John Seigenthaler Oral History Interview – JFK #2, 2/21/1966 Administrative Information

Creator: John Seigenthaler Interviewer: Ronald J. Grele Date of Interview: February 21, 1966 Place of Interview: Nashville, Tennessee Length: 171 pp.

Biographical Note Seigenthaler was aide to Robert F. Kennedy during the 1960 Presidential campaign and Administrative Assistant to the Attorney General, Department of Justice (1961). This interview focuses on the activities of the 1960 presidential campaign, covering issues such as campaign expenditures, the vice presidency, campaign volunteers, citizens’ groups, Civil Rights, the labor and minority votes, and Southern support, among other issues.

Access Restrictions No restrictions.

Usage Restrictions According to the deed of gift signed August 29, 1986, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government.

Copyright The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be “used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.” If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excesses of “fair use,” that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law. The copyright law extends its protection to unpublished works from the moment of creation in a tangible form. Direct your questions concerning copyright to the reference staff.

Transcript of Oral History Interview These electronic documents were created from transcripts available in the research room of the John F. Kennedy Library. The transcripts were scanned using optical character recognition and the resulting text files were proofread against the original transcripts. Some formatting changes were made. Page numbers are noted where they would have occurred at the bottoms of the pages of the original transcripts. If researchers have any concerns about accuracy, they are encouraged to visit the library and consult the transcripts and the interview recordings.

Suggested Citation John Seigenthaler, recorded interview by Ronald J. Grele, February 21, 1966, (page number), John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.

John Seigenthaler JFK #2

Table of Contents

Page Topic 125 Labor legislation 128 Wisconsin primary 129 Issue of John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism 133 Campaign expenditures 134 Kennedy-Humphrey debate 145 1960 Democratic National Convention 154 Vice Presidential nominees 157 Lyndon B. Johnson’s press conference 162 Campaign finances 166 Nixon’s television show 173 Campaign volunteers 178 Citizens’ groups 190 George Smathers’ Southern organization 196 Harry Belafonte endorsing John F. Kennedy 204 Campaign structure 212 State organizations 224 Civil Rights 232 Martin Luther King, Jr.’s arrest and denial of bond 246 Women in the campaign 249 The labor vote 257 The minority vote 262 General impression of the Nixon-Lodge campaign 276 Southern support 283 Reasons why John F. Kennedy lost Tennessee in the 1960 election 293 Robert Kennedy’s meeting with Harry Truman

Second Oral History Interview

with

John Seigenthaler

February 21, 1966 Nashville, Tennessee

By Ronald J. Grele

For the John F. Kennedy Library

GRELE: On the labor legislation, the Kennedy-Ervin Bill and the bill that eventually became the Landrum-Griffin, do you recall any details of legislative passage?

SEIGENTHALER: Personally, no. I remember the time that was going on and they were trying to get the support for that, that of course the President [John F. Kennedy], then the Senator, was very active in the effort to get it passed, the bill that bore his name. And he was working himself with a number of senators and I remember with a number

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of House members, Edith Green, Topper Thompson [Frank Thompson, Jr.] was active in that, and others. And there were a number of conversations and Bob [Robert F. Kennedy] was actively engaged in advising him on that and in working with the other members of the House and Senate who were involved in getting legislation passed.

GRELE: Did John Kennedy or Robert Kennedy ever express to you their opinion of the McClellan Bill of Rights? The Labor Bill of Rights?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think they were – I don’t think they were ever in a position of knocking the McClellan Bill and there were some phases of Senator McClellan’s [John L. McClellan] that everybody agreed to. I don’t believe they ever expressed any opinion on it to me, at least. Generally it was a very positive effort to pass the legislation that was pending that they

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had introduced and that they were hopeful that they could get through.

GRELE: Did they ever comment on the strategy of organized labor in that legislative fight?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I know there was another bill. Who was the House member from California? Labor was very active in trying to get that bill passed.

GRELE: The Elliot Bill?

SEIGENTHALER: I’m not sure. It was a weaker bill, a much softer bill, and certain elements of labor were favorable to it and wanted to get it through. Again their position in all this was to push as hard as they could for the bill that they felt meet the need and work as hard as they could to get the force for that. I don’t remember that there was really any attack on either bill. Really the strategy was to enlist the force for

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this bill because it will do the best job.

GRELE: Do you ever recall hearing of discussions with the Senator…

SEIGENTHALER: Whelan. It seems to me Whelan – was there a Congressman Whelan?

GRELE: Cohelan [Jeffrey Cohelan]?

SEIGENTHALER: Cohelan maybe and maybe Whelan too. Cohelan – maybe it was, yes.

GRELE: Do you ever recall any discussions or conversations that might have taken place with Andy Biemiller [Andrew Biemiller] over this bill?

SEIGENTHALER: No, I don’t.

GRELE: Moving on now, in an earlier tape you said that you had gone into the Wisconsin primary to cover that primary?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

GRELE: Were you covering it for The Tennessean [The Nashville Tennessean] or were you covering it for the President?

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SEIGENTHALER: I was covering it for The Tennessean. Just to give you that background, I had come back from Harvard from a Nieman Fellowship. I had planned to come back in 1959, but then the opportunity arose to help work on The Enemy Within and that took about five or six months. And so it actually was pretty close to 1960 when I got back here to work. Then the 1960 primaries came on, and I was working here with the paper, and I went to cover the primaries both in Wisconsin and in West Virginia on assignment from the paper, not for any extended period, maybe a few weeks trip into both areas once or twice.

GRELE: What was your impression of the issues in Wisconsin?

SEIGENTHALER: Of course the big issue there – in Wisconsin as it was later in West Virginia – was how much impact the Senator’s religion would have on the outcome. As much as

[-129-] anything else, it was hard organization work. The people who were there who were working were more interested in organization – getting a solid organization among the various factions in Wisconsin – than they were active in or concerned about the issues. They knew that Humphrey [Hubert H. Humphrey] was going to be pretty popular and that those western districts were going to get some overwash from Minnesota and Humphrey would be popular there. Really I think it was more – from where I viewed it – a campaign dedicated to hardnose organization work than it was to enunciation of the issues. They key overriding issue, although it was somewhat hidden, was whether a Catholic could be president.

GRELE: Did you talk to either John Kennedy or Robert Kennedy while you were in Wisconsin?

SEIGENTHALER: Oh, sure. I talked to the Senator just briefly because he was completely wound up

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in campaigning. Just sort of a hello, goodbye thing; but I talked to Bob at length.

GRELE: What was his concept of the problem in Wisconsin first and then West Virginia?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, it was just a day-to-day business of getting the people who were available involved for the Senator and to get the broadest possible exposure for the Senator. I think he felt that this was the first step toward winning the presidency, and he devoted almost every waking hour to that. He was making speeches and working – but fewer speeches I thought than he was actively engage in the organization work. Kenny O’Donnell [Kenneth P. O’Donnell] was very active at that time. Pat Lucey [Patrick J. Lucey] was very active. Ivan Nestingen was very active. Clem Zablocki [Clement J. Zablocki], the Congressman, was very active. I guess Lucey is now Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin.

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Ivan – I don’t know if Ivan is still in HEW or not. But I remember they represented different points of view in Wisconsin within the Democratic Party – Nestingen and Lucey.

GRELE: What do you mean different points of view?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think they represented different factions within the Democratic Party in Wisconsin, and I think Bob’s big effort was to get maximum support from all the factions within the state and to keep them happy and to keep them interested in the Senator; keep those different groups from coming to a collision with each other over their own personal problems, their own personal interests.

GRELE: Was there ever a concern for latent Stevenson [Adlai E. Stevenson] support?

SEIGENTHALER: No. There could have been. I was not that active in it, but there was not expressed to me in the short time I was there any concern for it.

GRELE: In West Virginia there was a great deal of

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controversy engendered over campaign expenditures. When you were in West Virginia, did anyone ever talk to you about campaign expenditures, or did you ever see any evidence of outlandish campaign expenditures?

SEIGENTHALER: No. I remember the – I don’t think there was any outlandish expenditure. I think it was a campaign in which you spent everything you needed to spend. I remember the campaign headquarters was in the mezzanine of a hotel – this was the state headquarters – and that there were an awful lot of people working there; that there was a constant demand coming in from the field for more literature, more brochures, more pins; jus the normal sort of thing you get in every campaign. It was not unlike the presidential campaign once we got into that. I do remember there was a discussion about money for more

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television exposure. If anything, I had the feeling that it was a campaign in which there was enough money to spend for what was needed but there were hard-told decisions made on whether to spend massive amounts of money. Little amounts of money on every issue, every time money was needed, it was discussed on whether it was worth spending this money on this project, and many times the decision, I think, was no. Again, I put this in the proper context. I was there on two occasions, and I tried to be there at key times during the campaign. I was there during the Kennedy-Humphrey debate, so-called debate, for example, which came at a time when there was a great deal of talk about more television exposure.

GRELE: How did John Kennedy handle himself in that debate against Hubert Humphrey?

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SEIGENTHALER: Extremely well. Extremely well and I remember the only – it turned out to be something less than a debate. I think everybody was disappointed that it was not hotter than it was. I remember the dramatic moment of the debate was when he brought in some surplus food. He had it concealed beneath the desk or beneath the podium and halfway through the talk he said, “This is what the people in West Virginia had to eat,” and he was appalled at this, and “This is not an adequate diet and something has to be done about this and this is what I’m interested in doing.” I was impressed with him. He was easy. I thought he showed remarkable good humor, that same ability to laugh at himself throughout the campaign showed up there. And I thought it was good. I remember I had a little more exposure to him in

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Wisconsin than I had in West Virginia. I remember one of the nights there – I don’t want to ramble on. Why don’t you ask another question.

GRELE: Well, you can ramble. Were you in West Virginia when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. questioned Hubert Humphrey’s war record?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

GRELE: To your mind at that time did you feel that this was a conscious part of the Kennedy campaign?

SEIGENTHALER: No, I thought it was Franklin just on the stump who one day came out with it and that Franklin was swinging from the hip. I didn’t think it was a conscious part of the campaign. I think they were concerned about keeping Franklin active every day in that campaign. He’s not the hardest worker that I ever observed. I speak as a working newspaperman. I remember the press had

[-136-] some comments about how hard Franklin was working or how hard he was not working. I didn’t have the feeling it was part of the conscious campaign, but again, it could have been. At that time I was not that close to it, but I do remember it and I was there when it occurred.

GRELE: I have been told that Franklin Roosevelt’s speaking in West Virginia turned the tide for John Kennedy. Do you agree with that?

SEIGENTHALER: No. No, I remember Mrs. Roosevelt [Eleanor R. Roosevelt] said that at the Convention. I don’t think it did.

GRELE: You were talking about a time when you met John Kennedy in Wisconsin?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

GRELE: What happened?

SEIGENTHALER: Oh, it was in West Virginia.

GRELE: In West Virginia.

SEIGENTHALER: When I said I had a little more time with

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him? Well, I remember one evening in particular. I was there for several days as I said – maybe I went into this on the tape. I don’t know. About the meeting with Joe Alsop [Joseph W. Alsop] and Sam Huff? [Robert Lee “Sam” Huff]?

GRELE: Yes.

SEIGENTHALER: That was the extent of it.

GRELE: In the treatment of the press in both Wisconsin and West Virginia, did you notice a distinct handling of the local press as contrasted to the national press?

SEIGENTHALER: On the part of Kennedy?

GRELE: On the part of the Kennedy organization of John Kennedy?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think the handling of the press was the same. I don’t think there was a concerted effort to favor one, ignore the other. I think they recognized quite

[-138-] clearly that if they were going to win that race, they had to have the local press there; help the local press. At the same time, as I say, I think Bob was thinking, “Regardless of what happens in Wisconsin, this is big, but we’re going all the way and this is a first step.” And I think they gave the national press every opportunity to cover it. But there were an awful lot of people in those campaigns who were interested in him who were with the press either in Wisconsin or West Virginia. I remember particularly, for example, Harry Hoffman in West Virginia who was extremely interested. My own experience would not be probably representative because I was rather close to Bob, and I think I probably had complete access to him whereas some others wouldn’t. But I thought he went out of his

[-139-] way to – for example, he’d answer phone calls from some local reporter for a weekly in Slab Forks, West Virginia or somewhere.

GRELE: Did Robert Kennedy ever talk with you about who he felt was effective in either one of these primaries and who he felt was ineffective?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

GRELE: Who was effective?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, effective – who are you speaking of?

GRELE: In terms of organizing, in terms of doing the jobs that they’ve been requested to do.

SEIGENTHALER: You mean in the Kennedy organization?

GRELE: Yes.

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I’ve mentioned names.

GRELE: Other than the names you’ve mentioned in Wisconsin, did he ever discuss who was letting them down in Wisconsin?

SEIGENTHALER: No, I think those people that I’ve mentioned

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are people who stand out in my mind who were very active, and it was not just that…. I had in mind that you were talking about staff people really more than anything else. I think they thought all the staff people worked hard and functioned well, some better than others. I mean in many of these cases they had people in who were complete novices in West Virginia and Wisconsin. Lem Billings [Kirk LeMoyne Billings], for example, was a complete newcomer to politics. He was an advertising executive from Madison Avenue, and he didn’t know anything about organizing people in the field. He worked hard. He worked hard at it. Red Fay [Paul B. Fay, Jr.], I remember, in West Virginia had some rural county. They were in there just because they were friends of Senator Kennedy, and, hell, they wanted to do whatever they could do. I’m sure that

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you might have found some political organizer who would have been more effective in going in there. Bob said this. But the big thing was how loyal and dedicated they were and that they were willing to work twenty-four hours a day if that was necessary to get the job done and that some political organizer, some pro – although they had them too. The people in West Virginia who stand out in my mind were Matt Reese [Matthew A. Reese, Jr.], Bob McDonough [Robert P. McDonough], Harry Hoffman was helpful and friendly. He was with the newspaper. Matt later went to work for the National Committee. Bob McDonough stayed in West Virginia, was a lifelong friend. Another fellow was – gosh, I remember him so well and his face so well – Jimmy… It doesn’t come to me now but it will.

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GRELE: Peters?

SEIGENTHALER: No. He sort of had an Indian face but anyway, it’s not important.

GRELE: Did you ever notice any resentment on the part of the locals at this organization moving in?

SEIGENTHALER: No.

GRELE: No. How did they handle this situation?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think they brought the locals into it in most cases. They brought anybody in they could. And they would spend the time with the local people, and all the staff people would work hard to get local people interested. No, I don’t think so. First of all, they went to the leadership, what segments of the leadership they could get. Once they got that leadership they relied on it heavily, and McDonough and Reese are good examples of this, and the same is true of

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Ivan Nestigen and Lucey and Clem Zablocki. I always thought it was interesting that we won the primary and lost Wisconsin in the general election. We should never have lost Wisconsin to Nixon [Richard M. Nixon], but we did.

