by Gus Russo
Although it has not been widely publicized, the CIA in 1975 reviewed its file on the Kennedy case and also reached a conclusion critical of the Warren Commission report:
The belief that there was Soviet or Cuban (KGB and/or DGI) connection with Oswald will persist and grow until there has been a full disclosure of all elements of Oswald’s handling and stay in the Soviet Union and his contacts in Mexico City. The Warren Commission report should have left a wider “window” for this contingency. That was the opinion of the counterintelligence component in the CIA in 1964. . . CIA would continue to regard this aspect of the Oswald case as still open.139
All of these shortcomings could have been avoided if Robert Kennedy, Allen Dulles, Lyndon Johnson, or Earl Warren had desired it. They didn’t. Robert Kennedy biographer Lester David wrote:
Robert Kennedy knew what had gone on since 1961. At the very least, the Warren Commission should have had the opportunity to pursue the Cuban link. It did not, because Bobby, deciding he wanted the entire horrible, painful story wrapped up and forgotten, participated in a coverup of essential evidence.140
In this context, Robert Kennedy bore much responsibility for the seriously incomplete work of the Commission, and consequently set the stage for decades of condemnation to be hurled at both the commissioners and the federal government. It also triggered a catastrophic collapse of public faith in official government pronouncements of all kinds.
Senator Richard Schweiker, who investigated the Kennedy assassination in the 1970s, recently summed things up: “The Warren Commission was set up at the time to feed pabulum to the American people for reasons not yet known, and one of the biggest coverups in the history of our country occurred at that time.”141
With hindsight, it is now apparent to most observers that the Warren Commission’s work was undermined by its hidden agenda to “dispel rumors.” There is no hint of a desire to examine every clue. Allen Dulles, Robert Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, and Lyndon Johnson had no qualms about telling the American people who shot JFK, but telling them why was out of the question. As Warren Commission attorney Burt Griffin would later testify, “We frankly ducked, I think. Everybody who has read the report knows we ducked the question of motive.”
When asked how things would have been different if the intelligence community (which included Commissioner Dulles) had informed the Commission of the anti-Castro plots, Griffin responded, “I do not think we could have ducked the question of motive under those circumstances. . . It becomes very important that something that perhaps the U.S. government did is what supplied the impetus to select President Kennedy rather than some other target.”142
The fact that this information was kept secret from the Commission protected the Kennedy myth, the reputation of the United States government, and the world from the possibility of nuclear war. But because so much of the government’s investigation of the assassination and Cuban operations became shrouded in secrecy, speculation filled the vacuum. The result was 35 years of misdirected allegations leveled at many of those who were foresworn to keep “The Big Secret:” that there may indeed have been a conspiracy instigated by Jack and Bobby’s “secret war.” In the years to come, however, the theory of Castro retaliation would come within a whisker of blowing wide open on a number of occasions. And while LBJ pondered how to exploit this tragic Kennedy misadventure to his political advantage, Bobby Kennedy dealt with that horrible reality in his own very personal way.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BOBBY ALONE
“I have. . . wondered at times if we did not pay a very great price for being more energetic than wise about a lot of things, especially Cuba.”
—Robert Kennedy in 19681
“I found out something I never knew. I found out that my world was not the real world.”
—Robert Kennedy, weeks before his own death in 19682
The day of the assassination, a devastated Bobby Kennedy remarked to his Justice Department assistant Edwin Guthman, “I’d received a letter from someone in Texas last week warning me not to let the President go to Texas because they would kill him. I sent it to Kenny O’Donnell.” This warning, coupled with his knowledge of Castro’s threatened reprisals and Oswald’s pro-Castro obsessions, clearly weighed heavily on the mind of JFK’s brother.3
In the wake of Jack Kennedy’s death, only firebrand Black Muslim leader Malcolm X had the temerity to pronounce what many savvy political insiders secretly suspected: “The chickens have come home to roost.” Harris Wofford, aide to both Jack and Bobby Kennedy, later wrote that Malcolm X’s taunt “caused more pain to Robert Kennedy than any of us could have imagined at the time.” The reason, Wofford explained, was that Bobby believed he was “to some significant extent, directly or indirectly responsible for his brother’s death.”4
Bobby had feared for some time that his policies were inviting reprisals—from prosecuted mobsters who felt double-crossed after dealing with Joe Kennedy during the election, or from right-wing hatemongers objecting to Kennedy policies on civil rights. But there was that third, more probable explanation, which surfaced soon after the assassination as the only clear conclusion. After the pro-Castro Lee Oswald was arrested, Bobby’s relentless pursuit of Castro now appeared to be the trigger.
