Hyman B. Raskin Oral History Interview – JFK#1, 05/08/1964 Administrative Information

Creator: Hyman B. Raskin Interviewer: Sander Vanocur Date of Interview: May 8, 1964 Place of Interview: Palm Springs, California Length: 80 pages Biographical Note Raskin, campaign worker, John F. Kennedy for President (1960), discusses his role managing Western states in JFK’s presidential campaign and the importance of state primaries for JFK’s campaign, among other issues. Access Open Usage Restrictions Copyright of these materials has passed to the United States Government upon the death of the interviewee. Users of these materials are advised to determine the copyright status of any document from which they wish to publish. 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 The copyright law extends its protection to unpublished works from the moment of creation in a tangible form.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 Hyman B. Raskin, recorded interview by Sander Vanocur, May 8, 1964, (page number), John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.

Oral History Interview

Of

Hyman B. Raskin Although a legal agreement was not signed during the lifetime of Hyman B. Raskin, upon his death, ownership of the recording and transcript of his interview for the Oral History Program passed to the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library. The following terms and conditions apply: 1. The transcript is available for use by researchers. 2. The tape recording shall be made available to those researchers who have access to

the transcript. 3. Copyright to the interview transcript and tape is assigned to the United States

Government. 4. Copies of the transcript and the tape recording may be provided by the Library to

researchers upon request for a fee. 5. Copies of the transcript and tape recording may be deposited in or loaned to

institutions other than the John F. Kennedy Library.

Hyman B. Raskin – JFK #1

Table of Contents Page Topic 1 Early opinions on John F. Kennedy (JFK) being the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party 2 How Raskin came to work for JFK’s 1960 presidential campaign 5 Why JFK was interested in Raskin working on his campaign 8 JFK’s liabilities as a candidate 10 Different strategies for JFK’s presidential campaign 11 Raskin’s meeting with Adlai Stevenson about JFK’s candidacy 14 JFK’s request for Raskin to meet with Midwestern states 15 Raskin’s disappointment in JFK’s speech-making 16 JFK’s manner when meeting people and “political sex appeal” 18 Raskin’s report on his meetings with Midwestern states 22 The early formations of the Kennedy staff 23 1959 Kennedy staff strategizing meeting in Cape Cod 24 Raskin’s assignment to the manage the Western states 25 JFK’s choice of primaries to enter into 27 Public response to Raskin switching from working for Stevenson to working for JFK 30 Difficulties in gaining support for JFK in Oregon and California 36 The importance of the Oregon primary 39 Robert F. Kennedy’s (RFK) involvement in JFK’s campaign 43 JFK’s success in winning Arizona’s delegates 45 The Montana State Convention 47 Campaigning in California 50 Raskin’s work at the Democratic National Convention 54 The Kennedy staff’s communication setup during the convention 57 Lyndon Johnson as JFK’s choice for vice president 61 The anti-Catholicism issue in Western states 64 JFK’s chances winning California in the election and mistakes made with absentee ballots 69 Raskin’s disinterest in continuing to work for the federal government after the election was over 73 Raskin’s relationship with JFK during his presidency 74 The story of JFK’s autograph to Raskin and his illegible handwriting 76 Qualities of JFK’s personality Raskin thought were unique for a politician 79 Raskin’s story of what he was doing when he heard of JFK’s assassination

Oral History Interview

With

HYMAN B. RASKIN

May 8, 1964 Palm Springs, California

By Sander Vanocur

For the John F. Kennedy Library

VANOCUR: This is Sander Vanocur, interviewing Hyman B. Raskin for the

Kennedy Library. We are conducting this interview in Palm Springs, California on the evening of Friday, May 8, 1964. For just the sake of

familiarity we'll use our given names in this interview. Hy, you were on Stevenson's [Adlai E. Stevenson] campaign in 1952, you served as Deputy Director of the nineteen, from 1952 to '55 on the National Committee, the Democratic National Committee, then you were again Western Director for Stevenson in '56. Now, what period between '56 and '60 did you think that John F. Kennedy might be the candidate of the Democratic Party in 1960? RASKIN: It was not too long after the 1956 campaign was over. To the best of

my recollection it really started during the Christmas, New Year, the holidays of 1956, '57 in Florida. I went there for a brief holiday, and

one evening I had dinner with some people who were delegates to the 1956 convention. From Florida. They recognized at that time that Stevenson would probably not be a candidate again in 1960. They asked me who I thought would be the most logical candidate for president in 1960. And I in turn asked them who they thought might be the most logical

[-1-]

candidate. One of the people spoke up and said if Kennedy would be interested in running for the presidency, they would immediately start out and go to work. The idea sounded like a

good one to me, so we discussed it at that time with the other people, they were all in agreement. This gave me the idea that even that early, a lot of people were thinking about Senator Kennedy as a candidate for president. Not too long after that, I was in Chicago and I discussed it with other people. Who also seemed to be in agreement that Kennedy would make a good candidate. By some coincidence, Bob Kennedy [Robert F. Kennedy] came through Chicago on one of his missions at the time that he was working for the Rackets Committee, the McClellan Committee, and I told him of my experience. He looked at me rather rilely and seemed to be intrigued by the idea but also somewhat surprised. And from that time on, the idea stuck with me. VANOCUR: Well, did they contact you, or did you contact them, or was it kind of a

coming together by mutual happenstance? RASKIN: No, it came about in a rather unusual way. George Smathers, Senator

Smathers of Florida, came to Chicago to make a speech at the executive committee some time during the latter part of 1957.

VANOCUR: Was that the Executive Club or the executive committee? RASKIN: The Executive Club of Chicago. And I attended the luncheon and after

the meeting was over, Senator Smathers asked me to ride out to the airport with him. And it so happened that his plane was delayed for

about two hours. And we sat in the airport in Chicago and discussed many things, and one of

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the things that we discussed somewhat, at some length, was this very thing, the possibility that Senator Kennedy might be interested and might become a candidate for president. Smathers suggested that the next time that I came east, meaning Washington of course, that he thought that I ought to discuss this with Senator Kennedy. Of course when I came east some months later, I contacted Senator Smathers and he told me that Senator Kennedy had gone to New York, the day before, and would very much like to see me in New York. I went to New York and I spent several hours with Senator Kennedy, and as I recall it was some time during the month of November, in 1957. And I came away from that meeting and that discussion with the firm belief that Senator Kennedy was very much interested in becoming a candidate, and he told me that he would like to talk with me about it further when I came back to Washington. I didn't come back to Washington for the next two months, but when I decided that it was time to talk about it again, I attempted to contact Senator Kennedy and learned that he was in Palm Beach, and talked with him in Palm Beach, and he invited me to come down to discuss it with him in Palm Beach during the Christmas holidays, between Christmas and New Year's, actually. VANOCUR: Well, now, you had known him, hadn't you, in the '56 campaign

somewhat?

RASKIN: Oh yes. Yes, I had a great deal of contact with him in '56, I had some contact with him in '52, rather briefly, and saw him occasionally between '52 and '56. I saw him a good deal during the convention. I

also saw several other members of the family at the convention in '56.

[-3-] VANOCUR: Well, to go back one step, what was your role in this strategy, if there

was such a strategy, about selecting the vice-presidential candidate in 1956? Did you go along with the John Sherrin [John H. Sharon] view

that Stevenson ought to throw it open to the convention, or did you have a candidate for the... RASKIN: No, I had no candidate, I thought that Governor Stevenson's idea was

an exceptionally good one, of throwing it open. I do believe that Governor Stevenson had had this idea all along, of throwing the

convention open, it was discussed many times during the early part of the pre-convention campaign. This always seemed to be Stevenson's idea. VANOCUR: Well, did you feel that when Kennedy lost by a narrow margin to

Kefauver [Estes Kefauver] and then made the gracious concession speech, did you think then, as some say now they thought, this was the

beginning of his campaign for the presidency in 1960. Did you think that at the time? RASKIN: No I did not. I, this, this had never occurred to me at the time at all, it

did occur to me much later when I was discussing it as I said, in Florida. I felt that so many people were of the opinion that Kennedy

made such a great showing at the convention, he was very popular after the convention, he was one of the most sought after speakers during the 1956 campaign. I would say that next to Stevenson and Kefauver he was in the greatest demand. Which of course to me was evidence that he was very popular, and would appeal to Democrats all over the United States and of course to the general public. I do feel that this had a great deal of

[-4-] bearing on it, yes. VANOCUR: Okay... RASKIN: But I did not think about it at the time. VANOCUR: ...now to move back where we were before. After this meeting with

Senator Kennedy, had he asked you to work for him, or was it just kind of a, exploring of each other?

RASKIN: It was, yes, the latter, it was more or less of an exploration meeting. I wanted to make sure in my own mind that he was serious about it, that was one of the real purposes of my going there to meet him. He

assured me, perhaps not in so many words but at least implied rather strongly that he was very much interested in it and I told him at the time that, I would make some investigations, explorations, and some checks around the country in the next few months, and report back to him as objectively as I possibly could. Then we would discuss it further after that. VANOCUR: Well, now did he come out and say, look, I'm after it, what's your view

about my chances, or was it more or less more cagey than that? RASKIN: I can't characterize it as being cagey, Sandy, I think that he definitely

was interested in it, I do honestly believe that he wanted the opinions of as many people as he could possibly get on the subject, well, let's

say a rather confidential method. And I assured him that I would do it on that basis. VANOCUR: Well let's throw your own modesty aside. Why do you

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think he came to Hyman Raskin? What expertise did you think that you offered him, was it on the Western states or was it the general

political situation? RASKIN: I think it was the general political situation. He knew that I had been

through the '52 and '56 campaigns and I should have a pretty good knowledge of what his chances might be, he knew that I was up to

date on the attitudes, or could become up to date on the attitudes of the politicians around the United States and therefore I could perhaps offer him some advice, as a result of my speaking with these various people around the country. I do believe at that time there were very few people, let's say close to him, or part of his strategy committee, or on his staff, who went beyond, let's say Massachusetts and a few New England states. I think he wanted to know for instance what was in the minds of the Democratic politicians in the middle West and the West, he seemed to know a good deal about those in New England and perhaps the Atlantic states. And I offered to go out west and go through some of the middle western areas and talk to various people and report back to him on their attitude. VANOCUR: Well, did you just leave it hanging at that time that he was interested,

or did he go into a discussion about his assets and his liabilities, was it that detailed…

RASKIN: No it was not. VANOCUR: Okay then, now, what’s this date again, this occurred ’57?

[-6-] RASKIN: '57 in November. VANOCUR: All right, what was the next contact you had with the Kennedys or the

Senator himself? RASKIN: The next contact was in Palm Beach between Christmas and New

Year’s. Of '57, which was approximately thirty to forty days after the original contact.

VANOCUR: What happened then, did you get called on? RASKIN: Yes, I was invited down by Senator Kennedy to discuss what I had

learned in the interim. I had actually gone out to a municipal officers convention in San Francisco where I met many mayors and other

public officials of various large cities, and had a real good opportunity, to find out what their attitudes were at that time. Of course we must realize that this is quite early. I'm not talking about December of 1957. And I found a pretty good reception. I also found that there was a good deal of interest in some other candidates, I recall specifically there was a good deal of interest in Governor Miner [Robert B. Meyner] of New Jersey, at that time. Of course that was immediately after his election in 1957, so he was quite popular at that time. VANOCUR: Well, how did you represent yourself? You were just Hy Raskin, a

member of the party, a former official of the committee, you didn't say you were working for Kennedy…

RASKIN: No, definitely I didn't because when I discussed it with these various

people I discussed it on the basis of who do you think we ought to have as a candidate for,

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president in 1960. VANOCUR: Had anybody been thinking about this, had any consensus been formed

among these people? RASKIN: No, no, it was just the attitudes of the various individuals who might

have some influence in their own states or cities and would eventually perhaps have some influence at the convention.

VANOCUR: Well, what were the net assets and liabilities they talked about in terms

of a Kennedy candidacy?

RASKIN: Well the usual ones, the ones that we heard about so much later, the liabilities were of course the obvious ones, the fact that he was a Catholic, the fact that he was young, he was very rich, and perhaps

lacked experience in this particular area. But it was my own opinion that as presidential candidates go, the fact that he was well known as a result of the 1956 campaign, the contest with Kefauver, he had what I call real political sex appeal. This I had learned from a great number of people, not only politicians but people on the street who I had discussed it with. Of course, when we think about candidates we have to think in terms of who is available. And it seemed that at this particular time we were talking about four or five people who might be available as presidential candidates. At that time it was Stevenson of course, Bob Miner [Robert B. Meyner] was mentioned often because of the election in New Jersey that I just spoke about, Symington [Stuart Symington, II] was mentioned, Hubert Humphrey [Hubert H. Humphrey] was mentioned, Lyndon Johnson [Lyndon B. Johnson], and others who, whose names would crop up in discussions.