GRELE: Why do you feel that?

SEIGENTHALER: I don’t know. Why do I feel we should never have lost it? Well, I think he did so much better in Wisconsin than anyone thought he would and that enthusiasm was extremely high when he came out of there. Somehow it just slipped away. That was the first step, and he never really developed it. We never really followed it up. Zablocki, for example, had been very helpful in the primary. He had his feelings hurt in the general election for some reason. I don’t know why. I remember very late in the campaign when I was working

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in Washington then – by that time I was actively engaged in the work of the committee – somebody called late in the campaign and said Zablocki had his feelings hurt. And I remember calling him and he was hurt, sore really, about nobody had come to him, we weren’t relying on him. Somebody had just forgotten to say thanks or something. You never know what causes those things. I had the definite feeling we shouldn’t have lost that state.

GRELE: Moving on to another topic, but going back in time, on one of the earlier tapes you talked about the 1960 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, and you said that one of your duties at that Convention was to be nice to the delegations that were not committee to John Kennedy?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, I was working for the newspaper then

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too, you see. I wouldn’t say it was one of my assignments, but it was Bob’s feeling that those – his attitude was, “Look, we’re going to win this and we’re going to need these people in the general election. We’re going to need Southerners; we’re going to need people who are going to be against us at the Convention. We know we’re going to win the Convention. We don’t want to alienate these people.” There was a growing feeling for Kennedy in the Tennessee delegation, just to give you an example. There were some people in there, and I could mention them: John Norman; Frank Clement was friendly; Albert Gore was extremely friendly to Kennedy. Tennessee was under the unit rule, which mean that a majority of delegates could vote the whole delegation; maybe thirty- three votes

[-146-] and each one had a half vote and there were some full votes. The question was whether we wanted – not that we could win it – but whether some of the people in the Tennessee delegation might not, in a caucus, move to get the vote out from under the unit rule. Ellington [Governor Buford Ellington] was completely committed to Johnson [Lyndon B. Johnson] and had control of the delegation. But whether we might not get a vote to move it out from under the unit rule on the theory that would get some publicity that would show that there was a friendship for Kennedy in the Tennessee delegation. I mean you’d never get the vote. He wouldn’t get a single vote, but you might show that you had six or seven votes in there; fourteen half votes maybe, and that this might be effective in getting some press that Kennedy had some votes.

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At that time, for example, Terry Sanford [James Terry Sanford] went down and said that he was for Kennedy. Howard Edmondson [J. Howard Edmondson] went down and held a press conference and said he personally was Kennedy. Kerr [Robert S. Kerr] delivered Oklahoma overwhelmingly for Johnson, but the psychology of having the Governor of the state of Oklahoma, Howard Edmondson, stand up and say, “I’m for John F. Kennedy” was helpful. The question was whether we wanted to do something like that in Tennessee. Bob’s feeling was, the strategy was, I fell, “Look, we know now that we have it.” This was a couple of days after, maybe the day after Edmondson. “We know we’ve got it, and we know we can’t get a vote there. We’re going to need Tennessee afterward. We’d much rather have those people know we’re friendly to them.” And so Matt Reese

[-148-] who was assigned to Tennessee among other states to serve as liaison didn’t make any effort. Talking with those people who were there who were friendly to Kennedy, he said to all of them, “Don’t say anything about this when you get in the caucus. Simply make it clear that if we win we want their friendship.” And that’s what the strategy was. Bob met with me, and I brought in John Hooker, Sr. [John Jay Hooker, Sr.] at one point. At another point I brought in Jack Norman and we talked this matter over, and he made it clear then that, “We don’t want any trouble. We want their friendship. You let them know. We know we’re going to win it, and after it’s over, we want their friendship.” And that’s the way it was handled.

GRELE: At the Convention aside from your interview with Ambassador Kennedy [Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.] and your

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discussion with Robert Kennedy on the vice presidential nomination, can you recall any other incidents that are not part of the public record?

SEIGENTHALER: Incidents. What sort?

GRELE: Well, did you have any discussions with Robert Kennedy when he was in the control center at the Convention as to the Convention strategy with any particular delegation?

SEIGENTHALER: I spent a good deal of time up there in the Biltmore – I guess the eighth floor of the Biltmore. I spent an awful lot of time up there, but I don’t recall any specific session. There were people in and out.

GRELE: Did he discuss any of the larger delegations with you? New York, Illinois, California?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, he had the definite feeling that Pendergast [Michael Prendergast] and DeSapio [Carmine G. DeSapio] tried to stick it to Kennedy, but that Charley Buckley [Charles A. Buckley] and Congressman

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Keogh [Eugene J. Keogh] had been able to overcome that opposition. I remember I traveled with him to several delegations to make speeches. Two or three come to mind. Ohio was one. Arkansas was one.

GRELE: What was his opinion of their chances with the Arkansas delegation?

SEIGENTHALER: I think he thought it was just a courtesy call. Again, it was building towards that support that might come after the campaign. He paid great tribute to McClellan. McClellan was present when he spoke to them. It was at one of the other hotels and we rode over together.

GRELE: His relations with McClellan were rather warm at that time, weren’t they?

SEIGENTHALER: They were friendly, yes. Very friendly. He had great respect for him, and I think he still has respect for him. I’m sure he does. Within the last few months

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McClellan was a guest at a party in their home with Mrs. McClellan. I saw them there. I remember he said to me one time – I was with him somewhere in the Justice Department – he had been examining the voting records of various members of Congress, and he laughed and he said, “I don’t think John McClellan would give us a vote if he could.”

GRELE: At the Convention do you remember any discussion about the California delegation?

SEIGENTHALER: I don’t remember any discussion about the California delegation. Why do you ask?

GRELE: I have been told at various times that members of the Kennedy organization were highly skeptical of Governor Brown [Edmond G. “Pat” Brown] and his ability to hold the delegation to his promises.

SEIGENTHALER: Let’s see, I remember I went out with him to the meeting – well, the Senator spoke

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to the California delegation out somewhere at an auditorium, and I went out there – I think with Steve Smith [Stephen E. Smith], but it could have been with someone else – and Brown said out there that it was very rough; that the opposition was difficult to overcome and that they were having some – that there were some mavericks. He spoke to that group knowing that he had lost some support there. That’s the most I remember about it.

GRELE: Do you remember any discussion of New Jersey?

SEIGENTHALER: No.

GRELE: Anything else akin to this during the Convention?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I remember Ohio. I remember going with Bob to talk to Ohio, and we met Ray Miller [M. Raymond Miller] and several others, and we had a discussion with them about the Ohio delegation. There was absolutely no problem about the Ohio delegation. I don’t know if I got into

[-153-] it on that earlier tape, but I distinctly remember the discussion about the vice presidency. Did I discuss that in the other tape?

GRELE: Riding up in the elevator?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes. GRELE: Yes.

SEIGENTHALER: I remember we came out of the meeting with Arkansas, and Bob ran into Symington [Stuart Symington].

GRELE: This wasn’t done on the other tape.

SEIGENTHALER: They had a very friendly discussion. Bob called him Stu and he called him Bobby. I guess Symington was coming from somewhere else, talking to some other group. He’d just finished up with some other group and they stepped aside and had this conversation and it was a very friendly conversation. And when we left there, driving back, I had the distinct impression that insofar as Bob personally was concerned,

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Symington would make it. He was the best possible choice for second spot. And as I think I must have said on the other tape, he subsequently told me that it was reasonably safe to write that Symington was going to be the choice. Did I say that on the other tape?

GRELE: Yes.

SEIGENTHALER: Well, he did and I wrote a story saying that Symington had the inside track and it was based on first hand information from him. I mean he figured it was time to move ahead and it was the best choice. It represented a border state, a Democratic state, and that Symington was a pretty good man.

GRELE: What were the reasons for eliminating Scoop Jackson [Henry M. Jackson]?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think once the Johnson thing got underway there just was no possibility.

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But you mean in Bob’s mind why they eliminated Scoop Jackson?

GRELE: Earlier when he had talked to you about Symington.

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think he thought that Scoop would be a good National Committee chairman and that you could get the best of both worlds by having one in the job of National Committee chairman and the other as the vice president. You’d get both of those factions, neither representing purely the South but at the same time representing a cross section of the country. I remember how impressed all the Kennedys were really with Symington’s speech as the time Kennedy accepted the nomination. Symington said something like this: “The reason….” – if you remember they had each candidate up; Stevenson, Humphrey, everyone who had been an active contender. Symington said, in effect, the

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reason he’s here today is because he had more industry and more courage and more integrity than all the rest of us, and that’s the reason he won it. I remember talking to Bob afterward about what a generous statement it was on Symington’s part. I always thought Bob thought that Symington would have been a strong vice presidential candidate.

GRELE: While we’re on the topic of Convention speeches, was there a lasting resentment in regard to Senator McCarthy’s [Eugene J. McCarthy] speech?

SEIGENTHALER: No, not lasting. Not lasting, but there was some feeling about it at the time. I think that the – and I’m sure I got into this on the tape, but this is about Johnson’s press conference.

GRELE: Yes, you mentioned it on the other tape but you didn’t go into it in detail. What did

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happen at the press conference?

SEIGENTHALER: It may be on the other tape, but this is generally my memory of it. I went down and covered that press conference. There were a whole series of press conferences, and I went down and covered that press conference, and after each one I spent all my spare time when I was not working in the Kennedy headquarters. I remember Johnson made the crack about Ambassador Kennedy.

GRELE: What was the crack?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, something about, “My father never carried an umbrella for [Arthur Neville Chamberlain].”

GRELE: This is what I mean about the specifics, the crack itself.

SEIGENTHALER: And I sent back upstairs and I said, “This is the most disgraceful goddamn thing I’ve ever seen and he’s getting desperate. You said you were going to win until now, but it’s

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obvious to me Lyndon Johnson now knows you’re going to win, or he wouldn’t be going to these extremes. I think he lost his judgment.” Bob never made any comment about it, but maybe six months after I came back here as editor, which would have been maybe July or August of 1962, I was in Washington one Sunday and I was out at Bob’s house and we were taking a walk. He said, “Do you remember talking to me about the Johnson press conference?” And I said, “Yes, I do. Why?” He said, “Well, do you remember what he said?” I repeated it for him. He said, “Are you sure he said it?” And I said, “Yes, I’m sure. Why are you asking about it after all this time?” He said, “Well, I was at dinner last night,” or maybe “a reception last night and the Vice President was there and he said to me, ‘I know why you don’t

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like me. The reason you don’t like me is because I made those remarks about your father at the press conference. Those remarks were reported at the press conference, and I didn’t make those remarks. They were taken out of context, and I never was accurately quoted about this.’” And Bob said, “Isn’t it interesting that after all this time he’d bring that up. I never would have brought it up. I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about. He said, ‘Yes, you do. You know what I’m talking about.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t remember what it is, but I want you to know that if that’s what you think, I’ve got some disagreement with you about you’re in error. I don’t have any disagreement with you about that. During the campaign I understand whatever you said you said

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because you had to say. Things are sometimes taken out of context.’” So I said, “Well, he’s not telling the truth. He did, he really unloaded.” So he passed it off, and I came back here and got our microfilm file of the New York Times and our own paper and the Banner [Nashville Banner] and ran all of them through the microfilm and found the quotes and they were very strong. So I had copies of it made and sent it up to him and the next time I saw him I said, “Did you get that yet?” He said, “I’ll tell you this. If the press misquoted him, it’s a general misquoting.” That was the extent of it.

GRELE: After the vice presidential nomination, were you at all privy to the attempts to mollify the liberal elements in the Democratic party?

SEIGENTHALER: No, except that I knew what was going on, and I think I recited on the previous tape the

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conversation I had – the first knowledge I had that there had been a change. It was no secret. Everybody in the press corps knew that the liberal elements were sore as hell about it. They were upset. They were angry about Johnson getting it.

GRELE: After the Convention you became an assistant to Robert Kennedy during the campaign. I was wondering if we could go through the various aspects of the campaign, point by point, to give your impressions of the organization, the way it functioned, who did what, etcetera. First, the finances. Do you recall anything about campaign finances?

SEIGENTHALER: Of course, Steve Smith had complete control of it. Well, Matt McCloskey [Matthew McCloskey] did a lot of the work. He and Steve pretty much handled it between them.

GRELE: Was it during the 1960 campaign still the

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Democratic tradition to rely on small contributors, or was this shift that is now seen evolving then, with more dependence on large contributors?

SEIGENTHALER: I think they got money, as people will in campaigns, from wherever it came from. I mean I remember one day, for example, and this is not a unique thing. My desk was like this and Steve Smith’s – there was a little door and his desk was right through that little door. And I remember, for example, he talked to somebody about taking a contribution of several thousand dollars. While he was on the phone there was a little lady who came in and was looking for a Kennedy button and she was trying to make a five dollar contribution. He finished his conversation and walked out and engaged her in conversation, made sure she got a button, got me into it, and we took her five dollars and gave her a Kennedy button.

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She left completely happy. But Matt McCloskey and Steve worked together primarily on the finances.

GRELE: Do you recall any problems in New York about the finances?

SEIGENTHALER: What do you have reference to?

GRELE: Well, I’ll tell you why I asked the question. I’ve been told that the liberal wing of the Democratic party in New York has the money and at one time during the campaign they were not particularly happy with the outcome of the Convention in terms of New York politics and that there was some kind of a problem. Do you recall anything about this?

SEIGENTHALER: No. But I remember second-hand a story that might not get told otherwise, and it probably should be told. That at one point Arthur Goldberg and Matt McCloskey had an arrangement to meet with the

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candidate at the Carlyle Hotel to transfer a certain amount of money that was contributed by some elements of labor to the Democratic Party in the presence of the candidate, and that this was to take place. Somebody else would have to verify the truth of the story. The way it was told was Arthur had the money, and he and Matt had a meeting, say at two o’clock in the afternoon at the Carlyle, and they went up to meet the President. There was a man in those days who was an old friend of the President named Langdon Marvin. Langdon Marvin was a fellow who was dedicated to Jack Kennedy and didn’t have too good judgment. The Senator said he wanted to take a nap, and he was still napping when Goldberg and McCloskey showed up, and he wouldn’t let them in. McCloskey said, “Look, we’ve got a meeting here. We’ve got to get in

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and would you just go in that door.” He said, “He’s not going to be disturbed and I’m not going to let you.” So they got on the elevator and went down to the stairs and out and found a telephone. And they called on the telephone to try to wake him up. Langdon Marvin answered the telephone and he said, “Well, he’s taking a nap. He can’t be disturbed.” He said, “Well, will you go in and tell him?” He said, “Who is this?” He said, “This is Matthew McCloskey.” He said, “Well, I told you when you were up here that you weren’t going to be able to see him. You can’t see him.” Somehow they ultimately got in. That’s the only problem I ever remember about raising money in New York. I remember the last day of the campaign Nixon had a television show. Maybe I got into this on the tape.

