[applause]
-I am announcing today
my candidacy
for the presidency
of the United States.
[tense music]
I run to seek new policies,
policies to close the gaps
that now exist between
black and white,
between rich and poor,
between young and old.
I run for the presidency
because I want
the United States of America
to stand for hope
instead of despair.
I have traveled and I have
listened to the young people
of our nation
and felt their anger
about the w*r
that they are sent to fight
and about the world
that they are about to inherit.
-[newscaster] Last week he
criticized the Vietnam policy.
This week he focused attention
on the plight of the poor.
-[Robert Kennedy]
These are not ordinary times
and this is not
an ordinary election.
The fight is just beginning.
-[newscaster] Campaign '68,
the Indiana primary.
This primary would offer
the first toe to toe meeting
between Senators Kennedy
and McCarthy.
-[Robert Kennedy] There's more
that we have to accomplish.
I think the deep divisions
within our country
are unacceptable.
I think that we can heal them.
I think that we can do better.
[crowd cheers]
-[newscaster 1]
Senator Robert Kennedy has won
the first primary test.
-[newscaster 2] He apparently
will have all 23 votes
at the Democratic
National Convention.
-[Robert Kennedy] And I intend
to go on trying to do that
in the state of Nebraska
and the state of Oregon
and the state of California.
-[newscaster] Well, it's
a real horse race out in Oregon.
Senator Eugene McCarthy
by a 6% victory margin
over Senator Robert Kennedy.
-[supporter] Good luck to you,
Mr. Kennedy.
-[Robert Kennedy]
Thank you very much.
-[supporter] Get 'em, Bob--
good luck to you.
-[Robert Kennedy]
Thank you.
-[Robert Kennedy]
That w*r still goes on.
Of all of
the presidential candidates,
I was the first one
to speak out against
the way the w*r
was being conducted.
I'm not going to be satisfied
until that w*r is over
and American Soldiers are
brought back here.
-[newscaster] An hour and a half
after the polls have closed
in California,
the biggest primary of them all,
a slate of delegates pledged
to Senator Eugene McCarthy.
It's a very tight race now.
McCarthy has 43%.
That small gain,
Kennedy is pulling ahead.
The votes are all in now.
Senator Robert Kennedy
claiming victory in California.
He's entering the ballroom
and you can hear the cheers
from the supporters.
-[supporters cheering]
-[Robert Kennedy]
My thanks to all of you,
and now it's on to Chicago
and let's win there.
[supporters cheering]
[gentle ambient music]
-[female announcer]
Kennedy has been shot.
[gentle ambient music]
[gentle ambient music]
-[Oliver Stone] Robert, do you
think there's a Kennedy curse?
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
I don't know if there's a curse
or whether there might be a gene
that disposes people
in my family toward risk.
In the summertime
during the Camelot years,
I was raised on Cape Cod
and we lived almost communally
in a compound
where each family had a house
that was next to each other.
All the kids,
there were 29 cousins
and we ate together every night
and we ate at a different house.
And then all the kids played
together during the day.
We had a regimen.
We had to take tennis lessons,
sailing lessons, boxing lessons.
-[Stone] It's like summer camp.
-[RFK Jr.] Like summer camp.
We played baseball every day
and we played football every day
and we all did that together.
So it was
really like being raised
in one really massive family.
-[Oliver Stone]
Did your mother ever hug you
or father ever hug you?
-Oh yeah.
-[Oliver Stone]
There was affection.
-Yeah, there was lots
of affection in our family,
lots of fights
and lots of affection.
-[Stone] I want to ask
you now about your father.
-[newsreel narrator VO]
Attorney General Robert Kennedy
paints a grim picture
of the rise of lawlessness
under the Cosa Nostra or mafia.
This he describes
as the government of organized
gambling, narcotics peddling,
extortion, racketeering
and controlling
of certain trade unions.
He says the income
runs into billions.
[tense music]
-[Lisa Pease] Bobby Kennedy,
I mean,
he was a born investigator.
He was a fantastic investigator,
senate investigator.
-[Robert Kennedy]
What did you do then Mr. Hoffa?
Did you say,
"That SOB, I'll break his back."
-[Jimmy Hoffa] Who?
-[Robert Kennedy] You.
You can't remember
what you talked about
and you can't remember
whether he was in your--
-Wouldn't have been anything
of any importance, Mr. Kennedy
and I can't recall it.
-[Edward R. Murrow] Tell me,
does Bob ever strike you
as a seemingly mild-mannered man
for a rackets investigator?
-Well, I'm awfully surprised
most of the time
when he really keeps his temper,
when witnesses
aren't telling the truth
and being quite frank
or when they take
the Fifth Amendment so often.
-You knew this was going on
for all this period of time.
Mr. Hoffa, it's just beyond
the powers of comprehension
that you can't recall that.
-[Edward R. Murrow] Just
a matter of great self-control.
Is that right?
-I think so.
-[Lisa Pease] Robert Kenny was
definitely more conservative
than his brother initially
and saw the world in a little
more black and white terms
than JFK did.
Bobby really
didn't like politicians
and didn't want to have anything
to do with politics
and was kind of dragged kicking
and screaming
into supporting his brother
when he first ran for senator.
-[JFK] My brother Bobby,
who managed the campaign,
perhaps he could give us
some idea more up to date
of what the final figures were.
-I think that what we got
up to about 20 minutes ago,
you were winning
by about 70,000.
-[John F. Kennedy] Well,
I'm guess you're glad it's over,
aren't you Bobby?
-[Robert Kennedy] I am at that.
-Okay.
-[Lisa Pease]
It was not his choice.
Bobby had a nice job with
the Department of Justice then
investigating communists
and subversives
and he enjoyed that.
He was good at that.
He didn't want to get involved
in politics.
-I am today announcing
my candidacy
for the presidency
of the United States.
-[Lisa Pease] But he really
came to believe in his brother
and his vision for the world
and what a really good
leader could do for the world.
-[supporters cheering]
-[John F. Kennedy]
Now my wife and I prepare
for a new administration
and for a new baby.
In the appointments I have made,
I have sought
the most qualified men,
men of ability and a desire
to serve their country.
It is with great pleasure
that I announce the appointment
of Robert F. Kennedy
as Attorney General.
-[newscaster] That building
across the street
there is
the US Department of Justice.
You may be able to see
lights burning
in the fifth floor office
of Attorney General
Robert Kennedy.
The late night work is a symbol
of the vigor
of the Kennedy administration.
-[David Talbot]
Then Attorney General Kennedy
declared his major mission--
hunting organized crime.
-[Robert Kennedy]
Some of these big time gangsters
corrupt the very system
under which we live
and something
has to be done about it
and the only thing
that's going to be done
is by the American people
and those
charged with authority,
taking some major steps
and doing them now.
[tense music]
-[Walter Lippmann]
The Attorney General, Bobby,
is a very attractive
human being,
but his greatest weakness,
the thing that I've worried
about before he was appointed
is that when he's bent
on what he thinks
is the right course,
he's rather ruthless in action.
-[newscaster] Mr. Hoffa,
Robert Kennedy called
for a broader wiretap law.
-I say that if he can push
through a wiretap,
he can have
a greater police state
than he already has
in this country.
-Have a couple
of words with you, sir?
-[Jimmy Hoffa] An attorney
general like Bobby Kennedy,
he has a personal desire
to destroy those
who may oppose him.
-[d*ck Russell] And was true.
He was a pretty ruthless guy.
He was taken on these,
he was taken on mob figures.
-[Robert Kennedy] Would you
tell us if you have opposition
from anybody
that you dispose of them
by having them
stuffed in a trunk?
Is that what you do, Mr. Giancana?
-I decline to answer
because I honestly believe
my answer might tend
incriminate me.
-[Robert Kennedy]
Can you tell us anything
about any of your operations
or you just giggle
every time I ask you a question?
I thought only a little girls
giggled, Mr. Giancana.
-[Sam Giancana chuckles]
-[d*ck Russell]
He was a crusader
that really didn't care
who he stepped on.
[soft tense music]
-[David Talbot] As the Kennedy
presidency went on,
Bobby Kennedy had to take on
more and more responsibilities.
He was in charge of civil rights.
-These students
are going to attend
the University of Alabama.
-[David Talbot] During the most
increasingly hostile
and tense moments
of the presidency.
-[newsreel] James Hood
is the first of his race
to become a University
of Alabama student.
-[David Talbot] In fact,
Bobby Kennedy was put
kind of in charge
of the CIA in an informal way.
Bobby began each day driving
from McLean, Virginia,
his estate, past Langley,
the CIA's headquarters
and stopping
to keep an eye on the CIA.
He was also in charge of Cuba.
President Kennedy
gave him the Cuba portfolio
as part of his
anti-communist task force.
Why was Bobby Kennedy
compelled to take on
all this responsibility?
Because his brother, JFK,
couldn't trust
his own State Department,
the Pentagon,
and of course, the CIA.
-[RFK Jr.] And my uncle
and my father realized
that the CIA was a problem.
Dulles had lied to him
about the Bay of Pigs.
-[d*ck Russell]
Director Allen Dulles
was working on the plan
to invade Cuba
and get rid of Fidel Castro
by enlisting right-wing Cuban exiles
who were living
in Miami and hated Castro.
-[RFK Jr.] My uncle,
he didn't want to do it.
He thought
we would look like a bully
if we had anything to do
with an invasion of Cuba.
And Dulles persuaded him
that the Cuban brigade
would not need US help.
-[newscaster] At a place called
the Bay of Pigs,
a landing was made
by a Cuban exile brigade.
The brigade recruited,
paid, trained,
supplied by the CIA in perhaps
the largest covert operation
in the history of subversion.
-[d*ck Russell]
But the invasion of Cuba failed
and the Cuban exiles were caught,
a lot of them,
and taken prisoner by Castro.
-[newscaster] The Bay of Pigs
disaster was a military
and diplomatic defeat
for the new president.
-[Talbot] President Kennedy
and Bobby Kennedy figured out
that Allen Dulles
knew well in advance
that the Cuban brigade
were not capable
of pulling off such a mission.
Castro could only be overthrown
if the full might
of the US military came in.
-[Lisa Pease] He had planned
for the operation to fail
in the hopes that Kennedy
would not want to fail
and send in the troops.
There were Navy ships
positioned right off Cuba
ready to go in
and support the operation.
-[David Talbot]
Kennedy is just furious
and he fires Allen Dulles,
this legendary director
who has served
every president
since Woodrow Wilson.
-[d*ck Russell]
But unbeknownst to the Kennedys
elements of the CIA
and the military were rogue.