[-8-] VANOCUR: This is Sander Vanocur. We're going to end this, this tape one of the

interview with Hyman B. Raskin and put a fresh tape on. VANOCUR: This is tape two of the interview of Hyman B. Raskin by Sander

Vanocur, tape two of the Raskin interview. All right, you were saying a few minutes ago Hy, that you went down to Palm Beach in

December of 1957 after you had been out to this municipal officeholders meeting, in San Francisco where you gained an assessment of what various Democrats thought about John F. Kennedy's possible candidacy. Now, you say you got a call from him to come to Palm Beach, right? RASKIN: Yes, that's true. VANOCUR: Okay, were you the only person down there? RASKIN: Outside the family, yes. VANOCUR: All right. Now who did you talk to when you came down? RASKIN: Specifically about this matter I spoke with Senator Kennedy, Robert

Kennedy, and Ambassador Joseph Kennedy [Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.]. VANOCUR: What did you tell them? RASKIN: I told them that in my discussions in San Francisco I had received

what I felt was a good reception to the idea that Kennedy would become a candidate for president. By enough people, so that I felt in

my own mind that it was a worthwhile project and had a fairly good chance of success as far

as I was concerned, good enough so that I was interested in continuing to do whatever I could help, to further the cause. VANOCUR: Now, who did most of the talking? Was there a general

[-9-] consensus of opinion among all three, Senator Kennedy, his brother, and his father, or was there divergence there about... RASKIN: Well, actually, there was somewhat of a divergence. I did most of the

talking, and it seemed at that time that Ambassador Kennedy asked most of the questions, actually the Ambassador and I differed on some

matters regarding the actual strategy of the campaign from that time on. Our differences really centered around the theory that I had, that if Senator Kennedy was going to seek the nomination that he ought to start out immediately, and do whatever he could in a rather quiet, subtle sort of a way, at least until his own election was over in the fall of '58 in Massachusetts. I recall Ambassador Kennedy disagreed with me and we had some minor discussion and arguments about the wisdom of this policy. But at that time Senator Kennedy didn't say too much as I call, as I recall, Bob Kennedy said almost nothing, he, they both mostly listened. VANOCUR: What did Ambassador Kennedy think he ought to do? RASKIN: Well, Ambassador Kennedy was of the opinion that the convention

perhaps would be the place where the matter was actually decided, and because of the experience that I'd had in '52, and of course even more

so in '56, it was my opinion that these things are done long before, in other words, the way must be paved for the actions going to be taken at the convention. The idea is to get as many delegates who are either pledged to you or favorable to you before they get to

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the convention. Sometimes it's even necessary for you to help get them elected as delegates to the convention. And this takes a good deal of work and the idea that I had was people who were working with Kennedy should be out talking to as many people as possible who might be delegates to the convention or people who would be influential in selecting the delegates to the convention. I felt that this was very important and we couldn't start too early. VANOCUR: Well you didn't get any inkling from the Senator, did you, that he

agreed with you and was against his father's point of view or vice versa?

RASKIN: Not at that time, but I think the actions later proved that he agreed with me. And I think, I certainly think that the Ambassador also came around to it not too long afterwards.

VANOCUR: Well, when you left, what was it, I'll call you, or don't call us, we'll call

you? RASKIN: No, it was, I certainly would like to see you again as soon as I can or

as soon as convenient for you to come to Washington, be sure and call me before you're coming so that we can get together, I'd like to discuss

this with you further, this was from Senator Kennedy of course. VANOCUR: Did you have any soundings from any other of the candidates? RASKIN: Yes. Well, actually, I've been getting a little ahead of the story Sandy,

after my return from San Francisco I called on Governor Stevenson at his law offices in

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Chicago. I told him about my visit with Senator Kennedy, I told him about my discussions with these various people in San Francisco. He was very much interested in Senator Kennedy, he was interested in what I had learned, and at that time he also assured me, without any question, that he definitely was not a candidate, was not interested in being a candidate, and was glad to see that people that were formerly associated with him would go out and select people or work with people that they wanted to support for president. VANOCUR: Now he had two law partners, Bill Blair [William McCormick Blair,

Jr.], and Newton Minnow [Newton N. Minow]. RASKIN: And Bill Wirtz [W. Willard Wirtz]. VANOCUR: And Bill Wirtz. Did you talk to any of them? RASKIN: Not at that time, I had a very good friendly relationship with Newt

Minnow, and also with Bill Blair. I did not see too much of Bill Wirtz after the 1956 campaign. But, of course I was on a very friendly basis

with all of them. I did have some talks with Newton Minnow, as I recall, about this same situation. VANOCUR: He was a strong Kennedy booster, was he not? RASKIN: Definitely, definitely. And Blair also seemed to feel that Governor

Stevenson was not a candidate and he also seemed to be very much interested in Senator Kennedy's campaign.

VANOCUR: But, the Governor never told them fellows, you were free to work for

whomever you choose. RASKIN: Well, I don't know what he had said to his own

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associates, Sandy. I do know that on one occasion I spoke with Governor Sawyer [F. Grant Sawyer] of Nevada, who was a very ardent

Stevenson booster, and he also seemed to be inclined toward Kennedy. Of course, only if Stevenson was not a candidate, and he told me this, and he said that the next time he went east he would stop and see Governor Stevenson and discuss this with him. It so happened on the day that he saw Governor Stevenson I was in Chicago, and I spoke with Governor Sawyer after his meeting with Governor Stevenson and he told me at that time that Governor Stevenson said the same thing to him that he had said to me, that is, that he was not a candidate, that is Governor Stevenson was not a candidate, and, that people who wished him well and supported him in the past should really go out and work for a candidate of their choice. VANOCUR: Okay, so after this Palm Beach meeting, to go back to that, you went

back to Chicago.... RASKIN: Right. VANOCUR: And when was the next call you got from the Kennedys? RASKIN: Well, actually, it wasn't a call, I had business in Washington, a couple

of months later, I don't recall the exact time, and I did call Senator Kennedy and tell him that I was coming to Washington and he asked

me to stop by and see him. Which I did. VANOCUR: What month was this? RASKIN: I don't recall the exact month, but I do know that it was some time in

the early part of 1958, it could have been February or March.

[-13-] VANOCUR: What happened at this meeting? RASKIN: Well, at that meeting we discussed the matter further and one of the

specific things that he asked me to do was to see if I could set up some meetings for him in Midwestern states such as Iowa, South Dakota,

North Dakota, states that he had not gone into during the 1956 campaign. I'm not too sure

that he had ever gone into these states, on any political missions during his entire career. He really seemed to be knuckling down to this business and was rather interested in meeting as many people as he could and especially people that he had never met before. And go into their states. VANOCUR: Did he give you any impression that he was generalizing from his

Massachusetts experience, as to how campaigns ought to be run in Midwestern states where he'd never been before, or did he plead

ignorance on these things? RASKIN: No we never got to anything as specific as that, he felt that he should

go into the states and meet the people, make an appearance, and therefore either make contacts or whatever impression he might be

able to make. And felt that this was new territory and he should go into the territory. VANOCUR: Well, how'd you leave that meeting? RASKIN: Well, I left that meeting by going out immediately and contacting

some of the people who I knew from these states to set up meetings. It turned out that as result of our discussion I did set up meetings in

South Dakota and North Dakota. And actually, this is rather interesting I

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believe, he asked me after the meetings were set up if I would be in a position to go out to these South Dakota, North Dakota meetings with him. And I told him that I probably could, and I eventually did, as I recall the meetings were some time in the late spring or early summer. I don't recall the exact dates but they could have been April or May of 1958. VANOCUR: And was that the next time you went out with him? RASKIN: That was, that was... VANOCUR: The first time... RASKIN: ...Actually the first time I went out with him and the only other person

that was at these meetings was Ted Sorensen [Theodore C. Sorensen]. VANOCUR: No, what happened at the first of these meetings? RASKIN: Well, it's a rather interesting story too, I was rather disappointed to be

very frank, I was pleased with the tremendous crowds that he drew in these rather small towns, at least we considered them small towns,

there were large towns in South Dakota, North Dakota, and while the attendance was excellent there were fundraising dinners for the state or for the Democratic National

Committee, I think that there was some basis upon which they shared the proceeds, and very frankly I was disappointed in Senator Kennedy's speeches, I thought the content was excellent, the speeches were good but his delivery left a great deal to be desired. I don't think I ever said anything to him about it but I did discuss it with Ted Sorensen. VANOCUR: What did he say?

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RASKIN: Well, Ted felt that as time went on he would improve and that the sincerity came through, and maybe this meant, made up somewhat for the lack and the type of delivery that might be expected of him, and it

proved to be correct. VANOCUR: In the 1960 election, some people were surprised that more anti-

Catholicism developed in the Midwestern states than developed in the South, it had been expected in the South. Did you get any overtones of

that when he came out in '58? RASKIN: No. No, not at that time, it seems that people were not really thinking

of Senator Kennedy very much as a candidate for president. I don't recall having heard much discussion about it at that time.

VANOCUR: They must have wondered what you were doing around, didn't they,

did they think that you had chosen sides? RASKIN: Yes, I think that some of the people who knew me and remembered

me from the Stevenson campaigns were rather surprised to see me because they knew of my associations with Stevenson, but I don't

recall having had any direct questions about it at that time. It seemed that we were there so early, when I say early I mean long before the convention itself, the people really hadn't gotten around to thinking too much about the convention yet, or presidential candidates. At least up in North and South Dakota they weren't. VANOCUR: Well, how was his manner in meeting people, did that go over well? RASKIN: It was good. He was good. He, he liked to meet with

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people, and I thought he did that quite well. Actually one of the things that I watched very closely and actually did some counting was the

fact that at these, all of these meetings the Chairman of the meeting, made a statement to the audience saying that if the people in the audience would like to meet Senator Kennedy personally and shake hands with him after the meeting, why he would wait and they could

line up. And I noticed that in almost every case, 85 to 90 percent of the people remained after the meeting and stood in line, and at, a, one place I recall I timed it, it took them 50 minutes to go through the entire line, and I thought that this was a great tribute to Senator Kennedy. VANOCUR: Well, did this tend to confirm your judgment, your prior judgment that

he had political sex appeal? RASKIN: Definitely. It sure did. VANOCUR: And, you know, you're a great one for name identification in politics,

you feel they knew who Senator Kennedy was. RASKIN: Oh yes, I think that this was established in the 1956 convention. VANOCUR: Okay, after these meetings when was the next time you had contact? RASKIN: I would, the next contact... VANOCUR: We're gonna stop this 'cause we're running out of tape, we'll continue

on tape 3 in a minute. This is tape 3 of the interview of Hyman B. Raskin, by Sander Vanocur. Hy, as the last tape ended, I asked you

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if after these meetings in the Dakotas and the Midwest you got in touch with Senator Kennedy. Did you call him, write him, or do what? RASKIN: No, I wrote to him, sort of, reporting what I thought he ought to know

regarding the meetings in North and South Dakota. After all, this was my first trip with Senator Kennedy, my first experience at watching

him in action, so to speak. All the way from meeting the various people that were present to the speeches that he made. I wrote him a rather lengthy letter, discussing the meetings, I didn’t say much about the speeches, I had discussed this with Ted Kennedy [Edward M. Kennedy], I mean Ted Sorensen. But I did make one observation that I thought was rather important. I felt that the time that he spent in these towns could have benefitted him more than they did. By that I mean that I felt that he could have seen 15 to 20 people after the speeches in his room to discuss political matters and problems of the various status. As it turned out after each meeting there were only 4 or 5 people there, I felt that he should’ve met with many more people and suggested this as the format for the future when he went into states to meet with people. And to make political speeches. VANOCUR: What was his response?

RASKIN: His response was good, he agreed with me, he felt that the same time that was used for these particularly meetings could be used for greater advantage if he met with more people. At least all the important people

in the Democratic Party in that particular area. He should have met

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on a little more personal basis. That's what I suggested, he agreed with me. VANOCUR: What, from his point of view or theirs? RASKIN: From his point of view. VANOCUR: Yeah but now looking back on it, he was never a, he was never a man

who liked the yak yak of just to strangers. Was there anything of that in this reticence, or was just a lack of familiarity with what it takes to

mingle with these people? RASKIN: Well, I don't quite know how to describe it, I think that Senator

Kennedy was probably as great a man as I ever met for doing what had to be done, and if he felt that this was desirable, this would be helpful,

he did it, and he did it well, and meeting with as many people as possible, who as I said earlier would be influential in selecting delegates or delegates themselves was important to him and therefore it should be done and there were many things that he could discuss with them and they wanted to discuss with him. Even if it was only going back and telling the kids and the wife that they had met with Senator Kennedy. VANOCUR: What did they want to discuss with him? You know, the main areas. RASKIN: Problems in their particular states and they also wanted to talk politics

as politicians usually do, they didn't often see a United States Senator other than their own United States Senator come to their state.

