Sixth Oral History Interview

Frank Mankiewicz Oral History Interview – RFK #6, 11/6/1969 Administrative Information

Creator: Frank Mankiewicz Interviewer: Larry J. Hackman Date of Interview: November 6, 1969 Place of Interview: Bethesda, Maryland Length: 63 pp.

Biographical Note Mankiewicz was director of the Peace Corps in Lima, Peru from 1962 to 1964, Latin America regional director from 1964 to 1966 and then press secretary to Senator Robert F. Kennedy from 1966 to 1968. This interview focuses on Robert Kennedy’s decision to run in the 1968 campaign, including his relationship with his staff, constituent groups, and fellow politicians, among other issues.

Access Restrictions No restrictions.

Usage Restrictions According to the deed of gift signed March 1, 2000, 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 The copyright law extends its protection to unpublished works from the moment of creation in a tangible form.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 Frank Mankiewicz, recorded interview by Larry J. Hackman, November 6, 1969, (page number), John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.

FRANK MANKIEWICZ RFK #6

Table of Contents

Page Topic 1 Robert Kennedy’s decision to run in 1968 3 New York politics 5 Detroit Riots 11 Tet Offensive 14 Decision regarding campaigning for President Johnson 18 Impact of the polls 30 Liberal groups in the Senate 34 McCarthy’s campaign 36 Youth vote 38 Jesse Unruh’s influence on Robert Kennedy 43 California filing committee 50 Robert McNamara’s resignation

Sixth Oral History Interview

With

FRANK MANKIEWICZ

November 6, 1969 Bethesda, Maryland

By Larry J. Hackman

For the John F. Kennedy Library

HACKMAN: At what point in '67 do you really become aware that Robert Kennedy is considering going in '68? Any tip-offs or anything?

MANKIEWICZ: Well, no real tip-offs until late in the year. But I think we thought about it all through that summer because the question would keep coming up. You know, people would keep asking him and he’d keep devising new answers. And every time he’d come up with an answer, Joe Dolan [Joseph F. Dolan] or I would try to get him to edge it. And then the conversation would start, “Well, you know I can’t do that.” “Well why not?” “Well, maybe I can”

HACKMAN: You mean among the three of you?

[-1-]

MANKIEWICZ: Yes, or whichever of us was talking to him about it. And there was this fellow – what was his name, Martin… Well, he had a thing called Kennedy-Fulbright Clubs and he was always…. He was a New York psychiatrist and he was always putting out news stories every once in awhile about how he was going to run “Draft Kennedy and Fulbright [J. William Fulbright] in ‘68”, and he was giving out bumper stickers. And then reporters would call up and ask us if we were secretly supporting him. And then we’d really kind of filed him off because he was not very responsible. And then Charlie Porter [Charles Porter] out in Oregon was starting moves. So the thing was always…. I mean there was hardly three or four days that went by that we didn’t have to talk about it. And it was clear to me that it was not entirely foreclosed. I mean I never thought he was actively considering it but I had the feeling that it was an ultimate option. Although, through most of ’67 he was also talking a lot and hitting very hard on the

[-2-]

notion of his reelection. His point was that whatever we were going to do in New York we should do in ’67 and ’68 because ’68 was going to be an election year and it was going to be hard to do anything, and by ’69 people would think he was just doing it to get reelected. So he was constantly at staff things. He’d talk to Joe or me or Adam [Adam Walinsky], you know, “For God sake let’s get some things going in New York,” and “Why hasn’t this and this and that been done?” And he was after me all the time to, you know, get with the New York press people, which I did. I can’t remember if I told you in another interview or not, but I had a thing going in ’67, which I’d tell him about regularly, which almost everyday I’d call just at random one or two upstate editors. And we’d also set up a television show for him in ’67, a monthly half hour to go into about seven or eight stations in New York.

HACKMAN: Live or film?

MANKIEWICZ: Tape. No – I think it was tape, I think it was tape. We met a guy in New York I met through

[-3-]

Bill vanden Heuvel [William vanden Heuvel], and he would come down and produce it. What we’d do is we’d get a – we’d pick a subject and then he’d interview two or three people who knew something about the subject. I remember we did our first one on the cities. We got Pat Moynihan [Daniel P. Moynihan] and somebody else. Instead of them asking him questions, he’d ask them questions. Then we had some students one month; we had one on the constitutional convention. My brother, as a matter of fact, was on that. He was a delegate. And Judge Bill Lawless [William B. Lawless], from Buffalo who is now the dean of the Notre Dame Law School. Scotty Campbell [Alan K. Campbell] came down. We tried to do those once a month starting, oh I guess, in the summer of ’67 and did them for four or five months until the campaign began. So that he was at one and the same time very serious about New York. Jerry [Jerome R. McDougal, Jr.] booked him a lot into New York. But, of course, he’d find that more and more, as he’d go up to Rochester and Buffalo and Syracuse, Albany, places like that, that

[-4-]

they’d be talking about national issues. I mean it was one thing to go to Binghamton; it was another to go to Binghamton and talk about the extension of Route 70. I mean that was almost more than he could bear. But he’d go there and he’d talk a little bit about Route 70 and the five counties, whatever it was, and then somebody’d ask him about Vietnam or worse, about the cities which were exploding through the summer of 1967, which were very much on his mind. And I have a feeling that President Johnson’s response to the Detroit riots may have started him off, too. As I think back now, I realize that I’ve been saying that it was the Tet offensive that changed his mind – I think it was. But I think what put him in a position to have his mind changed was the Detroit riots and the terrible feeling he had as he watched Johnson that night that nothing was going to happen anymore, that the Administration was through with domestic reform of any kind, that he wasn’t going to do

[-5-]

anything for the cities. He was going to appoint a commission – that was the Kerner [Otto Kerner] Commission – and it originally was not going to report until the following September. So from then on he began to talk more and in terms of the kind of leadership that the presidency and only the presidency could furnish. And I began to think that there were possibilities here. And then, of course, we got into late ’67, Joe and I, particularly Joe Dolan, began canvassing election laws and finding out about primaries just so we’d be ready if the occasion arose. And then he began having a lot of meetings about it.

HACKMAN: Is the sort of research that Dolan is doing, is this on Dolan’s own or is it Robert Kennedy…. I mean does he tell Robert Kennedy he’s doing it?

MANKIEWICZ: No. No. No. You’ll have to ask Joe about that. But if he did tell him he was doing it, he concealed it from everybody else because he told me that he hadn’t. He said that he rather thought maybe

[-6-]

that he knew he was doing it but he never told him that he was doing it. And we were looking up all the election laws and putting some lists together of people we knew and how you qualified on various ballots and how you avoided various states if you wanted to avoid them.

HACKMAN: At what point does anyone within the staff really tell him he should go in ’68, really try to persuade him to go in ’68?

MANKIEWICZ: I think Adam was telling him right along. Adam may have given him some memoranda to that effect in the summer. I would think it was…. Well, of course at the time that Gene McCarthy [Eugene G. McCarthy] decided to run, I remember one trip to California when Al Lowenstein [Allard K. Lowenstein] was on the airplane and he spent a lot of time trying to get him to run. That might have been…

HACKMAN: I’ve got that date somewhere.

MANKIEWICZ: Have you?

HACKMAN: Yes. We’ll put it in. [August 4, 1967]

MANKIEWICZ: It was late summer, I think.

HACKMAN: Well, McCarthy doesn’t come in until what, the very end of October. But I think that trip is

[-7-]

maybe August or September to California.