They were going off on their own
in order to achieve
what they believed
were the right objectives--
assassinate Castro, take him out.
And in fact, the CIA
kept enlisting mafia figures
and they were the ones
who were helping arrange
for these assassination plots
against Castro inside of Cuba.
-[David Talbot]
Bobby Kennedy was furious
when he heard that
the mafia of all people
who he was going after--
Public Enemy Number One--
was working with the CIA.
He confronted the CIA about this.
He said with icy sarcasm,
I hope in the future
that you will have the goodness
to tell the Attorney General
if you're working with the mob.
-[d*ck Russell] The Kennedys
said the assassination plots
against Castro have got to stop,
but they didn't stop.
-[Pease] Even as Robert Kennedy
is telling the CIA,
"Don't k*ll Castro,"
they had plots in motion
to k*ll Castro
and so they just
didn't tell him.
I mean, the insubordination
of the CIA against
the Kennedy brothers
is shocking to me.
[tense music]
-[John F. Kennedy] Good evening,
my fellow citizens.
Unmistakable evidence
has established the fact
that a series
of offensive m*ssile sites
is now in preparation
on the island of Cuba.
The purpose of these bases
can be none other
than to provide
a nuclear strike capability
against the western hemisphere.
-[d*ck Russell]
The world was on the brink
of a nuclear holocaust.
-[Lisa Pease] Unfortunately,
for JFK, all his other advisors,
every single one of them
was advocating bombing Cuba.
-[d*ck Russell] The Kennedy
brothers were determined
not to push this
to the brink as the generals
who just wanted to go in
and b*mb the m*ssile sites,
-[Lisa Pease]
Bobby was the only one who said,
we can't do that.
This is crazy
going in and bombing Cuba.
If we blow them up, there will
be retaliation from the Soviets
and this could quickly
escalate to nuclear w*r.
-[d*ck Russell]
It was really Robert Kennedy
who just took command
of this situation.
-[Lisa Pease] He had
the moral clarity to see
that preventing nuclear w*r
was the greatest good.
-[d*ck Russell] Interestingly,
Robert Kennedy Jr has recalled
that they wanted
the Kennedy family,
all the kids,
to leave the city of Washington
or Hickory Hill
and go into a protected bunker
that had been set up
for high officials
and they didn't do that.
Their father said,
if I pull you guys out of school
and take you to that bunker,
the country is going to panic,
so let's just go on
and go to school as usual
and we'll solve this thing.
-[JFK] It shall be the policy
of this nation
to regard any nuclear m*ssile
launched from Cuba
as an attack requiring
a full retaliatory response
upon the Soviet Union.
-[d*ck Russell] Robert Kennedy
had a channel to the Russians--
back channel
to the Premier Khrushchev.
-[Pease] There were two messages
that came in back to back.
-[John F. Kennedy] Friday night,
got a message from Khrushchev.
-[Pease] First one was like,
we will consider your terms,
and the second one was,
we don't accept your terms
and Bobby's like
answer the first letter,
don't answer the second one.
-[John F. Kennedy] Have to wait
to see how it unfolds
and there's a good deal
of complexities to it.
-[Lisa Pease]
And through Bobby's diplomacy,
they worked out a deal.
-[John F. Kennedy] Which said
that he would withdraw
these missiles and technicians
and so on providing we withdrew
our missiles from Turkey.
-[d*ck Russell] And we agreed
also not to try to k*ll Castro,
not to invade the island.
-[John F. Kennedy]
But we don't plan to invade Cuba
under these conditions, anyway.
-[d*ck Russell] The Cuban
m*ssile Crisis brought the world
closer to a nuclear holocaust
than anything we've seen since.
-[newscaster] Across the world
goes a long sigh of relief,
and with it, the world's first
nuclear showdown is over.
-[Lisa Pease] Without Bobby,
if Bobby hadn't have been there,
there's no guarantee
America would be here today
or any of us for that matter.
-[d*ck Russell]
He was called ruthless.
But the fascinating thing about
Robert Kennedy was that
he was willing to grow
and change.
-[Stone] And your father changed
when, then?
[phone ringing]
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] The day
that his brother was k*lled.
-[Robert Kennedy] Hello?
-[RFK Jr.] My father changed
after my uncle's death.
[soft tense music]
[somber music]
[gentle music]
-[newscaster] Ten years
after his death,
Robert Kennedy's widow
and children
and home are still
very much together.
So little seems to have changed.
There still are dogs everywhere
and children underfoot
or airborne and something
happening almost all the time.
Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. is 24 now,
a Harvard graduate
and is entering law school.
-[interviewer] Do you think
your father's career
will ultimately have
an influence on where you go?
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] Well,
like I said before,
I think that really we've been
raised the way we've been raised
and I think the way
that most of my family thinks
is that his goals
and a lot of his ideals
were really worth pursuing.
I didn't necessarily say
I was going to go into politics.
I'd always wanted to be
a veterinarian,
but I think I felt some pressure
after my father died
to sort of change my career
to try to do more of
the kind of thing that
he was trying to do.
And I ended up, rather than
going to veterinary school,
going to law school
and really followed
his career path.
I went to Harvard and then
to University of Virginia,
which he had done,
and then I became
an attorney and a prosecutor,
which was kind of what my father
had been doing.
-[Stone] In the wake
of your father's death,
you try to follow
in his footsteps.
You're going
to the same schools,
you become an attorney,
but it didn't seem to work out
and at this time,
in this area,
you have a drug addiction.
How does that play out?
-[RFK Jr.] I started
experimenting with drugs
when I was 15,
so a year after my dad's death.
I never even had drank coffee
by the time I was 15
and then I was at a party
for the older brother
of a friend of mine
in Cape Cod who had been drafted
and was being shifted off
to Vietnam
and it was his goodbye party.
I was hitchhiking home
from that party
and an older kid picked me up
and he offered me LSD.
And LSD had just come
to Cape Cod
with the Merry Pranksters
that night.
I would not have taken LSD,
but the week before these
older kids had eaten peyote
and they had taken
a hallucinogenic trip
and it had brought them
back in time
where they saw dinosaurs
and my favorite comic book
that I read every month
was called Turok Son of Stone,
which is about these
two Indians.
So I said to this kid,
"If I take LSD,
will I see dinosaurs?"
And he said, "You might."
And I had a trip that lasted
probably for ten hours,
extreme hallucinations
and I had a ball,
I had a lot of fun,
but I was coming home
in the morning
and I was crashing
and I was feeling depressed
and remorseful
and saying,
"I'm never going to do
that again."
Plus, I had to go back
and face my mom
and we had a curfew
and I was going to just be
in misery
and I saw these boys
in the woods,
they were all
on LSD that night.
I said to them
I'm really crashing on this
and feel miserable.
And they said,
"Try some of this,"
and it was crystal meth.
And I took it
so it was like I was in heaven
and it solved all my problems.
And that was the template
for my addiction
for the next 14 years
of me constantly trying to stop
and telling myself
I'm never going to do that again
and then
finding myself doing it.
I ran away from home
when I was 16 years old
and hopped freight trains
across the country,
disappeared for three months.
I worked in a lumber camp
in Colorado.
I hitchhiked and rode the trains
all over the country
and had no contact
with my mother.
-[Stone] Is this because
she was tough?
-[RFK Jr.] My mother, I had
a very troubled relationship
with my mother
from when I was born.
She had
a chemical reaction to me
and I had the same thing to her
and where my presence
would get her agitated.
-[Ethel Kennedy] Bobby,
who are you named after?
-[Edward R. Murrow] You, Bobby?
-[Ethel Kennedy] Can you get up
and tell the television
who you're named after, Bobby?
No.
Bobby, who are you
putting over your head?
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] Percy.
-[Ethel Kennedy]
Percy his elephant.
-[Edward R. Murrow laughs]
-[Ethel Kennedy chuckles]
-[Edward R. Murrow] And uh--
-[Bobby/Ethel indistinct]
-[Blake Fleetwood]
[laughs] I knew him.
He ran away as a kid.
He was kicked out of the house
so many times on his adventures,
but he loved his mother
and his mother loved him.
He was always the favorite.
That's why
when he screwed up so much,
she was so
disappointed with him.
-[d*ck Russell]
In the family at that point,
he was persona non grata
and ended up
not just getting into drugs
like LSD or marijuana
that were happening at the time,
but also heroin.
[tense music]
-[Blake Fleetwood]
He went through law school,
heavily addicted.
He passed his bar exam
after a few tries,
heavily addicted.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
I think heroin for me,
it was self-medicating.
I had been so restless before.
I was probably ADHD.
Nowadays they'd
probably give me,
put me on Adderall and stuff
because I could not sit still
and the world
was moving so fast for me.
And then heroin slowed it down
and allowed me to focus
and read and concentrate.
I went from being really among
the worst people in my class
academically
to the top of my class.
But it works
until it stops working
and it turns on you.
-Let's say hello to this
remarkable young man.
-Absolutely.
-Mr. Robert Kennedy Jr.
[applause]
Be right back.
-[Dinah Shore]
Come on in here.
Who have you got there, Bobby?
-[RFK Jr.] This is
an American Golden eagle.
-[Dinah Shore]
What do you think, Joey?
-[Blake Fleetwood]
He was functioning,
I mean, I'm sure that
he was not functioning
at his optimal level,
but he was functioning.
He held a job
and stuff like that.
-[Dinah Shore]
I wanted to ask you about,
you think eventually
you'll go into politics?
-I don't know.
That in itself is a pipe dream.
-[d*ck Russell]
Through Robert Morgenthal
who'd known his father,
Bobby got a job
with the DA's office
in New York.
-[Stone] As an attorney,
what were you doing?
-I was prosecuting criminals.
-[d*ck Russell]
At the same time,
he would go up to Harlem
and enter these tenements
in really rough neighborhoods
and score heroin.
-[Blake Fleetwood] He went
to rehab about five times.
I drove him to rehab three
or four times
and it never worked,
the times I took him.
It would work for a while
and when
he was trying to get off
and I would try and chase
the drug dealers away from him
to keep them away from him,
but eventually he relapsed.
-[RFK Jr.] At that point,
I really wanted to stop.
I was going out to Minnesota
to a rehab and I OD'd.
I took too much heroin
and I nodded out on the airplane
and somebody saw it
and they reported me
and then I got busted.
And when I got off the plane,
the police were waiting for me.
It's probably the best thing
that ever happened to me
because I had such a fear
that my addiction
was going to get in
the newspapers,
but at this point
everybody knew I had the problem
so I could start
talking about it
and that was the beginning
of my recovery.