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Nixon had a television show that was very effective. He had a number of people who were television personalities, movie stars, well-known figures. They came into the studio for little chats with the candidate. They’d sit around. They had a living room set. It was supposed to be a family scene. Pat [Patricia Ryan Nixon] and the kids would come in and out, and it was a very effective program. At about the middle of the afternoon we started getting calls from around the country, people who were saying, “Well, you’ve got to answer this tonight.” And we didn’t have any plans to answer it that night. Not only didn’t have any plans to answer it, didn’t have any money to answer it. There were just no funds for another nationwide half hour television program. A number of calls came in saying,

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“You’ve got to do something about this. Please schedule something to answer this.” About the same time we started getting calls from a couple of newspapermen. Roger W. Tubby, I think, probably got one of the calls. Somebody got some calls. I remember Tubby came in and talked to us and said that Nixon was throwing a tantrum in the intermission; that he had thrown all the still photographers out of the studio and that he was an absolute monster in between times when he was on camera, and that some effort should be made to get that on the wire. Well, we go on the wire, but unfortunately it didn’t get on until late that night, and it got in the paper the next morning which was election day and the story was played down and it didn’t really have any impact. At any rate, I remember a number of people who called

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about this television program, one of whom was Frank B. Ellis from Louisiana. He was really disturbed about it. I don’t remember the exact amount of money that was involved, but he said that enough money could be raised in Louisiana to pay a third of whatever it was. It seems to me that it was fifteen thousand bucks. But he said that he would guarantee that the people of Louisiana would pay for a third of this nationwide telecast that night if the time could be arranged, the program could be arranged. It seems to me they also called somebody in California. I don’t remember who – maybe Bart Lytton. Steve got on it. A half hour program, as I remember it, was arranged with maybe his sisters. Sort of a panel show in which they discussed letters that had come in, requests that had come in – not requests,

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but suggestions from people all around: Mrs. So and So writes such and such. It seems to me that program was put on late that night and that it was arranged at the last meeting. Frank Ellis later became head of the Office of Emergency Planning and subsequently a federal judge. I don’t know where he is now. I do remember that he called and I remember I talked to him.

GRELE: During and after the campaign John Kennedy talked about what an expensive proposition running for office in the American political system was. Now, with particular reference to the campaign of 1960, was this his opinion at the time?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I’m sure it was, but I think he was so involved in the actual business of campaigning that he really was not aware of how great the need was because you know

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he appointed Alec Heard [Alexander Heard] who’s now at Vanderbilt to head the committee that ultimately made the report and Heard’s book is now called The Costs of Democracy. I doubt seriously that he was aware of just how tight things were. An interesting story in connection with this is that at one point during the campaign it was discovered that somewhere up in New York, maybe in Long Island, a press was turning out anti-Catholic literature. People had looked all over to find out where this trash was coming from. Subsequently it was traced to somewhere on Long Island – my memory of it is that it was on Long Island. I could be wrong about that. And that maybe the building that housed it, or perhaps the lease on the building or maybe the ownership of the building – in some way H.L. Hunt was directly tied into that. Within a few

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days we had a call from somebody in Texas who had a cash contribution from H.L. Hunt. I may be wrong about this. My memory is that Steve was not aware of the situation in Long Island, and I’m not sure about the amount. At any rate, a substantial cash contribution was made from H.L. Hunt through a Democrat in Texas to the campaign. The money was delivered to Steve. When Bob heard about it, there was a discussion. He and Steve and I was in on part of it. Bob said, “In good conscience I don’t think we can take this money. It may be that this man will have to be prosecuted by the Democratic administration if we’re elected for publishing material in violation of the law, and it doesn’t seem right to me to take his money now.” And so Ralph Dungan – my memory is that it was Ralph Dungan – took the money back the next morning by airplane

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and delivered it in person to H.L. Hunt; plopped it on his desk.

GRELE: Did he explain why?

SEIGENTHALER: He just said we couldn’t accept it. I had a conversation with Ralph about it, but it was very brief. He said he just took the money back and gave it to him. He indicated to me he gave it to him in person.

GRELE: Were the volunteers successful in raising money?

SEIGENTHALER: No. There’s another interesting story about a fellow who came in. Bob was a good man in just getting people to come in. He’d talk to them for a half hour, and if it looked like they had something on the ball, he’d put them to work doing something. A fellow named Nat Welch came in from Auburn Alabama who wanted to go to work. He had a little money. He was a

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liberal Democrat from Alabama. He said he was considered a bastard in his own state by many of the people in power there; that he knew that Patterson [John Patterson] was going to support Kennedy, but that he just wasn’t comfortable working with Patterson. He thought he had the money to give and the time he wanted to do it. His wife and family would be able to get by. A number of people had this same sort of experience. So Bob said, “Well, good. Give me a day to think about it.” So the next day he came out and he said, “Look, I’d like to get that fellow to do some work with the citizens over with Whizzer White [Byron R. White]. Can you get him on the phone?” So I called on the phone and left word at his hotel to have him come by. He came by that afternoon. I said, “This is what we want you to do.” He said, “Well, I appreciate that but I’ve

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already been over to see McCloskey and McCloskey has put me in charge of Dollars for Democrats, and I’m leaving on a tour of the country in about fifteen minutes.” And so McCloskey beat us to the punch on that one. I had the feeling that the volunteers were not – by volunteers who do you mean?

GRELE: The people under Whizzer White.

SEIGENTHALER: I had the feeling they were not too successful in raising money. I’ll tell you, their most effective role was in interesting people who had never been before interested in politics and they had some excellent people in there. And they put on these air tours across the country which was very good in attracting people to Kennedy. As I say, I never had the feeling they raised a lot of money. I think that operation probably ran a deficit. Now and

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again they would come in and they would have people who had raised money or they’d have somebody who was interested more in idealism than they were in politics. They’d say, “This fellow wants to give a thousand, this fellow wants to give two thousand.” But I had the impression that those were few and far between and that most of the money came through the regular party sources and through Steve personally. Most of the people who wanted to give either were people who traditionally gave in large sums or people who wanted to give directly through Steve Smith.

GRELE: How much did the family give?

SEIGENTHALER: I don’t know. I’ll tell you a funny story. I was at a party one night on the “Honey Fitz.” It was one of the few times that I knew of that Frank Sinatra [Francis A. Sinatra] went on the “Honey Fitz,” but he was there. It was shortly after the

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inauguration and everybody was drinking toasts. Frank Sinatra got up and said, “I want to drink a toast to the man who made the greatest contribution to this campaign of anybody I know.” Of course, everybody thought and I thought he was going to say Bob Kennedy. He said, “Bart Lytton.” Bart Lytton was a big giver in the California campaign. And it was a very funny moment.

GRELE: Moving on now to the volunteers. Were there every any problems – I know there were problems, but what were some of the problems between the volunteers and the regular organization?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, they were just constant. Not at the top level. The citizens’ organization under Whizzer was set up, as you know, across town. Fred Dutton [Frederick G. Dutton] was in there and Roy Reuther was in there. They had a good group of fellows, but I think

[-177-] the people who were actively involved in the campaign felt by and large that they were naïve about politics and they were, many of them were, anyway. Fred was not, but many of the others were. But they had a clear understanding that the citizens’ groups would function outside the regular party machinery and would not function in such a way as to threaten or potentate the anxieties of anybody who was in the regular organization. You didn’t want a fellow who’d been delivering the county for forty years to suddenly think he was going to lose all of his contacts with the Administration because some young fellow who wanted to be a citizen was going to set up his own citizens’ group and compete with him for votes. Now that happened. Especially in New York that happened. It happened all across the country where citizens

[-178-] groups would get into a conflict with the regular party organization. By and large, those problems were worked out. But there were times, especially in New York, to my memory, when they did not work out. Prendergast and DeSapio were extremely bitter about this. They made at least two or three trips to Washington to try and get it straightened out. Once they talked to Bob. Twice I talked to them about it because he didn’t want to listen to Mike Prendergast mouth about it. And it was sort of pathetic to see these two so-called powers in the Democratic Party coming down there on their hands and knees to plead about the way the citizens’ groups were acting in upstate New York.

[END OF TAPE I, SIDE I]

[BEGIN TAPE I, SIDE II]

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GRELE: The opposition to Prendergast and DeSapio came from upstate New York?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, I mean there was some if it in upstate New York. Ben Smith [Benjamin A. Smith, II] was the coordinator up there. Paul Corbin was working with him, and later Norman S. Paul, who’s now Secretary of the Army, went up there. The three of them worked and most of the time they would come in and say, “Will you get Corbin out of there?” That was primarily what they wanted to do. He was an absolute thorn, a very sharp thorn, in their sides.

GRELE: Why?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, he would go in – they said he would go in and he would, I’m sure. He would go in to the citizens’ headquarters and say, “As soon as Kennedy is elected those of you who are active in the citizens’ organizations will run upstate New York.”

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And he’d leave there and then he’d go into the regular party organization and say, “All right. I’ve just been over there and told them if Kennedy wins, they are going to run things in upstate New York. Now I’m telling you. If you want to get on the bandwagon you’d better leave here and go over to the citizens’ groups. Sign up over there. They’re going to be running things.” Of course about thirty minutes later DeSapio or Mike Prendergast, more usually, would get a call from the country chairman up there, saying, “What’s this man doing up there? He’s got all of our workers going around in circles, and they’re all leaving up there.” Next thing you know, they’d be on the phone with us, Prendergast or DeSapio, saying, “Can we come down to see you about this guy up here?” And it got pretty heavy. But true, I’d never

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met Paul Corbin. He was just a voice on the telephone for me for the better part of a month. Finally it got pretty bad and Bob said, “You’d better get him down here and get him to take the needle out of them.”

GRELE: Was this a decision he had made on his own?

SEIGENTHALER: Who?

GRELE: Paul Corbin.

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think he was like everybody. I think he was like everybody in the field. Those coordinators moved pretty much on their own, and he was working under Ben Smith. I think he and Ben decided that they couldn’t do any good up there working with the party organization only. Generally, the Democratic Party in New York relied on a big city vote, and those upstate counties went Republican, and still the county leader

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handled the patronage for the Party. They decided they needed some activity outside the regular organization if they were going to be effective. As I say, Corbin came down a couple of times, and finally the third time Prendergast came down, Bob didn’t want to see him. He said, “He’s just a crybaby. I don’t want to talk to him about this. You talk to him.” So I talked to him. He said, “You got to get that guy out of there. I’m going to tell you, we’re not going to be able to carry this state unless you get him out.” So I said, “I’ll tell the campaign director what you say.” He said, “Well, let me know by tomorrow.” So I talked to Bob about it and he said, “Call Ben Smith. If he wants him out, I’ll get him out. If he doesn’t want him out, I’m not going to get him out.” So I called

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Ben Smith and I said, “Look, this is what they say, and Bob says you’re going to have to decide that.” He said, “Look, we’re a good team up here. Paul Corbin works one side of the street and I work the other. He ruffles the feathers and I go by and smooth them. I don’t want him out. I need him.” He said, “We could use another man up here.” And that’s when we sent Norman Paul up. So the next time I talked to Prendergast there were two things he wanted. One, he wanted Corbin out and two, he wanted Bill Walton [William A. Walton] to move his headquarters into the party headquarters in New York City. The last time he came down that’s what he wanted – those two things were what he wanted. And he said, “Get me an answer by tomorrow.” So I talked to Bob and called Ben Smith and

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Bill Walton to see what Bill wanted to do about moving over there. Ben Smith said, “I don’t want to lose Paul Corbin. These people think he’s a menace, but I’ll tell you, he’s doing a good job up here. And get me another man up,” so we sent Norman Paul up to help with the distribution of brochures. And then I called Bill Walton and Bill Walton said, “Hell, I’m perfectly comfortable where I am. I’m not going to move over there.” So when Prendergast called that afternoon I told him that Ben Smith said he’d be glad to talk to him about the problem up there but that he felt that at this stage it would be a mistake to pull Paul Corbin out. And Prendergast said, “Well, both of them have got to go.” So I said, “Well, why don’t you call Ben Smith and talk to him about it.” He said, “Fine. What about Walton?” I said, “Walton doesn’t want to

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move.” He said, “Well, you people down there ought to be able to tell these people what to do.” I said, “Bob Kennedy has full confidence in him. The candidate has full confidence in him.” That was the extent of it then.

GRELE: Why didn’t Bill Walton want to move? Just because he was comfortable?

SEIGENTHALER: No, I don’t think it was only that he was just comfortable. I think he was psychologically more comfortable in an area outside party headquarters. I think he enjoyed not being identified any more closely than he as with Prendergast and DeSapio. I think generally everybody knew that Prendergast and DeSapio – their big chance was to carry New York City and you weren’t going to change that situation. Now, we had people who were very friendly to them in the campaign. Dick

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McGuire [Richard McGuire], for example, was extremely friendly to Prendergast, very close to him, and from time to time would bring messages in from Prendergast that Corbin had to go or Ben Smith had to go or Bill Walton had to move in with them. But once Bob made his decision on who was going to do what, he relied on the judgment of those people pretty thoroughly.

GRELE: At one time he did have to go into New York to mediate, didn’t he?

SEIGENTHALER: Oh, yes. Twice, I think. But again, it was simply to bring those factions together and say to them, in effect, “The think I’m interested in is getting my brother elected as president and I couldn’t care less what the hell you people – what your problems are up here. You’re going to have to work those out. I’m telling you, we’re going to get elected, and once we get elected

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these little petty jealousies that you have among you up here are going to be resolved because we’ll be in.”

GRELE: Was he as harsh as they all later claimed?

SEIGENTHALER: Bob?

GRELE: Yes.

SEIGENTHALER: Well, he could be, but as a rule he was not.

GRELE: At that particular meeting. There was one meeting where they all claimed he was particularly harsh.

SEIGENTHALER: I think he was late in that meeting. I was not there, but I think that late in the meeting he finally said, “Look, you’re all bickering about nothing. Why don’t you,” to use his phrase, “get on to yourselves. When this campaign is over, we’re going to be in. You’re going to have access to the President of the United States. You’re going to have an

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opportunity to make a great contribution to your community up here and to your state. Why the hell do you let these little jealousies get in your way?” I think he shot straight from the shoulder with them, but I think they pushed him an awful long way before he did that. They made all sorts of demands.

GRELE: Moving on now from the citizens’ groups, how was the vice presidential campaign handled?

SEIGENTHALER: They had an office right across the hall, and it was handled as a completely separate operation. Bill Brawley [H.W. Brawley] was over there. Well, there were a number of people who were over there and they were cooperative, friendly, but they ran their own operation.

GRELE: At what level were the campaigns coordinated?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, of course the scheduling was coordinated. Beyond scheduling there was not much coordination.