The Guilt-Ridden Brother
“Bobby felt responsible for his brother’s death. One day he said to me, ‘What do you think [about the assassination]?’ I said I thought that Castro had gotten to Oswald. He just gave me a look that indicated it was possible.”
—Enrique “Harry” Ruiz-Williams5
John Davis, author and cousin of Jackie Kennedy, was among those in the inner circle paying their respects at the White House that awful weekend. In the blur of the somber occasion, one memory stands out for him. “All of the Kennedy family were stalwart at the White House after the assassination,” Davis recalled recently. “But Bobby was destroyed. He mumbled, walked in circles and, in my opinion, seemed consumed by guilt.”6
After waiting a week, Sergio Arcacha Smith called to offer his condolences to the man who had offered so much hope to Arcacha’s volunteers in New Orleans. “Little was said,” Arcacha recalls. “Bobby was a broken man.”7 RFK’s assistant on civil rights, William Vanden Heuvel, described the impact through an analogy: “What polio did for Roosevelt, the assassination did for Robert Kennedy.”8
“It was as though someone had turned off his switch,” said friend Dave Hackett.9 Journalist and RFK friend Jack Newfield recalled that Bobby was “in the deepest kind of mourning” he had ever seen in anyone. Although he was still Attorney General, Bobby didn’t appear at the Justice Department for more than a month. William Vanden Heuvel, Bobby’s special assistant on civil rights, recalls, “I never saw anyone so grief-stricken over anything as Bobby was after the assassination. His face was all pain, filled with an anguish that never left him for the rest of his life.”10 A friend visiting after the assassination described Bobby as “desolate, bleak, a vacuum—crushed beyond hope, mentally, spiritually, and physically.”11
G. Robert Blakey, who later became the Chief Counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, was a young attorney for the Justice Department at the time. He recently recalled, “Bobby was traumatized to the point of total paralysis. He could no longer function. In fact, Nick Katzenbach ran the Justice Department after the assassination.”12
When Bobby finally returned to work, he created a miniature shrine to his brother in a hidden corner of his office. An RFK biographer described it:
It was an obscure place, and only a few of his closest friends were even aware it existed. Bobby placed photographs, books, and small reminders there. He would go there many times during the day and stand in front of it, lost in thought. He would try to work, but within minutes of his arrival, associates would find him staring out a window. He would get up suddenly, go downstairs, and stride in the great courtyard of the block-square building. His eyes were always red from weeping.13
For many
months thereafter, Kennedy exhibited the symptoms of clinical depression—unable to sleep or concentrate on work, given to long bouts of brooding. His eyes were frequently red from crying. One member of his Secret Service contingent remarked, “Bobby was so undone by the assassination he could barely speak to his wife.”14 After interviewing numerous RFK friends, Lester David wrote that Bobby Kennedy “became preoccupied with the idea of death. . . He was engulfed by feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and discouragement.”15
One of Jack and Bobby’s closest and oldest chums, Lem Billings, concluded, “When Jack died, a large part of Bobby died, too. I saw that life extinguished. . . When they buried Jack Kennedy in that grave at Arlington, they buried much of Bobby, too.”16
All the observers saw a melancholic, vastly less energetic RFK. The only exception was when he protested Lyndon Johnson’s immediate possession of the Oval Office. The Secretaries of State and Defense had advised Johnson to assert swift authority in his new office in order to demonstrate, nationally and internationally, that the American government would proceed without interruption or dislocation.