-[Blake Fleetwood]
When he was sentenced,
part of his sentence
was to go to rehab.
He had been through rehab
a number of times,
but this was his final time
and he suddenly
had an awakening.
-[d*ck Russell] That was a real
turning point for him
and it really saved his life.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
I got sober in 1983.
-[Oliver Stone]
And how old were you?
-I was 28.
-You were still working
as an attorney?
-Yeah.
-And what happens then
after you go through this
period of change?
-When I got sober, I realized
I need to be true to myself.
I wanted to be working
with nature
and I wanted to be outside.
I decided to work
for an environmental group.
-[d*ck Russell] He started with the
Natural Resources Defense Council,
which is the leading
environmental group
in the country.
This is how he became
an environmental lawyer.
-[RFK Jr.] I took all
the training that I had
as a district attorney,
as an attorney and a prosecutor,
and started prosecuting
environmental crimes
by taking polluters to court.
-[Fleetwood] That also awakened
something deep inside him.
When he was an 8-year-old kid,
he loved animals
and he loved the fishes [laughs]
and all the animals in the wild,
and all of a sudden
he had a chance
to have a career of this
and that was thrilling for him.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
When I was young,
nature to me was always
something that was important.
It was a connection
that I had with my father.
-[d*ck Russell] Bobby's father
used to organize
whitewater rafting trips
starting when he was very young.
-[Robert Kennedy] All of these
rivers in the United States
that we've traveled down,
I think it's a great
natural resource
that I'd like to have
the children see and enjoy.
-[Robert Kennedy]
What you like the best, Bobby?
-[RFK Jr.] I liked it
when we went on the hikes
and I caught a lot of reptiles.
-[Robert Kennedy]
Bobby caught a rattlesnake,
and put it in a bottle,
which was very nice
for all of us.
-[young girl laughs]
-[d*ck Russell] In 1966,
his father had taken him
to the Hudson River
and his father was appalled
at what he saw.
You couldn't eat the fish
from the river.
Commercial fishermen had
all been put out of business.
Oil spills from Exxon Mobil,
the pollution from
the General Electric Company
and Monsanto.
I mean, it was just terrible.
-[Blake Fleetwood] Well,
he told me he was determined
to clean it up.
-[d*ck Russell] Bobby ended up
joining a new organization
called the Riverkeepers.
-[speaker 25] Riverkeepers
was started by a group
of commercial fishermen,
eager to protect their environment.
-[John Cronin]
They decided long before
the word
environmentalist was coined
that they were going
to do something about
oil spills, sewage.
They were going to
stand up and fight.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
Then the Riverkeeper asked me
to come and work for them
as their full-time attorney.
-[Russell] And Bobby was there
on behalf of the NRDC
and began to patrol the river
with John Cronin.
They became partners
and they would actually,
they'd really get out there
and look for polluters
-[RFK Jr.] And I found about
24 different polluters.
I photographed them.
I took samples
and I then brought lawsuits
against all 24 polluters.
-[d*ck Russell]
Bobby Kennedy was suing
under the Clean Water Act.
-[RFK Jr.] It's ill*gal
to pollute the waters
of the United States.
You have to pay a high penalty
if you do pollute.
-[d*ck Russell] And it outlawed
things like dumping PCBs
into the Hudson River.
[Blake Fleetwood] Soon after
he joined Riverkeepers,
he was out gathering
some fish with the nets
and I went out with him.
We had big boots on and stuff
and he told me we just won
a $2 million judgment.
They had sued Exxon for
polluting the Hudson River.
I realized that he was
onto something big.
-[RFK Jr.] In the face
of enormous industrial pressure,
we've been able
to save this river.
We came here in 1985.
We found it really
a polluted cesspool,
but now it seems pretty clean
and there's a relative
abundance of fish in it.
-[d*ck Russell]
Today, the Hudson River is
one of the cleanest in the country
and you can eat the fish again.
And it was the efforts
of Bobby and John Cronin
and Riverkeeper
that made that happen.
-[Robert Kennedy] To travel up
this magnificent river,
such a landmark
throughout the United States
and see the amount of pollution
that's taken place.
I think that we should do
something about it.
-[Blake Fleetwood]
Bobby was sober
and really dedicated
to his causes.
This was the passion
that he had.
This was his mission in life.
[tense music]
In those early years,
he really was fearless.
-[Roger Ailes]
Do you think the Spotted Owl
put a lot of people out of work?
-[RFK Jr.] First of all,
that is an exaggeration.
-[Roger Ailes]
Okay, I just asked.
-[d*ck Russell] He was lionized.
He wrote a book at the time.
It was a big bestseller.
-[Stewart] Crimes Against Nature
is now out in paperback.
It's on the bookshelves now.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
-[Blake Fleetwood]
He was changing the world
and I think that he felt that
and he was committed to that.
-[d*ck Russell]
And by the early 2000s,
Bobby was the leading
environmental lawyer
in the United States.
He was taking
on Smithfield Foods
and suing them for dumping waste
from their industrial hog farms.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
There's no right to pollute.
The polluter pays.
This battle that we're
all fighting for today,
this is the battle
against ignorance and greed.
-[Russell] 2004, he was asked
at the Democratic Convention--
the Bush administration
was in power
and he was taking them on.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
He has put polluters in charge
of all the regulatory agencies
that are supposed to protect
Americans from pollution.
The second in command
of EPA is a Monsanto lobbyist.
-Time magazine called him
a Hero of the Planet.
-Please welcome
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
[cheers and applause]
-[Colbert] Good to see you
again, Mr. Kennedy.
-[Blake Fleetwood] I took a lot
of river trips with Bobby
and a small river
was being poisoned by
a paper mill upstream.
All the animal life
around the river
were being poisoned by mercury,
and I think he
was very affected by that.
-[RFK Jr.] Mercury, it's a very,
very dangerous chemical.
In 17 states,
it's now unsafe to eat
any fresh water fish
because of mercury.
It's coming from
coal burning power plants.
-[Colbert] We are
the Saudi Arabia of coal,
are we not?
-[RFK Jr.] I think I've got
a good sense of who I am
and I'm very proud of my father,
of my uncles,
but I don't feel
competitive with them.
I love the gifts
that I've been given
and feel like I want to use
those in whatever way
that I'm supposed to,
like my father did with his gifts.
-Please welcome Robert F.
Kennedy Jr to the program.
Robert, nice to see you.
-Likewise.
-As we adjust our chairs...
Normally known more
for environmental causes
and I guess to a certain extent
this is apropos of that.
Most recently you're talking
about the link between autism
and vaccinations.
Pretty controversial.
-[d*ck Russell]
Back in the early 2000s,
Bobby was giving talks
all over the country,
like 200 talks a year, just about.
And he began to find
that there were all these women
showing up at his talks
sitting in the front row,
and some of them began coming up
to him afterwards and saying,
"What you're saying
about mercury
"from coal burning
power plants is true
"and it's all well and good, but...
"somebody has got to look
into the fact
"that mercury
in childhood vaccines
"in a preservative
called Thimerosal
"is causing neurocognitive
deficiencies in our kids,
including an outbreak of autism."
Bobby wanted nothing
to do with this,
but they kept coming up to him.
And finally there was a woman
named Sarah Bridges
whose son had autism.
So she came to Hyannis
with a big box of evidence.
-Brought a banker's box.
I gave him an impassioned one minute--
I thought it was really compelling,
what happened to my son.
How he was a totally normal
four month old
who received nine vaccines
and he had a two hour seizure.
The ER doctor pulled me aside and said,
"You've had a classic
vaccine reaction"
and acknowledged that he had
been brain damaged by his vaccines.
And Bobby looked at me
and said, "I'm not interested."
And I said, "Would you just
read some of these articles?"
And he said, "I will read a few."
And unbeknownst to me,
he sat up and read
the majority of them that night.
He said,
"Something's wrong here."
"I'm going to get involved in this.
I'm in."
-[Russell] In the beginning,
he didn't want to do it,
but nobody was willing
to take this on.
Who else was gonna do it?
-Between 1989 and 2003,
almost all of our vaccinations
included a material
called Thimerosal,
which breaks down to form mercury.
It was a preservative,
it was unnecessary
to add to the vaccines.
And we saw during that period
a dramatic increase
in neurological disorders
among American children
speech delay, language delay,
Dyslexia, and autism.
-[Hightower] When he was born,
my son was very alert.
He was born
with a head full of hair
and then my son had been
vaccinated for hepatitis B.
His hair fell out.
He was just not as alert.
I was trying to read everything
I could get my hands on
to find out
what happened to my son.
And there was a young lady
in the hospital
who had given me a pamphlet on
what the vaccines might contain
and the mercury just stood out.
-When we had our meeting with CDC
and we shared all of our concerns,
they sat and listened patiently
and then at the end
of the meeting,
they handed us
this one page paper
saying that they had looked
at this already
and they found
no evidence of harm.
Everything was fine.
So we decided
to file FOIA documents
to get all of the records
not only from CDC
but also from FDA at the time.
And it took a while
to get those,
but when we did get them
it was obvious
going through those records,
along with all
their internal emails,
that Mercury is incredibly toxic.
And they were very concerned
and they had actually found
statistically significant
associations between exposure
to Thimerosal and ADD, ADHD,
speech and language delays
and also autism.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
What I've been saying is
people are going to be
frightened about vaccines
if they don't trust
the federal regulators
to be honest
with the American people.
-[Lyn Redwood]
There was one arm of the FDA
that dealt with
over the counter products
and they had done
all these investigations
back in the eighties
and found out that Thimerosal
used in contact lens drops
and over the counter
products actually wasn't safe.
And so, they had made
a recommendation
that it be removed
from over the counter products,
but CBER,
the Center for Biologics
Evaluation and Research,
which is the ones who
oversee vaccines,
they left it in.
So how can you have one arm
of an agency
saying Thimerosal is toxic
and we shouldn't be using it,
and another arm of the agency
injecting it into our children?
-[Russell] And this convinced
Bobby that the agency, again,
that was supposed to be protecting people,
was in league with these
pharmaceutical companies.
So it became
a big part of what he began
to speak about publicly.
-[Jon Stewart] If these
vaccine makers are allowing
a certain compound
into these vaccinations
that's causing autism
and they now know it,
why are they fighting so hard?
-Well, how many of us
would want to admit
that a decision we made
had poisoned
a whole generation
of American children?
-[d*ck Russell] Now Thimerosal
was taken out of vaccines
after this outcry began.
-[Jon Stewart] I appreciate you
getting the word out.