MANKIEWICZ: That’s right. That’s right. I can’t remember what we were doing out there. I don’t think there was anybody else on the airplane. I guess it was a speech, I know that. No, it wasn’t the Commonwealth Club. I can’t remember where the speech was. And I remember working on it with him on the way out. Oh, I know what it was. It was a dinner for Jess Unruh [Jesse M. Unruh], that’s what. It was a fund raiser for the legislature. Jess has a dinner or had – twice a year or once every two years to raise money for the legislative campaign and that’s what it was.

HACKMAN: You said that you hadn’t realized until those October meetings were over that they were being held.

MANKIEWICZ: Yes.

HACKMAN: What kind of report did you get out of that meeting, if any, from either Dolan or Tom Johnson? Can you remember having the feeling

[-8-]

that that meeting ultimately had any impact on him?

MANKIEWICZ: Well, I don’t know. I’d say it because it was quite obvious…. In fact Joe – you know, nobody was going to tell me about those meetings. I think part of the agenda was “Now for God’s sake don’t anybody tell Frank about these meetings” because I would have given a different answer when people asked me about them. So I never inquired very much. I knew they’d been going on and I just figured well, obviously the question is in some doubt. Then McCarthy came to see him a couple of times before he announced his candidacy. And I talked to him after that and he said that he had told him that he was not going to run.

HACKMAN: He had told McCarthy that he was not going to run.

MANKIEWICZ: Yes. Or that he was not going to run then anyway. I assume he told him he was not going to run. And then – that was October. And then, of course, November and December were a lot of activity, all those meetings. I’m

[-9-]

trying to remember. I think I told you once earlier when the meeting was that surprised me. I told you it was a Sunday night, the night that Jack Newfield’s television show was on. [March 3, 1968]

HACKMAN: You mean more New York meetings?

MANKIEWICZ: No, this was a Hickory Hill Meeting.

HACKMAN: But that’s on into the spring of ’68, isn’t it? I was thinking….

MANKIEWICZ: Is it? Was it that late?

HACKMAN: I’m not sure.

MANKIEWICZ: I don’t know. But I thought the matter was over and then I – I guess maybe it was after the January breakfast with the reporters when he told me they were having another meeting. I called him on Sunday to tell him to watch this television show of Jack Newfield’s out at Bedford-Stuyvesant. He said, “We’re having another meeting here discussing my political future.” I guess that was probably after January.

HACKMAN: Your feeling then was that after that January announcement that really he had decided against it?

[-10-]

MANKIEWICZ: No. No, I didn’t think so. I thought…. Well, you see, that was very tough because I didn’t rally have time to think about that because, as you remember, that was the day the Tet Offensive began. And by nightfall of that day, the fact that he had said what he had said at that breakfast really was already being submerged by the Viet Cong entering the embassy compound and all of the things that were going on at Tet; so that it almost became moot. And then, of course, you remember the Christmas card in 1967 which showed – it was a psychedelic motif, and it showed a picture inside of an old car with all the kinds and the dogs and Ethel in the car, sort of superimposed – I mean they didn’t pose in it. They took a picture of each of them and stuck them into a picture somewhere, so they were all over the car. I think Brumus was driving. And the kids had signs, picket signs, that said “Santa Claus in ’67.” And on the back of the Christmas car, if you turned

[-11-]

it all the way over, there was just a little picture of Bob with a sort of an ironic sly look on his face and coming out of his head was a balloon, and in the balloon it said, “Would you believe in Santa Claus in ’68?” And he sent that out ______. And then I got a call from the New York Times, I remember, saying, “Is there any political about that?” And I said, “Well, anything political would be in the eye of the beholder.” And that ran in the New York Times and Ethel called me up and said, “That was just great.” And I think that that Christmas card, in a way, was her contribution to get him to run. I mean, obviously, he didn’t have to send it out but I think he let it go and figured, well…. So that there was a lot going on there toward the end of the year that I think those of us who wanted him to run hadn’t given up hope.

HACKMAN: Did you talk to other people like Dutton [Frederick G. Dutton], Marshall [Burke Marshall], Seigenthaler [John L. Seigenthaler], or any of the other people around about – or did you have a good

[-12-]

feel for their…

MANKIEWICZ: I talked to Joe and I talked to Dick Goodwin. I don’t think I talked to Seigenthaler. I probably talked to Dutton, probably talked to Dutton when he came in. And I think he shared my notion that he ought to run. Dutton was very concerned about Teddy [Edward M. Kennedy] at that time. He thought Teddy was being unnecessarily negative. And he worried a little bit about some of the other people whom he felt might have their own reasons for either wanting him – well, mostly for wanting him not to run – Sorensen [Theodore C. Sorensen], vanden Heuvel.

HACKMAN: When you say he shared your view and maybe others who wanted him to run, what did running mean, beginning in late ’68, I mean late ’67, lets say.

MANKIEWICZ: Well, I just felt…. I didn’t know about running really, but I thought he ought to keep himself available. I thought he ought not to foreclose it. I thought that there was still a possibility that Johnson would not run. I thought Johnson was extremely unpopular and

[-13-]

that he might decide not to run. Hays Gorey – I remember having a long conversation with Hays Gorey in which I was quite wrong. He said to me, “What do you think would happen if Johnson decided not to run?” What would happen to all the delegates?” And I said, “I think all the delegates would go to Robert Kennedy in a day.” And he agreed. As I say, Humphrey [Hubert H. Humphrey] wasn’t a serious candidate, and I still don’t think he was. Of course, McCarthy wasn’t and I didn’t take McCarthy seriously, and I don’t think the Senator did either. So that really when I say my point of view, all I wanted was for him to keep it open, for one thing because I couldn’t see, just for his own peace of mind, how the hell he was going to get through 1968 if he didn’t run. You know, I just couldn’t see him campaigning for Johnson, and I thought he’d destroy himself if he did.

HACKMAN: Was that ever discussed and was any decision made? Sorensen says in that new book [The Kennedy Legacy] that there was clearly a decision made that Robert

[-14-]

Kennedy would not campaign for Johnson. I’ve never heard anyone else say that. Can you remember any conversations about that?

MANKIEWICZ: No, and I would doubt it strongly. How could he not?

HACKMAN: He implies that that comes out of the series of meetings, I think, in the fall of ’67. I’ve never heard…

MANKIEWICZ: It’s a very well-kept secret, if it’s true. I would suppose that it’s the kind of thing that somebody would suggest, but it’s an impossible course of action. You can’t do that. I mean then, in effect, he’s campaigning against him. I mean, I just see…. That’s the kind of thing that bothered me because I felt he’d be destroyed with his own constituency if he campaigned for Johnson. I mean then his whole credibility is gone. I mean how could you be against the war and campaign for Johnson? In fact, how can you campaign for Johnson period? But on the other hand, if he doesn’t campaign for Johnson, then how can he claim

[-15-]

any allegiance of the Party people four years later or at any time thereafter, or for that matter in the State of New York? I mean what’s he going to do with his people in New York? Is he going to insist as well that Joe Crangle [Joseph F. Crangle] not support Johnson or, Stanley Steingut and John Burns.

HACKMAN: Did you make these arguments to him?

MANKIEWICZ: A little bit.

HACKMAN: How does he respond? Does he ever resent people bringing these things up at all?

MANKIEWICZ: No. Because every once in awhile when we’d chat, late in the day or something, I’d say to him, “How are you going to handle 1968 if you don’t run? I’d say, “there’s really nothing you can do. Why don’t you get a Guggenheim [Guggenheim Memorial Foundation] grant and go to Papua and study native art of something. I mean you just can’t do it. You can’t campaign for Johnson.” And he’d say, “I know that.” And I’d say, “But you can’t not campaign for him.” I think Joe was giving him those arguments. And I would say

[-16-] from time to time, “And I assume you can’t campaign for Gene McCarthy.” And he’d make a face and say, “Yes, that’s right.”