Especially places like North and South Dakota.

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VANOCUR: Wasn't there a fragmentation and a kind of a dislocation in the Democratic Party all over the country, they didn't know who the leader would be in 1960 at this time...

RASKIN: That's true. VANOCUR: ...Were they looking for a new one? Consciously?

RASKIN: I can't say that they were consciously, I don't recall that this had ever occurred to me.

VANOCUR: All right, well, what was his response in the letter, he agreed with you.

Did he write you a letter or did he call you? RASKIN: He wrote me a letter. VANOCUR: All right, then did he ask to see you again? RASKIN: Oh yes, each time that I ever talked to him or each time that he wrote

to me there was either a postscript or a sentence in which he said please let me know the next time you're coming east so we can get

together. This happened many times. VANOCUR: All right, now we're in the spring of 1958, right? RASKIN: Right. VANOCUR: And had you been asked formally, will you enlist in the cause? RASKIN: No, no this was a sort of an implied understanding that I was, had

already been enlisted in the cause. But there was never any real formal question and answer on that particular subject, this had never been

formalized in any way at that time. VANOCUR: Well you continued then with your law work.

[-20-]

RASKIN: Right. VANOCUR: What was the next major thing you did for them? He went to Europe

didn't he, in the summer of 1958 just before the Massachusetts senatorial campaign?

RASKIN: Strangely I don't remember that, it seemed to me in the summer of

1958 it was generally understood and I presume decided by him that not much more should be done at that particular time, that perhaps we

all ought to sit back and wait until his 1958 election was out of the way. VANOCUR: Weren't other people working at the time, wasn't Sorensen working,

going around...

RASKIN: Oh yes, Sorensen was doing a good deal of work. I don't recall specifically what he was doing at that particular time, I had some contacts with Steve Smith [Stephen E. Smith] at that time, I had met

Steve for the first time during the holidays that we spoke about earlier at Palm Beach. VANOCUR: Well, did you have any contact at this time with other prominent

Democrats, for example John Bailey [John Moran Bailey] was an early laborer in the vineyard and Abe Ribicoff [Abraham A. Ribicoff]. Did

you talk to them about this? RASKIN: No, no, I don't recall having discussed this with any other of the people

who worked in the Kennedy campaign after that time, at least I have no recollection of any important or serious discussions about it with

anybody else other than, as I said, Senator Kennedy, Steve Smith and, Ted Sorensen.

[-21-]

VANOCUR: Well now thinking back, what's the next important thing in the relationship of Hy Raskin and John F. Kennedy in 1958?

RASKIN: I can't recall of any until after his election in... VANOCUR: All right, what happened after the election? RASKIN: Well it seems to me that not too long after his election was the, we had

the meeting at Cape Cod if I'm not mistaken in 19 ... VANOCUR: That was 1959, wasn't it? RASKIN: …it was probably early ’50, I don’t, can’t recall whether it was late, of

’58 or early ’59, you may recall, I don’t, I don’t actually remember the exact time of it, I do know that it was not too long after his election in

’58. VANOCUR: Well I met you in September, right around World Series time, in 1959,

it seems to me the meeting was in October of 1959, there may have been two meetings for all I know. But when was, what I'm driving at

was when was the formal amalgamation of the Kennedy staff that we came to know, the Irish Mafia, Sorensen, yourself, Steve, Teddy, Bobby, Sarge [R. Sargent Shriver, Jr.], when did that all sort of jell? RASKIN: I, I can't tell you exactly, I don't think that you can really put a date on

it, at least I can't. Perhaps there are others that can.

VANOCUR: All right, well let's go to the meeting. It was called, you were asked to come.

[-22-]

RASKIN: That's right. VANOCUR: Who was there that you remember? RASKIN: Well there were quite a number of people there, the best of my

recollection, of course Senator Kennedy, Bob Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Ambassador Kennedy. Steve Smith, this was the family as I recall, Ted

Sorensen, Larry O’Brien [Lawrence F. O’Brien], Kenny O’Donnell [Kenneth P. O’Donnell], Pierre Salinger [Pierre E.G. Salinger], John Bailey….Bob Wallace [Robert Ash Wallace], and there were a few others, I can’t quite recall the names of all of them. VANOCUR: It was decided then that he was going. RASKIN: Yes, it was pretty well decided I think quite some time before that, but

this was sort of the gathering of the clan to discuss tactics and strategy and kind of pass out assignments so I'm inclined to agree with you that

it was well along in '59. VANOCUR: Well, talk first about the general sense of the meeting and then

secondly about your specific assignment. RASKIN: Well, the general sense of the meeting is rather vague because I have it

confused with many other things that I had discussed with Senator Kennedy, Bob, and various other members of the group and it's very

hard to segregate the points of discussion. I do recall that at this time it was more or less decided that I was going to be working in the Western states with Teddy. I recall that that was my specific assignment. VANOCUR: Well how did you happen to get Western assignment as against a

Midwestern?

[-23-] RASKIN: Well I don’t exactly know except that Bob Kennedy had worked with

me in the 1956 campaign and he I’m sure, recalled that I was responsible for working the Western states, when I say the Western

states that really means all of the states west of the Mississippi. Rather than what’s known now as the thirteen Western states.

VANOCUR: Did that exclude the Southwest, in Oklahoma and Texas and, but it includes New Mexico and Arizona, right?

RASKIN: That's right. VANOCUR: What was the general drift of the meeting, that now was the time, here

we go, did Senator Kennedy do most of the talking? RASKIN: Senator Kennedy did not do most of the talking, I would say that it

was pretty well divided between he and Ambassador Kennedy. VANOCUR: Okay, and Ambassador Kennedy changed his mind from the meeting

in Palm Beach. RASKIN: Well it seems as though he did, that he came around to the idea that a

lot of work had to be done before the convention. And this was really the purpose of the meeting.

VANOCUR: Did you get any detailed plan about which primaries.... RASKIN: Yes, we discussed in detail the primaries that we felt that we should go

in, it wasn't actually decided at that meeting as to the primaries that Senator Kennedy would enter. But that did take up a good part of the

discussion, that was one of the primary purposes for the meeting.

[-24-] VANOCUR: Well, this is important. Had the Senator decided that the primary route

which he eventually took was the only way he'd get the nomination? RASKIN: I don't think it was definitely determined at that time. VANOCUR: Well was there an alternative way that they thought about? RASKIN: No, not actually, I think it was all still a little vague as to what the best

procedure would be, I do believe that it was a little later that the primary route was decided upon. Because even at that discussion, there

was a question of whether he should enter for instance, Wisconsin, Oregon, California, Maryland, Indiana, and some of the others, and I do believe that the situations that arose later are really brought about the idea of going into as many primaries as possible. VANOCUR: What did you say about Oregon and California?

RASKIN: Well, Oregon was one that he couldn't avoid, and I was kind of a specialist in Oregon as he well knew, in fact, by the time that we had this meeting in Hyannis Port, I had already spent a good deal of time

putting together an organization in Oregon because I knew that we couldn't avoid that primary regardless. VANOCUR: Well, Congressman Edith, Congresswoman Edith Green [Edith S.

Green], was she already committed? RASKIN: No, not at that point, but we had sort of an understanding that she

probably would at the proper time. VANOCUR: Well, by the peculiarity of their law, his name was gonna

[-25-]

be on the ballot in… RASKIN: Right. Couldn’t avoid it. VANOCUR: Well then how did the meeting break up, everybody had their roles,

who was appointed the adjutant, so to speak in those… RASKIN: There wasn’t any. There wasn’t any at that particular time. VANOCUR: I mean, history, will probably say the Kennedy organization was a

very smooth functioning one, but, I get the impression from you that this was still a groping…

RASKIN: Definitely. VANOCUR: …thing at the time. RASKIN: It was. I can’t agree that the Kennedy operation, as it has been

characterized, was really a well-oiled, well-organized, coordinated effort.

VANOCUR: Absolutely or relatively? In comparison to others it was well oiled,

wasn’t it? Or any political organizations, are they really as good as people say they are?

RASKIN: No, they’re really not, this is a myth in my opinion. VANOCUR: All right, you left Hyannis Port, what was the next function for you in

the campaign?

RASKIN: Well, Sander, I have a little problem separating the various missions

and problems that I undertook, chronologically, so I can’t tell you exactly when these things took place, but I do recall very definitely

that one of the states we had a problem in was Indiana and I was asked to go out

[-26-] in Indiana and help set up some meetings so that Senator Kennedy could come into the state and meet with the various Democratic political leaders, which I did. I spent some time in Indiana and he came out to speak in Indianapolis and several other cities, later on. VANOCUR: In early winter 1960? RASKIN: I can't recall the exact dates. VANOCUR: No decision though, about him going into the primary there yet? RASKIN: No there was not. I think that the purpose for going in was not only to

meet the people but also to get a feel of the, what might be the problems involved in a primary there, and perhaps the advisability of

actually going into it. VANOCUR: Had you been going to any regional meetings of Democrats, like

Western states, Midwest... RASKIN: Went to all of 'em. VANOCUR: ...and it was recognized by this time, wasn't it, that you were a

Kennedy man? RASKIN: Yes, it was. VANOCUR: And any cries of how can you do this, Hy, to dear old Governor

Stevenson, or.... RASKIN: There was, here and there, there in fact, I was questioned by not only

people in the party but some newspaper reporters. VANOCUR: What was your reply? RASKIN: My reply was that Stevenson was not a candidate.

[-27-]

VANOCUR: Which you honestly believed at the time. RASKIN: I definitely did because in addition to the discussion that I had with

Stevenson that I referred to earlier I had several others with him after that and I was actually surprised during the convention, that he came

on the floor of the convention. VANOCUR: Okay, well look, in the next tape let's take up from the formal

candidacy onward, in January 1960. This is the end of tape 3 for the interview of Hy Raskin by Sander Vanocur.

Hy, President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy then, declared his candidacy in January 1960. Let's go to that Western states' meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When I went there, it was a Thursday afternoon at the end of January, beginning of February '60. I got the impression that everyone assumed the Western states were gonna go for Lyndon B. Johnson, indeed that meeting seemed to be a Lyndon B. Johnson meeting. Did you get that same impression when you got out there? I mean the traipings. RASKIN: Yes there were a great number of people there from Texas and perhaps

some of the other Southwestern states that were working very diligently for Lyndon Johnson. It seemed to me that they were trying

to establish a beachhead at this particular meeting and rightfully so, this seemed to be the territory in which he could operate very well and his people would operate very well.

[-28-]

VANOCUR: But did you pick up any support out there? RASKIN: Well, I can’t say that we actually picked up any support at this

particular meeting, in fact I can’t recall that we ever did at these various meetings but we felt that we had to go to these meetings to see

what everybody else was doing and do whatever missionary work could be done at the meetings, and then make contacts at the meetings so that we could follow them up later in the individual states that we traveled to for the purpose of getting delegates for Senator Kennedy. VANOCUR: Now I think you came out on a Sunday, I had to go to Los Angeles on

Saturday. Did he make a good impression on these people at the time? RASKIN: I can't answer that Sandy, I don't recall what his role at this particular

meeting was. Teddy and I were quite busy contacting as many people as we could, making various arrangements for our own visits to the

states and also setting up itineraries for Senator Kennedy to go in these states later on. So I don't even recall having heard his speech at the conference.

VANOCUR: Well that Sunday, we all wound up somehow in Las Vegas, a couple of days, and he spoke to the, a group of Democrats in Las Vegas, and the...

RASKIN: Yes, I remember that. VANOCUR: ...reception was Monday night, first week in February. And then we

flew to Oregon. Now, he had been in Oregon before. RASKIN: Many times.

[-29-]

VANOCUR: And I remember the meetings were quite well attended, and the plans were all laid for him to go in the primary, weren't they?

