◆ SpookStack

I said to him, "Thanks, and could yon please do me a favor? Call Tess and let her know that I'm all right, will you?’ Now I’m sitting there worried about my wife hearing all these reports about a stabbing and me in trouble. So what does he say. He says, ‘I spoke to her a hakif hour ago.’ Do you know what that does for you? You're stuck in London and you're worried and then you hear a thing like that? Well, that’s Bobby Kennedy and that’s all I can tell you about him, because that’s all he is tike.” “You mean the man stands up for you a little bit,” George O'Neill said. “He goes to the wall for you,” Jimmy McShane ‘- Tver, a day or so later, during one of those snatches in a campaign when there is a little time for talk, Kennedy was sitting in the back 9f a car going through Manhattan and he talked a little about himself. “I'm supposed to be ruthless and seeking a power base here and alt that,” he was saying. “I don't know. I'm just interested in politics as a way of getting elected to office. I'm not interested in politics for the power of it. I'd like to work for the government. If 1 don’t want to work I suppose I could live off my father. Maybe that’s what they want me to do. Live off my. father.” ; It was a primitive kind of a line. People very rarely use lines like that. But Kennedy uses them all the time. He jikes to climinate phrases and get to the hard fact. If there is one reputation he brings with him which is unanimously accepted, it is the reputation he has for telling the truth, and tclling it in a few words. They have accused Kennedy in Washington of using his power to run roughshod over the Bill of Rights, to push people around and generally be the little-brother- getting-too-big. But nobody has ever said Bobby Ken- _nedy does not give you the right count when he talks to you. . You can see that when he talks about himself being in New York. “If I'm going to be judged for the United F. BI. —-: “... if I’m going to be judged for the United States Senate on the basis of my - accent, or that I lived in Virginia and haven't been in New York in a long time, then all right... I cahn’t do any » States Senate on the basis of my Boston accent or that I live in Virginia and haven't been in New York a long time, then all right, judge me that way and I cahn’t do anything about it.” There was no plea and no snide remark about it, Just a guy stating facts. And then, when he warms wp, he begins to use facts and he sticks by them closely and they tumble out of him and the finger begins to jab and there is a little fire in the blue eyes and you — can sec where his reputation as a fighter comes from. They say I was personally responsible for having the F. B. I. go to those reporters in the middle of the | night during the stecl price fight. How can they say that when they know it isn't right? I didn’t even know it was being done. It was a mistake and I took credit . for it: But I did not do it personally. Your reporters in Washington knew that. Did you ever talk to them about it? Did you ever go to them and ask them about jit? Did they ever tell you that I had the F. B. I. go around in the middle of the night? No. Because they now it isn’t true, I had Nick Katzenback tell the to please interview Bethichem Steel. people they were not going to raise prices, sadether !