HACKMAN: Well, you mentioned Dutton as being….

MANKIEWICZ: I don’t know what he thought was going to happen. I don’t think he took McCarthy seriously, and I think he underestimated the anti-Johnson feeling that would eventually come to fruition in McCarthy’s candidacy. But there wasn’t a lot of talk about it because every time…. As a matter of fact, most of the time when we’d start talking about it, he’d say to me, “Well, why don’t you spend as much time worrying about how I look in New York?”

HACKMAN: Would he do that to other people too, do you think?

MANKIEWICZ: I would think so. I would think so. Oh yes, he could turn it off very quickly – I mean nicely. But he was obviously troubled by it.

HACKMAN: You said…

MANKIEWICZ: You know, those polls kept going back up.

HACKMAN: Yes. Do you get any feeling for the impact

[-17-]

the polls are having on him? I don’t think we’ve just discussed polls in general before and his reaction to them. Can you remember both public opinion polls?

MANKIEWICZ: Yes. Well, he didn’t take them that seriously. That is he didn’t think that they accurately and seriously represented what they said they did. But he did respect momentum. In other words, if he had gone down, let’s say, in public esteem from 52% to 32%, he did not believe that that meant that 52% of the people thought he was great and now only %32 did. But he believed that it meant people generally thought less of him, that is that he believed the ups and downs. Whether they were accurate or not was another question. He didn’t disbelieve them but he didn’t live his life by them. But he did know that in the spring of 1967 through till around the middle of the year that he was declining in popularity, and that from that point on he began to rise. And he began to become aware through late ’67 where his constituency was,

[-18-]

not only among blacks and the poor and Mexicans, but also enlightened businessmen. I mean there really came to be quite a shift among the business people that he talked to.

HACKMAN: This is primarily through talking to people though, rather than polls.

MANKIEWICZ: Oh yes. Yes. Well, the polls among business groups were always uniformly bad. No. He liked the fact that up against Johnson – or for that matter up against anybody – his Gallup and Harris figures and all were going up.

HACKMAN: Can you remember him commenting on the polls, whether one was more reliable than others, either Harris [Louis Harris and Associates] or Gallup [George H. Gallup, Jr.], or Muchmore [Don M. Muchmore] or Kraft [John Kraft] or Wilson [Glenn Wilson]?

MANKIEWICZ: He had no confidence of any kind in Harris. Oh no, absolutely none. I’m sure other people have told you too that anecdote that he tells about West Virginia. That’s when he got through with Lou Harris. Harris brought him some figures and he looked at them and he said, “Well, that doesn’t

[-19-]

gibe at all with what our canvassers are saying.” And Harris just took out an eraser and changed the figures and said, “Now is that better?” He believed that Harris tailored his figures for the client. But Gallup he thought was pretty accurate and some of the others. And Jerry’d run some polls for him from time to time. Jerry would get students up there at Syracuse to make phone calls off lists that seemed to be a pretty good cross section of whatever it was he was looking for.

HACKMAN: Do you remember anything on California? Muchmore versus Kraft? Really I guess that’s it.

MANKIEWICZ: Yes. Well I told him that I thought both of those were pretty accurate and he thought they were. We had some reason during the campaign to doubt Muchmore. But I think some people are a little dubious about Muchmore now. I heard not too long ago that the Los Angeles Times was dubious about Muchmore.

[HACKMAN: ______]

[-20-]

MANKIEWICZ: I think he used Quayle from time to time privately. And also – what’s the other fellow’s name? Oh, it’s Kraft, John Kraft.

HACKMAN: John Kraft.

MANKIEWICZ: I think Steve [Steven Smith] used to get some polls from John Kraft in New York and elsewhere from time to time.

HACKMAN: Does all this go through Steve Smith, the private polling?

MANKIEWICZ: Yes. Yes, that goes through Steve.

HACKMAN: Does the office usually get a feedback or does it usually come straight to the Senator?

MANKIEWICZ: It goes straight to him and then he tells if wants… well, I think he usually did, would tell Joe.

HACKMAN: Can you remember any of those in late ’67 or early ’68?

MANKIEWICZ: They were usually spot. They were upstate New York, small towns, factory workers, that kind of thing. And they were pretty good. They were generally quite favorable. He could detect a shift on the war too, brought on, I

[-21-]

guess, by the cities’ stuff. And then his legislation preoccupied him a great deal in the fall of ’67 as he began to have hearings and talk to businessmen and so forth. And that gave him a good feeling.

HACKMAN: You said you talked to…

MANKIEWICZ: I mean I don’t want you to get the impression that this business of running for president was the major preoccupation in the office because it wasn’t. There was plenty going on. There was all this legislation and the hearings and the monthly television show for New York and buttering up New York people and there was a steady stream of visitors and a heavy Senate schedule and a lot of important votes. And I think he was trying to get votes to preserve the Alliance for Progress funds that year; he mad a major fight on that. There was the welfare amendments he was getting he was getting into with Fred Harris [Fred R. Harris] and Joe Tydings [Joseph D. Tydings]. Adam and Peter [Peter Edelman] were working very hard on that stuff with him. So that was almost the kid of thing you did on Saturday. Late in the day

[-22-]

Joe Dolan and I would start looking at the Nebraska primary law.

HACKMAN: Yes, but other than the research that you and Dolan did and this kind of thing, are there other kinds of things that because you know he is considering to some extent – that you put before him, or different kinds of things you do over that winter?

MANKIEWICZ: No.

HACKMAN: Can’t think of anything?

MANKIEWICZ: Well, I talked to people, you know, and I’d say to them, “So and so called from Ohio and he thinks you ought to run,” or “Did you see this thing of Mike Disalle’s [Michael V. Disalle]?” or “I talked to Jess [Jesse M. Unruh] again and he says you could carry California easy against Johnson.” And he’d make a face and say, “Yes, I know.” And also, you know, I’d come to him all the time when I’d get that kind of question because I wanted to be sure that the answer…. I never thought that the answer that he’d give the New York Times on Tuesday would be the answer

[-23-]

he’d give CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System] on Wednesday. And indeed, it never was. You know, he’d wrestle with it every time and I’d try to get as soft an answer as I could. So it was a constant preoccupation, but it wasn’t a major thing that we were doing. I mean I would say I spent, in the second half of 1967, probably five times as much time sitting in with him on briefings about his tax bills than in talking about the presidency. And if I had any spare time with him, the chances are he would ask me to talk to him about what it meant that the Treasury [Department of the Treasury] was going to subsidize the interest rate on this low cost housing or how to answer questions about tax credits and why it wasn’t really a loss to the Treasury, and how the money came back.

HACKMAN: How much impact does the Administration’s response to those tax incentive things, the housing and the…

MANKIEWICZ: I think that bothered him too. I think that bothered him too that the Administration

[-24-]

was spending all it’s time trying to defeat his bills rather than put forward any proposals or even trying to work with him on it. Once they sent Joe Califano [Joseph A. Califano, Jr.] over to try to work something out, but it never came to anything.

HACKMAN: Can you…

MANKIEWICZ: And the President appointed some Indian council that fall, you know, trying to head everything off. He had those insurance company executives come in and pledge a billion dollars – and all very well timed.