And I know parents of kids
with autism truly appreciate it
and I know that it's a very
difficult thing for them
to be dealing with, so I'm sure they
appreciate the help.
-[d*ck Russell] The NRDC was not happy
with his taking on
this vaccine issue,
nor was these various groups
that he had worked with
for many, many years
and people began to urge him
to get away from this issue
and he refused to do it.
So he wrote a big article
for Salon and Rolling Stone.
What Bobby discovered
was back in 1986,
during the Reagan years,
the vaccine manufacturers
were granted no liability
from prosecution.
-[Sarah Bridges]
Pharma went to Congress
and worked out a deal where
there would be a fund set up,
the vaccine injury fund,
that pharma pays no money into.
So the government,
they're handing out these
multimillion dollar awards
to children damaged by vaccines,
but simultaneously saying
they are unequivocally safe.
-[d*ck Russell] There was a turning point
where Bobby Jr. and Sarah Bridges
went to a meeting
at the New York Times
to try to get the New York Times
into the vaccine issue.
-[Sarah Bridges] The main editor
said, can't do it.
Not, you're wrong.
Not, let's look more
deeply into this.
Said, "Can't do it."
"Big pharma is our biggest donor."
And that was the end of that.
-[d*ck Russell] Suddenly
he couldn't write op-eds anymore
and he couldn't even
eventually get a letter
to the editor published
after writing op-eds
about environmental issues
for the New York Times
and many,
many places for years,
being declared
a Hero of the Planet.
And then in 2011,
Salon retracted the article
that he had written back,
some years before.
-[Lyn Redwood] Suddenly the
New York Times would be like,
these are crazy people.
And that's when
the label of anti-vaxxer
and conspiracy theorists came about.
-[Hightower] And what Bobby's
about is making vaccines safe.
And it's not about
not having the vaccines.
That's a part of a conversation
that always gets pushed aside.
-It's pretty stunning to see
how quickly Bobby moved from
person of the year
on environmental issues,
such a thought leader,
to a total pariah.
-[Russell] It was the beginning
of a very painful period.
-[Robert Kennedy] Just haven't
decided what I'm going to do
in the future.
Well, I just don't know
what I'm going to do
and I just have
to leave it like that.
I just don't know what I'll do.
Oh, well, I might like to be
associated with a university.
Teaching, maybe, going
to school perhaps.
I dont know.
-[David Talbot]
After his brother's m*rder,
Bobby Kennedy's prone
to great bouts of depression.
I think Bobby was
suicidally depressed.
And during this dark time,
he's asked again and again,
did Lee Harvey Oswald really
k*ll your brother on his own?
Do you believe
in the lone g*nman theory?
And this has to be painful
for Bobby Kennedy
because he alone knows that
he's probably the only one
who can get to the bottom
of what really happened
to his brother.
-[newscaster] Something has
happened in the motorcade route.
Standby please.
-[d*ck Russell] Bobby Kennedy
got a call from J. Edgar Hoover,
the head of the FBI,
who coldly informed him
that your brother's been k*lled.
That was it.
Hoover hung up the phone.
-[David Talbot]
Immediately, Bobby Kennedy
realizes two things.
The man that he's deeply devoted to,
his brother who he loves dearly,
is now dead.
And number two,
whatever authority he has
as Attorney General is now
disappearing by the minute.
He has only hours maybe
to get to the bottom of the crime.
-[reporter]
Did you sh**t the president?
-I didn't sh**t anybody. No sir.
I'm just a patsy!
-[David Talbot]
He immediately suspected
there was not a lone g*nman
because the people there that day,
his closest A*DS
who were World w*r II veterans,
knew the sound of g*nf*re
and told him
we were riding into an ambush.
It was a crossfire.
So where did he look
in trying to figure out
what had happened to his brother?
-[Lisa Pease]
His first call was to the CIA
and said,
"Did you guys k*ll my brother?"
Bobby was worried that they
had pushed the CIA really hard
on not invading Cuba
after the Cuban m*ssile Crisis.
And that had been the response.
-[reporter] Report that the
president was hit in the head.
-[David Talbot]
Bobby Kennedy also suspected
that the right wing anti-Castro
exiles were involved somehow.
-[d*ck Russell]
Exiles who were embittered
by what had happened with JFK
during the Bay of Pigs
and then coming
to an accommodation with Castro
during the Cuban m*ssile Crisis.
-[David Talbot] And who was the
third party that he suspected
in the assassination
of his brother?
-[reporter] There is Leo.
[g*nsh*t]
He's been shot.
Lee Oswald has been shot.
There's a man with a g*n.
-I was standing
in the White House
in the East Room
and we were standing next
to my uncle's casket.
Lyndon Johnson came in
and told my father and Jackie
and my mother
who were standing there with me
that a man named Jack Ruby
just k*lled Lee Harvey Oswald.
And after they
absorbed that information,
I said to my mom,
why did he do that?
Did he do it
because he loved our family?
And so I think anybody who saw
what happened with Jack Ruby
would have that same question.
Why did he do it
in a police station wide open
when he was bound to be caught?
And of course he didn't have
a love for our family.
He had the opposite.
-[David Talbot] Who's Jack Ruby?
Bobby Kennedy puts people
on this right away
and they report back to him within hours.
Jack Ruby is mobbed up.
He's a mob errand boy.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
And Jack Ruby's phone records
on the month before the m*rder
were many, many calls
almost entirely to people
that my dad had indicted.
-I thought only little girls
giggled Mr. Giancana.
-[Sam Giancana chuckles]
-[David Talbot] So Bobby Kennedy
suspected the CIA.
He knew the mob
was involved somehow
and of course
in the Cuban exile underground,
all three of which
were working closely together,
they were working together
to k*ll a Fidel Castro in Cuba.
And of course Bobby Kennedy
came to the conclusion
they turned their g*ns
on his brother.
[somber music]
He has a lot of guilt
about the assassination.
He thinks he should have
protected his brother.
He thinks he should have seen
this plot coming.
The family all convened
at the White House
preparing for the funeral
and Bobby had said to the family
that day in confidence
we know Jack was k*lled
by a conspiracy.
We know there were
very powerful forces.
It was a domestic political conspiracy,
but we can't do anything.
My plan is to run for public office
and eventually get back
to the White House
and then I'll have the authority
to get to the bottom of the crime.
But imagine how difficult
that path was for him.
He knew that was years away,
but he knew he had to be patient
and bide his time
until he could bring official resources
to the investigation.
-[Cronkite] Who actually fired
the shots that k*lled Kennedy?
Was there a conspiracy?
The new president, Lyndon Johnson
ordered these questions answered.
-[David Talbot] Here you have
this blue ribbon commission
that's supposed to independently
get to the bottom
of what really happened in Dallas
and right away, it's compromised.
-[d*ck Russell] Basically the
Warren Commission
was run by Allen Dulles of the CIA.
-[David Talbot]
Dulles was still very angry
and bitter about his firing
by President Kennedy.
-Fired by Kennedy,
he becomes the most influential
member of the Warren Commission
investigating what happened to Kennedy.
-The Warren Commission
makes these major findings.
Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated
President Kennedy.
He did it alone.
-[newscaster 2] There is no
credible evidence
that Lee Harvey Oswald
was part of a conspiracy
to assassinate President Kennedy.
-[Talbot] And Bobby Kennedy
knew if he said,
I suspect the story
is bigger than that,
that powerful forces did it,
all hell would break loose.
And he knew it would actually
be traumatic for the country.
-[RFK Jr.] It would have
impeded his capacity
to participate in public life.
So you really, he didn't want
to pick that fight
and he stayed silent about it.
[ambient music]
-[Stone] Can you tell us a few
memories of Jack?
Was he warm with you?
-[RFK Jr.] My Uncle Jack
was part of my life
from when I was born.
He knew how to talk to children.
He was wonderful with children.
But for example, I sat next to him
on the way back
from the convention in 1960.
I sat in the seat next to him
on the airplane
and he talked to me
the whole time
and he had a lot of other things
to do at that point.
-[Robert Kennedy] Well,
I think really he made
Americans feel young again.
I think that he gave all of us
more confidence in the country
and that we were dedicated
to certain principles and ideals
and that we would live up to them
and if necessary fight for them.
-[d*ck Russell]
In the course of this,
Bobby is still trying
to come to terms with
what do I do now?
What was I going
to do with my life?
-[Robert Kennedy] Well,
I've thought some of my future
over the period
of the last few months
and some people from
New York and elsewhere
have spoken to me
about running in New York
and it's possibility
that I'm considering
as I'm considering
many other possibilities.
-[d*ck Russell] Bobby Kennedy
then stepped down
as Attorney General
of the United States
and ended up running
for the Senate in New York.
-[Kennedy] In 1963, the people
in the Plattsburgh area
paid $12 million
in taxes for schools.
If my opponent had his way,
your area would've lost...
I stumbled on it.
If my opponent had his way,
stop it.
Go ahead. Tell me.
I need your help
and support in November.
[band playing]
[cheers and applause]
-[chairman] He appreciates
this tremendous reception,
but he has a message
to give to you
and the American people.
-[Johnson] Chairman McCormick,
I accept your nomination.
[cheers and applause]
But the gladness
of this high occasion
cannot mask the sorrow
which shares our heart.
So let us keep burning
the golden torch of promise,
which John Fitzgerald Kennedy
set aflame.
[applause]
Let us tomorrow
turn to our new path.
Let us be on our way!
[cheers and applause]
-[convention speaker] And now
it is my privilege and honor
to introduce Robert Kennedy.
[cheers and applause]
[somber music]
[cheers and applause continues]
[cheers and applause]
-[Robert Kennedy]
Mister Chairman.
[cheers and applause]
-[Robert Kennedy]
Mister Chairman.
[cheers and applause]
-[announcer] I request the delegates
to be seated [indistinct]
[cheers and applause]
-[RFK Jr.] My father was
shattered after Jack's death.
And at that convention,
my father got this
extraordinary outpouring of love
and he cried.
One of the few times
anybody had ever seen him cry.
And he realized that, okay,
maybe I have a future.
-[crowd] We want Bobby!
We want Bobby!
-President Kennedy said
that we have the capacity
to make this the best generation
in the history of mankind
or make it the last.
I think we can make it
the best generation
in the history of mankind.
I think all of us
joined together
can make that difference.
[cheers and applause]
-[David Talbot] He fights
through the depression.
-[Robert Kennedy]
Am I a senator now?
-[Driver] You will be.
-[Robert Kennedy]
I expect that, but...