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The strategies and the issues were pretty well outlined in the beginning, before I got there, really. And from that point on the scheduling was coordinated by very little else was. Intelligence came in. Whenever they would pick up something that seemed like it was important they’d just come across the hall and tell us that this was something that should be attended to. I think the National Committee chairman, Scoop, who became unhappy himself at one point about his role helped in some coordinating.

GRELE: You mentioned earlier on the other tape that at one time Senator Smathers [George A. Smathers] had wanted to head a separate Southern organization?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

GRELE: Why?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I don’t think he was responsible for

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it, but I think the staff people who were there were interested in it. I was afraid when I brought it to Bob’s attention that they were interested primarily in finances. I didn’t like the looks of that thing. I don’t know how much detail – did I go into who brought in the information?

GRELE: No, not at all. You just mentioned it.

SEIGENTHALER: Well, it’s an interesting story and it might be worth going into. One Sunday afternoon while Bob was out of town, and I was working, a fellow named Howard Haggerud came in. I never saw Howard Haggerud before, but Howard Haggerud came in and wanted to see Bob and I said he wasn’t there. He was out of town. He said, “I want to talk to you about something I’m concerned about.” Fine. We went in Bob’s office and he began to tell me this story about

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the operation they had going on over at the Carroll Arms Hotel. And he said, “They’ve got an entirely separate campaign going on over there and I’m concerned about it.” He said, “They’re setting up a separate Speakers Bureau and you’ll have only Southern speakers in these states; speakers selected by this Speakers Bureau. You’ll have a separate coordinator. It’ll work out of their office not out of this office. You’ll have a separate finance chairman. You’ll have a – and all of this will be under Smathers. Whenever anyone helping with the national campaign wants to have something done in the thirteen southern states they can call the Carroll Arms Hotel and the Carroll Arms Hotel will take care of it over there.” He said, “I’m worried about it for a number of reasons. One, it’s empire building. Two, it has

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potential to take a good bit of money out of the campaign that might be spent on a coordinative basis and be put into an effort that might not produce any results.” So Dick Donahue [Richard Donahue] was also in the office that afternoon and he and I talked with Haggerud about it and the next morning I talked to Bob about it and outlined it to him. He immediately saw the potential dangers in it, and he contacted the Senator who told Smathers that he wanted that effort coordinated and integrated in the overall campaign. He was sure it would be. Two men who were on Smather’s staff, Scott I. Peek and Bud Lucky, were masterminding this operation. Instead of getting better it got worse, however. About three weeks later, after several conversations with

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Haggerud – they were not aware of who was telling us about it – but after a discussion with Haggerud the matter came to a climax and Bob talked directly with Smathers on it and told him that something had to be done. They were planning on making a trip to the Southern states at that time. Bob told Smathers he would go on that trip with him. Bud Lucky and Scotty Peek both advised that they not go on that trip – that Bob not go on that trip. They said, “Well, they hate Bob Kennedy in the South and he shouldn’t go on that trip.” So Bob went anyway and on the plane on the way down they had quite a heated discussion and it was decided, as a result of that discussion, to let speakers and finances and these other activities be handled directly though the national campaign, and that they would keep

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an office in the Carroll Arms. The Southern campaign would have its headquarters there, but the Southern campaign would be a part of the overall campaign. Another story comes to mind as a result of that. I sometimes ramble on. I sometimes ramble on. About halfway through, Adam Powell [Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.] began to say he wanted to speak. He and Bob had a conversation and he said he wanted to speak, make a number of speeches. Bob asked me to call him and arrange for his schedule. I talked to somebody on his staff about where he wanted to speak. So he gave me about twelve cities, all in the Deep South, and wanted to know if we could arrange speeches there. During the conversation this fellow said, “Well, where are you from?” I said “I’m from Nashville, Tennessee.” He said, “That would be a very good community for the Congressman to speak in too.” He

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said, “Congressman Powell would be very interested in speaking in Nashville. Add that to the list.” So I said fine. We’d set those speeches up and when did he want to make them? What dates did he have? So he said he’d call me back in a few days but of course, he never did. I never heard from him again about it. I think as much as anything else, that was a challenge to see whether we would, in fact, schedule Adam Clayton Powell in the South. And there’s one other interesting story that touches on that and I may have put it on the other tape. Do you remember whether I told the story about Harry Belafonte [Harold George Belafonte] endorsing Senator Kennedy?

GRELE: No.

SEIGENTHALER: It’s one of the fantastic stories of the campaign, I think. There was a fellow

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named Donovan [John C. Donovan] who was an administrative assistant for one of the senators. I don’t remember which one.

GRELE: Senator Muskie [Edmund S. Muskie]?

SEIGENTHALER: Maybe so. It seems not, but it could’ve been. Anyway, he was recommended. He was a bright fellow, able fellow. We had a film service which was available. The Senator made a number of films which were to be disseminated. One of these films was Harry Belafonte endorsing the Senator. It opened with a great fanfare; Harry Belefonte and Senator Kennedy walking down a street in Harlem and you had the music in the background – very well done. They walked down this street and into this house, a Harlem tenement, and sat down and talked with these people. The President told them

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how he felt about the problems of the Negro and what he wanted to do for the Negro. It started with a great fanfare, as I say. Sort of a blare of trumpets and Harry Belafonte endorses Senator Kennedy. This film was supposed to be made available to a certain number of people who had requested it. Most of these people were interested in civil rights, and they were the people the film was going to be made available to. There was a young lady who went to work over there in the office under Donovan and she was a volunteer. She didn’t know anything about politics. She didn’t know much about anything. She was given a list of people who had requested this film. One of those was Governor Williams [G. Mennen Williams] of Michigan, “Soapy” Williams. So one day

[-198-]

at lunch Donovan was out and a phone call came from Representative Williams, John Bell Williams from Mississippi. He wanted that film of Harry Belafonte so she said, “Well, if you send over, we’d be glad to make it available to you. It’ll be $13.35 plus tax,” or whatever it is. So he sent over his check, or maybe it was cash, for that amount. She wrote him out a receipt and gave him the film. The next night Senator Stennis [John Stennis] was endorsing Senator Kennedy on statewide television in Mississippi. I guess it was an extended program, maybe a half hour program, or fifteen minutes. But at any rate he gave Senator Kennedy and endorsement; a qualified endorsement, but nonetheless a full, unconditional, ringing endorsement from John Stennis of Mississippi for John Kennedy of Massachusetts. And so he went

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off the air – this statewide network had been set up – and immediately this statewide network got the blare of the bugles; Harry Belafonte endorsing Senator Kennedy, walking down a street in Harlem. The full treatment. Poor Stennis was sure crushed. Ex-Governor Coleman [James Plemon Coleman] called us that night and said that this was a devastating blow to the campaign and that he thought it very well could have the effect of sinking us in Mississippi; that he had understood that duplicates had been made of the film and that they had been circulated throughout the Southern states, or were available to be circulated throughout the Southern states. This was a shock because we were counting on carrying a number of the Southern states: Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, perhaps Mississippi.

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Coleman had two suggestions. One, that we try to get back the films so Steve Smith went to work and had his contacts in the Southern states immediately contact people in Mississippi and ask for copies of the film as if they were going to use the film in their own states. Within twenty-four hours about eight or ten copies of that film had been consigned to our sources in these Southern states, having been sent to them for their use, but of course, they ultimately came right back. We got them back that way. Coleman also said at that time that it would be helpful to have Senator Kennedy endorse Tennessee Tom Bigbee which he did the next day. We lost Mississippi by five thousand votes. I think Coleman always felt that we would have carried Mississippi if it hadn’t been for Harry

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Belafonte endorsing him on film. The interesting thing, I thought, was the way that both Steve and Bob handled this little girl who handed out the film. I mean, this was a blow that came late in the campaign and hit hard. Both the fellow who was in charge of the division and the little girl came in and both of them were literally scared to death. I mean, they realized what they had done. Bob and Steve told them not to worry about it, just to be careful and diligent; that they were doing a good job but that this was a major mistake. It was a mistake that was made. It was over and done with. It was not something they look back on. They tightened up the procedures for distributing the film slightly. I said he endorsed Tennessee Tom

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Bigbee the next day. It could have been a couple of days later. At any rate, Mike Feldman [Myer Feldman] who handled those detailed matters checked with him. He had intended to do this anyway. I think it speeded it up some, maybe by a couple of weeks. They had been planning to save that endorsement of Tennessee Tom Bigbee for the very last minute. But I think it’s one of those stories not many people knew about. I think it adds spice to the campaign.

GRELE: Going back now and tying in the separate vice presidential operation and the operation in the South, with the citizens’ group – do you have any comments or do you recall any of the incidents surrounding the conflict in Florida?

SEIGENTHALER: In Florida? No, nothing comes to mind. I could have known about it and forgotten

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it. Was there a conflict?

GRELE: Between Governor Collins [LeRoy Collins] and the people who supported him and between Governor Bryant [Farris Bryant] and Senator Smathers.

SEIGENTHALER: Yes. I remember going to Florida, I think with Bob, on a speaking engagement, but I don’t remember the details of it. I don’t remember the details of it except I remember that Collins went out of his way to be helpful. And I remember also in the last week of the campaign Collins was quite despondent about the outcome. He was quite concerned we were going to lose Florida, which we did, of course.

GRELE: Moving on now, how were the state organizations handled, generally?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I don’t know if I went into the campaign structure.

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GRELE: You talked about your office and Larry O’Brien [Lawrence F. O’Brien] and Kenny O’Donnell.

SEIGENTHALER: Yes. Yes. Larry O’Brien and Dungan were in the back. I think – what’s that fellow from Kentucky’s name? The old fraud. Anyway, all of the coordinators worked out of the back office. The scheduling went through McGuire’s office. Really, Kenny O’Donnell’s operation. State organizations functioned, through the National Committee. As a rule, Scoop Jackson was out campaigning most of the time. John Salter handled some of that, who was his administrative assistant. Some of it washed over to our operation and some of it into Larry O’Brien’s office. Larry really did most of the state by state organization. There were some states, of course, where we didn’t have coordinators,

[-205-] but we had people in those states who knew Larry and knew that he was running the campaign. Halfway through, I thought Scoop got upset a couple of times.

GRELE: Why?

SEIGENTHALER: As much as anything else, the press was saying that he had no effective active voice in running the campaign; that he was Democratic National Committee Chairman in name only. I remember John Salter called me one day and said that he wanted to see Bob and I said, “Fine, what’s it all about?” He said, “Well, he’s upset and concerned about what people are saying.” So Salter came in the next day and they sat down and they talked it out. And I think Bob was ready when he came in. He said, “Look, I know people are saying this. The question is whether you and I understand what the situation is. I do and I just

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hope you do. I’m doing all I can, and you do all you can. Sure, we do overlap and we do have problems but they work themselves out.” And Scoop left very, very satisfied, I thought; happy, and as loyal as ever to the overall effort. The thought was he was going to quit. I think there was a time when Archie Cox [Archibald Cox] – you get into a campaign like that and you get so many people in it with so much talent and so much ability and the question is whether there’s enough for them to do. They’re people who can make a contribution to any field, and they really wonder if they’re making any contribution. Cox, as you know, was head of the, really, the Washington speech writing effort. However, Ted Sorensen [Theodore C. Sorensen] was traveling with the President, and there was some question about whether any of

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Archie’s stuff was getting into the speeches. I think he was discouraged about this at one point. He came in and talked to Bob and again I think Bob recognized that here was a fellow who had great ability and who was legitimately concerned about whether he was wasting his time. I think he convinced him that he was not wasting his time and that it was a worthwhile effort. Just as a sidelight to this, late in the campaign, maybe in the last three weeks, Kenny O’Donnell called me one night. They were out somewhere in the Middle West. He said, “The Senator thinks that he’s having a tough time with new ideas and new phrases, and he would like to have you contact each day a group of people and ask them to give you their ideas about the campaign and how we can

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say the same thing in a different way.” He mentioned Arthur Schlesinger [Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.] who by this time was back in Cambridge. He mentioned a fellow who was at the, I think the University of Wisconsin whose name was Doyle [James Doyle], and he mentioned Ken Galbraith [John Kenneth Galbraith] and Archie Cox. And I remember calling them. Arthur was, I felt – and I may be wrong about this whole thing, but I remember it quite well. I had the impression that perhaps these people were making a contribution, or perhaps Kenny thought they were making a contribution, and that they were getting bottlenecked from Sorensen and that they weren’t getting through. You never know the genesis of something in a campaign, but I had the feeling that Kenny and perhaps even the President wanted a source outside Ted, and so he

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asked Kenny to contact these people and Kenny, of course, was traveling with him and didn’t have a great deal of time and so he called me. So I called each name. What they really were asking for were little “brights” to drop in. That’s what Kenny was asking for. Arthur said, “Well, I think it’s a mistake just to have one man on the plane. I was in the Stevenson campaign, and I think the best thing to do would be to have me there with him.” I had the feeling that Arthur was a little miffed about it although he didn’t say so. Archie Cox said fine, he’d be glad to do whatever he could. I had the feeling he continued, though, to channel material I the same old way. Ken Galbraith every day had something. He obviously took the time to find about it,

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and he gave it without reservation, without question. He didn’t have any way of knowing whether I had any access or channel of communication, really, then I did. But he was the most cooperative. Doyle was cooperative – not so cooperative, but he was cooperative. At the same time there was another group that was holding meetings. This group included Albert Gore, Bill Haddad [William F. Haddad], and several others. They’d hold weekly breakfast meetings for ideas. Insofar as I could tell they never contributed a single idea, and insofar as I could tell nothing they came up with ever got into the dialogue of the campaign. But they did meet and they did have the feeling that they were making a contribution. I think it was announced in the press that they were a study group. Albert Gore was

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one. I think maybe Fulbright [J. William Fulbright] was in that group. I don’t remember who else. There were several in there.

GRELE: Do you recall offhand any of Galbraith’s contributions?

SEIGENTHALER: I don’t. I don’t remember. I do remember that as a rule they were one sentence jives, and that a couple of them were pretty corny but that most of them were pretty good.