HACKMAN: Okay. You said that Dutton sort of felt the way you did on going in. You said you talked to Goodwin. What can you remember about Goodwin’s feelings in that period?

MANKIEWICZ: Well, Goodwin was the one who was so strong on the notion that Johnson could be defeated – and we’d talk about it – or maybe not even defeated but not run. And we’d talk in those terms of how to keep the options open in case that happened. But I don’t think even Goodwin was talking about a direct

[-25-]

challenge to Johnson, except after McCarthy went in. And I think Goodwin went right to work for McCarthy. No, he didn’t either. He went to work just a couple of weeks before the primary. That’s right.

HACKMAN: Yes, it wasn’t right away.

MANKIEWICZ: That’s right. But Goodwin was ready to go. In general, Teddy’s people were very negative. Who else was around? I didn’t talk to Burke [Burke Marshall] on this, I think, very much. I got the feeling Tom Johnston was not as pro-running as the rest of us, but I could be wrong because I don’t think I ever talked to him about it. I just got the feeling that…. I think that Tom probably felt that Bedford-Stuyvesant and those other things that he worked so hard on would suffer in a campaign. I think he was right, but I think that was not as important. But I got the feeling that in New York he wasn’t getting the pressure to run that he got down here.

HACKMAN: Can you remember urging anyone to take the case

[-26-]

for running to him? I think I read in one of the books that the Doyle [James S. Doyle] thing, the Boston Globe reporter, you encouraged him to talk to Robert Kennedy for instance. Were there other things like that?

MANKIEWICZ: Yes. But that was late. In fact, that was – God, I think that was just a week before he decided to run, the night of the Gridiron dinner.

HACKMAN: I’m wondering if there were anything like that earlier though?

MANKIEWICZ: Well, I always encouraged reporters and others who had some special Vietnam mission to talk to him. I mean I remember Joe McGinniss, the guy that’s just written this book on the Selling of the President, he was a Robert Kennedy fan and wanted to see him when he had just come back from Vietnam. And I think that was helpful. Anybody who had just come back from Vietnam – they all wanted to talk to him when they came back and I always encouraged them to do so and lay it on the line with

[-27-]

him, tell him that things are awful. Pete Hamill [Peter V. Hamill] was after him a lot of the time.

HACKMAN: Can you remember Edward Kennedy’s trip to Vietnam having any real impact either way?

MANKIEWICZ: I don’t remember. I suppose it must have because I’m sure he must have talked to him when he came back. I think that may have radicalized Dave Burke [David W. Burke] a little bit. Dave was much more hostile to the Administration when he got back. When was that trip?

HACKMAN: That’s what – January, I guess.

MANKIEWICZ: Was it that late?

HACKMAN: Yes.

MANKIEWICZ: Tet?

HACKMAN: It’s before Tet but it’s not very long before Tet.

MANKIEWICZ: When did Tet begin, the end of January?

HACKMAN: Right, the 31st Tet began.

MANKIEWICZ: Yes.

HACKMAN: There are a number of people that have said that one reason for not going is that you destroy the Senate doves who are up for reelection.

MANKIEWICZ: Yes.

[-28-]

HACKMAN: Do you know if people who were up for reelection really came around and made that case to him or is this something he felt? Do you remember anyone coming in?

MANKIEWICZ: No, it was both. It was both. He sought them out, a lot of them. And I think he got no encouragement. I mean they all liked him and wanted him to do good things, but I don’t think any of them encouraged him to run. I don’t know about McGovern [George S. McGovern]; he might have. But, you now, Church [Frank Church], Nelson [Gaylord Nelson], Morse [Wayne Morse], Clark [Joseph S. Clark] – he was never very close to those guys anyway, except in terms of their feeling about the war. But even then, he didn’t want to join in any of these group signature things and all.

HACKMAN: Why?

MANKIEWICZ: I think it was probably a residual distrust of liberal political activity. He used to wince a little bit when people would describe him as, you know, “Well, now you liberals” or “the

[-29-]

liberal group in the Senate.” And he’d always sort of – I mean, he’d never say, “Well, don’t count me in that,” but you could see that he was just trying to keep his distance there and I think probably going back to earlier times when he distrusted them. And also he was never comfortable with slogans and sort of preset conditions. I always had the feeling that his intensive study and analysis of the social classes and the way people live in America, particularly the poor, and the relationships between the power structure and the establishment and those who are outside was extremely intensive and rather late, that is in time, that is from 1960 on. And that, in the sense, he was learning what most of the liberals accepted with their mother’s milk and had never bothered to reexamine. And he was aware of the fact that, after all, he hadn’t been out there on the frontiers fighting for increased social security benefits and public housing and minimum wages and civil rights acts

[-30-]

early on. But he was now, but from a slightly different vantage point. It was from what he thought was a more sophisticated and better understanding of the country and its needs then they had, even though they had reached the positions ahead of him. [Interruption] Well, as I say, he tried to stay at arm’s length. It isn’t that he didn’t trust them, I think it’s that he felt that maybe they’d been at it too long. And I think they felt probably that he was like the fellow who had just discovered things that they had known all the time. But because they’d known them all the time, they didn’t feel nearly as strongly about them as he did. He had great respect for Wayne Morse, and he was the smartest man around – difficult. But I think that’s the reason that he didn’t want to join in any manifestos and so forth. But he did respect those guys, particularly the ones who’d been elected and who were now going to fight the Administration to get reelected. But he saw that fellows like Frank Church

[-31-]

and McGovern and Nelson, Fulbright, all these guys were going to have tough fights, Gruening [Ernest Gruening], Clark, that if he had forced them to choose between himself and President Johnson in the primary, they were going to loose something. If they chose Johnson they’d loose his people – if they chose him they’d loose those few Johnson people. And these guys were all at the time figuring they needed every vote they could get. Well, as it turned out they all won easily really except for Morse and Clark and they probably didn’t lose because of…

HACKMAN: Gruening.

MANKIEWICZ: Well, Gruening lost in the primary, and certainly not on the issues of the war. And Morse and Clark lost but probably again not because of the war. I mean, Schweiker [Richard S. Schweiker] and Packwood [Robert W. Packwood] were certainly not hawks. I think Morse and Clark both lost because they were kind of cantankerous people who over the years had alienated too many constituents. But he

[-32-]

was damn worried and didn’t want to put people on the spot. [Interruption]

HACKMAN: You’d been talking about Morse and …

MANKIEWICZ: Yes, well…

HACKMAN: I think we’ve pretty much exhausted the liberals.

MANKIEWICZ: Yes. Except you’ll notice he never called himself a liberal. He would suffer other people to call him one but he never referred to himself as a liberal or his views of his group even in answering questions.

HACKMAN: Okay. You said earlier that you felt that he told McCarthy that he was not going to run.

MANKIEWICZ: Yes.

HACKMAN: Some people have felt that McCarthy told him that if he did come in McCarthy would step aside. Did you ever get that feeling?

MANKIEWICZ: No, I don’t…

HACKMAN: Did he ever say that McCarthy had said that?

MANKIEWICZ: I think he probably said that originally when he was first deciding whether to run, McCarthy. But I think once he had declared, I don’t think that was understood on either side. McCarthy did tell

[-33-] him finally that he’d only serve one term – astonishing.

HACKMAN: Is there ever a period then before New Hampshire where McCarthy or the McCarthy people ever say to Robert Kennedy, “If you’ll come in, we’ll get out?”

MANKIEWICZ: Not once the New Hampshire campaign began, I don’t think so. There may have been some hints of that from some McCarthy people but I doubt that McCarthy would ever have said that.