RASKIN: Yes. VANOCUR: Was there any trouble that you noticed at that time? RASKIN: Yes, there was a considerable amount of trouble in Oregon because,

Senator Morse [Wayne L. Morse], at that time, had been acting as though he also might enter the primaries in Oregon, as a candidate for

president, ostensibly to get control of the delegation. As you perhaps know it's what we call a jackpot delegation. You win all or none, in a state like Oregon, the candidate that is elected by the people in the primary gets all of the delegates who are elected at the same time. So it was quite an important election as far as we were concerned because it was the next to the last important primary in the United States before the convention. It came a couple of weeks before the California primary. And it was quite important and Morse had already indicated that he might enter, so naturally this would give us a good amount of trouble because in many places it was considered not cricket to run against a favorite son. But Oregon is different in this respect because due to the peculiarity of their laws, and I think they are peculiar in this respect, every man who the Secretary of State considers a potential candidate for president has his name entered by the Secretary of State, in order to get out of the primary in Oregon he must file an affidavit that he is not a candidate for president and this is about the only way that he can have his name removed. So we were in it whether we

[-30-]

wanted to be or not. VANOCUR: Well, you know, primaries, they're not only a way to pick a nominee,

they're also the way sometimes the factions settle who's gonna run the party.

RASKIN: This is true. VANOCUR: Was Congresswoman Green already on your side at the time? RASKIN: Yes, yes she was. VANOCUR: And was there any factionalism here that they were trying to end by a

Kennedy candidacy in Oregon? RASKIN: No, I... VANOCUR: Was he there in this instance? RASKIN: ...don't think so. No, not for this purpose. No, he was a candidate for

president and trying to get as much and as good as support as he possibly could. It was my old idea that we enlist the support of

Congresswoman Green because in my opinion she's perhaps one of the most effective Democrats in the state of Oregon, certainly the most effective in her own district by far. And I felt that if we could get her to come with us and perhaps head up our committee, we would have an excellent chance of success in Oregon. VANOCUR: Wasn't there some static at the time about Kennedy's candidacy being

hurt by Bobby Kennedy's role in the teamster investigation, the teamsters being pretty strong up in Portland, you remember some

teamsters were all mixed up in that investigation from Portland? RASKIN: Yes, there were the mayor of Portland as I recall was involved in it,

and...

[-31-] VANOCUR: Who was that, Terry Shrunk [Terry D. Schrunk]? RASKIN: ...Terry Shrunk, and there was a trial held in Portland, and Bobby

came out at the time of the trial and some of the people in Portland felt that this perhaps was a, a something that was not the most diplomatic

thing to do and they were rather put out by it, but it was eventually ironed out satisfactorily, I'd say. VANOCUR: Well, then, then, I remember that I was traveling with Kennedy and

Humphrey that week, and I remember, we were at the convention of the Council of Democratic Clubs in Fresno, on, a, I guess it was a

Friday night, the first or second week in February. '60. And he had stopped off and seen some of the northern leaders, in northern California and I remember that night as we left Fresno, he asked my opinion, and I didn't know, whether he ought to go on the California

primary. Did he ask, I said no, I said I hadn't seen such a state that was so messed up as this state, did he ask you at that time, what your opinion was on it? RASKIN: I think he asked everybody's opinion, that knew something about

California, and that was in California, and of course, I was working the Western states, I was not in a position at that particular time to offer

him any definite advice as to whether he should or should not, I felt that we should take a little more time in discussing it with various other people in the state, that is leading Democrats. We had to consider what the alternative might be. The alternative naturally, was some kind of an understanding as to where the

[-32-]

delegates would go. VANOCUR: Well you were finding a great Stevenson sentiment in the state, weren't

you? RASKIN: Oh yes, there was. Especially among the members of the CDC

[California Democratic Council]. VANOCUR: Well, did you think you could arrive at this understanding, did Brown

[Edmund G. Brown] really have control of the delegation, does any governor ever have control of California?

RASKIN: Well, if anyone should, it would be the governor, a governor of the

state, whether Democrat or Republican, should have as much control over his party as anyone could. But California is a very unusual state

in this respect, there is no political organization as we understand it in the large industrial Northern and Eastern states. And one of the reasons for that is that, there is very little patronage, as we know it in the large industrial states, so the governor or the leader of the party does not really have the tools at hand to impose the discipline that is imposed on political parties or the members of the political parties in large northern states. VANOCUR: Well did that subject come up that weekend? RASKIN: I can't recall. As I said, Sandy, these... VANOCUR: Well what was your point of view? RASKIN: ...things are vague. Well, I, my own point of view on this, later, was

that if we could arrive at some understanding as to what the, as to the makeup of the delegation, let me put it this way, we should avoid a, a

primary fight in California, especially if it meant taking on the

[-33-] governor and all the leading officeholders in the state, plus the leading Democrats. This becomes a very great problem, because, in making up a delegation, naturally, the governor, if he was going to lead the delegation, would select the leading Democrats in the state, so you would not only be taking on the leader of the delegation, but you'd be taking on every leading Democrat in the state because he or she would be on the delegation. And as I recall in California because of the half votes, this ran into a great number of people, and this, this would be a formidable task. VANOCUR: But what I don't understand is that, you know, he literally, threatened

Mike DeSalle [Michael V. DiSalle], and that was the first key state he got, in 1960, and it was a big coup. You know, Mike, if you don't go

along with me I'm coming in and running against you. Now why didn't he do that in California? RASKIN: I can't answer that Sandy, I don't really know, it seems to me that there

were, there were many stories about it, and I'm not quite certain as to what the reason was, or what understandings there might have been,

unless you can judge by the final result. By that I mean how the delegation itself divided at the convention. VANOCUR: Well I told him on the plane that night, out in Fresno, that he’d

probably get thirty three or thirty four if he didn’t go into the primary, which is pretty much what he got eventually.

RASKIN: It seems to me he got about 50% of the delegation as I recall. VANOCUR: Which was, which you thought was about as good as he

[-34-]

could do all along, wasn't it? RASKIN: I felt that he should've gotten a little more. I do believe that most of

these people were favorable to Kenny, Kennedy anyway, and were, what we termed Kennedy delegates, I felt that because the governor

came out for him, at a rather, a rather late date of course, he perhaps should've gotten more. I don't know how hard the governor insisted that these people support Kennedy, but I felt that we should've done a little better than we did. VANOCUR: If the governor had come out at any time, let's say earlier than he did,

because I don't think he came out for him, until after the Governors' Conference in, about the first week or so, I think it was the 15th of

June he finally came out for him.

RASKIN: No, that's, no he didn't, officially he didn't, come out for Senator

Kennedy until the convention started. VANOCUR: That's right, and I remember... RASKIN: A couple of days before the convention started. VANOCUR: ...there was all that, you were up in Sacramento, I was out in Los

Angeles waiting for the announcement to come and it never came, but, let's say for the sake of argument he had come out, could he have

delivered the whole delegation? RASKIN: No. No, he could never deliver the whole delegation, I don't think he

could have ever delivered more than, let's say maybe five or ten more votes than he actually

[-35-]

brought to Kennedy or I'd say that Kennedy got, even by the most persuasive and strenuous arguments that he could possibly have made. I believe because of the makeup of the delegation he could not have. For instance, a great number of these delegates were members of the CDC that had decided, apparently, quite some time beforehand that they were going to be for Stevenson. In addition to that you had a number of congressmen and people that were close to some of the congressmen who were going to support Lyndon Johnson, and some that, a few I think supported, Symington. VANOCUR: Well, after this trip to California, you went back to Chicago. When,

let's skip over Wisconsin and West Virginia which other people were involved in. You started working on Oregon then, didn't you?

RASKIN: Yes, I spent most of my time in Oregon, between Oregon and

California, after that trip that we were talking about that took us from Albuquerque to Oregon and Fresno.

VANOCUR: Well, in Oregon, did it look like a sure thing? RASKIN: Oh no. Not when Morse decided that he was going to become a

candidate, this becomes a real problem at that time, actually before the deadline for filing, there was a possibility that Stevenson's name

might also be entered in the primary, and Stevenson was an exceptionally popular person in Oregon because he had run in the Oregon primary in 1956, and I was out there to run that campaign myself, and I know that he was, well received, well regarded, and a lot of the people in

[-36-] Oregon would have gladly voted for Stevenson in the primary. VANOCUR: Well did Humphrey cause any trouble at that time, because he was still

in the race? RASKIN: No, he was not really in the race at that time because that came after

the West Virginia primary. VANOCUR: Yeah, but he withdrew after West Virginia, but in April he was still an

active candidate… RASKIN: Oh, he was an active candidate, and, we were somewhat concerned,

we felt that he would probably run third, we felt that the real contest was between Morse and Senator Kennedy and Humphrey would

probably run third. Of course when Humphrey dropped out, it made the thing a little more clear cut. VANOCUR: We’re gonna pause here for a minute while I answer the phone.

Hy, before West Virginia, which was I suppose the high water mark of the primaries, Oregon was very important, was it not?

RASKIN: Yes, I think Oregon was perhaps the most important state, after the

Wisconsin primary, before we realized that we were going to be involved in the West Virginia primary, early in the game we didn’t

think we’d be in West Virginia. And Oregon was important because, it was really the last primary in which Senator Kennedy was involved before the convention. VANOCUR: Okay, we’re going to have to stop before the tape runs out. This is the

end of tape four.

[-37-]

Hy, we were just talking about Oregon being very important before West Virginia because of the primary, because of the fact that it was the last primary before the convention since he wasn’t running in California. After West Virginia, the heat was still on though, I remember you were worried. RASKIN: Well, yes. VANOCUR: A loss wouldn’t have been any help to you.

RASKIN: Not only would a loss not be helpful, but the winning of Oregon involved as I recall about eighteen delegates, and if we could win that primary that meant that we would have eighteen more delegates

pledged to us, that someone else might have, if we lost it. VANOCUR: Was there any disagreement about the strategy that he employed in

West Virginia as against the strategy that had been employed in Wisconsin, Indiana, West Virginia?

RASKIN: Well, I don’t quite know what you… VANOCUR: I remember you talked about, you couldn’t exactly take the methods

that you use in a senatorial campaign, the phones, the mailings…. RASKIN: Well, that, there, I see what you mean, there was a little difference,

Oregon being a Western state, is different than the industrial states in the north, large states in the Midwest, the Northeast, in that it’s usually

the soft sell that works best. I do believe that Oregon has a very politically sophisticated population, and they know a good deal about their candidates, they know a good deal about the issues, and I would say that, they are not going to be

[-38-]

very easily persuaded by a lot of posters, and slogans, and the usual methods that are employed in campaigns in the larger cities and states. And it would take someone that understood the people of Oregon quite well, to work in a campaign of this kind. And you couldn’t use the usual paths, this is true, and when there was some discussion about sending the same group out that worked West Virginia and a lot of people had also worked in Wisconsin, there was a controversy about it, and it was eventually settled by Senator Kennedy himself. I was very grateful for the fact that Senator Kennedy felt that the people who had been working in Oregon such as myself and Mrs.______, make decisions as to how the campaign would wind up. He left it entirely in our hands. VANOCUR: Well wasn’t one of the decisions that Robert Kennedy should stay out?

Of the actual running of the campaign? RASKIN: Well, not the actual running from Washington, or headquarters, where he was working. The decision was that because of the problems that were involved with a rather popular mayor who was a Democrat, that Bob Kennedy himself, would not come into the state. But Bob did not do much campaigning, in the states, Bob stayed in the headquarters and sort of ran things from there. Bob did very little, actually, state work out in the field by the way of speeches and campaigning. Teddy did a good deal of it, some of the other members of the Cabinet, but Bob sort of quarterbacked the entire front, in headquarters.

VANOCUR: Well when the Senator came out and flew overnight on a

[-39-]

Saturday night and arrived here on Sunday, the Sunday before the Friday of the primary. Did it look then that you had it in the bag or

were you still worried about Morse? RASKIN: I wasn’t worried. I felt that we were going to win it, I, it’s hard to say

that we had it in the bag, in the few days later, when we say the results of some polls that had been taken by people other than ourselves, that

we felt very confident, this perhaps 48 hours before the election itself, and we were very confident. But, for some strange reason, President Kennedy, or Senator Kennedy at that time, didn’t seem to be quite as confident as we were. Since he felt that it would be quite a chore to beat an incumbent Senator who was a favorite son in his own state. I might say that, this feat was accomplished and he was very grateful and very happy about it. VANOCUR: Yeah, but he always ran scared anyhow. RASKIN: Yes, he did, but I think he was, he was genuinely scared about this one. Not scared, but felt that if we lost this one, it wouldn’t really be taken as a defeat because we were running against a favorite son. VANOCUR: Well now, remember you had a candidate for a few days with no voice that week. RASKIN: Yes. VANOCUR: And he left on a Thursday night to go to Idaho, right? Utah?