GRELE: Going back now to the question on state organizations, which state organizations were easy to work with and which were difficult to work with?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, almost all my contact came with coordinators, and came with coordinators with special problems. The coordinators as a rule went through Dungan and Larry O’Brien and Dick Donahue. However, it was a busy time, and they weren’t always able to get through. And I’m not sure

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they always wanted to get through. I had the feeling sometimes that they became concerned about whether they were getting the service they wanted especially on questions of material, campaign material. Dave Hackett [David Hackett] was in charge of disseminating campaign material, and we were constantly behind and people were always complaining, “We need more material. We must have more materials. Send more of this. Send more of that.” And many of them had the money to pay for it, but they just couldn’t get it. We couldn’t get it to them. This was a big bottleneck in the campaign. These coordinators often in desperation would call Larry or Ralph or Dick Donahue and after the third call still couldn’t get it, and it was no fault of the people they were calling. Then they would call Bob and I

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would get them. If at times it was successful, then if they had another problem they might very well call us back. I made it a point always to work with Donahue and Dungan particularly, to let them know whether we had a call that came through so that we were on the same track. I had a feeling at times that especially Dungan resented them calling us – calling Bob. They thought they should go through us. But the state coordinators were pretty good. I had very little contact except once in a great while with people who were actively involved in the state organizations. But there were exceptions to that. Usually the contact came from somebody who though Bob Kennedy could do something that somebody else couldn’t do. They would call and I’d get that

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assignment. I think it helped to keep the operation that Dungan and Donahue were running on their toes to know that Bob Kennedy would get reports from all over the states too. I’d have a better idea about coordinators than I would about states.

GRELE: What coordinators gave you few problems and what coordinators gave you many problems?

SEIGENTHALER: Almost all of them we dealt with gave us a lot of problems. Lem Billings was in Wisconsin and he was in a difficult situation there between Nestigen and Lucey, and I thought he had an awful lot of problems. He was constantly torn between the factions in Wisconsin.

GRELE: This is an aside and it may be putting ideas into your head, but do you think that this might be because of the primary

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and the various commitments that the Kennedy organization had to the various factions that this kind of thing showed up in the campaign?

SEIGENTHALER: No, I think it probably was that they didn’t make any and that these people were still fighting among themselves. There was a sharp division of opinion about which faction out there was effective. Larry and Kenny largely relied on – at least my memory of it is – Nestingen. Bob thought Lucey was good. I could be wrong about that. It could be just the opposite of that. I wouldn’t want to get into that. At any rate, there was a difference of opinion about which faction was the most effective. Corbin had come from out there originally and he was a Lucey man. But they got him out of the state primarily because he was a bomb thrower.

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I thought Bill Rivkin [William R. Rivkin] was pretty good in Minnesota and also he did some work in Illinois. Now, Dungan and Donahue, I thought, had the feeling he had limited ability. However, I thought he did an excellent job, and I thought he was one of the best at feeling the pulse of the – especially in Minnesota. I think he also had Iowa. I’m almost sure he also had Iowa. I thought he was effective. Rip – God, what’s his name? He was in Nebraska. Well, I’ll come back to it. Teddy [Edward M. Kennedy] pretty well handled all the states in the West. We’d hear from them, but it would largely be at times when he was out caucusing and couldn’t be reached.

GRELE: Who coordinated California?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, there were two or three people. California was largely coordinated out of

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California. What’s that fellow’s name from Chicago?

GRELE: Hy Raskin [Hyman B. Raskin]?

SEIGENTHALER: Hy was out there and he was active, I thought, and effective. Again, I had the feeling that people in Larry’s office had reservations about him. Dick Donahue, however, thought he was good. But those Western states were largely in Teddy’s bailiwick, and we’d only hear from them about problems when Teddy was not able to handle it. Some of the other coordinators were… Of course, I mentioned the two in New York. We had Jerry Tremblay [Gerald Tremblay] was in Pennsylvania part of the time. Both of them were pretty good. They let Billy Green [William J. Green, Jr.] run the show in Philadelphia almost

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completely, and I thought they concentrated on the western end of the state, around Pittsburg.

GRELE: Didn’t this cause any conflict with Senator Clark [Joseph S. Clark] or Governor Lawrence [David L. Lawrence]?

SEIGENTHALER: Not really. Governor Lawrence was terrific. He was really fine. I think Governor Lawrence let Billy Green handle Philadelphia too. Did I tell the story about the night of the inauguration and Billy Green?

GRELE: No.

SEIGENTHALER: Well, it’s another aside, but it’s interesting. Billy Green was just a name to me during the campaign – a hell of a nice guy. After the election I met him a couple of times. I didn’t really get any chance to sit down with him until the night of the inauguration. It was

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either the night of the inauguration or the night before. At any rate, a group of us were in the Mayflower [Hotel], and we were having dinner at a big table in the main dining room, darkened. I guess it was the night of the inauguration. Billy Green came in and sat down and Dick Donahue said, “How do you feel? Just tell me how you feel.” He said, “This is the greatest night in American history and there’s never been anything like this in the history of the United States.” He said, “I’ve spent many years here. This is the most significant night in my life.” So you know, I didn’t know what to say. I said, “I’m surprised to hear you say that.” He said, “Why should you be surprised?” I said, “Well, you were here in 1932 when Franklin Roosevelt [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] took over in the height of the

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depression. Can you actually tell me that tonight is more thrilling and more significant to you than that night?” He said, “Well, I was here for that inaugural. I was in this city at that time. Yes, I think it was.” I said, “Well, why?” He said, “There’s only one reason.” I said, “Why is that?” He said, “Tonight an Irish Catholic sleeps in the White House.” Is that on the other tape?

GRELE: No, no.

SEIGENTHALER: Had you heard that before? Well, he said, “Tonight an Irish Catholic sleeps in the White House.” He was a terrific little guy. He was a real pol. As I said, I thought Rivkin did a good job.

GRELE: Were there coordinators in the South?

SEIGENTHALER: There weren’t many coordinators in the

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South. No, there were not, largely because Smathers didn’t want them. We tried a couple in Kentucky but they never really – Vinson went into Kentucky. Justice Vinson’s [Fred M. Vinson] son, Fred Vinson [Fred M. Vinson, Jr.], went into Kentucky. I didn’t think he ever really came to grips with the problem there, but it was not his fault. He went in late. That’s almost the only Southern state we tried for. Now, there were some coordinators sent out of that Southern office over there. Smathers wanted to do that and we couldn’t very well object to that. There was one interesting meeting that involved the South and it also involved Buford Ellington. I don’t guess I got into it in the other session.

[END OF TAPE I, SIDE II]

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[SESSION II, TAPE II, SIDE I]

GRELE: What happened in Ohio?

SEIGENTHALER: It’s amazing. I’ve always said that basically Ray Bliss happened in Ohio. I remember it was the greatest shock to us of any other state in the whole campaign. I think it was the greatest shock to Bob, and also the greatest shock to the President, because we had been in there and the crowds were fantastic. The organization was good, or we thought it was good. The response to every phase of the campaign was good. I think the

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President expected to carry Ohio. This was one that he looked for and counted on and expected. We thought, or I thought, at least, that we’d carry Ohio by about the same margin that the Republicans ultimately carried it, which was substantial, a hundred thousand votes maybe.

GRELE: On a previous tape you talked about the civil rights section and the conflict within that section. Could you detail that for us a little more explicitly?

SEIGENTHALER: The conflict within the civil rights section you mean in the campaign? During the course of the campaign?

GRELE: In the campaign.

SEIGENTHALER: Well, this all came under Sarge’s [Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr.] operation. Basically I felt that there were some people in that…. Well, let’s just talk about the

[-224-] personalities. You stop me when I start overlapping.

GRELE: Harris Wofford [Harris L. Wofford, Jr.].

SEIGENTHALER: Harris Wofford was in there. Harris Wofford was in that campaign in that area. A fellow named Oliver Hill, who was with the NAACP in Virginia, was in that operation. Frank Reeves, who’d been with the President all the way through, was in that operation. There were a number of others.

GRELE: Mrs. Lawson [Marjorie M. Lawson]?

SEIGENTHALER: Mrs. Lawson, Marge Lawson was in that operation.

GRELE: You said on the previous tape that there was a conflict between those who had a working knowledge of politics and were willing to engage in political action and those who were more

[-225-] retiring.

SEIGENTHALER: Really, more idealistic and not very practical, and as much as anything else, we were dealing with people who were insecure about their own ability to deliver the Negro vote. And they were insecure about this for a number of reasons but primarily because Nixon was making a pretty strong appeal to these people. The question really was whether the vote would come, whether there was anything they could do, personally, to get it. I remember Bob repeatedly at meetings would urge them to get out into the field and to make contacts. As Frank Reeves put it one time, they didn’t want to get away from the mainstream. Frank Reeves worked hard for the President, but there were limits on what he could do. Clarence

[-226-]

Mitchell was, really, the Republican Negro leader in Washington, Frank Reeves’ counterpart, and he was an effective, able fellow, Clarence Mitchell was. He was a tough political organizer, and he was doing a good job for Nixon. I think Frank Reeves wanted to do whatever he could, but all of them were afraid, really, to get out of Washington. They didn’t want to get out of Washington really; and I found only one exception to that and that was Louis Martin. Did I say this in the other tape? Louis in my opinion was the most effective – the most effective – organizer that they had.

GRELE: Do you recall the details of the tiff between Harris Wofford and Mrs. Lawson? Did that ever reach your office?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, but I don’t remember all the details

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of it, except it was there.

GRELE: Well, at one time supposedly Mr. Wofford asked her for a list of names which she refused to give to him. Then she went to Sarge Shriver, and she went back and forth between them.

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, that’s right. Well, there was this conflict, and this was only one of them. I had the feeling that there was an awful lot of jealousy throughout that operation. The only thing they generally agreed on, I felt, was that you couldn’t push Martin Luther King too hard; you couldn’t make demands on Martin Luther King, an that if we were counting on some manifestation of support on the part of Martin Luther King, we were asking for too much. And they felt that to be effective you were going to have to say clearly and strongly that you favored a full breakdown of all

[-228-] barriers in the area of civil rights – in effect, what Kennedy ultimately delivered – that you were going to have to say that you’d be willing to change the attitude of the United States of America on the subject of human rights. Did I go into that one meting where everybody began to talk about what you could expect from Martin Luther King?

GRELE: No, you went into the details of one meeting where Louis Martin finally stood up.

SEIGENTHALER: Well, that really was the same meeting. The issue there as much as anything else was: What can we expect from Martin Luther King? Bob said, in effect, to Harris and Frank Reeves and to the others – I believe Sarge was probably there but I’m not sure – Bob said, in effect, “Look, he’s going to do these things

[-229-] anyway. This is right, and it should be done, but if he says this and makes this a campaign issue now, he’s going to throw away an awful lot of votes.”

GRELE: He being John Kennedy?

SEIGENTHALER: John Kennedy. “And after the election’s over, he’s going to do it. I think it’s a calculated risk to make it an issue in the campaign, and I think that the civil rights platform is strong and he stands on that platform. Now what you’re asking is one step beyond that. You’re asking that he makes an issue of the platform, and Nixon’s not doing that. I’m asking you, “what are we going to be able to expect on the other side?” Of course, they said, “Well, you’ll be able to expect that Dr. King will say that this is a very forthright statement.” Well, what’s going to happen when Nixon says, in

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turn, that he’s willing to support the Republican platform on it?” Well, he’ll make the same statement for Nixon.” And then Louis Martin got up, and he spelled it out. He said two or three things, but one thing he said was, “We’re going to have to get out of the mainstream. We’re going to have to get involved in this. Two, we’ve got to spell it out to King. We’ll say this, and not only will we say it, we’ll do it. But if we do it, we expect full support from you, and if we don’t get it, then no quid pro quo.” He was strong on this. I think at that time Louis Martin, for the first time, established himself as the political contact who had really more knowledge, more know how, more sense, more ability to get things done for both the civil rights cause and the political cause of the Senator than anybody else in the

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field. Ultimately, I think Harris, through Sarge, arranged the contact with Mrs. King [Coretta Scott King] when Dr. King was in jail.

GRELE: You left off the last tape with Mr. Geoghegan [p. 124] discussing the telephone call that Robert Kennedy made to the judge.

SEIGENTHALER: To the judge, yes.

GRELE: And you cut this story off right when he came back to Washington and told you that he did, indeed, call the judge.

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, I guess he told me on the telephone before he came back. He had left and said he would not – well, that it was up to them. And then in the middle of the day, I guess, Roger Tubby came in and said the judge said that he had heard a call from Robert Kennedy. I told Tubby to put out a

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statement saying it absolutely was not so because Robert Kennedy had told me he was not going to get into it; that the President had done it, and he had agreed with the President; that it might cost him some votes but that it was right; that he though the position of the judge was disgraceful, and when he got on the airplane, he was talking about that, what a disgrace it was. He couldn’t make bond, the constitutional right of any arrested person, and he was not being allowed to make bond simply because he was a Negro. He was obviously burned about this, but he had said that he was not going to get into it. Then when Tubby came in, I told him to issue a statement denying it, saying that a spokesman for Robert Kennedy said that no such call had been made. Then I

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talked to him later on the telephone, and I said, “Bob, you’d never believe the story that the AP has got out.” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “That that crazy judge says – he’s going to be a real idiot – he says that you called him on the telephone complaining about this.” He said, “What did you say?” I said, “I told Tubby to put out a denial.” There was a long pause. He said, “John, you’d better get Tubby to put out another statement. I did call him.” I said, “I can’t believe it.” He said, “Yes, it just burned me all the way up here on the plane. It grilled me. The more I thought about the injustice of it, the more I thought what a son of a bitch that judge was. I made it clear to him that it was not a political call; that I am a

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lawyer, one who believes in the right of all defendants to make bond and one who had seen the rights of defendants misused in various ways, the rights of people misused by the law and the misuse of power sometimes in congressional investigations. I wanted to make it clear that I oppose this. I felt it was disgraceful.” So we called Tubby in, and at his suggestion we got Louis Martin over, and we issued a statement.

GRELE: How effective was it generally believed that the telephone call to Mrs. Martin Luther King was?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think the feeling was that – Louis Martin was elated, and Harris Wofford was elated, and that elation spread throughout the civil rights section, and from that point on, that

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organization was a functioning, effective group. From the point of the call on, it gave them confidence, it gave them something they could sell, something they could move with. For example, prior to that Bob had been trying to get an airplane. It was a suggestion that Louis Martin had made in on of the early meetings – that it would be helpful if we could get an airplane with Negro celebrities to tour the country for Kennedy. This was first suggested maybe in late August, and every meeting we had, several of them, it was brought up. And we were working on it. One other fellow who was in those meetings was Frank Montero from New York, who was subsequently in the United Nations with Stevenson. Frank Montero was given the job of lining it up. It never really moved. A couple of times we had the plane ready to go, and we just

[-236-]

couldn’t get the people. Frank never was able to pull it together, but after this, that gelled immediately. The plane made a trip. They had a press conference, left from New York, and toured the country. I can’t remember who it was but there was – I guess it was Hank Aaron [Aaron Henry]. Hank Aaron, I think, was the only fellow who didn’t go. He met and went to the press conference, got in a taxi cab and rode to the airport, went out to the airplane, and somehow missed the airplane. Everybody said it was because he was afraid to fly or something. Anyway, Hank Aaron didn’t make the plane, but he did let his name go on the record in support of Senator Kennedy.

GRELE: Was there any discussion at that time whether or not the seeking of legislation

[-237-]

would be an issue in the campaign?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, I think it was, and I think that was part of what they were asking for.