HACKMAN: Was anyone of Robert Kennedy’s aides or advisors ever recommending that he endorse McCarthy or does everyone…

MANKIEWICZ: There was some talk about whether he would do that in New Hampshire. That was a very tough problem. As a matter of fact, I think he went on Face the Nation right about the time McCarthy was going to declare – or he did something. He had an interview with Roger Mudd – that’s what it was – a long interview with Roger Mudd. And Mudd said, “Well, you’ll be supporting President Johnson in New Hampshire?” And he said, “No, I’ll wait and see who enters there” or something like

[-34-] that. And Mudd said, “Well, do you mean you’ll support McCarthy? I thought you said you were going to support Johnson.” I can’t remember how he finessed that. It was something about he said he would support President Johnson if he was the nominee. That’s how he avoided that problem – not very successfully. [Interruption]

HACKMAN: You were talking about how to handle McCarthy versus Johnson in New Hampshire and

MANKIEWICZ: Yes, yes. Well, he finally wound up saying that he would not take sides in the New Hampshire primary and that he would support the Democratic nominee, who he assumed would be President Johnson.

HACKMAN: When does he and the other people begin to take McCarthy seriously?

MANKIEWICZ: Not until about a month before the primary.

HACKMAN: Why? Do you remember? Polls?

MANKIEWICZ: Because Dick Goodwin called and said he was going to do very well.

HACKMAN: Can you remember Robert Kennedy ever commenting

[-35-]

on how important he thought the kids were in New Hampshire as opposed to just anti-Johnson?

MANKIEWICZ: Yes, he thought they were very important.

HACKMAN: Very effective?

MANKIEWICZ: Very effective. He also talked to Mary McGrory about that and she was willing to tell him about the kids. And Goodwin was telling him. It upset him, of course, and he later referred to it at great length, that McCarthy really had got the best of them.

HACKMAN: What I’m, you know…. People have….

MANKIEWICZ: You mean what were the important elements of McCarthy’s vote in New Hampshire? Was it the kids, was it the anti-Johnson, was it the war?

HACKMAN: Yes, I’m just trying to get at whether he thought using young people like that and going around knocking on doors…

MANKIEWICZ: Well I’ll tell you the guy to talk to about that is Adam because once he decided to run Adam got up a rather ambitious memorandum with a long

[-36-]

proposed program of how to use the kids, in effect to get together all the kids we could and turn them loose in the way in which the McCarthy kids had been turned loose. There was always a lot of trouble in the campaign about that. Even as late as California that issue had not been resolved. Ted Sorensen didn’t like it; it wasn’t well organized. Sorensen wanted to have an organized campaign. And Adam was very strong for getting all the kids we had and letting them go in their hometowns or paying them some transportation money to go to the primary states and just go. He felt that there was an enormous untapped group of kids and manpower here and that New Hampshire had showed that they could do it and that it would be a mistake to try and fit them into a campaign organization and give them two precincts and a county and a coordinator and this and that. And he was generally successful. But the battle was still going on, but Kennedy was on Adam’s side on that, I think, He wanted to get the

[-37-]

kids and get them to working, although he recognized that we’d already lost the best ones. I think his feeling about New Hampshire was that it demonstrated an extraordinary anti- Johnson feeling, largely the war. I think he underestimated, even in New Hampshire – I think we all did – the fact that there were an awful lot of people who voted for Gene McCarthy who were even hawks and just did not like Lyndon Johnson at all. He didn’t really catch on to that until a month into the campaign – in fact, the two weeks before Johnson withdrew.

HACKMAN: You mentioned Unruh. How much contact did you have with Unruh during the winter of ’67, ’68 and what can you remember about Robert Kennedy’s feeling about Unruh, the impact Unruh has on the decision?

MANKIEWICZ: Well, Jess kept telling him to run. And every time I’d talk to him about it he’d say, “Well, you know, there’s no politician in the country wants me to run except Jess Unruh.”

[-38-]

And that impressed him because these are guys who depend for their own election and he thought, “Well God, nobody thinks it’s in their interest, and maybe I shouldn’t run.” And he would say that if they could just come up with somebody else besides Jess. But he talked to Jess and I talked to Jess quite a bit and to Frank Burns, who was Jess’ political guy – it’d be fun to talk to him. I think somebody ought to talk to him.

HACKMAN: Yes, we’ve had several with Unruh and are doing some more next month.

MANKIEWICZ: And I think he had a considerable impact because Bob liked Jess and he respected him as a winner. You know, he isn’t that group of California liberals who would rather lose and be pure. I have great respect for Jess and I think sometimes he…. I think in his early insecure days he made a point of surrounding himself with people who were not as good as he was and it hurt him, but he was awful good on this question and he kept after us. And whenever I’d get in to California,

[-39-]

whenever we’d go to California, I’d always see that Jess had a fair amount of time with him and those guys. I don’t know – I can’t remember now what I’ve told you, but I remember a remarkable evening where – it was on a poverty trip out there in June with the Clark subcommittee, and I went along. And they had committee hearings in the morning and afternoon, but I set up a breakfast and a lunch and a dinner each of the three days with different groups in California. I had some Berkeley professors I remember over one day at lunch and Phil Selznick [Philip Selznick]. I asked Phil to get together about six or seven of the better, young professors – not so young. And I remember at one point Bob said to them, “Gentlemen, what national leaders are there that kids on your campus, the best kids”…. They were talking about how the peace movement no longer involved a fringe of radicals, that you were seeing the student body president, the fraternity presidents and the editor and the fraternity council and all of this, student council, getting involved,

[-40-]

and that they were the best kids in every way. And he said, “Gentlemen, what national figures are there that these kids admire, and would support?” And then he laughed and said, “But, of course, present company excluded.” And I remember Selznick saying to him, “Well, present company excluded, nobody.” And they all agreed with that. But then what one of the things I set up there was a dinner with Unruh and six or seven guys from the legislature that I asked him to pick. And he brought them along and we had dinner in San Francisco; it was the night that we came back and then wound up talking about the repertory theater. And it was an extraordinary dinner. It was Jess and about six guys in the legislature and Frank Burns, I think. And, you know, these were first rate guys, George Zenovitch and Shoemaker [Winfield Shoemaker] and Bob Crown [Robert W. Crown] and three or four others, Willie Brown, I think. And we walked back to the hotel and he made the point that, you know, here we’d been with these guys for oh, it

[-41-]

must have been four hours, just talking. And he said, “You know, there’s no other legislature in America where you’d want to spend four hours in dinner and pleasant conversation with eight members.” I said, “Maybe two in some legislatures.” And then he said, “Can you imagine having a dinner like that with the members of the New York State Assembly?” And that’s the New York State Assembly [Interruption]

HACKMAN: You were talking about the thing in June, I guess, with Unruh and the meeting with the legislature. Anything else there?

MANKIEWICZ: No. I’m just citing that to show another example of what a lot of respect he had for Jess because Jess really got these guys in. I mean Jess made the California legislature a very high class operation. So that when Jess would give him political advice he respected it.

HACKMAN: But something like this discussion was primarily of issues as opposed to California politics?

MANKIEWICZ: Oh, it was issues, it was kind of reminiscing about

[-42-]

the ’60 convention – a couple of them had been delegates. And they were talking, you know, “Remember how so and so was wobbling.” And then they did have a lot of discussion about how a legislature can solve some of these problems and they talked about the cities. And it was a good…. But there wasn’t very much talk about the presidency although everybody there was for him for president, and he knew it. Have I explained the problem that Joe Dolan and I went through in January, I believe?