Someplace.… RASKIN: Well, this is true, well let me reconstruct that for you, Sander, because

I was involved in it, he,

[-40-]

leaders in Idaho, very early in the game had asked if Senator Kennedy would address a fundraising dinner in Lewiston, Idaho. And we felt that about the only time that he could do it without a long trip and taking too much out of his, the remainder of his campaign, would be on Election Day in Oregon, which was a Friday. So he and I left….Portland, on Friday, Election Day, to fly to Lewiston. Because the laws of Oregon prohibit any campaigning on Election Day. VANOCUR: Did you do any good for yourselves in Idaho?

RASKIN: Yes, I think we did, I don’t recall the exact number of delegates that we eventually got, in Idaho, but it seems to me that we got about half of them.

VANOCUR: Well now, he went from Idaho to Chicago, he was met at the airport on

Saturday morning following the Oregon primary which he won, by Newt Minnow and Bill Blair and went out to see Stevenson. Now,

there was a plan, was there not at this time, that Stevenson would nominate Kennedy at the convention? RASKIN: Well there was discussion of the plan. VANOCUR: Yeah. RASKIN: How far that went I don’t know. VANOCUR: Do you know what happened at that meeting? RASKIN: No, because I was not present. I went from Portland to Lewiston, with

Senator Kennedy, and then returned to Portland that same night after the dinner was over in Lewiston, Senator Kennedy went on to

Chicago, being the only passenger on his plane. VANOCUR: That’s right, I remember you showed up at headquarters

[-41-]

about ten o’clock the Friday after Election Night. Well now, after the victory in Oregon, was there any doubt in your own mind, your own personal opinion, about that time, was there any doubt, that Kennedy was going to win the nomination? RASKIN: Yes there was some doubt, we still hadn’t had any definite

commitments or understandings from large states… VANOCUR: Which were Pennsylvania… RASKIN: …Pennsylvania and Illinois, especially, I felt quite good about Illinois,

being my own state, and I felt that Mayor Daley [Richard J. Daley], while he hadn’t said too much about it, was rather, leaning rather

strongly to Senator Kennedy, this was really the test, Mayor Daley, if he would go with Kennedy, I felt that, a preponderant number of the delegates of Illinois would follow Mayor Daley. I also knew that there was a lot of good work being done by various influential Democrats in Pennsylvania for Senator Kennedy, but the only real horse, Dave Lawrence [David Leo Lawrence], had not indicated in any way that he was favoring Senator Kennedy, or for that matter any of the other candidates. I honestly felt that one we heard from these,

especially if they were favorable, from these two states, then it would be all right because we had a good report from New York which was the other large state. I do believe that by this time the word was pretty well out that Michigan would be ours. VANOCUR: Where’d you go from Oregon? RASKIN: Now again, I have a problem putting this together, chronologically, but

one of the places that I

[-42-]

recall having gone to was Montana. However, if I went there immediately from Oregon or not I can’t say, but I was in Montana not too long after the Oregon primary. VANOCUR: Is that, is that when Jim Roe [James H. Rowe, Jr.] was out there too,

and Kennedy came out, and Johnson came out? RASKIN: Yes, yes. VANOCUR: Weren’t you all there? RASKIN: No I don’t, I don’t recall Lyndon Johnson there… VANOCUR: That’s right, he wasn’t a candidate. RASKIN: But Mike Mansfield was there, and Jim Roe was there. They were the,

these were the representatives of Lyndon Johnson. And this was the State Convention. Montana selects their delegates to the National

Convention by the State Convention. There are various methods of selecting delegates, and this happens to be the one for Montana. VANOCUR: Okay, I’m forgetting something, which happened earlier in the year.

You and Stewart Udall [Stewart L. Udall] were instrumental, weren’t you, in winning the Arizona delegates, for John F. Kennedy?

RASKIN: Well, I can’t say that I was very instrumental, except that I did spend some time in Arizona talking with a great number of people and I did not have a very optimistic view about our chances in Arizona and I

was working on, let’s say a deal, by which we might get a, a good portion or perhaps half of the delegates. That didn’t work out successfully, Senator Kennedy came there after the meeting in Albuquerque actually, the, that’s one of the things we did at

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Albuquerque, set up meetings in Arizona for the purpose of having Senator Kennedy go through the state and meet a good number of the Democrats in the state and perhaps set the stage for a gathering of as many delegates as we could. It turned out later that because the, the leadership, and it was known as a conservative leadership, in Arizona, that missed their signals, and Stewart Udall and some of his associates were gonna move in on that convention and come out with all of the delegates for Arizona. That was considered quite a coup because it appeared, at the early stages of the game that either Lyndon Johnson or Symington who seemed to have a lot of support in that state would get a good portion of the delegates. So it came as a surprise that we got all of the delegates from Arizona. VANOCUR: Now, going back to that period after Oregon, you went up to

Sacramento, about the 15th of June didn’t you? RASKIN: That was, I went to Sacramento right after the Montana convention, I

remember that quite vividly. VANOCUR: All right, I feel slightly responsible, you just camped outside Brown’s

door, didn’t you?

RASKIN: For about ten days, I reported to the Capitol every day. VANOCUR: Waiting for him to make the commitment? RASKIN: Well, hoping that he might make the commitment but at the same time, checking to find out whether he was wavering or changing his mind and if he was how he was changing it so that I could report back and get some support thought I might hate it. Now I did spend, as I recall, ten solid days in Sacramento and reporting each day to Governor

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Brown’s office. VANOCUR: This was the time, was it not, that you set up the meeting between

Ambassador Kennedy and Governor Brown? RASKIN: Yes, actually, this was done as a result of my meeting in Montana after

the Montana convention was over we, sort of went our separate ways, that is Senator Kennedy, Teddy Kennedy, Sarge Shriver, all those

present, there were quite a group in Montana. I might say that although you haven’t asked me, we did quite well in Montana at that convention. This seemed to be more or less of a natural for, Lyndon Johnson because Mike Mansfield, the Majority leader, was there, Jim Roe [James H. Rowe, Jr.], a lot of other former residents of Montana that were working for the convention, but again this was a situation where they either took things for granted or

came rather late. We had been in the state several times before the convention, setting up meetings with various people for the purposes of, of selecting people, at the precinct level who would go on to the convention and elect the convention delegates at the convention, and we did a great deal of work with them. And I think that that work paid off handsomely, as I recall, we got about ten or ten and a half votes out of possible fourteen, from Montana. And that was a tremendous victory because I think before we went there we would have gladly settled for half. VANOCUR: Well that’s what I was talking about before, about the smooth, well

oiled, machinery, it always seemed like you were there when everybody else was thinking it was in the bag.

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RASKIN: Sandy it isn’t, smooth or well oiled, I would characterize it more as

getting there firstest with the mostest… VANOCUR: And working hard? RASKIN: …and working hard, and sticking right with it, and getting right down

to the grassroots, instead of trying to win at the last minute with a few top people.

VANOCUR: But that’s the way the politics operated, isn’t it? RASKIN: That is the way, that is the way it operates, and these little people are flattered by the fact that you come around and ask them to help you and ask them to work with you and when they get to their conventions they remember this, and this is one of the things that the Kennedy people did quite well. VANOCUR: You mean they never took anything for granted… RANKIN: Never. Anything, they didn’t leave anything to chance that didn’t have

to be left to chance. VANOCUR: I remember John Bailey had a phrase, every delegate a king. Was that

an application of this? RASKIN: I would say so, yes. And not only the delegate, but the people who

select the delegates. Sometimes they were even more important, and this worked out exceptionally well in Montana especially.

VANOCUR: All right, we’ll get to the meeting in Sacramento between Joseph

Kennedy and Pat Brown, on the next tape. This is the end of tape 5.

[-46-] Okay, so you went down to, this is tape 6 of the interview with Hy Raskin by Sander Vanocur. Okay so you went down to Sacramento, camped outside of Governor Brown's door, it was during this period, wasn't it, that there was a meeting or dinner set up, between Joseph Kennedy who was vacationing in Lake Tahoe, and Governor Brown and yourself? RASKIN: Yes, that's true, there was. The day that I was to leave Montana for

Sacramento Ted Kennedy asked me if I would stop at Lake Tahoe and visit with his father, who was due to be at Lake Tahoe the following

day, which I did, and I spent the better portion of a weekend with Ambassador Kennedy, we discussed a great many things. One of the matters that seemed to be uppermost in the minds of both of us was the California situation. Ambassador Kennedy felt that it might be well for him to come to Sacramento and meet with Governor Brown. He suggested that if it was plausible and sensible, that I do whatever I could to set up this sort of a meeting. This I did. I suggested that I had visited with Ambassador Kennedy during my first meeting with Governor Brown, Governor Brown had said to me that he had not seen Ambassador Kennedy for some time, and would like to see him. Of course, I said that I thought that could be arranged, rather easily. And asked him when he would like for the meeting to take place, he checked through his appointment book and suggested a day in the very near future. I called Senator Kennedy, asked him if he could come down, he said he could, the meeting was set up, he came to Sacramento from, Lake Tahoe, I picked him up at the

[-47-] airport, and we went out to have dinner at the Governor's Mansion, with Governor Brown, Mrs. Brown [Bernice Brown] and Fred Dutton [Frederick G. Dutton]. VANOCUR: What happened at the meeting? RASKIN: Well, there was a good deal of talk about the campaign generally, the

chances of Senator Kennedy, and of course naturally the Ambassador broke through in his inimitable fashion and got down to the brass tacks

and asked Governor Brown what he thought about Senator Kennedy's chances in California, that is what he thought Senator Kennedy might get by way of votes among the delegates of California. Brown was not quite certain, as to the exact number, but he in his own mind felt that Senator Kennedy would probably get 75% of them, as I recall this was his, the round numbers figure that he gave. VANOCUR: Was it, friendly, or was it.... RASKIN: Extremely friendly. VANOCUR: As they say in the communiques, friendly and frank and useful.

RASKIN: It was all three, friendly, frank and useful, yes. VANOCUR: And when you were over with that, did you do any work in Nevada? RASKIN: Yes, while I visited with Ambassador Kennedy, at Lake Tahoe, we had

discussed the advisability of meeting with Governor Sawyer, who was very friendly at that time. And, Ambassador Kennedy, set up a dinner

meeting with Governor Sawyer, so that we could both attend it. At this meeting, all of the delegates, of course they had been

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selected at this time, were to be invited to the Governor's Mansion for cocktails and dinner so that we would have an opportunity to discuss with them their support of Senator Kennedy. This took place two or three days after our meeting in Sacramento with Governor Brown. VANOCUR: And you finally left Sacramento, didn't you, without Governor

Brown's assurances one way or the other? RASKIN: Well I never felt at any time that I needed his assurance, I always felt

that Governor Brown was with us, the real important purpose of our discussion with Brown and my being there and also, that of

Ambassador Kennedy, was to try to persuade as many delegates as we could, all of us combined, to be for Senator Kennedy at the convention. And I always felt that Brown was with us all the way through. The question was how many could he take with him? And this was our real problem, and it was not easy, to continue our persuasion. And we just had to wait it out, and it was decided that I ought to stay right there until the convention actually started, which I did. VANOCUR: Yeah, but you didn't get it before you left. RASKIN: Oh, I had the assurance for it... VANOCUR: Without a statement... RASKIN: That was, no, there was not a public statement, actually at this time

there was a serious question of how important it was. But really, we, we hoped that we would have gotten the public statement of Governor

Brown before he went to the convention.

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VANOCUR: But, now, Hy, when the convention opened, you had the votes, didn’t you?