GRELE: They were asking for…

SEIGENTHALER: They were asking for some sort of a statement, some sort of statement that would go beyond the statement at the time of the first debate. They were asking for something that they could, in fact, sell. There were a number of meetings set up and they were suggesting, “Well, at this meeting let him say this,” or “At that meeting let him say this.” What they wanted was a broad, sweeping declaration. One of the things Harris had in mind, for example, as I remember it, President Kennedy had started by saying, “A hundred years ago the issue in the presidential campaign was whether the nation could live half slave and half free. This year the issue

[-238-]

is whether the world can live half slave and half free.” Well, Harris wanted that transmitted into today’s civil rights terms: whether this nation is, in fact, still half slave and half free. We must wipe away the last vestiges of slavery.

GRELE: What was the thinking that negated such a sweeping statement?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, nothing ever negated it. The whole question was one of what the effect of it would be. I think what Bob was searching for before he was willing to get into such an issue was what’s the effect of it going to be among the Negro voters? And nobody was willing to say, for example, that it would move a leader such as Martin Luther King or even Roy Wilkins, who was already pretty much committed. I think Bob had the feeling that this is going to get

[-239-]

bogged down in some sort of a competition of promises about who could promise the most in the area of civil rights. If you remember about that time, or something during this discussion, Lodge [Henry Cabot Lodge] came out with a statement about, “Of course, we’ll put a Negro in the Cabinet.” It was perfectly clear to Nixon that he didn’t have any idea of what Lodge was talking about when he made this statement, and the reaction in the South was rather strong about that. I think Bob was reluctant to get into a situation in which we tried to out promise Nixon; they’re going to put one in the Cabinet, then we’re going to but two in the Cabinet, or, “Yes, we’re going to put one in the Cabinet, but we’re going to put one everywhere else.” I think he was of the opinion that these promises

[-240-]

were worthless insofar as political support was concerned unless you could pin it down, unless you could get something positive.

GRELE: How did the civil rights section operate with Congressman Dawson’s [William L. Dawson] organization?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, they gave him an office over there, and that was about the extent of it. He was pretty ineffective. Most of the people in the section thought he was senile. Very few of them ever bothered to talk to him. There was a feeling within the organization that Dawson was a figurehead and something had to be done out of respect for his years, and what the members of the civil rights section felt was senility.

GRELE: Did he or did he not have this wide range of political contacts in the Negro

[-241-]

community?

SEIGENTHALER: It was my impression he had very few.

GRELE: Did Adam Clayton Powell have any?

SEIGENTHALER: Practically none.

GRELE: Who did have them?

SEIGENTHALER: I have the feeling that the contacts were largely through Harris, Frank Reeves, Oliver Hill, Louis Martin, Marge Lawson, and others like that – Frank Montero. I mean, Adam Powell’s contacts are broad. There’s no question of that. But they were limited largely, I thought, to New York, and he functioned as part of the New York operation. Dawson’s power – and everybody recognized this – was limited to Chicago and to part of Daley’s [Richard J. Daley] machine, organization would be a better word, for a Democrat. But there was not the feeling that he had broad support across the country, and certainly

[-242-] not with this new breed of Negro leadership that was on the move. Dawson, for example, had no appeal whatever to King, and neither did Powell. So the civil rights section, while the office was there and while he was there…. I remember, for example, one day Bob and I went over to visit the civil rights section, just to drop in and pay them a little surprise visit and see if they were hard at it. We went in, and they were hard at it. He had called Dawson to say he was coming, and Dawson came over, just to be there. It was perfectly obvious. He called everybody in, and they had a little meeting around the table. It was perfectly obvious that he didn’t know what the hell was going on over there. He didn’t have any idea what they were doing and really didn’t care much.

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Of course, the other thing that’s interesting is that up to this point Bob Kennedy was suspect to all the civil libertarians, all of them. They thought of him in terms of a man who asked questions and had witnesses before him in congressional committees. Many of the people who were supporting the civil rights struggle were career liberals who were opposed to congressional committees because of McCarthy [Joseph R. McCarthy]. So he was very suspect at this point in his career, and this washed over until the time he was considered for appointment.

GRELE: Was this true of everyone who worked in the Kennedy organization prior to that time, like Frank Reeves or Mrs. Lawson?

SEIGENTHALER: No. If I had to characterize their attitude, it was awe. I don’t think they liked him particularly. He was

[-244-]

pretty tough on them.

GRELE: What happened to Mrs. Lawson? She seems to have faded from the primaries, during the campaign and then after?

SEIGENTHALER: Was she made an ambassador?

GRELE: No.

SEIGENTHALER: She was not. She was considered for an ambassador. That’s right. She was made a juvenile judge. I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know. I remember I was pushing her for an ambassador for some place, but I don’t remember what happened to that. Oh, I think she could have had that but her husband….

GRELE: Luxembourg?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes. Bill Rivkin ultimately got that. Her husband didn’t want her to take it. That’s my memory of it.

GRELE: Can you think of anything else dealing with the civil rights section or civil rights during the campaign?

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SEIGENTHALER: Not offhand.

GRELE: Moving on now to another minority group. Was there any special problem with women? Were women organized?

SEIGENTHALER: Oh, yes, there were problems. Esther Peterson used to come in every three or four weeks, and then Katie Louchheim [Kathleen Louchheim] was always fluttering around. But I thought they functioned pretty well. Bob always held their hand when they came in, and whatever they asked within reason, they got.

GRELE: What were their concerns?

SEIGENTHALER: Esther’s concern was more with labor – but then it’s in her background – than with anything else. Esther’s idea was that the way to appeal to a woman was in her role as consumer and in her role as a wife of a laborer. She had some pretty good ideas, and I thought she was effective. I never kept up

[-246-] with her. I remember she came up with the idea that Kennedy in Utah should speak in the Mormon Tabernacle. I’m sure some other people came up with the idea too, but she was the first one I heard say it, and I think she was probably the first one Bob heard say it. She came in with that idea one day. She was going to talk about something else and she said, “When he goes to Utah, this is something he should do,” and I said, “You ought to talk to Bob about that,” and she did and it came about. As I say, a lot of people also may have been responsible for it but she was certainly a mover.

GRELE: Was there any tension between Margaret Price and Katie Louchheim?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

GRELE: Why?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think, you know, they were just women

[-247-]

and it isn’t worth repeating. Margaret was on the winner, Katie was on the loser. He didn’t punish her.

GRELE: What do you mean, she was on the loser?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, she was not very big for Kennedy. She was a little slow to come along and Margaret was very big. But Bob Kennedy was very nice to Katie and went out of his way to make her feel comfortable and to give her something to do and give her a job. She was damned effective I must say. She traveled a hell of a lot and talked a lot. I never had the feeling that Margaret Price did a hell of a lot.

GRELE: Was there a special appeal to women?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, but I don’t know a great deal about it. It went largely through those women who were working. Margaret’s office was way on the other end, and I saw very little

[-248-] of her.

GRELE: What about the labor vote? Was it considered that there was a labor vote?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

GRELE: Where?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, really all over. Like everything else, that vote pretty well is handled by labor. It was not really integrated in the overall campaign as such, at least not as I remember it. There were individuals like Harry Van Arsdale in New York who was effective. Various people called in with suggestions.

GRELE: Who were the people who were liaison between the campaign organization and the labor movement?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, Dungan had the best contacts because he had been the Senator’s legislative representative who had worked most frequently with labor. Archie Cox was

[-249-] also an excellent contact. He was effective. Again, people would call in, and most of that went through Ralph. Most of those contacts went through Ralph, and he coordinated what was done. It could have been substantial, and I just wouldn’t have heard about it.

GRELE: Were there any problems that came up to you?

SEIGENTHALER: No. Labor’s pretty well disciplined, you know, and what they’re looking for as much as anything else is just service. Labor does what it needs to do pretty much on its own. It furnishes its own money and its own people. As much as anything else, they just want to let you know what they’re doing and let you tell them what needs doing. There may be an instance or two in which that occurred, but I don’t recall any.

[-250-]

GRELE: Was there any kickback from your rackets committee or John Kennedy’s sponsorship of the Kennedy-Ervin Bill?

SEIGENTHALER: No, I think once the campaign got underway, that was behind us, and I don’t think that was a problem.

GRELE: Moving on now to the registration drive. How effective was Frank Thompson?

SEIGENTHALER: Very. Very.

GRELE: Were there efforts concentrated in particular places?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, it was carried on on the citizens’ committee, and they handled it almost exclusively. Statistically, it was effective. He worked very close with labor. Roy Reuther worked with him. Periodically, Bob would meet with them. Sometimes he’d have dinner with them at Duke Siebert’s. There’s an interesting story about

[-251-]

Hooker [John J. Hooker, Jr.]. It’s not really worth…. Well, it ought to be a part of the record because it’s a good story, and he probably won’t tell you about it. Roy Reuther and Whizzer White and Topper Thompson [Horace A. Thompson] and Bob and I went to dinner the first night Hooker got in town to go to work, and we took Hooker along with us.

GRELE: Was this in the minority section?

SEIGENTHALER: Where Hooker worked?

GRELE: Yes.

SEIGENTHALER: It’s the strangest thing. He started out working…. He just came up. He wanted to help, and he could afford to give the time. He paid his own salary and his own expenses. His law firm just gave him up. It was a bit of a sacrifice, but he wanted to help. He said to Bob, “Look, I’ll come up there and help. I want to help.” So he came up, and the

[-252-]

first thing he did was become involved in answering anti-Catholic literature. Then he started organizing Doctors for Kennedy and subsequently Lawyers for Kennedy. I don’t think he had that much contact with Kennedy, but he had contact with a hell of a lot of lawyers and a hell of a lot of doctors. At one point, he set up a press conference for Jackie [Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy]. Another time, he was assigned or he got all screwed up because Mrs. Roosevelt [Eleanor R. Roosevelt] scheduled him. I don’t know if that’s on his tape. If it’s not, he should put it on tape. Franklin [Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.] was supposed to bring down Mrs. Roosevelt’s dates and said he did bring them down. To make a long story short, Franklin just never showed up with them. There was some hell raised about it, and he was

[-253-]

thrashing around for a name of someone he gave them. By this time we had assigned a fellow named Bob Dunn [Robert Dunn] to Franklin for the full campaign. He had the responsibility to keep Franklin off his butt and on the campaign trail. I was constantly checking with Bob Dunn to be sure that that was done, and I think I was a pain in Franklin’s ass, to be perfectly frank about it, if the recorder will pardon me. But Franklin said, “I gave those dates to John Seigenthaler.” Well, I never heard of them. So finally Bob came in one day and said, “Roosevelt’s mad at you. He says you fouled up. What have you done?” I said, “I haven’t done anything.” So he said, “Well, check and find out, will you?” There’s a fellow named Abba Schwartz, who’s now down at the State Department in the security division. Abba

[-254-]

was very helpful. He loved Mrs. Roosevelt; called her the Lady. He said, “Yes, the Lady’s very much perturbed. I know what happened. You don’t have to tell me what happened. Franklin threw those things away, or they’re in some pants pocket or in some room in some hotel somewhere, and he was just looking for a name.” But he said, “Well, work this out.” Well, we needed to send somebody up to talk to her. So we sent Hooker up to talk to her, and that’s an interesting sidelight too.

GRELE: We’ll try to get that from him. You were talking about a meeting with Roy Reuther?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes. We were sitting around the table at dinner, and Hooker didn’t know who these people were. He knew Whizzer White, of course, but he didn’t know anybody else.

[-255-]

I was listening to him. He didn’t get Reuther’s name. Now, Hooker’s a very well-to-do young fellow, you know. They call him the Duke of Bellmede. So he said, “Well, what do you do, Roy?” and Roy said, “I work in registration.” He said, “Well, what do you do for a living?” Roy said, “I’m active in labor.” I was saying Hooker comes from a very well-to-do, and some people say conservative background although he’s liberal in the Kennedy image today. After it was over – and he had pushed it: “What do you do? What do you do in labor?” He obviously didn’t know who he was talking to – I leaned over to him, and I said, “Your conservative friends are going to go wild when I get back to Tennessee and tell them that you’ve been having dinner with Walter Reuther’s brother.” And it

[-256-]

really stunned him.

GRELE: How was the issue of anti-Catholicism dealt with?

SEIGENTHALER: In the early days, just hit or miss. For example, Hooker came up and went to work on a paper which was put out on a short-term basis. But shortly after that, a fellow named Jim Wine [James Wine], who was active with the National Council of Churches, came in and handled it. He did an excellent job. He set up the Houston ministers’ meeting. He was an able fellow. He ultimately was an ambassador to one of the African nations, as I remember it. But that’s the way it was handled subsequently.

GRELE: Was there any particular strategy for minorities?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think I told the story about Bill Henry [E. William Henry].

[-257-]

GRELE: Yes, coming up to…

SEIGENTHALER: There’s a fellow who was the head of that, whose name doesn’t come to me, who was a real pro, and who had handled it before. He headed it up. I can’t remember his name.

GRELE: Do you recall any conflict during the campaign between the necessities of gathering the minority vote and John Kennedy’s obvious reluctance to do this?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, what minority vote?

GRELE: The Poles, the Italians.

SEIGENTHALER: Yes. Bob had the feeling that President Truman [Harry S. Truman] had done a great job – those who handled his campaign had done a great job in getting that minority vote, the nationalities vote. He wanted to be sure that we did as well. Now, you said Kennedy’s obvious reluctance.

GRELE: Well, over a period of time he had stated a reluctance to engage in this kind of

[-258-]

politics.

SEIGENTHALER: I thought, at this point in the campaign at least, he was not really concerned about it. Like everybody else, he wanted that vote, and Bob worked for it and he worked on it hard. There was an active effort made to get it. I mean, Bill Henry was employed almost to the sole purpose of making sure that those people who were working for us to give us that vote didn’t double-cross us.

GRELE: What do you mean, double-cross?

SEIGENTHALER: Didn’t work both sides of the street.

GRELE: Was that the usual practice?

SEIGENTHALER: There was some fear that that had been done in Eisenhower’s [Dwight D. Eisenhower] election. I don’t remember who expressed that fear, but there was some fear of it. An interesting think in all this was the…. John Kennedy, for example, was not so reluctant to make a pitch

[-259-] for that vote that he was perfectly willing to make the appeal. Stash [Prince Stanislas Albert Radziwill], for example, his wife’s brother-in-law, came in and made speeches and was very good. Everybody had a reluctance to bring somebody in who represented royalty. You know, Prince Radziwill. But the first time you heard him, you had to say that he was very good at what he did.

GRELE: Was he sent to Polish arenas?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, he was. Let me ask why you say that Kennedy was reluctant to?