HACKMAN: What, on the California thing?

MANKIEWICZ: Yes, getting a committee together.

HACKMAN: Filing?

MANKIEWICZ: Yes.

HACKMAN: You haven’t talked about it. I’ve read about it in a couple of places in books.

MANKIEWICZ: Well, I’m trying to remember now what the timing on this is. Oh, I know, yes.

HACKMAN: You have to file a month before.

MANKIEWICZ: You have to file tow months before the primary which meant that we had to file in California by the fourth of April.

HACKMAN: Right.

[-43-]

MANKIEWICZ: And what we had discovered in the California law… [Interruption] We found from the California law that in order to file on April the fourth, you had to have a committee take out papers I think it was ninety days – it’s either ninety days or sixty days – before that.

HACKMAN: It was March fourth, the deadline; so it would be…

MANKIEWICZ: Ninety days then before the primary.

HACKMAN: … ninety days before the primary, thirty before the filing.

MANKIEWICZ: Is that what it was, March fourth? All right. At any rate, we knew that by March fourth somebody had to take out some papers in California to say we were a committee for Robert Kennedy, or a committee for a candidate that could be converted into a Robert Kennedy committee if he was going to run. He was not prepared to announce by March fourth, which I believe was ahead of the New Hampshire primary which was March 12th. And obviously, you can’t do it on March fourth; you’ve got to lay the groundwork ahead of that time. And in February he was not about to admit that he was going to run and,

[-44-]

indeed, I don’t suppose he’d finally made up his mind. I think he probably made up his mind sometime in mid-to-late February. But, in any event, he certainly was not going to announce that he was a candidate before the New Hampshire primary. So Joe and I had this problem of getting him qualified for California even though he wasn’t going to announce. So about two weeks before we started lining up a committee out there and we got Norbert Schlei and a couple of other people who set up a committee and to go in on the fourth of March and get the papers. And we hoped that it would go unnoticed. Then on about the first of March Joe figured, “We can’t really let him get hit from the blind side on something like that, Let’s just tell him what we’re doing and we’ll make it seem very provisional: we’re just holding open the possibility because if we don’t do this he can’t run even if he decides he wants to.” So we told him and he said, “Well, yes, that’s probably a good idea. Let’s hold that possibility open. I’ll get Jess to do it.” We said, “Well, we already have this committee.” He said, “That’s

[-45-]

all right. I’ll…” And I think what he wanted to do was, I think, at that point he wanted to forewarn Jess that indeed he probably was going to run. So he called Jess and he told him about what we had discovered about the law and that, “Now you understand that this doesn’t mean I’m going to run and don’t go telling everybody I’m going to run. But in case I decide that I will, we’ve got to have this committee.” And Jess said, “I’ll take care of it. I’ll get a committee in order. Tell Joe and Frank to deal with Frank Burns; Frank will do it.” So we started talking to Frank Burns and Frank Burns was very set against it. He didn’t like the idea. He thought, “If you’re going to run, run.” I don’t know what he thought, but he didn’t want to do it this way. He didn’t want to do a blind committee. But he was under orders to do so from Jess and so he was going to do it. And on the morning of the fourth he called me and said, “Well, I’ve got the committee and – I think it was Bob Harmon [Robert L. Harmon] and he’s got seven lawyers and they will file today.” Great. He called me back at noon, his time, and said, “I’ve

[-46-]

lost them.” I said, “What do you mean you’ve lost them?” He said, “Well, I don’t know where Harmon is. I don’t know if he’s going to do it or not. I can’t find him and I don’t know if he’s on his way to Sacramento. If he isn’t, it’s too late.” And I said, “Frank, you don’t understand. You can’t do that. You’ve got to guarantee that it’s going to be done. Get somebody else.” And he said, “Look you guys, this is the way you wanted to do it and I’m now out of it. I’m withdrawing. If they’re going to do it, they’re going to do it and if they’re not, too bad. You should have figured some other way to do it.” Well, Joe and I were just beside ourselves. We talked to Bob about it and he said, “Well, I’m not going to call Jess and get mad. And don’t you do it. If this is the way it’s going to be, then this is the way it’s going to be.” And he didn’t want us to call anybody and say, “Dammit, make him do it.” So we sweat it out. And we didn’t know if this guy was…. I called Burns back and he said, “I just don’t know where he is. I don’t know if he’s going to get up there or not or even if he’s on his way up there.” And we

[-47-]

called Harmon’s office and nobody seemed to know where he was. And finally about…. So I naturally stayed in the office until 8 o’clock, until 5 o’clock California time. And about quarter to 5 I get a phone call, ten to 5, I get a phone call from the AP [Associated Press]. And they wanted to know what I know about a committee that has just taken out papers in California at the Secretary of State’s office twelve minutes before the deadline, in the name of “Kennedy for President” run by, as they put it, five little old ladies. And I’m completely baffled because first of all it wasn’t supposed to be “Kennedy for President” and God knows it wasn’t five little old ladies. Ad so I said to the AP, “Well, I don’t know anything about it. I have no idea.” And I found out from the AP that, indeed, they had qualified, that they’d done it. And, of course, what had happened was that Harmond’s group had indeed gone to Sacramento but the papers were wrong. They’d failed to fill out the right forms or they didn’t have the right forms…

HACKMAN: This is Harmon’s group of lawyers.

[-48-]

MANKIEWICZ: Harmon’s group, the lawyers, never did qualify. What did qualify was a group set up by a marvelous lady named Kim Riordan [Mrs. Justine Riordan], who had gotten together four or five of her friends who loved Robert Kennedy and, by God, they weren’t going to check with Kennedy or anybody else, they went in and put in a “Kennedy for President” committee. And it was that filing of Kim Riordan that enabled him to enter the California primary. Otherwise I don’t believe he could have gotten into the race at all. I hung up the phone and I said to Joe, “What is it with five little old ladies and a Kennedy for President committee?” He said, I don’t know.” And then later Burns called and said Harmon had filed. But, indeed, he hadn’t as it turned out. Now, I don’t know. Maybe Harmond’s filing could have been sustained ultimately, you know. I just suspect there may have been a technicality there and so we’d have gone to court, you know, and the court would have said well, it was essentially correct – I don’t know.

HACKMAN: If Unruh’s so strong to get Robert Kennedy into the race, why does he handle it this way? Why

[-49-]

doesn’t he make sure that this goes through? Or is this…

MANKIEWICZ: Oh, I think he probably thought he had. I think Frank Burns dumped it. And Burns may have been teasing us a little bit. He may have been really pretty sure that the guy was going to do it, I don’t know. But you know, it’s a nice little side story about Jess. Of course, he had pretty good polls at that point.

HACKMAN: Okay, one other thing that has some impact, some people say, and that’s the McNamara [Robert S. McNamara] resignation and the way it’s tied into things.

MANKIEWICZ: Yes.

HACKMAN: And from what I understand you got involved in making some phone calls at the time to reporters on the McNamara thing. Do you remember that?

MANKIEWICZ: Yes, well, you know, I didn’t. That’s funny. Well, let me tell that story and then I think I better tend to my businesses.

HACKMAN: Let me just reverse this.

[BEGIN SIDE II TAPE I]

MANKIEWICZ: I’ll tell you exactly what happened in the McNamara thing as I know it – and it is very much little, but somehow I became very much involved.