RASKIN: When you say had the votes… VANOCUR: You know, you knew that Bill Green [William J. Green, Jr.], was

gonna deliver most of Pennsylvania. RASKIN: Well, Bill Green and Governor Lawrence. When they arrived on the

convention scene, yes, we felt confident that we had the votes. The two big states that I spoke about earlier, had indicated that they were

with us. This was Pennsylvania, this was the real turning point as far as I was concerned. VANOCUR: Now at the convention, upstairs in the suite at the Biltmore, were, the

Irish Mafia, Kenny O’Donnell, Larry O’Brien, Bobby… RASKIN: Steve Smith. VANOCUR: Steve Smith. You and John Bailey manned that big reception room

downstairs. I always got the impression that you and John were down there as a kind of trusted, old, friends, of many delegates, who might

be a little unsure about those young fellas upstairs. Was that the plot? RASKIN: Well, no, it didn’t start that way, it turned out that way, I think that,

since John and I had been involved in several campaigns, prior to this, we were perhaps better known to the old timers, and it’s usually the

old timers that come to conventions as delegates, than fellows like Steve Smith, and Larry O’Brien, and Kenny O’Donnell and Teddy. And, they would feel a little bit more free about talking with

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us, and talking with us honestly and frankly. And this is what’s important to the convention, it’s one thing to have somebody say, well don’t worry about, we’ll be okay. Well, in convention or political language that could mean a lot of things. He may say we’ll be okay, as far as he’s concerned he’s okay, that means he may be okay with Johnson, Symington or somebody else. But, if you take them off into a corner, they have some gripes or beefs about the people or the candidate, or the way the campaign is run, you have an opportunity to discuss it and bring it all out. And, they may be wavering delegates and therefore you have a chance to bring them around to your side. If they’re already committed, really there isn’t too much you can do. And unbeknown to most people, I do believe that a great majority of the delegates are committed long before they come to the convention. I think the convention is really a formality, unless it breaks open and all bets are off. By that I mean the people who were the frontrunners, the important candidates prior to the convention, who sort of drop out because they can’t make the grade, and new people come up, and you start talking about dark horses and compromised candidates. Then things change and all bets are off.

VANOCUR: Do a lot of these delegates just like to talk, and like somebody listen to them?

RASKIN: Well, it’s more than that, Sandy, they like to feel that they’re

important. In the case of, most of these people, they only come in to this every four years, they become important people. In between

campaigns and

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conventions, they may be storekeepers or bookkeepers, lawyers, or whatever they might be in their hometowns, they’re little people, and when they come to a convention, they’re important people, and they should be, they get a lot of attention, and it’s important to remember this. And I believe that, we were very successful because we treated them as important people, and we got there early and treated them as important people, didn’t wait until the last minute, because at the last minute, there are a lot of people, that, representing candidates that treat them importantly. VANOCUR: Well, after this, Illinois and Pennsylvania declaration, Mayor Daley gave most of the delegates in his delegation, I think, after that meeting out in Pasadena, the Pennsylvania delegation gave most of Pennsylvania, there wasn’t any doubt then, in your mind, was there, that Kennedy…. RASKIN: No there was no doubt. There was no doubt in my mind that, Kennedy

would be the nominee, there was some doubt as to whether he’d make it on the first ballot. But I felt that we would definitely be in on the

second ballot. VANOCUR: Well no, the Wyoming delegation, Terry McCracken [Tracy S.

McCracken], put it over. Did you know that you were gonna get that at the crucial moment?

RASKIN: No, we did not know that we were going to get it, we actually were

trying to get the Kansas delegation at the time that the Wyoming delegation

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finally came around. As I recall we were perhaps five or six or seven votes short of a majority. And the Kansas delegation was a, a unit, they voted under the unit system. However, if it broke evenly, it could be split evenly, and we had six out of the twelve as I remember it, it may have been seven out of fourteen, but I think it was six out of twelve, which meant that if we could get one more half vote, in Kansas, because we would have had a majority, we could get the entire group. And this is the group that we were working on at

the time Tracy MacCracken brought in the additional few votes that we needed to put us over. VANOCUR: Now during the convention, after the Biltmore was kind of closed up

on the Monday the week of the convention, the actual convention, you all moved out to the cottage, didn’t you? Outside by the sports arena?

RASKIN: You mean when the convention started? VANOCUR: Yeah, you know, you were there, the convention, the pre-convention

period you were at the Biltmore, right? RASKIN: That’s right. VANOCUR: And then the Monday when the convention proceedings began, you all

moved out to the cottage… RASKIN: Not all, I, this was, was a very small group of, of people moved out,

the people, really, that were at the cottage adjacent to the convention hall were, Bob Kennedy, Larry O’Brien, Kenny O’Donnell, Pierre

Salinger and myself. Actually, there were very few people ever got there, I don’t recall Senator Kennedy ever having… VANOCUR: He came, he came into the…

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RASKIN: …oh yeah, that’s right, he came in the night… VANOCUR: After he was nominated. RASKIN: …after he was nominated. That’s true. VANOCUR: Because I found myself by some mistake… RASKIN: That’s right. He was there after… VANOCUR: Now what were you doing on the phone, this elaborate phone setup

you had on the floor? RASKIN: Well, that was elaborate, but, it was very good, it was probably, when

you talk about the well oiled machines, perhaps this is the best example of it, and if we had it, we had it at that particular time, using

the electronics for conventions was a little bit new. Our setup was this. We had a rather minor type of switchboard in the cottage, adjacent to the headquarters which was manned by

myself. We had a telephone set, in as I recall, ten or twelve locations in the convention hall. They were strategically located so that we could within a matter of a minute, or less, reach any person in the convention hall. Now that was quite a feat. We did that by way of bringing the telephone closest to that particular state, that we wanted to speak with and the messenger would get that person to… VANOCUR: These were all friendly delegations, I remember Abe Ribicoff had one. RASKIN: Oh yes, oh sure. Dick Daley had one, there was one in the

Massachusetts delegation, there was I think one in the Rhode Island delegation. And, everybody connected with this operation had a floor

plan, and knew exactly

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where these delegations were situated on the convention floor. And it worked remarkably well, we could get the people that we wanted, they could call us back, and if it was something that we didn’t want to speak about over that particular phone, they could go to a public phone, and this was the only way that Senator Kennedy could be reached, by any of the people on the floor, and actually if he wanted to talk to someone on the floor we had a rather unique method for working it out. I would call Senator Kennedy at the apartment, and, or he would call me and say, I’d like to talk to let’s say Senator Muskie [Edmund S. Muskie], I’d get Senator Muskie on the phone through the system and ask him to go to a telephone booth and ring a certain number. VANOCUR: Did you ever do that that night, that Tuesday night? RASKIN: Oh yes, yes. VANOCUR: During the voting? RASKIN: No, no, not during the voting, during the actual voting we didn’t do it.

But, there were times that, it became necessary, I don’t think that there was this kind of communication that I was talking about, and if

Senator Kennedy or Bob or any of the fellows that were working on the floor wanted to speak, why, all he had to do was to go to one of the phones that we had on the floor and pick up the receiver and they would immediately be in contact with me and they could through that be in contact with Senator Kennedy or any of our, of people that were located in that area. VANOCUR: I remember I went in and took the number off one of those phones the

week before and called you on it, I think the

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Wednesday of the voting, you told me to get off as fast as I could. [Laughter] RASKIN: Well, we were pretty busy, it wasn’t a very easy thing to do and there

was a lot of tension, and this was quite a delicate operation, but I enjoyed it, and it was rather unique, and it was a, really a first in

convention operations. VANOCUR: Well, on, on that note we’ll end tape six.

Hy, let’s test this, this is, yeah, this is all right, this is all right. This is Vanocur and Hy Raskin for tape seven, the Kennedy Memorial

Library. We’re just testing now to see if it’s all right. Hy, we were talking about before, the convention when President, Senator Kennedy received the nomination. What happened immediately afterward in the cottage, he came down from North Rossmore, ‘cause I came down with him. What happened in the cottage? RASKIN: Well he came to the cottage for a few minutes, to assemble his

thoughts and talk a little bit with some of the people who were present before going to the convention hall itself to acknowledge the

nomination. There was also a plan that had been made earlier in the day for assembling many of the party leaders in the cottage after President Kennedy had made his acknowledgment to the convention that evening. But for some reason it was called off, by Bob Kennedy, and it was my chore to call the people back who I had called earlier to invite to the meeting at the cottage. I couldn’t

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get them all on the phone so several of them came over to the cottage anyway, but there was no meeting held that evening after the acknowledgment by President Kennedy. VANOCUR: But didn’t these people come in, like Carl Magisappio and Dave Lawrence just before, you know, he went over? RASKIN: There were a few there, Sandy, I can’t recall exactly who they were,

but there weren’t too many because most of them were still on the convention floor waiting for his arrival there.

VANOCUR: Okay, let’s go to the next day. You know, it surprised a great many

people that it was gonna be, it was Lyndon Johnson as the VP choice. Had you had any inkling that it might have been Lyndon Johnson?

RASKIN: Absolutely not. I had absolutely no idea, and it had never occurred to

me that it might be Lyndon Johnson, the night before, or any time up to the nomination, and actually when I heard it the next day I was

somewhat surprised, it was rather hard for me to believe because the Kennedy people and

most other people close to this thing had been talking about a lot of names, and Johnson’s name was not among them. VANOCUR: Which names? Symington was prominent, wasn’t it? RASKIN: Yes. Symington, Jackson [Henry M. Jackson], Hubert Humphrey,

Orville Freeman [Orville Lothrop Freeman], Governor Loveless [Herschel Cellel Loveless], Governor Docking [George Docking], of Kansas, and I think that there

were several others. But, principally, these are the names that stand out in my

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mind as those who were mentioned most frequently. VANOCUR: At what time did you know that it was gonna be Lyndon Johnson? RASKIN: I didn’t know it, Sandy, until it was actually announced by the press. VANOCUR: That was late on Thursday afternoon. RASKIN: Seems to me it was some time around noon. VANOCUR: Yeah. What was your feeling, you know, was it the best choice, after

you got out of the shock? RASKIN: I really didn’t have any particular thought about it from that

standpoint, I was rather surprised because I had thought of many other people, and one of the names that had not occurred to me was that of

Lyndon Johnson. And so, I hadn’t really had any opportunity to think about the wisdom of the choice of the selection, I hadn’t really given it too much thought from that standpoint. At that particular time. VANOCUR: What’d you do after the convention? RASKIN: I went back to… VANOCUR: Let me stop. There’s a meeting of the National Committee on Saturday

morning, before Senator Kennedy left for Hyannis Port. Did you attend that?

RASKIN: No, actually there was a meeting before that, that I attended, that

included, in fact, let me put it this way, there were several meetings, it was done on the basis of region. Regional leaders were called together

by Bob Kennedy and the campaign strategy was discussed at these regional

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meetings with the various leaders from the particular regions, and I attended practically all of these meetings, as I recall I think this was on Friday. VANOCUR: What happened as these regional meetings? RASKIN: Strategy was discussed, the plans for running the campaign, the, a little

bit was discussed regarding itinerary, but a great deal of emphasis as I recall was put on the fact that, we had to get out and do a great job and

getting as many people registered as possible, all over the country. This seemed to be the immediate problem, and Bob Kennedy stressed this emphatically, that one of the things that everybody could work on as soon as they got home would be registration. It was really too early to get into the campaign itself at this particular point. But a great deal of work could be done on registration. VANOCUR: Well, at this time did you received your Western assignment in the

campaign staff? RASKIN: No, not at that particular time, after it was over, I had a private

discussion with Bob Kennedy, and he suggested to me that in addition to the work that I could do in the West that he thought it would be

advisable for me to spend a good deal of my time traveling with Senator Kennedy, I believe because, he had traveled with us, meaning the Stevenson campaign group, in 1956, and Bob Kennedy had spent a good deal of that time with me, during that campaign and during those travels. Apparently he thought that I could be of some help in that way, to Senator Kennedy.

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VANOCUR: You went back there, to Chicago after Los Angeles? RASKIN: Yes. VANOCUR: And then did you, what, what happened after that? Did you go to

Hyannis Port, did you go to the Cape to talk to the Senator? RASKIN: Yes, I went to the Cape, I didn’t talk to the Senator at the Cape, I spent

some time with Pierre Salinger, Steve Smith, and Bob Kennedy. VANOCUR: What’d you talk about? RASKIN: Oh, we talked about the campaign itself, but a great deal of time was

not spent on details.

VANOCUR: Well, by this time had it been announced that Edward Kennedy would be in charge of the Western states?

RASKIN: No, it was not. Not at the time, up to the time I should say, that I went

to the Cape. VANOCUR: What’d you do, did you just go to San Francisco and establish

headquarters? RASKIN: Oh no, I was… VANOCUR: Toward the late, late August now. RASKIN: Toward the late… VANOCUR: There was a special session of Congress… RASKIN: No, that’s true, but we didn’t, as I recall, Ted Kennedy went to

California, about ten days or two weeks before Labor Day. Labor Day is usually the day that the convention, the campaign I should say,

normally gets underway. It’s the starting point. When I heard about this, I was not surprised because I had discussed it a good deal with

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Ted Kennedy, and Ted Kennedy and I had worked together, in the pre-convention campaign in many of the Western states. Ted Kennedy called me, to discuss this with me, and I suggested that since he was going out, he should stop in Chicago and spend a little time with me, which he did. He spent several hours with me in my office in Chicago before he went to California, and I told him that I couldn’t get away at that particular time but would be out a week or ten days later. VANOCUR: What problems did you think presented themselves? For example, did

you think at that early stage that this anti-Catholicism as it turned out, would matter more in the far Midwestern states, you know the plain

states and the West, than it did say, eventually wind up in the South? RASKIN: Oh, we knew, we knew we had this problem, all during the pre-

convention campaign, it was not news to us at all. VANOCUR: Why is, why was that Hy, in the West, what was there peculiar to the

West that made this a problem?

