Mar 16, 2021 · On January 21, 1961, President Kennedy appointed him Attorney General of the United States, and he held the office until September 3, 1964. Kennedy was elected to the United States Senate from New York in 1965.
Nov 08, 2009 · Robert Kennedy was the U.S. attorney general from 1961 to 1964 and a U.S. senator from New York from 1965 to 1968. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Virginia School of Law,...
Sep 04, 1964 · When he became Attorney General in 1961, he was criticized as a brash young man with the narrow instincts of a prosecutor. But he was respected as an architect of his brother's election to the...
The Attorney General of the United States is the nation’s chief law officer. More than any other executive officer he is required to suffer himself not to “know” all the things Mr. Kennedy ...
Jun 14, 2018 · Kennedy told Lewis that after the 1960 election and before he was sworn in as attorney general, the Treasury Department’s legal counsel informed him that IRS criminal agents could not be used to investigate the crime syndicates.
Artist: Robert Francis Kennedy was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 20, 1925. He served with the United States Naval Reserve from 1944 to 1946. He earned a B.A. degree from Harvard University in 1948, was a correspondent on The Boston Post, and in 1951 graduated from the University of Virginia Law School.
From 1957 to 1960 Kennedy was chief counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field.
senator from New York from 1965 to 1968. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Kennedy was appointed attorney general after his brother John Kennedy was elected president in 1960. In this role, Robert Kennedy fought organized crime and worked for civil rights for African Americans. In the Senate, he was a committed advocate of the poor and racial minorities , and opposed escalation of the Vietnam War. On June 5, 1968, while in Los Angeles campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Kennedy was shot. He died early the next day at age 42.
After John F. Kennedy was elected president in November 1960, he named his brother Robert Kennedy as America’s 64th attorney general. In this role, Kennedy continued to battle corruption in labor unions, as well as mobsters and organized crime. In 1964, Jimmy Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and fraud.
In 1964, Jimmy Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and fraud. As attorney general, Kennedy also supported the civil rights movement for African Americans.
Robert Francis Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the seventh of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a wealthy financier, and Rose Kennedy, the daughter of a Boston politician. Kennedy spent his childhood between his family’s homes in New York; Hyannis Port, Massachusetts; Palm Beach, Florida; and London, ...
On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced he would not seek reelection, and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey became the key Democratic party hopeful, with McCarthy and Kennedy trailing closely behind. Kennedy conducted an energetic campaign and on June 4, 1968, won a major victory in the California primary.
Kennedy has been condemned by Southerners for committing too much Federal power on the racial issue and by some civil rights groups for not committing enough. He is charged with conducting a personal vendetta against the teamsters president, James R. Hoffa.
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Robert Kennedy, shown here in 1963, served as chief counsel for the U.S. Senate ’s Rackets Committee and then as U.S. attorney general. In both capacities, he worked to crack down on organized crime. Courtesy of Library of Congress.
But Defense secretary nominee Robert McNamara felt uncomfortable having to supervise the president’s brother. JFK soon warmed to the idea of his trustworthy brother, and closest aide, in the A.G job. He expressed his interest in appointing Bobby, who gave in. Both knew there’d be disapproval and political blowback.
Kennedy meets with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on February 23, 1961. RFK and Hoover did not get along, largely because of Hoover’s reluctance to go after organized crime.
His other major priority, and what he is more recognized for today, was enforcing federal civil rights laws, and advancing new ones, for America ’s black population, which, in the early 1960s, suffered through segregation, discrimination in housing and business and the denial of voting rights in some states. RFK also expressed concerns about juvenile delinquency, price fixing by businesses, an overall decay of morals in American society and a decline in the public’s trust in law enforcement.
His continued national onslaught against the syndicate would be referred to as “Operation Big Squeeze. ”. RFK that year led the Kennedy administration’s push to pass its eight anti-crime bills, some of them similar to what his predecessor, Attorney General William Rogers, had wanted.
RFK also expressed concerns about juvenile delinquency, price fixing by businesses, an overall decay of morals in American society and a decline in the public’s trust in law enforcement. Coverage in newspapers of the time revealed much anticipation for Robert Kennedy’s declared crackdown on crime syndicates.
That June, RFK’s office gained indictments on 13 national organized figures in a countrywide horse race betting scheme, and launched his first major raid, using IRS agents to arrest six alleged illegal gamblers.
That duty forced him to tolerate the lawless excesses of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who, as RFK knew, had a thick file of embarrassing information about the president's sexual conquests.
She would get an argument from Martin Luther King Jr., whose telephone was wiretapped with the approval of Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy. (He thought King might be working for the Kremlin.) Nor did RFK let his deep respect for constitutional rights get in the way of his crusade against organized crime. Advertisement.
Dozens of cases against organized-crime figures were lost because the FBI's evidence came from illegal methods. Most of the blame for that lies with Hoover, but it was Kennedy who refused to rein him in.
Janet Reno had chronically chilly relations with Bill Clinton because she took that obligation too seriously for her boss' taste. Asking such independence of the president's brother, though, is asking too much. RFK, who was appointed at his father's insistence, saw his job as protecting the president.
RFK, however, approved some 600 wiretaps. What's more, reports Evan Thomas, "He kept no records and placed no time limits.". Kerry Kennedy Cuomo says her father was willing to let the guilty go free rather than abuse their rights. The truth is roughly the opposite.
RFK does deserve credit for putting the federal government on the side of the civil-rights movement. But honest liberals don 't deny Bobby's dark side, which was most conspicuous when he was attorney general.
But "evidence strongly suggests that RFK was not speaking truthfully," concluded Evan Thomas in his 2000 biography. One Kennedy aide told Thomas, apparently with a straight face, "He became a civil libertarian later.". But maybe you don't learn inconvenient facts like that at family gatherings in Hyannisport, Mass.
Speaking with NPR, author James Heff said that the general consensus that Kennedy's cross-examinations of Jimmy Hoffa had been "inept" was correct; Robert Kennedy was not a litigator, and Hoffa went out of his way to trip up the politician and embarrass him.
As reported by NPR, Robert Kennedy publically called Jimmy Hoffa "the most dangerous man in America." He even set up an unofficial "Get Hoffa" squad at the Justice Department that at its height had 20 prosecutors assigned to run grand juries across the United States against Hoffa and the Teamsters.