Cocoanut Grove, all of which were promised to be preserved in some manner. From 2006 to 2010, six new schools were built on the site and named the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Plans to re-create the pantry in the area of the school complex and create a museum, dedicated to Kennedy's assassination, fell through after commission chairman Cruz Reynoso, a former state Supreme Court justice, said in court, "We didn't want to celebrate the death. We wanted to celebrate his life, particularly his ideals."

The handcuffs that were used by now-retired police officer Arturo Placecia to arrest Sirhan Sirhan are now part of the collection of the upcoming National Law Enforcement Museum in Washington, D.C..

The blood-stained suit coat, shorts, shirt, belt, tie and socks which Kennedy wore when he was shot are now in the possession of the Los Angeles County District Attorney. Controversy arose in 2010 when Kennedy's clothing was transported to the California Homicide Investigators Association conference in Las Vegas, where they were included in a temporary public display of never-before-seen artifacts from famous crime scenes, related to prolific serial killers and infamous murders, such as the Black Dahlia murder and the murder of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate. The items and Kennedy's clothing were subsequently removed from the exhibit and returned to the LAPD vault, with the LAPD apologizing to the Kennedy family. 

Until 1987, the LAPD retained the original files, reports,  transcripts, fragments of the bullets that struck Kennedy and the four other bystanders in the kitchen pantry, the .22 caliber Iver-Johnson handgun used by Sirhan, Kennedy's blood-stained clothes, and numerous other artifacts related to the assassination. In 1987, the LAPD donated the entire evidence collection (except for Kennedy's clothes which remain in possession of the LAPD) to the California State Archives in Sacramento for permanent preservation. The collection remains in the California State Archives.  

The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Archives at Southeastern Massachusetts University also contain a large collection of materials on the Robert Kennedy assassination. Included among these records are files donated by several writers and researchers and materials purchased from the National Archives and Records Administration-Pacific Southwest Region, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, and the FBI. Another source of information on the case is the Assassination Archives and Research Center. The Center maintains an extensive collection of government documents, interviews, unpublished manuscripts, photographs, audio tapes, and secondary works.

Some items - such as the bullet-pocked ceiling tiles - were removed long ago and intentionally destroyed by the LAPD and not used in Sirhan's trial. A large number of the photographs of the pantry area and the tapes of the recorded interviews with individuals who were present during the assassination suffered a similar fate. Conspiracy theorists today believe that the destroyed evidence was vital as it proved that Sirhan Sirhan may have had an accomplice and there has been a cover-up, similar to the assassination of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's brother. Furnishings from the defunct Ambassador Hotel, ranging from bedroom furniture to silver champagne buckets, were auctioned off over the years until the hotel's demolition. Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (, Sirḥān Bishārah Sirḥān; born March 19, 1944) is a Palestinian of Jordanian citizenship who was convicted of the 1968 assassination of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He is currently serving a life sentence at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County, California.
        
Sirhan was born in Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine and is a strong opponent of Israel. In 1989, he told David Frost, "My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians."  Some scholars believe that the assassination was the first major incident of political violence in the United States stemming from the Arab–Israeli conflict in the Middle East. 

Early life

Sirhan  was born into a Palestinian Christian family in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine. When he was 12 years old his family emigrated, moving briefly to New York and then to California. In Altadena, he attended Eliot Junior High School, followed by John Muir High School and Pasadena City College, both in Pasadena. Sirhan's father, Bishara, was characterized as a stern man who often beat his sons harshly.  Shortly after the family's move to California, Bishara returned alone to the Middle East.  Sirhan never became an American citizen, retaining instead his Jordanian citizenship.

As an adult, Sirhan changed church denominations several times, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches.{url=http://www.biography.com/people/sirhan-sirhan} Then in 1966, he joined the occult organization Ancient Mystical Order of the Rose Cross, commonly known as Rosicrucians. 

Robert F. Kennedy assassination

On June 5, 1968, Sirhan fired a .22 caliber Iver-Johnson Cadet revolver  at Senator Robert Kennedy and the crowd surrounding him in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after Kennedy had finished addressing supporters in the hotel's main ballroom. George Plimpton, Rosey Grier, author Pete Hamill, and 1960 Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan after a lengthy struggle.