-[David Talbot] Reading poets
and ancient Greeks
who give him kind of more
perspective on life
and history and tragedy.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
Parts of the Greek myths,
the flawed hero
who gets meaning from life
by acting heroically
even if everything fails
and the plays of Shakespeare.
And he began reading all of these
and incorporating them
into his own cosmology.
-[Blake Fleetwood]
And Senator Bobby Kennedy,
he also had
a spiritual awakening.
-[Russell] Bobby Kennedy became
a truly compassionate individual
and that set him apart from
other people running for office
and from the way he had been
perceived when he was younger.
And it was true,
he was a pretty ruthless guy.
That was no longer true
and he was a fighter
for the people.
-[Robert Kennedy] I desperately
needed that we raise
the minimum wage to $1.50
an hour here in the state.
To focus attention
on the poisonous fumes
inflicted on the people
who live in this area.
We've been discussing federal
legislation governing r*fles,
shotguns and hand g*ns,
aftercare program
for narcotics addicts.
The average Indian income is $1,500,
75% below the national average.
We don't think
that it's acceptable,
as I've said before,
with the gross national product
that this country has,
with the great amount of wealth
that this country has,
that we still have people
who can't find jobs.
We still have children
who don't have enough to eat
and don't have clothes to wear.
-[d*ck Russell] The attribute
he most admired in someone was
if they had moral courage,
if they were willing
to stand on their ideals
against all odds sometimes.
-[Blake Fleetwood] And he decided,
that he would buck
the Democratic party,
the Democratic establishment
and the military industrial complex.
We had, we'd been waging
this stupid w*r for so long
and 50,000 Americans died
and he didn't care
what happened to him.
[g*nf*re]
-A Southeast Asia
dominated by communist power
would bring a third world w*r
much closer to terrible reality.
[soft tense music]
Since I reported to you last January,
the enemy has been defeated
in battle after battle.
[applause]
-[Lisa Pease] At this point
in the Democratic party,
it was wrong to speak out
against the Vietnam w*r.
-[interviewer] The w*r
in Vietnam has escalated
at a fantastic rate.
-[newscaster] Do you see
any immediate solution?
-[Johnson] There will be some
who will become frustrated
and bothered and break ranks
under the strain
and some will turn
on their leaders
and on their country
and on our own fighting men.
-Would you be inclined to oppose
further escalation of the w*r?
-[Robert Kennedy] I think first
that we should make this major
kind of effort
to find a peaceful solution,
and I think that's vital
no matter what the turn of events
might be in the next few months.
-[Walter Cronkite] The holiday was Tet--
the Lunar New Year.
-[General Westmoreland]
The enemy, very deceitfully
has taken advantage
of the Tet truce.
-[Walter Cronkite]
The Viet Kong had chosen
a number of strategic targets,
a suicide attack
in the American Embassy.
-[d*ck Russell]
The Tet Offensive in 1968
showed that
we were not winning this w*r
as we'd been assured by the
powers that be in Washington.
It was an awakening,
especially for Bobby.
-[Robert Kennedy] There is no
real dialogue about Vietnam.
We frequently won't let those
who disagree with us speak.
I think it's a very, very bad mistake.
The whole country suffers
and our society suffers.
-[Lisa Pease] After the Tet Offensive,
the establishment
was still behind Johnson
and trying to keep the party together.
-[Lyndon Johnson]
We will stand firm in Vietnam.
[applause]
-[Lisa Pease] But Bobby
quickly saw that the w*r
was turning into a disaster.
-[Johnson] This will make it
necessary to raise
a monthly draft call
from 17,000 to 35,000 per month.
-[Robert Kennedy]
Somebody wrote on the pyramids
at the time
they were being constructed,
the words and no one
was angry enough to speak out.
I think people should be
angry enough to speak out.
if one feels involved in it,
that one should try to do
something about it.
[soft tense music]
-[Robert Kennedy]
Our people and this nation
must be told the truth
about this w*r
in all its terrible reality,
both because it is right,
both because it is right
and because the progress
that we have claimed
toward increasing control
over the country
and the security
of the population
is largely illusionary.
The best way to save our most
precious stake in Vietnam,
the lives of our soldiers,
is to stop
the enlargement of the w*r.
And that the best way
to end casualties
is to end the w*r.
[cheers and applause]
-[Lisa Pease]
This was an earthquake
that Bobby would come
out so much against the w*r.
This sent shock waves
through the establishment
and people were furious at him
for speaking out about this.
-President Johnson said,
if you persisted in that line,
it would end
your political career rapidly.
-[Johnson VO] All of it makes
Bobby look like a great hero
and makes me look like
a son of a b*tch.
-[d*ck Russell] Suddenly there
was tremendous opposition
to the Vietnam policies
that Johnson was advocating.
-[Robert Kennedy]
We don't say that we're never
going to disagree.
I think that there's much
to disagree about,
and I think it's within
the Democratic party
that we should have dissent.
I am at the moment
reassessing what I should do
as not only as a member
of the Democratic Party,
but more importantly
as a United States citizen.
-[d*ck Russell] And then
Robert Kennedy announced
he was going to run
for president.
-I run to seek new policies,
policies to end
the bloodshed in Vietnam
before it further saps our spirit.
-[David Talbot] Civil rights,
poverty in America,
the w*r in Vietnam.
That's why he's running
mainly for the presidency.
Those major themes.
-[d*ck Russell] Two weeks after
Robert Kennedy announced
he was going to run for President,
Johnson saw
the handwriting on the wall.
-I shall not seek
and I will not accept
the nomination of my party
for another term
as your president.
-[d*ck Russell] Lyndon Johnson
was bowing out of the race--
that opened it up.
-[newscaster] The Senator
has spoken out often on Vietnam,
civil rights, and poverty.
And each time he has taken
a minority position.
-[Robert] I think we can find
answers to these problems.
I think we can make progress.
-[supporter] Robert Kennedy
is the only man
that can do the job
that we need done.
-[reporter] Is there a second choice?
-There is no second choice
as far as we're concerned.
-[Blake Fleetwood]
Senator Robert Kennedy,
he was foreseeing a country
that was leaving
a lot of people behind.
He was making alliances
with small businessmen,
with farmers,
with union members,
with Republicans.
-[d*ck Russell] At the same time,
Bobby Kennedy took on
the military industrial complex.
-[Robert Kennedy] I don't accept
the idea of Vietnam
as just a military action,
that this is
just a military effort.
Every time we have had
difficulties in South Vietnam
and Southeast Asia,
we have had only one response.
And that's to send
more military men
and increase our military power.
And I don't think
that's the kind of a struggle
that it is in Southeast Asia.
[cheers and applause]
America was a great force
in the world
with immense prestige
long before we became
a great military power.
-[Lisa Pease]
The generals in the army,
they knew him.
They didn't like him,
they didn't trust him.
They felt he had
a completely different agenda.
He wanted to end the w*r,
bring our troops home.
And Bobby also saw that
Bell Helicopter and Hughes
we're making a fortune
selling helicopters
to the army in Vietnam.
And the CIA,
they're running drugs,
they're trying out new tactics.
They're trying out
expensive new weapons
like Monsanto's Agent Orange.
There is a ton of money
being made off this terrible w*r
and the military
industrial complex,
they didn't want it taken away.
[airplane roaring]
-[newscaster 1]
Agent Orange was a defoliant,
one of those new weapons of w*r
supposed to turn the tide in Vietnam.
It was sprayed over
5 million acres of South Vietnam
from 1962 to 1970.
-[newscaster 2] It was one way
we were going to win the w*r--
dump herbicides
all over the jungle
so the Viet Kong
would come out and fight.
-[newscaster 3]
Its use was restricted in 1970
because tests showed
the ingredients in Agent Orange
caused cancer and birth defects.
-[Ted Koppel] Newly-released
court documents indicate
that the companies
which manufactured Agent Orange
knew as far back as the 1960s
that one of its ingredients
contained the toxic contaminant dioxin.
-[newscaster 1] A lethal
ingredient in Agent Orange.
-[newscaster 2]
The government has now agreed
to pay $8 million a year to veterans.
-[newscaster 3]
Over the next six years,
the fund will pay out at least
a quarter of a billion dollars
to veterans and their families,
including children not yet born.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
Monsanto has been involved in
some of the worst environmental
catastrophes in this country.
It was the creator
of Agent Orange.
It was the creator of DDT.
I've been litigating
against Monsanto
since I became an environmental
lawyer 35 years ago.
-[Stone] You have quite
a long history with Monsanto.
I mean there's the Monsanto
story in your life
seems to start because
of Rachel Carson's book,
Silent Spring.
Was that the origin?
-You know,
when I was a little kid,
I'd wanted to be
a scientist or a vet.
I wanted to be like a field
biologist like Rachel Carson.
One night,
my uncle Jack and my father
had her over to Cape Cod.
I got to meet her
and that was really important
because she really became my hero.
-[newscaster]
Biologist Rachel Carson,
worked four years
in the preparation
of Silent Spring.
What she wrote has been called
the most controversial book
of the year.
[airplane flying by]
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
Up until that time,
nobody had any problem
with pesticides like DDT.
-[narrator] These insects
can now be completely wiped out
by manmade fogs,
loaded with DDT.
-[RFK Jr.] Pesticides
and the chemical industry
were putting us on top
of the world.
We were going to have
abundant food for everybody.
We were going to get rid
of all the pests.
And Rachel Carson came along
and said, yeah,
but actually pesticides,
were imposing huge costs
that we're not seeing.
[helicopter whirring]
Rachel Carson wrote
Silent Spring in '62
and it alerted people
for the first time
that DDT is k*lling
not just the predatory insects,
it's k*lling all the insects,
k*lling the worms.
The fish are dying,
the songbirds are disappearing.
The spring is going to be silent
because there's going to be
no bird song.
She became an enormous threat
to the pesticide industry.
Monsanto, which was the
manufacturer of DDT,
they mounted a nationwide
campaign against Rachel Carson
to discredit her.
They had Life Magazine,
Time Magazine all write attacks,
vicious attacks on her.
They used the same talking points.
She's a quack.
She's anti-science.
-[d*ck Russell] This
courageous woman had taken on
the powers that be showing
the dangers of DDand was just vilified
and taken apart by Monsanto.
-They had scientists
going around the country
doing speeches condemning her.
-[scientist] The major claims
in Ms. Rachel Carson's book
are completely unsupported
by scientific evidence
are gross distortions
of the actual facts.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
This became the blueprint
for all the other industries
for how do you discredit
and destroy your critics.
Rachel Carson
never defended herself
because she was dying
of cancer at the time.
And my uncle
commissioned a group.