But when Johnson approached the Oval Office on the morning after the assassination, Bobby, seemingly half-deranged, spread his arms at the doorway and shrieked to the new President that he could not enter. “Don’t come in here! . . .You should not be here! You don’t deserve to be here.”17 Although Johnson himself is the single known source for that story, he apparently repeated it often enough to give it validity. Bobby later explained, more convincingly, that he wanted to keep Johnson out only until his brother’s belongings were removed. In any event, he confirmed that a confrontation did take place.18
The coming winter of 1963-64 was a spiritually desolate trial for RFK. His insomnia had deepened to the point where he would leave home in the middle of the night, driving at high speeds in his convertible in the freezing cold. He often would not return until dawn. Kennedy refused to allow Secret Service agents to accompany him on these rides, so no one ever knew where he had gone, although many suspected he went to his brother’s grave.19
LBJ speechwriter Leo Janos was told by Johnson’s personal secretary, Juanita Roberts, that Bobby was incoherent, “and found wandering around cities shortly after his brother’s death, not just because of the loss of his brother, but because RFK felt personally responsible due to his involvement in the anti-Castro activities.”20 By all indications, Bobby Kennedy’s now-legendary melancholia stayed with him until his own death-by-assassination four and a half years later.
When the Warren Commission report was released in the fall of 1964, Bobby told intimates that he didn’t accept its conclusions. This was no surprise, considering Bobby knew secrets to which most of his friends weren’t privy. In 1966, RFK would admit to historian Arthur Schlesinger his misgivings about the Commission’s findings. Schlesinger wrote:
On October 30, 1966, as we talked until 2 a.m. in P.J. Clarke’s saloon in New York, he wondered how long he could continue to avoid comment on the report. He regarded it as a poor job but was unwilling to criticize it and thereby re-open the whole tragic business.21
In the days after JFK’s murder, Manuel Artime visited with his grief-stricken friend. Bobby Kennedy told his exile ally, “The Kennedy family has two big enemies, the Mafia and Castro. One of them killed my brother.”22 Bobby also told Schlesinger, just two weeks after the murder, that he was uncertain whether Oswald had acted alone “or as part of a large plot, whether organized by Castro or gangsters.”23
RFK’s brooding led him to an abrupt change in character. Writer Jack Newfield concluded that the “assassination punctured the center of Robert Kennedy’s universe. . . . It made Robert Kennedy, a man unprepared for introspection, think for the first time in his life what he stood for.”24 In his search for meaning, he immersed himself in the brooding, existential writings of philosopher Albert Camus, which considered the fundamental questions: Why are we here, and what is the meaning of life?
Kennedy proceeded to read every Camus novel, play, and essay. Camus’ published works were soon filled with RFK’s marginal notes. The result was the rebirth of Robert Kennedy. He became not merely a fatalist, but a tireless worker for global peace, and a beacon of hope for the underprivileged. All the manic energy he had poured into the violent and ill-conceived “Cuba Project” now seemingly was channeled toward his new, loftier goals.
There was no in-between for Bobby Kennedy. He had changed 180 degrees. As one friend recalled, “His transformation was total. He changed as much as any human has the capacity to change.” For all his energy though, Bobby Kennedy now suspected—no doubt thanks to Camus—that, in the long run, all his efforts were for naught. “I don’t know that it makes any difference what I do,” he once told his advisors. “Maybe we’re all doomed anyway.” When an aide was discussing how a certain recent occurrence might affect his political hopes in 1972, Kennedy replied, “Who knows whether I’m going to be alive in 1972?”
His new-found fatalism even became the butt of some dark humor. When arriving in Indiana during his 1968 bid for the Presidency, Kennedy was greeted by signs proclaiming: “KENNEDY AND CAMUS IN 1968.”25 Followers began to speak of the old “Bad Bobby” and the new “Good Bobby.”