Kennedy was shot three times, once in the head and twice in the back, with a fourth bullet passing through his jacket. He died nearly 26 hours later. Five other people at the party were also shot, but all five recovered: Paul Schrade, an official with the United Automobile Workers union; William Weisel, an ABC TV unit manager; Ira Goldstein, a reporter with the Continental News Service;  Elizabeth Evans, a friend of Pierre Salinger, one of Kennedy's campaign aides; and Irwin Stroll, a teenage Kennedy volunteer.  

Prosecution

Despite Sirhan's admission of guilt, recorded in a confession made while in police custody on June 9, a lengthy trial followed. The court judge did not accept his confession and denied his request to withdraw his not guilty plea so that he could plead guilty. 

On February 10, 1969, Sirhan's lawyers made a motion in chambers to enter a plea of guilty to first degree murder in exchange for life imprisonment (rather than the death penalty). Sirhan announced to the court judge, Herbert V. Walker, that he wanted to withdraw his original plea of not guilty in order to plead guilty as charged on all counts.  He also asked that his counsel "dissociate themselves from this case completely".  When the judge asked him what he wanted to do about sentencing, Sirhan replied, "I will ask to be executed."

Judge Walker denied the motion and stated, "This court will not accept the plea". The judge also denied Sirhan's request for his counsel to withdraw; when his counsel entered another motion to withdraw from the case of their own volition, Walker denied this motion as well. Judge Walker subsequently ordered that the record pertaining to the motion be sealed. 

The trial proceeded, and opening statements began on February 12. The lead prosecutor in the Sirhan case was Lynn "Buck" Compton, a World War II veteran who later became a justice of the California Court of Appeal. The prosecution's opening statement, delivered by David Fitts, was replete with examples of Sirhan's deliberate preparations to kill Kennedy. The prosecution was able to show that just two nights before the attack, on June 3, Sirhan was seen at the Ambassador Hotel, apparently attempting to learn the building's layout; evidence proved that he visited a gun range on June 4. Further testimony by Alvin Clark seemed especially damning. Clark, Sirhan's garbage collector, claimed that Sirhan had told him a month before the attack of his intention to shoot Kennedy.

Sirhan's defense counsel, which included attorney Grant Cooper, had hoped to demonstrate that the killing had been an impulsive act of a man with a mental deficiency, but when Judge Walker admitted into evidence pages from three of the journal notebooks that Sirhan had kept, it was clear that the murder was not only premeditated, but also "quite calculating and willful".

On March 3, 1969, in the Los Angeles courtroom, Cooper asked Sirhan directly in testimony if he had indeed shot Senator Kennedy. Sirhan replied immediately: "Yes, sir", but then stated that he did not bear any ill-will towards Kennedy. Sirhan also testified that he had killed Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought". He explained in an interview with David Frost in 1989 that this referred to the time since the creation of the State of Israel. He has maintained since then that he has no memory of the crime, nor of making that statement in open court. 

During Sirhan's testimony, Cooper asked him to explain his reasons for the attack on Kennedy. Sirhan launched into "a vicious diatribe about the Middle East conflict between Arab and Jew". Defense counsel Emile Zola Berman, who was Jewish, was upset by Sirhan's statements and expressed his intentions to resign from the defense team. Berman was eventually talked out of resigning by Cooper and stayed until the end of the trial.

During the trial, the defense primarily based their case on the expert testimony of Bernard L. Diamond, M.D., a professor of law and psychiatry at University of California, Berkeley, who testified that Sirhan was suffering from diminished capacity at the time of the murder. Sirhan's behavior throughout the trial was indeed bizarre, and at one point, he became outraged during testimony about his childhood.

Sirhan was convicted on April 17, 1969, and was sentenced six days later to death in the gas chamber. Three years later, his sentence was commuted to life in prison, owing to the California Supreme Court's decision in The People of the State of California v. Robert Page Anderson, 493 P.2d 880, 6 Cal. 3d 628 (Cal. 1972), which ruled capital punishment a violation of the California Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The California Supreme Court declared in the Anderson case that its decision was retroactive, thereby invalidating all prior death sentences imposed in California.