He got Jerome Wiesner,
who is a scientific advisor
to bring together
a group of scientists
to actually read her book line by line.
-[newscaster]
The administration announced
that the government pesticide program
would be reviewed by a panel
of the President's Science Committee.
-I think particularly, of course
it's Ms. Carson's book,
but they are examining the matter.
-She gave three references
for virtually every fact
in her book.
-[Oliver Stone]
So she really...
-So she knew the stakes.
-Yeah.
She knew she was going
to be attacked
and they went
through her book line by line
and they issued a report
that validated everything.
And it exonerated her.
And Silent Spring became
one of the greatest bestsellers
in history.
And then my uncle planned
an Earth Day.
He was going around the country
to talk about,
to promote
the first day Earth Day,
and it was his last
big campaign.
I'm very proud that my uncle
vindicated Rachel Carson.
-[Russell] Because of her book,
Silent Spring,
DDT was banned.
She didn't live
long enough to see that,
but it was outlawed
in 1973 in this country.
Monsanto, they needed something
after DDT got outlawed.
So they came up with glyphosate,
which is now a known carcinogen,
and they began using this
in their Roundup herbicide.
-[Brent Wisner]
It was jarring to see
that there was this chemical, glyphosate,
that was causing cancer
because it was a pesticide
that was so commonly used.
It was so pervasive
in our agriculture
and our food systems
and residential uses.
And no one's being warned about it.
-Even though over the years
we saw this propaganda
where they'd say
"Roundup is safe enough
to drink, basically."
-[Brent Wisner]
There was this commercial
where this guys walking
around in shorts
and a t-shirt sh**ting weeds
on his driveway,
like fun little
western-style commercial.
-Home gardeners, and they're
wearing shorts and flip flops
and they're spraying Roundup.
They're going to get it
on their skin
and it's going to be
absorbed by their skin.
-[d*ck Russell] So then in 2017
there was a groundskeeper,
Dewayne "Lee" Johnson,
he had the glyphosate
Roundup Ready on his back.
-[Dewayne "Lee" Johnson]
I was applying the herbicide
and the hose snapped
and it started to funnel out.
And the stuff was going everywhere,
it got on the outside of my suit,
it got inside my suit,
it was on my face,
it was everywhere.
And that's where I got exposed.
-[d*ck Russell]
And he ended up suffering
and almost dying
from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma,
which is a form of cancer
that's very deadly.
Glyphosate was responsible,
so he was one
of the first clients
that this legal team
took on Monsanto.
-[Brent Wisner] Our lawsuits
were about proving that
Monsanto knew
and their failure to warn.
-[Mark Burton] Monsanto for
years and years
and years since Agent Orange,
they're very involved
in politics and lobbying
and so they just had an attitude
in the United States
that they were untouchable.
-[Brent Wisner] We really
didn't have the resources
to take on a company
like Monsanto.
So we started
calling people that we knew
could help us fight this fight.
Because we knew we were
outgunned and outmanned
and out moneyed for sure.
One of first people
we called was Bobby
because he had gone up
against Monsanto before
and he had known
a lot of their tactics.
He'd known
just how nasty they could be
to individual scientists,
particularly in water contamination
and his work
with the Waterkeeper.
So he joined us
right from the very beginning
and helped us develop
this strategy and the process
through which we'd actually
prosecute this case.
-[RFK Jr.] For 40 years, Monsanto knew
that Roundup was carcinogenic
and it made great efforts
to hide that
from the American public.
-[Brent Wisner]
The relationship with the EPA,
particularly as it relates
to Roundup, is a tortured one,
to say the least.
-[Mark Burton] The EPA initially
we're going to classify
glyphosate as a class C carcinogen,
and that's when Monsanto kicked
the lobbying into high gear
and really fought that classification.
-And the political will
to oppose Monsanto disappeared.
-Interactions between Monsanto scientists
and people actually within the EPA
is really how glyphosate got approved.
-[Brent Wisner]
When I first got involved,
I believed in the EPA,
just naively as I may have been.
I thought, oh, well,
they must be mistaken.
And it was Bobby
who explained to me,
no, they know what's going on.
You cannot litigate
this case as though
the EPA is ignorant or mistaken.
You have to litigate this case
as though the EPA is in cahoots,
and he was right.
-[RFK Jr.] We came across
discovery documents
that showed that
it was an email exchange
between the executive officers
of Monsanto Corporation
with the head of the pesticide
division EPA for over a decade.
So the head
of the EPA pesticide division
was actually under Monsanto's control,
and they were telling him,
you have to k*ll this study,
you have to falsify this science.
-[Wisner] Bobby was really good
at understanding the nuances
through which corporate America
manipulates science.
-[newscaster]
Monsanto denies any link between
the active ingredient
in Roundup and cancer.
-[Mark Burton] In court,
Monsanto would just come in
and take an absolute position,
no evidence at all whatsoever.
-Monsanto didn't warn because
glyphosate-based products
don't cause cancer.
-[Mark Burton]
But in one of the emails,
Donna Farmer, one of the head
scientists from Monsanto said,
we can't say
it doesn't cause cancer
because we just haven't done
the studies to prove that.
Of course, that was a dynamite document.
-[RFK Jr.] Monsanto chose
to tell the world
that this product is as safe
as table salt.
If Monsanto had warned
our client, Lee Johnson,
we wouldn't have had a case.
-Late today, a California jury
awarded nearly $300 million
to a former school
groundskeeper who sued Monsanto
claiming its weed K*llers,
including Roundup,
gave him non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
-[Brent Wisner] The unanimous
jury here in San Francisco
has told Monsanto - enough,
you did something wrong
and now you have to pay.
-[newscaster]
And Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
who was in the courtroom
for today's verdict.
-And I'm so glad that this jury
held them accountable.
-[Wisner] It's kind of amazing
that this one groundskeeper
from Northern California
has essentially brought
this venerated institution to its knees.
[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
-I want to say one last thing,
which is that this case was
personally gratifying to me.
My hero, Rachel Carson,
was under a vicious sustained
as*ault by Monsanto.
I watched that happen
as a little boy,
and I was so happy
that I got to be
part of this historic trial,
which once and for all
brought Monsanto
finally to justice
in front of an American jury.
-[Rachel Carson] We've heard
the benefits of pesticides,
but very little about the hazards,
very little about the failures,
the inefficiencies.
And yet the public was being
asked to accept these chemicals,
was being asked
to acquiesce in their use
and did not have
the whole picture.
So I set about to remedy
the balance there.
[soft tense music]
-[Russell] Along came COVID,
and this is when
Bobby began taking on
the pharmaceutical industry
and its connections to the CDC,
the Food and Drug Administration
and big media
-[Oliver Stone]
When it comes to COVID,
what is it that they got wrong
in your opinion?
-The fact that we mismanaged
COVID is indisputable,
and the best evidence of that
is that for 50 years
there's been protocols
for managing global pandemics,
and they all say--
the WHO,
the European Medical Agency,
CDC, et cetera,
they all say in a pandemic
what you do is
you isolate the sick,
you take care of the vulnerable,
but you don't lock down a population
for a respiratory virus
because it's more likely
to spread indoors.
The lockdowns actually
end up k*lling more people,
so they were violating
their own protocols.
-[d*ck Russell] Bobby was talking early on
about the fact that this virus
most likely escaped
from a lab in Wuhan, China,
which had been funded by Dr. Anthony
Fauci's National Institutes of Health.
But now we know that that's
pretty much what happened.
-[Nicole Shanahan]
During the pandemic,
it was very clear
that there was one narrative
that anyone was allowed to discuss
and anything counter to that narrative
we were made to believe was dangerous,
uninformed.
-[RFK Jr.] I knew back in May of 2020
that the COVID vaccine was not
going to prevent transmission.
I went through the evidence,
I read the monkey studies.
They were basing the whole study
on a handful of monkeys
and they were giving
half of them the vaccine
and half of them a placebo,
and they were
exposing them to COVID
and the vaccinated monkeys
had the same amount of COVID
in their nasal pharynx
as the unvaccinated monkeys.
And when I said the monkey study
showed the vaccine
doesn't prevent transmission,
I was called a conspiracy theorist
and silenced for it,
taken off of Instagram.
-[d*ck Russell] He was removed
from Facebook, Twitter.
He was just blackballed, basically.
-[Stone] It's scary that the
pharmaceutical companies
have grown into 70% of
the advertising on television.
-[RFK Jr.] Seventy-five
percent of evening news
from pharmaceutical companies
and I can't get on
any of the networks,
so all they hear about me
is the defamations
and the pejoratives and insults
and the name calling,
and you know, he's a r*cist,
he's an antisemite,
he's got a brain worm,
he eats dogs.
He's anti-vaxx.
-[Nicole Shanahan]
I did a quick Google search
and only saw very negative
articles about Bobby,
and I realized that
there was something going on
with the media trying to censor
what he was trying to say.
-[d*ck Russell]
What he was pointing out was
a lot of people died from
side effects of these vaccines,
or at least their illnesses
were exacerbated
by taking the vaccine
rather than cured.
We now know when President Biden
came into office,
he and Mark Zuckerberg got together
and Biden requested
that they take Bobby Kennedy off
their social media.
-These people from the Biden
administration pushed us
and said,
anything that says that vaccines
might have side effects,
you basically need to take down.
Our government is telling us
that we need to censor true things.
It's like, this is a disaster.
-It's terrible what they did
to suppress Bobby's free speech.
His family broke with him,
a lot of people broke with him.
[siren blaring]
-[Rep. Connolly]
Hate speech has consequences.
Distortion of the truth has consequences.
-You don't have the right
to a platform
to promote idiotic
bigoted messaging.
This is not the kind of
free speech that I know of.
-[Rep. Schultz] Mr. Kennedy,
do you think it was easy
for Jewish people to escape
systematic slaughter of Nazis,
yes or no?
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] Absolutely not.
-[Rep. Wasserman Schultz] Okay, good.
Do you think it was just as hard
to wear a mask during COVID
as it was to hide under floorboards
or false walls so you weren't m*rder*d
or dragged to a concentration camp?
-Of course not. That's ridiculous.
-That's a comparison that you made.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
I did not make that comparison.
Mr. Kennedy,
the measures taken--
The time is mine.
I'm reclaiming it.
Please ask the witness
to stop talking.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
You asked me a question.
-Protective measures were taken
to take down disinformation
about vaccines,
and no matter what you may
think, Mr. Kennedy
and I revere your name,
you're not here to propound
your case for censorship.
No.
It's an opportunity
to have a conspiracy theory
and it makes me profoundly sad.