Robert Kennedy’s friends have always maintained that RFK had no interest in the details of his brother’s murder, or, for that matter, who committed the murder. In fact, this lack of interest has been a Kennedy family mantra for the last three decades, most recently uttered, almost to the word, by John Kennedy, Jr., when interviewed in 1992 by ABC’s Sam Donaldson. The journalist asked the President’s son who he thought had killed his father. Young Kennedy responded, “I frankly haven’t given it much thought. All that matters is that my father is dead.”
More than a year after the tragedy, journalist Oriana Fallaci suggested to Bobby Kennedy that the memory of Jack “persecutes you, doesn’t it?” Bobby dodged the question. “For a long time now, I have refused to speak of it. . . Please do not ask me. Let us forget the question.”26 He essentially repeated the same refusal almost three years after the assassination. In July 1966, Richard Goodwin, formerly of Jack Kennedy’s inner circle, became convinced that the Warren Commission’s investigation had been seriously flawed. Because he was well aware of Bobby’s “still-unhealed vulnerability,” he cautiously raised the subject in private—and received the response of a man still in pain. Goodwin wrote:
Bobby listened silently, without objection, his inner tension or distaste revealed only by the circling currents of scotch in the glass he was obsessively rotating between his hands, staring at the floor in a posture of avoidance. After I completed my brief presentation, he looked up: “I’m sorry, Dick. I just can’t focus on it.”27
To some, such devastation, even given the special circumstances, was not only puzzling but suspicious. It seemed a grief of a different order than that felt by the other Kennedys. Friends portray Bobby as unable or unwilling to say why he was so overwhelmingly stricken. More than that, he seemed to be hiding something. CIA Director John McCone had worked intimately with Bobby on many intelligence matters and felt they had a close relationship. McCone sensed in Bobby’s reaction to the assassination “something troubling [him] that he was not disclosing.”28 Later, McCone would state his belief that Robert Kennedy “had personal feelings of guilt because he was directly or indirectly involved with the anti-Castro planning.”29
McCone’s intuition was probably right, but not even he, the Director of the CIA, knew all the details of the most dangerous, potentially most explosive secrets. Those darkest secrets concerned plots and plans to eliminate Fidel Castro, an aspiration about which the Kennedy brothers were “hysterical,” according to later testimony from Robert McNamara.
In one sense, Bobby’s avoidance of the subject of Jack’s death seems an understandable emotion, often referred to as a trait typical of the family’s Irish heritage. Yet, one has to wonder if the “ruthless,” sometimes “vengeful,” side of Bobby Kenne
dy so easily gave in to this emotion. Did he, in fact, not care that his beloved brother’s murderers might have escaped to a beach in Brazil? Although it is not certain, there have long been rumors that Bobby Kennedy did indeed take an interest, albeit a very discreet one, in ascertaining the details of his brother’s assassination.
Considering the early data filtering back to Washington that weekend following the assassination, Robert Kennedy must have shared the same interpretation of events as Desmond FitzGerald: Had Castro, in fact, struck first? To recap:
Oswald had ties to Cubans in New Orleans, where Bobby Kennedy had numerous staging operations (involving the likes of Sergio Arcacha Smith, David Ferrie, and Nino Diaz), many of which were penetrated by Castro’s agents. In fact, Oswald had used Arcacha’s previous address on his fliers. And New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison suspected that Oswald had contact with Ferrie.
Oswald had just returned from the Soviet and Cuban Embassies in Mexico City, where Bobby’s own Castro assassin, Rolando Cubela, was known to frequent.
And there was more. In early December 1963, Bobby Kennedy received a letter from Havana that had to hit him like a heat-seeking missile. The letter, dated November 27, 1963, indicated that Oswald had been hired and paid off by an agent of Fidel Castro. Although later determined by the FBI to be fictitious, the note nonetheless had to ignite Bobby’s legendary thirst for revenge. In a second letter sent to a Cuban newspaper in New York, the same writer said that the contact with Oswald was made in Mexico City.
The letters bore an eerie resemblance to the allegations of Gilberto Alvarado, which already had official Washington in a tizzy. Recall Alvarado’s claim that Oswald had been paid $6,500 by a Castro agent in Mexico City. These letters used the figure of $7,000—a great similarity that may have seemed too close for comfort.