GRELE: Because people told me just that he often complained about this plane of politics. Many people told me that he objected to minority politics and objected to…

SEIGENTHALER: Well, we made the appeal. We made the appeal, and we worked the minority vote as best we could in the same way it had

[-260-]

been worked by the Democratic Party before. And as I say, Bill Henry was employed for one reason only – that he was a bright, young, energetic, honest guy who would give you or tell you exactly what he thought.

GRELE: Does this go right down to buying space in the ethic press?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes. It included that. John Kennedy might have been against that, but his campaign did it.

GRELE: What about the Republicans for Kennedy? Was there any special problem with them? How were they garnered?

SEIGENTHALER: As I remember it, they were largely gathered through the citizen’s organization. And I don’t know a great deal about that except that that’s the way it was done.

GRELE: What issues in the campaign do you think were particularly effective, and how did

[-261-]

they evolve?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, you have to say the overriding issue was the Catholic question. This was on everybody’s mind. The debates sort of took it out of the realm of a single issue. In three or four weeks Quemoy and Matsu didn’t get a vote one way or the other, in my opinion. Outside of Quemoy and Matsu, I’d have a tough time saying that any issue, aside from the civil rights issue, emerged. I think the missile gap was an issue. I don’t remember that any issue emerged during the course of the campaign that was not anticipated before we got into it. There might be something I’m overlooking there. The only exception I can think of is Quemoy and Matsu.

GRELE: What was the general impression of the Nixon-Lodge campaign?

[-262-]

SEIGENTHALER: Of course, they knew Lodge from the past, and it would seem from the outset, I think, that he would be a bad campaigner: that the crack about the Negro in the Cabinet – that, or something like that – would come. Some of the people in the campaign, Donahue for example, told me how sensitive Lodge was to have his picture take in profile; that he has a big nose, and he was very sensitive about it; and that if photographers take a picture in profile, he’ll ultimately get sore and blow up about it. They knew Lodge pretty well, and they didn’t worry too much about Lodge. I think the President and Bob both were very wary of Nixon. They were also very concerned about Eisenhower’s popularity. They steered clear of any direct criticism of President Eisenhower. Bob strongly

[-263-]

felt…. Well, I can remember on one occasion, for example, he killed an edition of the Democratic news – I don’t remember the name of the paper – because it knocked Eisenhower on the question of golf, and somebody said, “You know, this has been an issue, we’ve been on this for four years.” He said, “By God, we’re going to stop doing it now. I don’t want anybody going out of this office criticizing President Eisenhower on playing golf, or anything else. How many voters are you going to gain attacking President Eisenhower because he loves to play golf? The same thing’s going to be true of Kennedy when he’s in because he likes to play golf too.” Bob was very strong on this subject. He did two or three things like that during the campaign. The New York Times editorial, for example.

[-264-]

A half a million copies of the New York Times editorial endorsing Kennedy were published. Immediately after that endorsement came – again, Bob was out of town, and I had to run down to a telephone somewhere – I got on the telephone and said, “Listen, they’ve printed a half million copies of the New York Times endorsement of Senator Kennedy.” He said, “Kill them. Destroy them. Burn them. Throw them away.” The truth was the editorial was really a backhand endorsement, as much a slap in the face as anything else. I always thought it was excessively good judgment to hold it. Looking back on it, I thought it was much…. Anyway, he said, “We just don’t need to say that. There are plenty of good editorials around the country. It’s all right to say the New York Times also endorses [Senator Kennedy],

[-265-]

but don’t run that editorial. So as I say, I thought it was good.

GRELE: Was there any particular problem with the press?

SEIGENTHALER: Not that I got. Of course, most of the press was following the campaign on the trail, was out with him. Did I tell the story in the last tape about the death of Khrushchev [Nikita Khrushchev]?

GRELE: No.

SEIGENTHALER: About halfway through the campaign, somewhere in there, this was mentioned. We could check the date. The wire services released a story that Khrushchev had been deposed – not the death, that he’d been deposed. God knows where it came from. I think ultimately they traced it to some drunk telegrapher in Austria. But anyway, it moved on the wire services. At that time, Bob was

[-266-]

having some real problems in California. Unruh [Jesse M. Unruh] and Brown were at war. He was in Chicago at the Blackpool Hotel. This think came in on the wire. Hooker was with him. I put in an immediate call out there. Hooker got on the telephone, and I said, “I’ve got to talk to Bob quick.” Then Hooker went into the next room, came back and said, “He’s on the telephone talking to California.” I said to him, “Well, goddamn it, go tell him I’ve got to talk to him. Get him off the telephone.” So he came back and said, “He’s working on a problem in California. He’s going to be on the telephone a half hour.” I said, “Tell him there’s a report that Khrushchev has fallen in Russia, and I’ve got to talk to him about it.” I mean, I was really on edge, you know, and very tense. Hooker

[-267-]

came back and said, “He said to tell you that he can’t do a damn thing about that until he solves those problems in California, and he’ll call you back.” And you know, I had to laugh. I thought he had great political judgment. His reaction to it immediately was, “Well, there’s not much to it to begin with or if there is, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. As far as we’re concerned here, I’ve got Jess Unruh on the telephone and now is the time to resolve this.” I mean, as I say, there were other things, about destroying that printed publicity, that I thought were so intelligent.

GRELE: Congressman Bolling [Richard Bolling] went to California too, didn’t he?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

GRELE: For the same problem?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

[-268-]

GRELE: What was the problem?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think it was just that those factions out there were feuding as they did in every state. There were some citizens’ problems out there too. I don’t remember the details of it now, but there was a state senator out there who was very helpful to us. It seems to me it was in the southern part of the state. There was another fellow who was very active in college communities – maybe at UCLA, I don’t remember though – in the citizens’ groups. And they did have some problems about that. But they not only had problems of citizens’ versus organization, they also had problems of organization versus organization; and they were much more serious. Ultimately, I think Bob himself went out there. He came back convinced we were going to

[-269-]

carry California by a small margin. Of course we did, but the absentees took it away from us.

GRELE: Do you have any further comments on the congressional liaison aspects of the campaign?

SEIGENTHALER: No, I don’t think so. Dick Bolling did an awful good job on the thing. One other story. About halfway through the campaign, Tubby came in one day and said, “We’re being picketed by the Nazis.” I said, “You must be kidding.” He said, “No, we’re being picketed by the Nazis.” So I got up and raced down the stairs – we were in that office at Connecticut and K – and walked out on the street. Sure enough, George Lincoln Rockwell was walking around carrying signs that said things like “Kikes for Kennedy,” “Jews for Jack.” You just wouldn’t believe it. I said

[-270-]

to Donahue, “God, I believe you hired them.” But they were deadly serious, and they felt they were really making a big…. I rushed back upstairs and told Tubby to get damn photographers there and get pictures quick. I don’t remember whether we did.

GRELE: This raises two other questions. How did you deal with kooks and cranks like this; the woman who carried around the picture of the president with Pam Turnure [Pamela Turnure] and people like this?

SEIGENTHALER: God, there wasn’t anything – you just had to deal with them. I did a piece after I got back on some of those crackpots. There was one fellow who wanted to jump out of airplanes in a parachute carrying a sign. He called exactly six weeks before the end of the campaign, and he wanted to spend the next

[-271-]

forty-five days, one jump a day, over the capital city of each state. He would leap out in this parachute, and a sign would unfold, “I Jump for Jack.” [Laughter] There were other nuts. Really, there was nothing you could do about them; just as quickly as you found out they were nuts, get rid of them.

GRELE: The second question that arises: Was there any particular problem with the Jewish vote because of the reputation that Ambassador Kennedy had had as Ambassador to Britain?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, there was. This was a big problem at one point, but as I remember it, Jim Landis [James M. Landis] came up with a file which was very helpful – very helpful. It spelled out not only that he was not anti-semitic, but that he had been a real force in trying to get Jews liberated; that

[-272-]

he had not only used his influence as ambassador but also spend a hell of a lot of money to try to get them out. And it was pretty well documented, and it was widely circulated, and it got support from various people. But everybody was concerned about this, but then we got some good support, I guess, from various Jewish leaders around the country.

GRELE: Who were the Jewish leaders who advised that this might be an issue? Do you recall?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, one I remember was Morris Simon. He’s now from New York; he was then from Atlanta. He was head of the National Jewish Congress, I guess, or something. Not then, but subsequently he was. There were an awful lot of people in New York who were worried about it. Of course,

[-273-]

the Nixon people were using it in certain areas. Pamphlets were distributed I don’t know if it was used.

GRELE: There was?

SEIGENTHALER: You know, smear stuff.

GRELE: Was there ever any contact with Charles Taft and the Fair Campaign Practices Committee?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, and I thought they were reasonably effective. They didn’t go overboard, but an awful lot of that anti-Catholic literature, there’s nothing you can do about it. You get beat over the head with it every week.

GRELE: At one point in the campaign wasn’t there a public controversy over whether or not the committee was doing its job?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

GRELE: What were the details of that?

SEIGENTHALER: I don’t remember except that there was.

[-274-]

You mean the campaign committee?

GRELE: Yes.

SEIGENTHALER: I remember the feeling was that some of the Republicans were actively responsible for it, and they were given some evidence which seemed to indicate that they were. They never made a statement on it. One thing that occurs to me is one fellow who was constantly calling with ideas about organization. Throughout the campaign he called Bob, and he found out that when Bob was not available, when he was on the road, that he could get through if he came to me. That was Phil Graham [Philip L. Graham]. I would say I talked to him maybe fifty times during the course of the campaign about some idea he had or some message he wanted to get through.

[-275-]

GRELE: He was that personally involved?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

GRELE: Do you recall any of the particular ideas he had?

SEIGENTHALER: I’ll think about it and try to come up with some. But it was a regular thing.

GRELE: These were ideas that weren’t expressed in The Washington Post?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, it just might have been a bit of intelligence he picked up somewhere or one of his reporters had picked up; some idea in answer to some charge that Nixon had made. I just don’t remember, but I’ll put my mind to it and try to come up with something.

GRELE: How effective was the Johnson organization in mobilizing the Southern governors to support the ticket – or Southern congressman and senators?

[-276-]

SEIGENTHALER: Not very.

GRELE: Why?

SEIGENTHALER: I would say not very. About the only contact I ever felt was in Tennessee, and practically no effort was made in Tennessee. Now, I don’t blame Johnson for this as much as I do Smathers. I mean, it was his responsibility, and he was just not capable of delivering.

GRELE: Didn’t the majority of the Tennessee Democrats support the ticket?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, they opened their mouths for it. Buford Ellington said he was for it, but there was literally no effective support. I mean, as a result we lost the state by a hundred thousand votes.

GRELE: Who worked on the senators, such as Senator Talmadge [Herman E. Talmadge]?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think Smathers made the effort.

[-277-]

Bob personally made some attempts with people like Eastland [James O. Eastland] and Stennis. Frank E. Smith, from Mississippi, tried to be helpful but there were limits on what he could do. He worked harder than anybody in the South, I think – Frank Smith. And it cost him his seat for Congress.

GRELE: Did this happen with many Southern liberals?

SEIGENTHALER: Not many of them really went all out. It didn’t happen to many of them, no.

GRELE: Was the campaign organization ever brought into the Texas situation?

SEIGENTHALER: No. Well, I say it was not. There were people out there who called and needed help – people like Barefoot Sanders [Harold Barefoot Sanders, Jr.] and Ramsey Clark.

GRELE: Barefoot?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, he’s now in the Justice Department.

[-278-]

And they worked hard. And Judge Bean [Woodrow Bean].

GRELE: Well, that’s the last of my questions on the campaign. Were you given any special assignments during the campaign that we haven’t covered?

SEIGENTHALER: No. My only job was to be liaison man between Bob and anybody who wanted him, whether they wanted to make a speech or whether they wanted him to get them some material or whether they wanted to come in and see him to complain about something, or just complain about it through me. After I came in I had the feeling it freed him to move around more and to appear more.

[END TAPE II, SIDE I]

[BEGIN TAPE II, SIDE II]

GRELE: What are your general impressions of Robert Kennedy’s conduct of that campaign?

[-279-]

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think he came into his own as a political personality – and not as a public political personality. There are many people within the organization through this day who are not willing to admit that he was really very effective. Most of it is based on jealousy, and it’s based on jealousy by people who were with Kennedy before. And they never express it. They never express this openly. Some of it’s based on a lack of information, and some of it’s based on just out and out dislike.

GRELE: Could you give me names?

SEIGENTHALER: No. I don’t really….

GRELE: Specific charges?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, it was just the general feeling of some of those who had been around the President a long time that Bob was

[-280-]

not really an activist and shouldn’t have been an activist and they still tell themselves that. But names I don’t think…

GRELE: On the last tape you stated that you were asked to write a book on the campaign, but you never did, and that at one time you had drawn up the memorandum?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes.

GRELE: I was wondering if you would like to attach a copy of the memorandum or if you’d let us Xerox a copy to attach it to the transcript?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes, I’ll try to find it.

GRELE: Can you think of anything we’ve missed on the campaign?

SEIGENTHALER: No, but I’ll make a note to go over it.

GRELE: You should really write the book.

SEIGENTHALER: It would be fun, I’ll tell you.

GRELE: Where were you election day?

[-281-]

SEIGENTHALER: In the office. Bob asked me to come up to the Cape. I didn’t want to go, really. I’d been away from my wife a long time, and I thought, “Every hanger-on in this campaign is going to try to be up there.” I was confident we were going to win. I thought we were going to win by a substantial margin. I just didn’t want to be up there. For some reason I just preferred to stay in Washington so I stayed all day in Washington in the headquarters. And that was a good thing, probably, because an awful lot of people called in during the day with minor problems. Nothing you could resolve; somebody in California with somebody stealing votes out here, or they closed the polls too early in Seattle – or somewhere near Seattle – that sort of thing. I talked to him two or three times during the day.

[-282-]

GRELE: You did? About what?

SEIGENTHALER: Just those various things. He called in. About 8 o’clock at night he called in and thanked everybody down there, and the President called in at the same time, got on the phone, and thanked everybody there. We talked to him all night long. Tennessee came in, and I was really low. Bob called me, and the President got on the phone again and said, “Don’t worry about it because we understand. We’ll have to wake them up down there in Tennessee.”

GRELE: Any reasons why he lost Tennessee?

SEIGENTHALER: I don’t think Ellington worked, and this is one thing that he can boast to the campaign. Did I get into the meeting between Kennedy and Ellington?

GRELE: No.

SEIGENTHALER: Well, that’s an interesting meeting, and

[-283-]

I’d like to. It’s during the campaign. Ellington had said on the floor of the Convention after Kennedy was nominated, “We’ve just elected a Republican president.” This was reported in the press all around the country. One day about a month after I came to Washington to work in the campaign, Bob called me. He was speaking somewhere and said, “I’ll be in tonight, and I’d like for you to spend the night with me.” I was living in Ross Bass’ apartment during the campaign. He said, “I’d like for you to spend the night with me. There’s going to be a meeting in the morning between Ellington,” – what’s that guy’s name from Kentucky? Earl something. He said, “Earl, Ellington are going to meet with Jack, and I want you to go.” And so I went, and it was a hot meeting. We had breakfast out

[-284-] on the patio, around the garden outside.