Appeals

Sirhan's lawyer Lawrence Teeter later argued that Grant Cooper was compromised by a conflict of interest and was, as a consequence, grossly negligent in defense of his client.  The defense moved for a new trial amid claims of set-ups, police bungles, hypnotism, brainwashing, blackmail, and government conspiracies. On June 5, 2003, coincidentally the 35th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, Lawrence Teeter petitioned a federal court in Los Angeles to move the case to Fresno. He argued that Sirhan could not get a fair hearing in Los Angeles, where a man who helped prosecute him is now a federal judge: U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr. in Los Angeles was a deputy U.S. attorney during Sirhan's trial, and part of the prosecutorial team. Teeter had been trying since 1994 to have state and federal courts overturn the conviction, arguing that his client was hypnotized and framed, possibly by a government conspiracy. He was granted a June 30 hearing. During the hearing, Teeter referred to testimony from the original trial transcripts regarding a prosecution eyewitness to the attack, author George Plimpton, in which he said that Sirhan looked "enormously composed. He seemed... purged." This statement coincided with the defense's argument that Sirhan had shot Kennedy while in some kind of hypnotic trance. The motion was denied. Teeter died in 2005, and Sirhan declined other counsel to replace him.  On November 26, 2011, Sirhan's defense teams filed new court papers for a new trial, saying that "expert analysis of recently uncovered evidence shows two guns were fired in the assassination and that Sirhan's revolver was not the gun that shot Kennedy"   and he "should be freed from prison or granted a new trial based on 'formidable evidence', asserting his innocence and 'horrendous violations' of his rights". 

On January 5, 2015, Sirhan Sirhan was denied freedom by U.S. District Judge Beverly Reid O'Connell in Los Angeles, who said that Sirhan "failed to meet the showing required for actual innocence" that might excuse his having failed to seek his freedom sooner in federal court. Sirhan's case was not strong enough. "Though petitioner advances a number of theories regarding the events of June 5, 1968, petitioner does not dispute that he fired eight rounds of gunfire in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel," O'Connell wrote. "Petitioner does not show that it is more likely than not that no juror, acting reasonably, would have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."

Motives

A motive cited for his actions is the Middle East conflict. After his arrest, Sirhan said, "I can explain it. I did it for my country." Sirhan believed that he was deliberately betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War,  which had begun exactly one year to the day before the assassination. During a search of Sirhan's apartment after his arrest, a spiral-bound notebook was found containing a diary entry which demonstrated that his anger had gradually fixated on Robert Kennedy, who had promised to send 50 fighter jets to Israel if he were elected president. Sirhan's journal entry of May 18, 1968, read: "My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming the more and more of an unshakable obsession...Kennedy must die before June 5th". They found other notebooks and diary entries which contained his growing rage at Zionists, particularly at Kennedy; his journals also contained many nonsensical scribbles, which were thought to be his version of "free writing".

The next day, on June 6, the Los Angeles Times printed an article by Jerry Cohen which discussed Sirhan's motive for the assassination, confirmed by the memos that Sirhan wrote to himself. The article stated:When the Jordanian nationalist, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, allegedly shot Kennedy, ostensibly because of the senator's advocacy of U.S. support for Israel, the crime with which he was charged was in essence another manifestation of the centuries-old hatred between Arab and Jew. 

M.T. Mehdi, then secretary-general of the Action Committee on American-Arab Relations, believed that Sirhan had acted in justifiable self-defense, stating: "Sirhan was defending himself against those 50 Phantom jets Kennedy was sending to Israel." Mehdi wrote a 100-page book on the subject called Kennedy and Sirhan: Why?

Later in prison, Sirhan claimed that he was drunk. An interview with Sirhan in 1980 revealed new claims that a combination of liquor and anger over the anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war triggered his actions the night when he assassinated RFK. "You must remember the circumstances of that night, June 5. That was when I was provoked," Sirhan says, recorded in a transcript of one of his interviews with Mehdi, later president of the New York-based American-Arab Relations Committee. "That is when I initially went to observe the Jewish Zionist parade in celebration of the June 5, 1967, victory over the Arabs. That was the catalyst that triggered me on that night." Then Sirhan said, "In addition, there was the consumption of the liquor, and I want the public to understand that..."

At a June 30, 2003 hearing, Lawrence Teeter, in an attempt to get Sirhan a new trial, claimed that Sirhan had been hypnotized by a conspiracy into firing at Kennedy and that he may have been using blanks; that Sirhan couldn't possibly have fired the fatal shot from where he was standing; that prosecutors blackmailed his defense attorney to throw the case, and that police and government agencies whitewashed or bungled investigations. The motion was denied.