RASKIN: Well, peculiar to the West, I think that we could put it another way and say the few places that it was not peculiar was in the mid-Atlantic and some of the Northeastern states, the large industrial states where the

various ethnic and religious groups had lived together for so many years. Out in the West, you don’t find this situation, as a, as much as you do in the larger states. It cropped up, in several places, I remember particularly in Oregon was where I did a good deal of work as you know, was a particular difficult state

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on this particular subject and this point. We were told about this when we first had discussed the possibility of Kennedy’s candidacy, and Oregon. But since he ran so well in the primary we thought we had this pretty well behind us. It turned out that we did not, they had some bitter experiences in Oregon, twenty five, thirty years ago on the religious issue. VANOCUR: When was that, what….that’s supposed to be a pretty sophisticated

state…. RASKIN: Well, I thought so, I thought it was a sophisticated state, and I still

believe that it is, but on the religious issue apparently, there was a, a residue of feeling that had accumulated back in, I would say, as best I

can recall, some time during the ‘20s or even before. Actually, some legislation was passed that gave the Catholics in that community a great disadvantage regarding schooling, books, and so forth, that was later declared unconstitutional. VANOCUR: But, now take a state like Washington, you know, when he,

President—Senator Kennedy went in there the organization which was lousy, we came in there right after the Cadillac Square speech, it was

about a day later, and then nobody on the streets, what was it with the Democratic organization in the state of Washington, was it, was it bad, was it prob, was there a special problem there? RASKIN: No, I don’t think that Washington was unique in this case, the Western

states are not organized in the same way that the large industrial states in the Midwest

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and the East were organized. And I believe that those of us who are familiar with politics in these large states have a tendency to equate the large industrial states, where they were pretty well organized, with states all over the country. And this just isn’t true. The newer states in the West have never organized in that fashion. Perhaps a good illustration of the organization in states you speak of, the state of Washington, is the fact that most of the statewide officials are Democrats. We’ve had Senator Magnuson [Warren G. Magnuson], Senator Jackson, statewide, having been elected statewide, and one time a Congressman who was elected on a

Congressman’s large basis, so he had to run statewide, he was a Democrat. Yet as I recall, all except one of the Congressmen, that ran in districts, were Republicans. A very strange situation, they just split tickets, and are as independent-minded as can be. I’d believe that the states in the West have never organized in the same fashion or on the same basis that they have in the East. And I do believe that there’s good reason for it. I have learned that in the Eastern states, the large industrial states in the Midwest, and of course you know I’m more familiar with Chicago perhaps than I am any other state, that the Democratic Party in these states is usually made up of first or second generation immigrants, and ethnic groups that band together and sort of make up the Democratic Party. As you get farther west, why, you don’t have as many, people of, of this kind of in these groups as you do have in the middle West or in the East. VANOCUR: Now Hy, your prime concern was California. How many

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electoral votes was it that year? RASKIN: I think thirty two. VANOCUR: Did you have any doubt, looking back on it, that he could carry it? RASKIN: No I did not. I was positive that he would carry it. VANOCUR: What made you think so? RASKIN: I felt that the predominance in Democratic registrations, which was a

little over a million, should give him plenty of room to carry the state in spite of the fact that we would have many defections on the

religious issue. I just didn’t feel that we’d have a million, or out of the million or more Democratic registrations, that we would have half of them that would go, go to Nixon [Richard M. Nixon]. VANOCUR: Well did, did you know at the time, did you think about this, this

problem that many of the people in the central valley were Okies and Arkies, you know, hard shell Baptists…

RASKIN: Yes, yes, I was familiar with that, at the same time I felt that if there

were two or three hundred thousand it still shouldn’t be enough, to make the change in the final result.

VANOCUR: Looking back on it, what do you think were the mistakes in the

campaigning in California?

RASKIN: I think one of the mistakes we made that we were very careless about, doing the job that had to be done on the absentee votes. This is the way we lost the state. Perhaps you don’t recall it, but just in case that you

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do it won’t hurt to remind you, that when the polls were closed and the votes were tallied, Kennedy had carried the state of California by 35,000 votes. About ten days later he lost the state by 35,000 votes. VANOCUR: So that was a switch of 60,000 on absentee… RASKIN: 70,000, and in order to do this, it, it took quite some doing, because

there was 210,000 absentee votes cast. Now in order to change this result as radically as it was changed it was necessary in the absentee

votes, for Nixon to get 140,000 to Kennedy’s 70. This just seemed impossible because they tell us that normally the absentee votes in California run pretty much the same way the rest of the states does. VANOCUR: Let’s end it on that.

This is tape number eight, interview with Hy Raskin for the Kennedy Library. Hy, we were talking in the last tape about these absentee

ballots. Now, where did most of them come from? That were favorable, say to Nixon. Orange County? RASKIN: No, I think that they were spread pretty well throughout the state. I

believe that more than the normal number came from San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles. Particularly Los Angeles.

VANOCUR: Are you suggesting anything now? RASKIN: No, I’m not suggesting that there was anything wrong, in the voting of

the absentee ballots, but I might also remind you of this, since that time legislation has

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been passed in California, to make the voting of absentee ballots much more strict than they were in those days. VANOCUR: For example, what was, what was lax about them in ’60? RASKIN: Well, my own feeling about the voting of the absentees in California is

that too many people who really do not need to make use of the absentee voting laws make use of them. Most of the other states are

much more strict about the people allowed to vote absentee. It seems that in California 1960 almost anybody who had a slight cold or a sore arm, didn’t feel that they wanted to go to the polls, could vote absentee. You can’t do this in most other states. They have very difficult rules, very strict rules I should say, for absentees, in California there is a much greater proportion of absentees based on the number of votes that there are in the state, than there are in most other states, and that’s the reason, it’s pretty easy to get an absentee ballot, the absentee, voting in California, in 1960, is actually a misnomer. It’s not only, it’s not only people who are absent from the state, it’s also people who are in hospitals, rest homes, and are ill at home, it seems that all they need is a letter from the doctor or the doctor himself can send a letter requesting a ballot. The ballot is sent to the person and the person votes, under rather unusual circumstances, there really isn’t any, very much supervision. And there isn’t anything secret about the ballot when the person votes an absentee ballot. The nurse can be there, the doctor can be there, or there can be any number of people in the hospital room. This isn’t true normally.

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VANOCUR: Okay, California was lost, the West was a disaster for John. F. Kennedy.

RASKIN: True. VANOCUR: Looking back on California, do you wish you had him more in the

central valley, you wish you had him someplace else, was there anything you could’ve done, to change the grade?

RASKIN: Yes, I think that we could’ve done a better job on the absentee ballots.

I, I believe that we sort of let this thing go because, in talking to people about it afterwards I discovered that this was really the first time that

the absentees ever changed the result of the election. VANOCUR: Uh huh. RASKIN: And 210,000 votes is a lot of votes to be cast with the little supervision

that there was at that time. VANOCUR: With the different ratio than the other vote that… RASKIN: Yes, this is most unusual, when you realize that the state broke almost

even in roughly 600,000 or more votes that were cast, and then out of 210,000 it’s absolutely amazing that they would turn out two to one.

VANOCUR: If you’d had, if you’d had an even split in absentee, you’d have wound

up with no worse than say, 20,000 majority, right?

RASKIN: Of course. VANOCUR: Okay. RASKIN: We still would’ve carried the state. VANOCUR: What’d you do after, the election?

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RASKIN: I remained in the California area, I went to Arizona for a few days in the sun, and also spent a weekend in Las Vegas as I recall and came back to California because it was at least a week before the absentee

ballots were actually counted. VANOCUR Did you talk to Teddy Kennedy about the result? RASKIN: Yes. VANOCUR: Did the President call you? RASKIN: No, the President did not. VANOCUR: What did Teddy say? RASKIN: Teddy was in Mexico as I recall with Bob and Steve Smith. VANOCUR: And Dave Hackett [David L. Hackett], right, yeah. RASKIN: Yes. VANOCUR: Hit Acapulco afterward. RASKIN: Yes. VANOCUR: When was the next time you saw President-elect Kennedy? After

California? RASKIN: The best of my recollection it was about three weeks after the election,

it was early in December if I’m not mistaken. VANOCUR: Where? RASKIN: At his home in Washington.

VANOCUR: Now, I remember the broadcast, that you were going to see him that morning in Georgetown. Did he invite you?

RASKIN: Yes. VANOCUR: How did that come about? Teddy?

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RASKIN: Yes, that came about through Teddy, I came to Washington on my way to New York on business and I had lunch with Ted Kennedy, we were discussing the campaign, various other things related to the

campaign and the election itself, Teddy actually had said to me that he had heard through the grapevine that I had no interest in an appointment to the federal government, which was a little unusual, I guess, in his mind at least, for people that had worked in the campaign, for the length of time that I had worked on it. And I told him that it was true, that I didn’t, I wanted to go back and practice law for a few years, and since I was in Washington I would like to pay my respects to the President-elect and then go on to New York. And Teddy, did not tell me that I would see him or wouldn’t, really didn’t comment directly except to say that he was going to Georgetown to meet his father and Senator Kennedy and they were all going to the hospital to see Mrs. Kennedy [Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis]. VANOCUR: Who had just given birth to John Jr. [John F. Kennedy, Jr.], right? RASKIN: That’s right. VANOCUR: Well, when did you get the call to go… RASKIN: Well Ted called me later that afternoon at the Democratic National

Committee, and told me that the President would like to have breakfast with me on Friday. As I recall this was a Wednesday and I was, he

knew I was going to New York that evening and had to be in New York on Thursday. And asked me if I would call Evelyn Lincoln [Evelyn N. Lincoln] for the time and the specific arrangements, which I did late that afternoon and

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she confirmed it and asked me to be at the President-elect’s home at 8:00 on Friday morning. VANOCUR: …what happened, that morning? RASKIN: Well, it was very pleasant for me, we had breakfast, I might say we

were the only ones there at that particular time and all through breakfast. We talked a good deal about the campaign, the various

things that had happened, we discussed the situation in Illinois and some of the other states

that were very close, but everybody seemed to be, I should say we seemed to be perfectly confident and very much at ease, we also discussed briefly some appointments that I was interested in, that I’d heard about, and, and that was pretty much it. VANOCUR: Which were those if you care to say? RASKIN: Well, I don’t think it’d be fair to say at this time. VANOCUR: Okay. Did he ask you if you wanted anything? RASKIN: No, he merely repeated what Ted had said to me, that he had heard that

I was not interested in an appointment in the federal government. And I assured him that I was not.

VANOCUR: Well how did the breakfast end? RASKIN: Well, it seemed to be that breakfasted ended when Dave Bell [David

E. Bell] came in, that was the day that he was going to announce the appointment to the press of his Budget Director, who was Dave Bell.

Dave Bell happened to be an old friend of mine. VANOCUR: Yeah, you knew Dave Bell…

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RASKIN: Oh yes. VANOCUR: Did he tell you at breakfast that he was gonna do it? RASKIN: Oh, it had already been published as I recall, in the newspapers. VANOCUR: Did you comment on it, or did he bring it up? RASKIN: No, I don’t think he did, I don’t think we discussed that phase of it at

all, and then as I recall Pierre Salinger came in a few minutes after that.