[-50-]

On the morning of the day McNamara resigned, or the day the story broke, there was a New York Times editorial about Robert Kennedy – very unfair. It was – I’m trying…. It had to do with… [Interruption] It involved Dean Rusk – well, it’s unimportant – but it had to do with what we thought was a serious misrepresentation of what Robert Kennedy had said. Oh, I know what it was. It was about, “was there a new policy in Vietnam?” quoting Rusk. What the Times was doing was attacking Kennedy in their editorial column for saying exactly what they had said a week before – that’s what it was. And we were damn mad. We were more than usually mad at the New York Times. And so we called Scotty in the morning with the idea that maybe he and Bob could talk in the afternoon, not so much about this editorial but the whole crumby way in which John Oakes at the New York Times was writing editorials and, in this case, really deliberately distorting what the record was. So he put in the call to Scotty and Scotty wasn’t there. And now the day goes on. We’d do other things, we had a little counter-

[-51-] offensive going against the Times; we had a couple of people to write letters. And then in the afternoon I was in talking to him about something else and I was standing by – I was talking to him right outside his office by Angie’s desk. And Angie puts her hand over the phone and says – and I forget whether we picked up the story about McNamara yet or not, but it didn’t matter because what she said to him was—“Andy Glass [Andrew J. Glass] is on the phone and he wants to know if it’s true that Robert McNamara has resigned.” And I guess Angie knew that McNamara had just called him and that he was on his way then over to the Pentagon. And so he said sort of as a joke to Angie, “Tell him I don’t know anything about it. I’m on my way to the Pentagon.” And she told him, told Andy that, whereupon he left and I guess went to the Pentagon and saw McNamara. And then he came back to the office and then Scotty called. And by now, of course, Scotty was full of the McNamara story. And what Scotty told him was that it was his understanding and indeed he was going to print a column in the next day’s New York Times, which had already

[-52-] gone to press or at least had gone into print – I don’t know when the first edition of the Times comes out – that was going to say that McNamara had not known about his resignation when he was told that he had moved on to the World Bank, which Bob then told Teddy. Now, whether he told him on the phone or whether he went over to the Senate floor and told him I don’t know, but they were on the Senate floor because it was a late debate. Teddy then – because by now the McNamara story was on the Senate floor – Teddy then said, “I understand that an important newspaper will publish a story by an important columnist” – or something like that – “tomorrow morning, to the effect that McNamara did not resign to go to the World Bank, but was told that he had resigned to go to the World Bank.”

HACKMAN: Edward Kennedy told that to whom?

MANKIEWICZ: To the Senate. It’s in the record. I mean, you know, he just delivered some colloquy about McNamara. Then I guess everybody went home. But somehow I knew that Teddy had said that; so maybe Bob came back to the office first and told us that Teddy had said that on the floor. At any rate,

[-53-]

I knew that. And then everybody went home. And there was some speculation, you know, and we knew that Reston [James B. Reston] was saying that McNamara had been fired. And, hell, it was obvious to me from the beginning that McNamara had been fired, if for no other reason that that it’s impossible for any man of intelligence at all to leave the office of Secretary of Defense and become the president of the World Bank. I mean, what the hell’s the president of the World Bank for Christ sake? You know, it’s like resigning as Secretary of Defense and becoming a claims adjuster for Allstate. I mean you don’t – it’s a demotion. So then I went home. And when I got home I’d a phone call from Dick Harwood [Richard L. Harwood] and Harwood said, “What is the McNamara story?” And I said, “Well, I don’t have any idea what the McNamara story is. The Senator, I think, went over there today, Dick, and I assume he talked to McNamara but I don’t know anything about it. I know Scotty Reston is saying that he doesn’t think that it was a resignation. But I don’t know. I assume you have the rest of the story anyway. I don’t know anything about it.” And he said,

[-54-]

“Well, do you think this?” And I said, “I just don’t know.” And it went back and forth, and I said, I don’t know. I haven’t talked to the Senator about it really since he talked to McNamara and I just don’t know anything.” And I felt very bad about the fact that I hadn’t had any news and I knew it was a big, big story. And so I said to Dick, just as we were winding up the conversation, “Well, I hope you get the story.” And he said, “Well, what do you mean? We have the story.” And I said, “What do you mean, you have the story?” And he said, “We have it that McNamara was fired and so forth. We have it right from your boss.” I said, “You do?” Oh, wait a minute. I’m sorry, sorry. Go back. Before I talked to Harwood I talked to Andy Glass who called me and said, “Is it true” – this is the way I remember the conversation – “Is it true that James Reston says in the Times tomorrow morning….” Oh, that’s where I heard about Teddy. All right, now we have it. “Ted Kennedy said in the Senate today that New York Times, Scotty Reston, will say tomorrow morning that McNamara was fired, didn’t resign. Is that true?” And

[-55-]

I said, “Yes, it is” meaning “Yes, it is true that Reston will say that.” And Andy and I chatted a little bit more and then he went away. And then Harwood called me about an hour or two later. And that’s when Harwood said, “We have the whole story and we have it right from Robert Kennedy.” And I said, “You have it right from Robert Kennedy?” And he said, “That’s right.” And I said, “Who the hell talked to Robert Kennedy?” He says, “Andy Glass. And he says he has the whole story.” I said, “Well, I’ll tell you, Dick. I don’t think Andy Glass talked to Robert Kennedy about it. If he did, he just called him on the phone. I’ll find out.” And Dick said, “Well, you damn well better”. So I called the Senator and I said, “Listen, the Washington Post is saying that Andy Glass has the whole story that McNamara was fired and he got it right from you.” And he said, “Well, that can’t be true because I haven’t talked to Andy Glass. I talked to him maybe a minute in the parking lot and he asked me if I’d seen McNamara and I said, “Yes, I have” and that was all. And I ran off to my car. I wouldn’t tell Andy Glass anything.”

[-56-]

So I called Harwood back and told him what he’d told me. And he said, “Well, I better call him and verify that.” So he called the Senator, and I guess he told him the same thing. And the upshot of it was that Andy Glass was fired because what Andy Glass had done was to write a whole story – he ways now – based on the assumption that when I said to him, it’s true that I meant “Yes, it’s true that McNamara was fired”. And he assumed that I must have gotten that from Kennedy and that Kennedy must have gotten it from McNamara. But when Andy went into the Washington Post, he said, “I have the whole story right here.” And they said, “Where did you get it?” And he said, “I got it from Robert Kennedy,” which was not a very good thing for him to say. And Andy was fired. It actually was the upshot of a number of incidents like that that had happened over there at the Post. I think Andy, in fact, had sailed pretty close to the land a few times, once too often. And so that was that. And then, of course, the whole McNamara thing started boiling along with “did he jump, was he pushed.” And I kept talking to the Senator about it, and he never told me. He’d never tell

[-57-]

anything. To this day I don’t know anything about what his conversation was with McNamara. But I did keep telling him what I thought had happened and I said, “Gee, I’ve been to the World Bank. You can fire a cannon down those hallways at 3 in the afternoon. Nobody’s going to go there voluntarily.” And he kind of, you know, said, “Well, this and that….” And then there was that terrible story in the Washington Post about Lyndon Johnson at the end of this ordeal and how McNamara had always wanted to go to the World Bank. You know, it was such bilge! Anybody with any intelligence…. You didn’t have to be on the inside to know that that was just nonsense. And then we see a column by Joe Alsop [Joseph W. Alsop] which says that this “insane” story that McNamara was fired, you know, is just preposterous and it’s all coming from a source very close to Robert Kennedy. That’s odd. And then George Christian…. And the President had a little press conference in which he said that he understood that a couple of kids were spreading the word that McNamara had been fired, and everybody assumed that he meant Robert Kennedy