Imprisonment

In 1971, Sirhan was housed in the Adjustment Center at San Quentin State Prison.  He was subsequently transferred to the Correctional Training Facility (CTF) in Soledad, California, where he was confined until 1992.Curtis, Kim. Even in prison Jackson would be 'star'. Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA), June 13, 2005.Grossi, Mark. Corcoran Prison Home to Who's-Who of Killers. The List of Infamous Murderers at the State Facility has Grown This Week to Include Sirhan Sirhan and Juan Corona. The Fresno Bee, June 5, 1992  From 1992 to 2009, he was confined at the California State Prison (COR) in Corcoran, California, and lived in COR's Protective Housing Unit until he was moved to a harsher lockdown at COR in 2003.  In October 2009, ostensibly for his own safety, he was transferred to the Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California, where he was housed in a cell by himself.Deutsch, Linda. [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2010186978_apussirhantransfer.html "Robert F. Kennedy's killer is moved to new site"], The Seattle Times, Associated Press, November 2, 2009.  He was subsequently moved back to Corcoran.

On November 22, 2013, Sirhan was transferred from Corcoran to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County.  The transfer occurred on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said that the transfer was "a routine matter of housing allotments" and its timing was "simply an unfortunate coincidence." 

Applications for parole

In a 1980 interview with M.T. Mehdi, Sirhan claimed that his actions were fueled by liquor and anger. He then complained that the parole board was not taking these "mitigating" circumstances into account when they continually denied his parole.

On May 10, 1982, Sirhan told the parole board: "I sincerely believe that if Robert Kennedy were alive today, I believe he would not countenance singling me out for this kind of treatment. I think he would be among the first to say that, however horrible the deed I committed 14 years ago was, that it should not be the cause for denying me equal treatment under the laws of this country."  

A parole hearing for Sirhan is now scheduled every five years. 

On March 2, 2011, after 42 years in prison, Sirhan's 14th parole hearing was held, with Sirhan represented by his current attorney, William Francis Pepper.  At this parole hearing, Sirhan testified that he continues to have no memory of the assassination nor of any details of his 1969 trial and confession.  Pepper also repeated the claim, which Sirhan's lawyers had previously stated, that Sirhan was "hypno programmed" and his memory of being programmed was "wiped" by an unknown conspiracy behind the assassination which is why Sirhan has no recall of the murder.  Pepper said he hired Dr. Daniel Brown of Harvard Medical School to spend more than sixty hours with Sirhan Sirhan in prison and recover his memory of both the shooting and having been put under hypnosis.  His parole was denied on the grounds that Sirhan still does not understand the full ramifications of his crime. 

On February 10, 2016, at his 15th parole hearing, Sirhan was denied parole again in a federal courthouse in San Diego. One of Sirhan's shooting victims from that night, Paul Schrade, now aged 91, testified in support of Sirhan, stating his belief that a second shooter killed Robert Kennedy and that Sirhan was intended to be a distraction from the real gunman by an unknown conspiracy who plotted to kill Kennedy.    Sirhan also repeated his story in claiming to have no memory of the shooting of Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel.  In his testimony before the parole board, Sirhan recalled events before the shooting in some detail - going to a shooting range that day, June 4, 1968, visiting the hotel in search of a party and returning to the lobby after realizing he drank too many Tom Collins to drive.  He next claimed to have drunk coffee in a backstage area near the hotel pantry with a woman to whom he was attracted, and who may have been involved with the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy.  Dr. Brown has stated that the unknown woman then took Sirhan into the pantry, which Sirhan described in his prison memory sessions as a dark room at the hotel, and that while in the pantry the woman gave Sirhan a post-hypnotic cue to fire a gun in the direction of Robert Kennedy minutes later.  Sirhan was immediately subdued by several men in the pantry as Kennedy fell to the pantry floor fatally wounded.  Sirhan has claimed that after having coffee with the woman, the next thing his conscious memory can remember is his being choked and unable to breathe moments after the Kennedy shooting, stating:  "It's all vague now.  I'm sure you all have it in your records.  I can't deny it or confirm it.  I just wish this whole thing had never taken place."  

Sirhan's next parole hearing will be in 2021.
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