I began my political interest
with your father
and it brings shame
on a storied name that I revere.
-I just want to respond--
-[Rep. Plaskett] Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair.
-[RFK Jr.] May I, Mr. Chairman?
-[Rep. Plaskett] You may not, you may not.
-[Rep. Jordan] I don't think--
-[Rep. Plaskett] Time's out.
We're done.
-[RFK Jr.] I want to say this
while I'm on the record,
while I'm under oath.
I've never been anti-vaccine,
but everybody in this room
probably believes that I have been
because that's the prevailing narrative.
I believe vaccines should be
tested with the same rigor
as other medicines and medications,
and my views are
constantly misrepresented.
I spent 30 years trying
to get mercury
out of the fish in this country,
and nobody ever called me anti-fish.
At that time we were trying
to get mercury out of vaccines.
Mothers were coming and saying,
my child was injured by the vaccine,
and they said, nobody's listening to us.
And I felt like
I should listen to them
and actually read the science.
And that is what got me down into the--
-[Rep. Jordan] Time.
-And by the way,
it's the worst career decision
I have ever made.
We have to stop trying
to destroy each other,
to marginalize, to vilify,
to gaslight each other.
We have to find that place
inside of ourselves of light,
of empathy, of compassion,
and above all, we need to elevate
the constitution
of the United States,
which was written
for hard times,
and that has to be
the premier compass
for all of our activities.
Thank you very much.
-[Rep. Jordan] Thank you.
-[Rep. Schultz] Mr. Chairman.
[applause]
-[Rep. Jordan] We stand in recess.
We stand in recess.
We'll be back in
and right back at it.
Thank you all.
[applause]
[siren blaring]
[indistinct chatter]
Do they know
about Martin Luther King?
Ladies and gentlemen,
I'm only going
to talk to you
just for a minute
or so this evening
because I have some
very sad news for all of you
and I think sad news
for all of our fellow citizens
and people who love peace
all over the world,
and that is that
Martin Luther King was shot
and was k*lled tonight
in Memphis, Tennessee.
For those of you who are tempted
to be filled with hatred
and mistrust of the injustice
of such an act,
I would only say that
I can also feel in my own heart
the same kind of feeling.
I had a member
of my family k*lled.
But we have to make an effort
to get beyond
or go beyond these rather
difficult times.
What we need
in the United States
is not division,
what we need
in the United States is not hatred.
What we need
in the United States
is not violence and lawlessness,
but is love and wisdom
and compassion
toward one another.
A feeling of justice toward those
who still suffer
within our country,
whether they be white
or whether they be black.
Let us say a prayer
for our country
and for our people.
Thank you very much.
[cheers and applause]
-[David Talbot] I think that
Bobby Kennedy himself knew
in early 1968 when he fatefully decides
that he must run for president,
that he was doing so under a great cloud,
that he was doing so
at risk to his own life.
And imagine the courage
that it took for Bobby Kennedy
to plunge into the crowds
during the 1968 campaign,
again and again
putting himself in danger.
And why does he do this?
Because he thinks the country
is so mortally wounded
at this point,
is in such a suffering
place after years of w*r,
and rioting in its inner cities,
of racial strife,
that he alone knows that
he's probably the only candidate
who can heal the country,
so he takes this burden
on his shoulders.
-[Russell] When Robert Kennedy
came into the race,
people didn't really
give him a chance
and there was a lot of
resentment and opposition,
but he began to win the primaries.
For example,
he went to South Dakota
and there he spent time
with the Lakota Sioux
on the Pine Ridge reservation.
-[RFK Jr.] My father took us
to Indian reservations
everywhere we went.
-Because he wanted you
to see the poverty
or he wanted to see
a different way of life?
-He was just interested in Indians
and he felt, he really believed
America was an exemplary nation,
that we were
the world's exemplary democracy.
But that we'd never live up
to the promise of our nation
if we didn't go back and redress
the original sin of America,
which was the genocide
of the Native Americans.
So he was concerned about
the way that they lived
and the poverty.
-[Robert Kennedy] That these
conditions can be allowed
to prevail among a people
uniquely entitled
to call themselves
the First Americans.
A people whose civilization
flourished here for centuries,
before the name America
was thought of,
this is nothing
less than a national disgrace,
-And he's bestowed upon him
an honored chief
of the American Indians.
[applause]
-[RFK Jr.] When he was on that
Sioux reservation in 1968,
there was 20,000 white people
waiting for him in Rapid City,
and they waited
for about eight hours
and his aides kept saying,
you got to go there.
The Indians don't vote anyway.
And my father was saying,
I'm staying here.
And he spent the day
at the reservation
and didn't get to Rapid City
until the evening,
and he won the state
of South Dakota
and he largely won
because it was the first time
there was a massive Indian vote
and he got almost
a 100% of the vote.
So he won the most rural state
in the country,
which was South Dakota
and the most urban state.
So he had succeeded
in bridging the divide.
-[David Talbot] Bobby Kennedy
had a brief and shining moment
where if he had won,
if he'd been elected,
he could have brought
the country together.
During the campaign
he would tell people,
yes, I don't believe
the Warren Report.
Yes, I'm going to reopen
the assassination case.
-[interviewer] Would you welcome
a reopening of the investigation
into President Kennedy's death?
-Well, I don't see that
if there isn't
any new evidence to consider,
you'd ever get away
from the idea
that maybe there was a plot.
We just didn't find
any traces of it.
-[David Talbot] All the forces
he felt had k*lled JFK
could not allow Bobby Kennedy
to become president
because he was going to be
coming after them then,
with the full power
of the federal government.
-[d*ck Russell] This meant that
Kennedy had to go.
-[newscaster] Senator Kennedy
is going down now
to address his supporters as
McCarthy did a short while ago.
Rafer Johnson,
the Olympic decathlon winner,
is on one side of him there.
He's been acting as a bodyguard.
Now he's advancing
towards the ballroom
where he will talk
to his campaign workers
from California.
-[supporters chanting]
-[newscaster] Here he is now,
he's entering the ballroom
and you can hear the cheers
from his supporters.
-[supporters cheering]
-[David Talbot] So Bobby Kennedy,
I'm sad to say,
his days are numbered
from the moment he announces
for president.
In fact, Jackie Kennedy
told him this.
Jackie Kennedy told him
she was crushed by his decision
and she said, "Bobby,
the same people who k*lled Jack
are going to k*ll the you."
[camera shutter clicks]
[g*nf*re]
[screaming]
-[reporter]
Kennedy has been shot.
They think Kennedy
has been shot,
appeared to be g*nshots
in a little room off to the side.
I was near the Senator.
What appeared--
what appeared to be g*nshots
coming from inside
this room in here.
I'm not...
Keep me plugged in.
There's a great deal of blood.
Keep me plugged in.
[indistinct chatter]
-[reporter]
We don't know what--
-[bystander] Move back, please!
-[newscaster] Oh, someone else was shot.
Someone else was shot.
We had another person
who was next to Kennedy
who was shot in the forehead.
She's bleeding badly.
Another person is shot near Kennedy.
It's mass chaos here.
We did hear g*nf*re
from in the hallway,
there are people
running everywhere.
-[police] The individual
we have in custody
is Sirhan Sirhan.
[siren blaring]
-[reporter]
I don't know how many times
the Senator was shot.
His blood is still here
on the floor.
[siren blaring]
-[Frank Mankiewicz]
Senator Robert Francis Kennedy
died at 1:44 AM, today
June 6th, 1968.
-[Oliver Stone]
Now, I want to ask you
about your father's assassination.
And what do you make of it?
-[RFK Jr.] I always assumed
that my dad's m*rder
was pretty straightforward
because Sirhan confessed
to the m*rder.
There were 77 eyewitnesses
and many people,
at least a dozen,
testified that they'd seen him
firing the shots at my dad.
Paul Schrade, who was a very
close friend of my father,
a very, very compassionate,
determined labor organizer.
He was standing
beside my father,
maybe a foot behind him
as they walked into
the Ambassador Hotel kitchen.
And the first of the shots at my father
had hit Paul Schrade
and he had fallen down.
He survived.
-[Paul Schrade]
It's a great personal tragedy
because Bob Kennedy was
a very close friend of mine
and I, not only as a friend,
but expected him
to be a great president.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
And then probably 15 years ago,
Paul Schade,
he called me and he said,
"I want you to come
to my house
and read your dad's autopsy report."
And I said, "That's the last
thing in the world
that I want to do."
And he said, "I'm asking you
and I need you to do this."
And because of the role that
he played in my father's life
and because he had taken
a b*llet for my father,
I felt like
I couldn't say no to him.
So I went to his home
and I sat at his kitchen table
and I read that autopsy report
and it was transformative for me
because anybody
who reads that report
will understand that Sirhan
could not have k*lled my father.
-[newscaster] Final totals
will be Kennedy 48%,
Senator McCarthy 41%.
-[Lisa Pease] The mainstream
narrative of June 4th
is that Kennedy wins the primary.
He goes down
to the embassy ballroom
and gives his acceptance speech.
-[Robert Kennedy]
My thanks to all of you.
And now it's on to Chicago
and let's win there.
-Thank you very much.
-[supporters cheering]
-[Lisa Pease] At that point,
he walks off
the back of the stage
and walks through the pantry.
The cameras are all off
at this point
because the event is over.
There are busboys in the pantry.
There are some campaign
hangers on, there's staff.
And Sirhan steps out,
pulls out a g*n,
starts firing at Kennedy.
-And Syrian fired
two shots of my dad.
And then he was grabbed
by Rafer Johnson,
Rosie Greer,
and four other guys.
So six people altogether.
And I talked
to Rafer about this.
Rafer was a gold medal
decathlon champion in 1960.
Very close friend of my father.
Rafer told me they bent Sirhan
over the steam table.
-[reporter] I'm right here.
Rafer Johnson
has a hold of a man
who apparently
has fired the shots.
He has fired the shots.
He still has the g*n.
The g*n is pointed
at me right at this moment.
That's it, Rafer, get it!
Get the g*n Rafer!
Okay, now hold onto the guy!
Hold onto him!
Take a hold of his thumb
and break it if you have to!
Get his thumb!
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
Rafer took the g*n hand
and pointed the g*n
away from my father.
And Sirhan then was able
to fire off six other shots
in the opposite direction
from my father
and emptied the magazine.
-[reporter] Hold him Rafer!
We don't want another Oswald!
Hold him, Rafer,
keep people away from him!
-[Lisa Pease] And the witnesses again,
who saw them both
and were in a good position
to judge distance,
put the g*n muzzle about
three feet in front of Kennedy.