VANOCUR: I remember, it was a bitter cold morning and you came out. And there

were some picture taken? RASKIN: Yes. [Background noise]

VANOCUR: …We were talking a moment ago about the breakfast that you had with President Kennedy. What was that thing, the story that you told me about the Rothchilds, when the photographer was taking the

picture that he said to you? RASKIN: Well I think it’s a most interesting story and it was told many times

around Washington and other places, and actually it was published in the newspaper. The story is, as it actually happened is this. When Dave

Bell was getting ready to go out on the steps with the President-elect, I asked Dave if he was going downtown immediately after he had completed his interview with the press and he said he was, and I told him I would wait for him, and go downtown with him. And we agreed that we would go together. So I waited in the house ‘til the matter came to a

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conclusion, and Senator Kennedy, and David Bell, Pierre Salinger, and by that time there were a few others there, came back, and we talked for a few moments and we started to leave, as you said it was quite cold that day, we got our hats and coats and we collected them, and I put my coat on, Senator Kennedy took me by the elbow and started to walk out with him. He got just outside the door and I noticed that the members of the press came back to the house from across the street. I assumed that they felt that there was something else happening and they wanted to be in on it, and they got back and we were standing on the steps talking, and I have to assume that the President-elect did this rather deliberately, he detained me on the steps until the press returned and the photographers were able to take pictures. And the story that he told me was rather interesting. He told me that a mutual friend of ours by the name of Bill Thompson had been there a few days before, and he had also told President Kennedy that he was not interested in an appointment with the federal government. However, he did want to tell President Kennedy a story, and the story was about the Rothchild Bank. And appears as though, several years ago, a very good friend of Baron Rothchild in Paris had walked into the bank, this friend had not seen the Baron for many years and as he was walking through the bank the Baron recognized him and he walked up to him and he said, my friend I haven’t seen you for many years, is there something that you want, did you come to the bank perhaps to make a loan? And the gentleman said, no Baron, I didn’t. And the Baron said, well is there something I can do

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for you? He said yes, there is, he says just walk through the bank with your arm on my shoulder. [ Laughter] VANOCUR: What were your relations with him after he was President? RASKIN: They were very warm, very cordial, in spite of the fact that I didn’t see

him too many times, the next time I saw him was, as I recall, some time in March, which was about two months after the Inauguration. Of

course I saw him during the Inauguration, for just a few moments. But I did not have any opportunity to really spend any time with him until some time in March of 1961. I was working at the Democratic National Committee with John Bailey, helping him reorganize it and handle many of the matters that he felt that I could be of some assistance to him with and one day Evelyn Lincoln called me and asked me to come to the White House, that the President had told her that he hadn’t seen me and would like to have me drop over. VANOCUR: What’d you talk about? RASKIN: Oh, we didn’t talk about too many things, the, there were some things

that had come up, at the National Committee, they weren’t of any real great importance, it was more of a social visit than anything else.

VANOCUR: Did this occur from time to time? You used to go on his flights some

times… RASKIN: Yes, he invited me, the following year he invited me to go to

California with him on one of his flights, and I was with him for several

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days during that time on the flight and I didn’t see too much of him, of course. Spent a little time with him on the plane, it was very enjoyable, and after we landed in California, this was as I recall on our way out to California but we had stops in the Dakotas and in Nebraska on our way out and we did spend some time on Sunday afternoon in Malibu. VANOCUR: What was that famous, you told me about it, but it’s a footnote to

history, about signing the log, or the flight chart on Air Force One? RASKIN: Well I think even before that, Sandy, there’s a more interesting remark

that he made to me that I thought was quite interesting, in fact I believe that I repeated it later and it was published by one of the

magazines. When we started out in the trip I was in the airplane talking with John Bailey, Larry O’Brien, and Matt McCluskey. At the time the President boarded the plane he walked through and he stopped and he looked at us and he said, well, it looks like old times, it looks like the campaign all over again. To the best of my recollection I said yes, but we’re traveling in a little better style. And he said well, he said, we’re entitled to it, that’s what we get when we get elected. [Laughter] VANOCUR: What did he do when you were on this flight, it was back from Palm

Beach wasn’t it? He signed your, the Air Force One log? You wanted his autograph, didn’t you?

RASKIN: Well yes, he had invited me to come up to the

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office, the private compartment that he used as an office, to chat with me and as we were chatting one of the attendants came in with some of

the….I don’t exactly know how to describe them but, they were records of the trip. The, and…. VANOCUR: Flight time, weather… RASKIN: Flight time, weather and so on, it was done by the Captain and all of

the, these were on individual pieces of paper and most of the people on the plane could have access to them… [tape breaks off]

VANOCUR: Hy, we were talking a moment ago on tape 8, this is tape 9, about this

little note, I want to tell this, get you to tell this, story because it will illustrate something about John F. Kennedy. There’s a log on Air

Force One, you’re going from Palm Beach to Washington, or vice versa. What’d he write on it? You asked for his autograph, didn’t you? RASKIN: Well, he, the attendant brought several of these sheets of paper up on

which this is printed, and asked the President to autograph them for various people. And I asked him if he would autograph for, one for

me, since I noticed that there was an extra one that was on the table. And he said of course. He wrote something on it, signed it, and handed it to me. I folded it, and started to put it in my pocket. And he said, aren’t you going to read it? I was a little embarrassed because the President’s handwriting is not very good, and I unfolded it, and I looked at it for a moment, and I couldn’t decipher it. He took it out of my hands and he showed

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it to his brother-in-law [Anthony Stanislas Albert Radziwill] and sister-in-law [Lee Bouvier Radziwill] who were sitting across the aisle. VANOCUR: Who’s that? RASKIN: The….Princess Radziwill… VANOCUR: Lee. RASKIN: …Lee, and Stash as he called it, Radziwell, and they couldn’t read it

either. He read it to them, and it said, “To all of Hy Raskin’s clients, John F. Kennedy.” I reached for it and of course he drew it back and

he tore it up! Threw it in the wastepaper basket and autographed another one.

VANOCUR: Hy, looking back now, it’s almost a year after his death that we’re doing this. You always used to tell me that this guy had it. That’s the way you used to put it. What made him so unique in your judgment,

because you’ve seen a lot of politicians, what made you think this guy really was it? RASKIN: Several things, of course. But I think the most important of all, is that

he was a great human being. And I do believe that in order to be a great anything, and especially a great politician, you have to be a

genuinely good person. Jack Kennedy—I’m sorry to call him Jack Kennedy at this stage of the game—President Kennedy, was this kind of a person. He seemed to be interested, vitally, in his associates, his friends, the people he worked with, the people that were around him, this was almost impossible not to notice, just brief contact and encounters with him. And one of the things that I’ve told you, Sandy, is that after he became President, the few

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times that I did have the pleasure and honor of being with him, the first question was “How are you?” or “How’s the law business?”, “How are you doing?”. He didn’t start out by asking me how he was doing or how the Party was doing or how the government was doing. He always started out by being genuinely concerned with what was going on with me. And this I think is the measure of the man. I’ve always said that Jack Kennedy went first class, when he decided that he wanted to do something for you, or help you, he didn’t do it in a small way, if it was worth doing it was worth doing right. And he went all out. Just wasn’t satisfied to just sort of pay you a compliment or help you in some small way, if you were worth helping, why he wanted to help you in every possible way. This, this, this is the measure of the man as far as I’m concerned. But that, a lot of people have that. But I think that, to make my point, I’ve got to point that out, this is the very foundation, this is the basis, upon which the rest of it is built. And without this I don’t think anyone can be a really, a great man. And President Kennedy had this, at all times as far as I was concerned. Because I saw it coming to play not only as far as I was concerned but as far as many, many other people were concerned. It was just as much a part of him as anything else that was connected with him. It was just embedded in his character. VANOCUR: Well what was there in him, because you know, after he died, Jess

Unruh [Jesse M. Unruh] in California said, “I’ll never have another tiger like this one.” What made him such a

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tiger? I mean, in your eyes? At that particular time, 1960, or before. RASKIN: Well, it, I can’t point to the exact moment, I….can say this, that the, as

I got to know him more and as I got to know him longer I found more things to admire about him. I was attracted to him originally,

politically on the basis of the 1956 convention. A lot of people told me that they thought he

would make a grand, a great campaigner, and a great candidate, because he had what’s known as political sex appeal. That’s, that, that’s the attraction, that’s what calls your attention to him. But then I discovered that he had an absolutely brilliant mind, he had great instincts, he was as hard a worker as I’d ever met in my life, there wasn’t anything that was too hard for him to do and he had a tremendous amount of confidence, and it was supreme confidence, without ever being cocky. And, and he worked at whatever chore was put before him. He worked harder than everybody else put together in my opinion, pre-convention and also in the campaign. He was just great at all times. And yet with it all he had that good touch, the soft touch when it was necessary, and he could be just as tough as anybody else. He had a great sense of humor, and intense loyalty, and of course it takes loyalty to your followers to get loyalty from your followers. I think there was a tremendous amount of devotion, to President Kennedy by not only the people that were with him for many years, but also the people that came along later. VANOCUR: Did….you ever feel, as you knew him, setting out in 1950, it

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was ’58, wasn’t it in your case? RASKIN: Late ’57, early ’58, yes. VANOCUR: That he wasn’t gonna be a nominee? RASKIN: Strangely enough I did not. I always felt that he was. Now, I might

say, that in this connection, that it wasn’t entirely Jack Kennedy, a lot of other things have to be taken into consideration. These are things

that are often overlooked, in discussing candidates, the average person seems to think in terms of the ideal candidate, and measures a candidate against the ideal. Well there is no such thing. Except on paper or in books. But, there are no ideal candidates in the flesh as far as I’m concerned. Jack Kennedy turned out to be as close to one as you could possibly get, otherwise he could not have won the nomination and the election with the political handicaps that he came into the convention and into the election with. But you also have to take inventory of the other candidates who are available. And I felt at that time that Kennedy had as good if not a better chance of not only becoming the nominee but also being elected. VANOCUR: Just one final thing, Hy. Where were you when you heard the news

that he was shot? RASKIN: Strangely enough I was on an airplane on my way to California from

Chicago. It was announced on the airplane. VANOCUR: What was your first instinct?

RASKIN: Well, I, it was unbelievable, and strangely enough I was sitting with friends of mine, one from

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Chicago, they were both from Chicago, but one of these men had just come back from Texas, he was in the oil business. And we were talking about this very thing, and he told us that he felt that President Kennedy was not doing too well in Texas and this trip to Texas might help create a little better image in the state of Texas. And this, just about this time when we heard the announcement. VANOCUR: Well I think that does it. Thank you very much. That’s the Kennedy

Memorial Library interview with Hyman B. Raskin. Started in Palm Springs and ended in Washington.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

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Hyman B. Raskin Oral History Transcript – JFK #1 Name List

B Bailey, John Moran, 21, 23, 45, 50, 73, 74 Bell, David E., 70, 71, 72 Blair, William McCormick, Jr., 12, 41, Brown, Bernice, 48 Brown, Edmund G., 33, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 D Daley, Richard J., 42, 52, 54 DiSalle, Michael V., 34 Docking, George, 57 Dutton, Frederick G., 48 F Freeman, Orville Lothrop, 57 G Green, Edith S., 25, 31 Green, William J., Jr., 50 H Hackett, David L., 68 Humphrey, Hubert H., 8, 32, 37, 57 J Jackson, Henry M., 57, 63 Johnson, Lyndon B., 8, 28, 36, 43-45, 51, 57, 58 K Kefauver, Estes, 4, 8 Kennedy, Edward M., 18, 22, 23, 29, 39, 45, 47,

50, 60, 61, 68, 69, 70 Kennedy, John F., 1-32, 34-60, 62, 64, 65, 67-80 Kennedy, John F., Jr., 69 Kennedy, Joseph P., Sr., 9, 10, 23, 24, 45, 46, 47,

48, 49 Kennedy, Robert F., 2, 9, 10, 22, 23, 31, 32, 39, 50,

53, 55, 58, 59, 60, 68 L Lawrence, David Leo, 42, 50, 57 Lincoln, Evelyn N., 69, 72 Loveless, Herschel Cellel, 57

M Magisappio, Carl, 57 Magnuson, Warren G., 63 Mansfield, Mike, 43, 45 McCluskey, Matt, 74 McCracken, Tracey S., 52, 53 Meyner, Robert B., 7, 8 Minow, Newton N., 12, 41 Morse, Wayne L., 30, 36, 37, 40 Muskie, Edmund S., 55 N Nixon, Richard M., 64, 65 O O'Brien, Lawrence F., 23, 50, 53, 74 O'Donnell, Kenneth P., 23, 50, 53 Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy, 69 R Radziwill, Anthony Stanislas Albert, 76 Radziwill, Lee Bouvier, 76 Ribicoff, Abraham A., 21, 54 Rowe, James H., Jr., 43, 45 S Salinger, Pierre E.G., 23, 53, 60, 71, 72 Sawyer, F. Grant, 13, 48 Schrunk, Terry D., 32 Sharon, John H., 4 Shriver, R. Sargent, Jr., 22, 45 Smathers, George A., 2, 3 Smith, Stephen E., 21, 22, 23, 50, 60, 68 Sorensen, Theodore C., 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 23 Stevenson, Adlai E., 1, 4, 8, 11-13, 16, 27, 28, 33,

36, 41, 59 Symington, Stuart, II, 8, 44, 51, 57 T Thompson, Bill, 72 U Udall, Stewart L., 43, 44 Unruh, Jesse M., 77 W Wallace, Robert Ash, 23 Wirtz, W. Willard, 12