[-58-]

and Ted Kennedy. But Christian made it clear later that who he meant was me and somebody else – I don’t know who – maybe Dick Drayne [Richard C. Drayne]; I don’t know. But somebody even wrote a story for the Hearst papers saying that Mankiewicz at forty-three is a very unlikely kid. And the fact is I didn’t talk to anybody. And then I talked to Joe and I said, “What the hell is all this about?” And he said, “Well, the source close to Robert Kennedy is you.” And I said, “But I haven’t been saying anything.” And he said, “I happen to know that you called reporters at the Pentagon and told them that McNamara had been fired, and that you’ve been spreading this world all over town.” And I said, “Joe, I don’t know any reporters at the Pentagon. That’s the one place I don’t know anybody. I don’t know anybody on the Pentagon beat for any newspaper. If I think about maybe I could tell you who the New York Times man is, but I don’t know.” And Joe and I really had several ferocious arguments about it in which he was absolutely convinced – and I’m sure the White House had told him – that I had been the source of this story. But I was

[-59-]

not. I never told anybody anything because I never knew anything. The only think I ever did was to tell Andy Glass that it was true that Reston’s story was going to be in the story the next day and that never got into the Washington Post. The Washington Post story was that McNamara had resigned.

HACKMAN: Did anyone ever come up with the names of any reporters you supposedly called at the Pentagon?

MANKIEWICZ: No, No. No, Joe would never tell me. No.

HACKMAN: Did the Senator ever ask you about it then?

MANKIEWICZ: Yes. Yes, and I told him it was just nonsense. Well, he knew that it was nonsense because he knew I didn’t know anything.

HACKMAN: Yes.

MANKIEWICZ: I mean Joe’s story was that the Senator was leaking all this to me, and I was putting it out. Well, I didn’t have to deny to the Senator that I was putting it out because he knew I didn’t have anything to put out. I really never knew anything.

HACKMAN: Did you ever on your own, by asking questions of other people, ever come up with a satisfactory story of how…

MANKIEWICZ: No. I never really bothered to try to figure

[-60-]

out what had happened. I assumed that a number of reporters probably had as much sense as I did, which is not an unreasonable thought. If I’d been a reporter, I would have written the story that it was inconceivable that McNamara would have resigned. You know, if I was an editorialist, I certainly would have said so. If I had been writing a column, I would have said, “What kind of business is this? Nobody gives up a powerful job for a non-job!” and I remember even speculating that to the Senator saying, “Well, it seems to me probably what happened is that once he said to Johnson in a mellow moment, “You know, when all this is over, I’d like to get into the world development scene”. But all this nonsense about George Woods having stayed on another year just for McNamara; it’s crap! I said, I think what probably happened is some reporters were printing the story just because it was patently inconceivable that anything else could be true. I mean Christian and Johnson may very well have thought that I was doing it. And maybe somehow the Andy Glass thing got to them in a distorted way

[-61-]

and they figured that since I had done that, maybe I was telling everybody else. And then they gave that story to Joe Alsop and he printed it.

HACKMAN: How quickly did Andy Glass get fired after that?

MANKIEWICZ: Next day. Next day because Bob was very clear with Dick Harwood that he had never talked to him. And that was the end of him. In other words, it wasn’t a question of whether he had the story right or not; it was that he said that he’d gotten the whole story from Robert Kennedy and, indeed, he had gotten nothing from Robert Kennedy. And then Andy backtracked and said, “Well, I really got it from Frank Mankiewicz.” Well, even if he had, I think the Post would have nailed him oh that because he’d done a couple of other things.

HACKMAN: Yes, but isn’t it conceivable then that Glass in reaction to getting fired ______to other people like this?

MANKIEWICZ: No, I don’t think so because what they did was to say, “We’ll talk about it in a couple of days when you’ve cooled down.” And he was, in effect, suspended for about three or four days and then he had talks with Ben Bradlee [Benjamin C. Bradlee] and

[-62-]

then what they did was to keep him on for two or three months. And that was really unfair because they led Andy to believe that maybe they’d relent. But they never did, and in a couple of months he left. So I don’t think he would have done it because he at that time was very full of remorse and would have done anything to stay on the Post. It wasn’t a case of him turning in anger against the whole thing.

HACKMAN: Well, you want to go?

MANKIEWICZ: Yes, I think I better.

[-63-]

Frank Mankiewicz Oral History Transcript – RFK #6 Name List

A H

Alsop, Joseph W., 28, 62 Hamill, Peter V., 28 Harmon, Robert L., 46-49 B Harris, Fred R., 22 Harris, Louis, 19, 20 Bradlee, Benjamin C., 62 Harwood, Richard L., 54-57, 62 Brown, Willie L., 41 Humphrey, Hubert H., 14 Burke, David W., 28 Burns, Frank, 39, 41, 46, 47, 49, 50 J Burns, John, 16 Johnson, Lyndon B., 5, 13-15, 19, 23, 25, 26, 32, C 38, 58, 61 Johnson, Tom, 8, 26, 34, 35 Califano, Joseph A., Jr., 25 Campbell, Alan Keith, 4, 51, 52 K Christian, George, 58, 59, 61 Church, Frank, 29, 31 Kennedy, Edward M., 13, 26, 27, 53, 55 Clark, Joseph S., 29, 32 Kennedy, Ethel Skakel, 11, 12 Columbia Broadcasting System, 24 Kennedy, Robert F., 1, 6, 12, 14, 27, 34, 35, 37-40, Crangle, Joseph F., 16 44, 47, 49, 51, 53, 56-62 Crown, Robert, 41 Kerner, Otto, 6 Kraft, John, 19-21 D L Disalle, Michael V., 23 Dolan, Joseph F., 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 13, 23, 43, 45, 46, Lawless, William B., 4 47, 49, 59, 60 Lowenstein, Allard K., 7 Doyle, James S., 27 Drayne Richard C., 59 M Dutton, Frederick G., 12, 13, 17, 25 Marshall, Burke, 12, 26 E McCarthy, Eugene G., 7, 9, 14, 17, 26, 33-36, 38 McDougal, Jerome R. Jr., 4, 20 Edelman, Peter M.,22 McGinniss, Joe, 27 McGovern, George S., 29, 32 F McGrory, Mary, 36 McNamara, Robert S., 50-58, 60 Fulbright, J. William, 2, 32 Morse, Wayne, 29, 31-33 Moynihan, Daniel P., 4 Muchmore, Don M., 19, 20 G Mudd, Roger H., 34

Gallup, George H., 19, 20 Glass, Andrew J., 52, 55-57, 60-62 Goodwin, Richard N., 13, 25, 35, 36 Gorey, Hays, 14 N Gruening, Ernest, 32 Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 16 Nelson, Gaylord, 29, 32 Newfield, Jack, 10 Sorensen, Theodore C., 13, 14, 37 O Steingut, Stanley, 16

Oakes, John, 51 T

Tydings, Joseph D., 22 P

Packwood, Robert W., 32 U Porter, Charles, 2 Unruh, Jesse M., 8, 23, 38-42, 45, 46, 49, 50 R V Reston, James B., 54-56, 60 Riordan, Justine, 49 vanden Heuvel, William J., 4, 13 Rusk, Dean, 51 W S Walinsky, Adam, 3, 7, 22, 36, 37 Schlei, Norbert, 45 Wilson, Glenn, 19 Schweiker, Richard S., 32 Woods, George, 61 Seigenthaler, John L., 12, 13 Selznick, Philip, 40, 41 Z Shoemaker, Winfield, 41 Smith, Steven E., 21 Zenovitch, George, 41