GRELE: Where?

SEIGENTHALER: At the house on N Street. Jackie was not there. When Bob and I got there Earl Clements and Buford were already there. Breakfast was set and we went out on the patio and sat down. Clements began by saying that he’d known Buford since he was a little fellow and how much Buford was dedicated to the Democratic Party. They had asked my opinion of what we should do in Tennessee, and I told them that I didn’t think that Ellington would do much, and that I would try to establish a committee, a statewide committee, and let the committee members elect a chairman. That chairman would be the functional head of the party during the course of the campaign. So we got out on the patio, and

[-285-]

Bob had briefed Jack on this. So after Clements told them how much Ellington loved them and how much he really didn’t mean about electing a Republican president and how, really, he thought it was the smartest thing that was ever done was to name Johnson vice president, Jack said, “Well, now let’s talk about what we’re going to do in Tennessee because I’m glad to have your support and it’s good to have you up here, and I think with your active support we can pretty well count on carrying that state. I have in mind that what we need is a committee down there to run the campaign.” Ellington said, “I’ve been thinking in those terms myself. However, the only organization in the state that can raise money to carry on

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that campaign would be the state administration organization.” He said, “I can do it. We’ll put on dinners and raise money from the state employees. I can guarantee you we’ll get the money to run our own campaign down there. The National Committee won’t have to contribute anything.” The President sort of smiled and said, “Well, we were counting on you to contribute some money to the National Committee.” And Ellington smiled and said, “If it’s necessary, we can do that.” At any rate, the meeting went on and there was an agreement that a committee would be formed and that it would be a three man committee; that Ellington would select a representative from his political factions, that Albert Gore would select a representative, and

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that Estes Kefauver would select a representative; and that these three representatives would make up the committee. I said, “I think it would be well if you’d include a Negro on the committee and make it a four man committee.” They said that was satisfactory and Ellington said that he would ask Bob Willard [Robert Willard] who’s a Negro leader here in Nashville. I said, “He’s an Uncle Tom. I don’t know how well he would do,” and Ellington said, “He’ll do well.” As a matter of fact, he did well. Somehow, somebody else subsequently suggested somebody else weeks later, but the understanding was that the original committee would be Ellington’s man, Kefauver’s man, Gore’s man. They would sit down and meet and name their representatives. Ellington

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said, “I will arrange a meeting this afternoon while I’m in town with Gore and Kefauver, and each of us will have our representatives.” The President said, “Well, could you call htem now and set up the meeting now? I’ll try to drop by there because I’m very interested in Tennessee.” So Ellington did that, and the meeting was arranged for just after lunch. The President had a meeting somewhere else and he said he could stop by. And they left. That afternoon he was leaving on a plane and Bob was going somewhere with him. It seems to me it was up to the Cape, but I could be wrong. At any rate, it was on the Caroline, and I took Bob to Butler Aviation. The President was waiting for him when we got there. We walked out to the ramps and the President was near

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the plane. He walked over to where we were standing and he said, “I went by that meeting. Albert and Estes are very much upset.” I said, “Why?” He took out a little piece of paper from his pocket, and he said, “Well, they gave me these three names.” He gave me Frank Gray, Harry Phillips, and Joe Carr. Incidentally, Harry Phillips and Frank Gray are both now federal judges. Kennedy named them both federal judges. Phillips represented Gore, Gray represented Kefauver and Carr, who was the Secretary of State, was Ellington’s representative. But he said, “Gore and Kefauver are very upset because Ellington told them that I wanted Carr to head the committee. I told them I didn’t want Carr to head the committee, but I don’t know if they believe that. They know we had breakfast together. They

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think something was worked out.” He said, “By the time I got there Ellington had already told them Carr was chairman of the committee and they had that agreement thing, and that was what I wanted. And he used this argument that they could raise the money.” So I said, “Well, that’s a mistake. He’s Ellington’s man, and they’ll control the purse strings, and these other people won’t be able to be effective.” And the President said, “Those bastards are always looking out for themselves, aren’t they?” I never will forget that. And that’s the last thing he said. He got on the airplane, and I called Gore and Kefauver and explained to them that I had been to the breakfast, and that was not the understanding. But Carr did head the campaign and handle the purse

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strings.

GRELE: Did you have any other contacts with Senators Kefauver or Gore during the campaign?

SEIGENTHALER: Yes. Kefauver called and told me that he’d be available to speak as much as we wanted him to speak. He said, “I think the areas where I’ll be effective are New Hampshire and in the Middle West where I did well, and I’ll make a few speeches in California.” So we set those up. Gore was on this consultant’s group, and I met with him periodically to talk with him. As I say, I didn’t think anything worthwhile ever came from that group that was effective. I wouldn’t say nothing, but as I said, very little ever got into the dialogue of the campaign.

GRELE: Did you have any other contacts with John Kennedy during the campaign?

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SEIGENTHALER: A couple, but they were of a minor nature. Once he came by headquarters there at Connecticut and K to shake hands. Another day Jackie came by. A couple of times I was with him when Bob was with him, but again it was very brief. Once he suggested to Bob that he go by and see Harry Truman who was at the Mayflower. We stopped by to see him.

GRELE: You saw President Truman?

SEIGENTHALER: No, Bob went, but I took him. I dropped him off in front of the Mayflower and went on to headquarters.

GRELE: What was their conversation about?

SEIGENTHALER: Truman scolded him a little bit and told him that he should stop being so presumptuous and that he should stop trying, in effect, to make people mad, and that everybody thought he was a son of a bitch. And he said, “I understand that because everybody

[-293-] thinks I’m a son of a bitch. But you should learn to moderate your attitude in your dealing with people. I’ve heard some stories about how you react.” Bob said he told him that he thought they were largely exaggerated and that he didn’t think he was a monster, a bogey man. I had the feeling that the whole thing came off pretty well.

GRELE: Was there ever any discussion of how to use the family in the campaign?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, it was just understood from the very beginning that they would all do whatever they could, and that was from Mrs. Kennedy [Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy] down. I’ll tell you an interesting thing. The President came here to make a speech while I was working for him in Washington, and they had a reception for him. About four thousand people attended, and my mother

[-294-] was one of the people who attended. My contact with him during the campaign was rather limited, but it was an interesting thing that, as my mother was going through the line, she shook hands with him; the Mayor was standing beside the President and said, “This is Mrs. Seigenthaler.” He said, “What relation are you to John?” She said, “I’m his mother.” And he stayed and talked to her for about five minutes – just held the line up about five minutes – told her what a great job I was doing and how grateful he was and that he knew it was a sacrifice, and he hoped my mother would tell my wife that it was all worthwhile. I mean, he just went out of his way to be generous with his time. And then my mother turned around and introduced my aunt to him. Both of them were just

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ecstatic. They called me on the telephone within the hour to tell me what a great man he was.

GRELE: What did you do right after the election?

SEIGENTHALER: Well, I came home. Hooker and I had lived in Bass’ apartment for all those days. I came home for a couple of weeks. I had planned to go back into the newspaper business. I told Bob that that’s what I wanted to do. But unfortunately, in the month that followed the campaign I had a run- in with the editor here, my predecessor.

[END SESSION II, TAPE II, SIDE II]

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John Seigenthaler Oral History Transcript – JFK #2 Name List

A Eastland, James O., 278 Edmondson, J. Howard, 148 Alsop, Joseph W., 138 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 259, 263, 264 Ellington, Buford, 147, 222, 277, 283-288, 291 B Ellis, Frank B., 169, 170

Bass, Ross, 284, 296 F Bean, Woodrow W., 279 Belafonte, Harold George, 196-200, 202 Fay, Paul B., Jr., 141 Bigbee, Tom, 201, 203 Feldman, Myer, 203 Biemiller, Andrew, 127 Fulbright, J. William, 212 Billings, Kirk LeMoyne, 141, 215 Bliss, Ray C., 223 G Bolling, Richard W., 268, 270 Brawley, H.W., 189 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 209, 210, 212, Brown, Edmond G. “Pat”, 152, 153, 267 Geoghegan, William A., 232 Bryant, Farris, 204 Goldberg, Arthur J., 164, 165 Buckley, Charles A., 150 Gore, Albert A., Sr., 146, 211, 287, 289-292 Graham, Philip L., 275 C Gray, Frank, Jr., 290 Green, Edith S., 126 Carr, Joe, 290, 291 Green, William J., Jr., 218-220 Chamberlain, Arthur Neville, 158 Clark, Joseph S., 219 H Clark, Ramsey, 278 Clement, Frank, 146 Hackett, David L., 213 Clements, Earl C., 284-286 Haddad, William F., 211 Cohelan, Jeffrey, 127 Haggerud, Howard, 191, 193, 194 Coleman, James Plemon, 200, 201 Harris, 229, 232, 238, 239, 242 Collins, LeRoy, 204 Heard, Alexander, 171 Corbin, Paul, 180, 182-185, 187, 216 Henry, Aaron, 237 Cox, Archibald, 207-210, 249 Henry, E. William, 257, 259, 261 Hill, Oliver W., 225, 242 D Hoffman, Harry, 139, 142, 143 Hooker, John Jay, Sr., 149 Daley, Richard J., 242 Hooker, John Jay, Jr., 252, 255-257, 267, 296 Dawson, William L., 241-243 Huff, Robert Lee “Sam”, 138 DeSapio, Carmine G., 150, 179, 180, 181, 186 Humphrey, Hubert H., 130, 134, 136, 156 Donahue, Richard, 193, 212, 213-215, 217, 218, Hunt, H.L., 171-173 220, 263, 271 Donovan, John C., 197, 199 J Doyle, James E., 209, 211 Dungan, Ralph A., 172, 173, 205, 212, 213-215, Jackson, Henry M. “Scoop”, 155, 156, 190, 205, 217, 249, 250 206, 207 Dunn, Robert, 254 Johnson, Lyndon B., 147, 148, 157-159, 162, 277, Dutton, Frederick G., 177, 178 286

E K

Kefauver, Estes, 288-292 Nixon, Patricia Ryan, 167 Kennedy, Edward M., 217, 218 Nixon, Richard M., 144, 166-168, 226, 227, 230, Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier, 253, 285, 293, 294 240, 263, 274, 276 Kennedy, John F., 125, 126, 128-130, 134, 137, Norman, John, 146, 149 138, 141, 145, 147-149, 165, 170, 180, 196-201, 208, 209, 224, 229, 230, 233, 238, 247, 251, 253, O 258-261, 263-265, 280, 283, 284, 286, 287, 289, 292, 294 O’Brien, Lawrence F., 205, 206, 212, 216, 218 Kennedy, Joseph P., Sr., 149, 158 O’Donnell, Kenneth P., 131, 205, 208-210, 216 Kennedy, Robert F., 126, 130, 131, 139, 140, 142, 145, 148-150, 153, 154, 156, 157, 159, 160, 162, P 172-174, 176, 179, 183, 184, 186, 188, 191, 193- 195, 202, 204, 206, 208, 213-216, 223, 226, 229, Patterson, John, 174 232, 233, 236, 239, 240, 243, 244, 246-248, 251, Paul, Norman S., 180, 184, 185 252, 254, 258, 259, 263, 265, 266, 269, 279, 280, Peek, Scott I., 193, 194 282-286, 289, 293, 294 Peterson, Esther, 246 Keogh, Eugene J., 151 Phillips, Harry, 290 Kerr, Robert S., 148 Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr., 195, 196, 242, 243 Khrushchev, Nikita, 266, 267 Prendergast, Michael, 150, 179, 180, 181, 183-187 King, Coretta Scott, 232, 235 Price, Margaret, 247, 248 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 228-230, 232, 239, 243

R

L Radziwill, Prince Stanislas Albert, 260 Raskin, Hyman B., 218 Landis, James M., 272 Reese, Matthew A., Jr., 142, 143, 148 Lawrence, David L., 219 Reeves, Frank D., 225-227, 229, 242, 244 Lawson, Marjorie M., 225, 227, 242, 244, 245 Reuther, Roy, 177, 251, 252, 255, 256 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 240, 263 Reuther, Walter, 256 Louchheim, Kathleen, 246-248 Rivkin, William R., 217, 221, 245 Lucey, Patrick J., 131, 132, 144, 215, 216 Rockwell, George Lincoln, 270 Lucky, Bud, 193, 194 Roosevelt, Eleanor R., 137, 253, 255 Lytton, Bart, 169, 177 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 220 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, Jr., 136, 137, 253, 254 M S McCarthy, Eugene J., 157 McCarthy, Joseph R., 244 Salter, John, 206 McClellan, John L., 126, 151, 152 Sanders, Harold Barefoot, Jr., 278 McCloskey, Matthew, 162, 164-166, 175 Sanford, James Terry, 148 McDonough, Robert P., 142 Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 209, 210 McGuire, Richard V., 187, 205 Schwartz, Abba P., 254 Martin, Louis E., 227, 229, 231, 235, 236, 242 Shriver, Robert Sargent, Jr., 224, 228, 229, 232 Marvin, Langdon, 165, 166 Simon, Morris, 273 Miller, M. Raymond, 153 Sinatra, Francis A., 176, 177 Mitchell, Clarence V., 227 Smathers, George A., 190, 192-194, 204, 222, 277 Montero, Frank, 236, 237, 242 Smith, Benjamin A., II, 180, 182-185, 187 Muskie, Edmund S., 197 Smith, Frank E., 278 Smith, Stephen E., 153, 162-164, 169, 172, 176, 201, 202 Sorensen, Theodore C., 207, 209 N Stennis, John C., 199, 200, 278 Stevenson, Adlai E., 132, 156, 210 Nestingen, Ivan, 131, 132, 144, 215, 216 Symington, W. Stuart, 154-157 Van Arsdale, Harry, 249 Vinson, Fred M., 222 T Vinson, Fred M., Jr., 222

Taft, Charles, 274 W Talmadge, Herman E., 277 Thompson, Frank, Jr., 126, 251 Walton, William A., 184-187 Thompson, Horace A., 252 Welch, Nat, 173 Tremblay, Gerald, 218 White, Byron R., 174, 175, 177, 252, 255 Truman, Harry S., 258, 293 Wilkins, Roy O., 239 Tubby, Roger W., 168, 232-235, 270, 271 Willard, Robert, 288 Turnure, Pamela, 271 Williams, John Bell, 199 Williams, G. Mennen, 198, 199 U Wine, James, 257 Wofford, Harris L, Jr., 225, 227, 228, 235 Unruh, Jesse M., 267, 268 Z

V Zablocki, Clement J., 131, 144, 145