Then we cut to the autopsy report
and the coroner, Thomas Noguchi,
a very competent coroner
who'd done many famous cases
including Marilyn Monroe
and Natalie Wood
and other celebrities.
He was given the body of RFK
and it was clear to him immediately
as it was to the police
because they saw the body.
Kennedy had been shot
from behind the right ear.
He had not been shot
from the front.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
The shots that hit my father--
there were four,
all of them were from behind.
One of them went harmlessly
through the shoulder pad
of his jacket.
Two of 'em went into his back
and one of 'em went into
the back of his head,
which was the shot
that k*lled him.
And Noguchi says that
all of those shots
were contact shots,
meaning they left
a carbon tattoo
on my father's skin,
which means that the barrel
could not have been more than
a half an inch from his body.
-[Thomas Noguchi]
The muzzle distance would be
one inch from the right ear
and no more than three inches.
-[RFK Jr.] And the Sirhan
was never behind him
and never got that close to him.
-[Pease] So how do you reconcile
three feet from in front
with an inch and a half from behind?
And you don't.
-My father appears to have known
that he was being shot from behind
because the last thing he did
was twist around
and tear off the tie of
the security guard behind him.
The early pictures of my father
show my father lying
on the ground
with the clip on tie.
-[Lisa Pease]
From day one from moment one,
Sirhan claimed he did not know
what happened in the pantry.
The police asked him questions
like, is this your car?
He's like, I don't know.
They said, what's your name?
He was completely silent.
And so as one of the DA's
assistants is talking to him,
he stops himself midsentence, he's like,
do you know where you are?
Do you know what
you've been charged with?
He knew Sirhan wasn't processing
like a normal person
would process.
-[interviewer]
Do you remember anything?
-No, no, no.
I don't remember much
what happened after that.
-[interviewer] You don't
remember much about that.
I don't remember.
-[Lisa Pease] And there are
12 points of entry
for the eight b*ll*ts
Sirhan's g*n could have held.
Two b*ll*ts
were removed from Kennedy.
Five other people
had b*ll*ts removed from them.
-[RFK Jr.] Five people,
including Paul Schrade.
-[Pease] But there are still
at least five more b*llet holes
pictured from FBI photos
and an AP photo.
-[d*ck Russell] And in the chaos
of what happened there,
people didn't initially question
the fact that there was
a recently-employed security guard
standing behind Robert Kennedy.
-[Lisa Pease] Thane Eugene Cesar
had joined a security company
only a week earlier
who were running security
for the event
that night at the hotel.
And Thane Cesar also was
moonlighting for Lockheed,
who was also working as
a bodyguard for Howard Hughes.
And I went through some
public records databases.
The only employer Cesar
ever listed was the CIA.
So you've got this CIA guy
at Kennedy's elbow.
He's six foot two.
He's stocky.
And he's literally holding
Kennedy's right arm
with his left hand
if he's right-handed,
and he is, no one is in a better
position to sh**t Kennedy
under the arm than Thane Cesar.
He's right there.
-[RFK Jr.] Cesar steered
to my father into the kitchen,
and when he was shot,
my father fell on top of Cesar
and Cesar fell as well,
and then pushed my father
off him and stood up.
And he had his g*n drawn,
which was visible
to numerous witnesses.
And Cesar later suggested
that maybe he had pulled his g*n
to sh**t at Sirhan,
but the g*n was never taken
by the police.
-[d*ck Russell] At the time,
Bobby had planned
to go to the Philippines
to speak with than Eugene Cesar,
who quite possibly fired the shots
that assassinated the senator.
And Cesar said, "Yeah, I could do that,
but you're going to have to pay me--"
I don't know, I think it was $30,000,
something like that.
It didn't happen.
Cesar backed out
at the last minute
and he has since died.
-It's a dirty story.
But you went to see Sirhan.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] Yeah,
it's occurred to me,
although I don't have evidence,
definitive evidence for this,
that Sirhan was a distractor.
He believes that
he was hypnotized.
-I don't remember aiming
at any human being.
I don't remember any of that.
I've said that from the get-go.
The doctor said that I was
in a dissociated state.
-[RFK Jr.] During the course
of my own investigation,
I got a hold of the CIA
training manual for MK Ultra.
It was about developing
a Manchurian candidate
and using hypnosis
and psychoactive drugs.
And one of the interesting
things it says in there is
it says it's very difficult
to reliably train somebody
to be an unwilling assassin
and that it may
take years of training,
but that you can train a distractor
within a couple of months.
And a distractor
would be the person
who would be visibly
firing the shots
while the real k*ller was
actually firing the k*ll shots.
-If that isn't the template
for what happened in the pantry,
I don't know what is.
So again, they didn't have time
to train Sirhan
to be a skilled assassin
in that short of time,
but they did have time
to train him to be a patsy.
-[Sirhan Sirhan] I don't remember.
I'm not saying that to be
dismissive of my responsibility,
but that is really what happened.
-[Lisa Pease] When you're in
the hypnotic state,
sometimes the memory
is not being recorded
or it's recorded,
but it's locked away
and you can only retrieve it
in a hypnotic state.
And so Sirhan's own defense team
had hypnotized him
to try to get him to remember
what happened in the pantry.
-[Lisa Pease] And it turned out
that what Sirhan remembered
from that night
in hypnosis was meeting
a very attractive girl
in a polka dot dress.
-[Lisa Pease]
He remembers her taking him
to the center in the pantry.
-[Lisa Pease] The choking is
almost k*lling him.
So that almost brings him out
of hypnosis.
No recollection
of Robert Kennedy at all there.
There were witnesses
who saw this girl
that Sirhan remembered
seeing under hypnosis.
One of them was Sandy Serrano.
-[Sandra Serrano]
Everybody was in the main room,
you know, listening to him speak,
and it was too hot.
So I went outside
and I was out on the terrace.
Then this girl came running down
the stairs in the back.
I can remember what she had on
and everything.
She had on a white dress
with polka dots.
She came running down
the stairs and said,
"We've shot him,
we've shot him."
And I said, "Who did you sh**t?"
And she says,
"Weve shot Senator Kennedy."
-[Lisa Pease] Sandy's
obviously distressed.
So what did the police do?
Hank Hernandez and Manny Pena
were the two people
at the LAPD charged with
the conspiracy investigation.
However, both of them had former
intelligence backgrounds
and ties to the CIA.
They interviewed her
multiple times
and she wasn't
changing her story.
So Hank Hernandez runs
what can only be called
psychological warfare against her.
-[Pease] Eventually she's like,
I don't know.
Maybe I misheard.
And that's how they shut down
that angle.
However, the topic of hypnosis
and mind control was so powerful
and so sensitive
that when Nixon fired Helms
after the whole Watergate debacle,
Helms on his way out
of the agency,
the one thing
he asked them to destroy
was all the MK Ultra files.
-[interviewer]
That leads you to conclude what?
-My opinion is really irrelevant.
What's important is
what the facts say.
I've asked for a reinvestigation
of the m*rder.
[somber music]
[somber music]
-[Dan Rather] Six of Senator
Robert Kennedy's, ten children
had been with him in California.
They were flown back late today
aboard a government plane.
[somber music]
The tragedy and senseless violence
of Robert F. Kennedy's death
casts a deep shadow
of grief across America
and across the world.
The presidential proclamation
went on to declare Sunday
as a national day of mourning
over the death
of Senator Robert Kennedy.
-[Russell] The senator's body
was flown back to New York,
and then there was
a train ride that took him
to Arlington Cemetery
to be buried beside his brother.
And Bobby Jr. said
that he would never forget
looking out that train window
at the thousands of people gathered
to pay homage to his father.
Bobby Jr. spent some time
in the office
that his father sometimes used,
and he looked around
at the walls
and there were all these
photographs of Kennedys
and Kennedy relatives,
including his Uncle Joe,
who he never knew
because he was k*lled
during World w*r II.
An Aunt Kick
that he never knew either
because she was k*lled
in a plane crash
in the late 1940s,
and he realized
they're all dead.
-[Edward Kennedy]
My brother need not be idealized
or enlarged in death
beyond what he was in life,
to be remembered simply
as a good and decent man
who saw wrong
and tried to right it,
saw suffering and tried to heal it,
saw a w*r and tried to stop it.
As he said many times
in many parts of this nation,
some men see things as they are
and say, Why?
I dream things that never were
and say, Why not?
[somber music]
-[RFK Jr.] My father,
he would give me things to read
all the time and poems
and books, et cetera.
It was about a couple of weeks
before he died
and he said to me,
with this unusual intensity,
I want you to read this book
called The Plague.
The book is about a doctor
who is in a quarantine city
in North Africa,
and there's a plague
raging through the city,
and nobody can go in or out
and it doesn't tell
what the name of the plague is,
and nobody knows,
but everybody is dying.
And a lot of the beginning
of the book
is a conversation that this
doctor is having with himself
about whether he should venture
out of his apartment
because he knows
that if he goes to help people,
he's highly likely to die
and very unlikely
to be able to help anybody
because nobody knows how to help.
In the end,
he goes out and does his duty
and consoles people,
does the best he can
to bring comfort to people.
And so after he died,
I read the book several times
trying to unlock the key
of what message
he had been trying to tell me.
This doctor,
he accepted his burden
and he did his duty.
And it brings
a sense of wellbeing
that you're doing
what you're supposed to do.
And for me, it makes sense
because I find that
the best way for me to live
is to make the effort
to do the next right thing,
to get up every morning,
say reporting for duty, sir,
and then let go of the results,
that the outcomes in God's hands.
We do what we're supposed to do.
But if the boulder needs
to roll back on us,
then that's okay.
We'll push it up again.
-[RFK Jr.] I've come here
today to announce my candidacy
for the Democratic nomination
for President of the United States.
[supporters cheering]
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
It is very painful for me
to let go of the party
of my uncles, my father,
but I'm here to declare myself
an independent candidate.
[supporters cheering]
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
Each time that our volunteers
turned in those towering boxes
of signatures needed
to get on the ballot,
the DNC dragged us into court
in state after state
attempting to erase their work.
-[RFK Jr.] Ultimately, the only
thing that will save our country
and our children
is if we choose to love our kids
more than we hate each other.
-[RFK Jr.] The first thing
I've done every morning
for the past 20 years is to get
on my knees and pray to God
that he would put me in a position
to end the
chronic disease epidemic
and to help America's children.
-[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
Ours has always been a family
that has been involved
in public service,
and I look forward
to continuing that tradition.
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RFK: Legacy (2025)
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