ON THE OPPOSITE side of labor’s dispute with the McClellan Committee, the Irish Brotherhood faced an entirely different problem.
Kenny noted to Jack one evening that he had come firmly to believe that “the management/business group was almost violently pushing this investigation, as they believed it was a way to topple Walter Reuther. They were more worried about Walter Reuther than about Jimmy Hoffa.”
Bobby was caught squarely in the middle of this very public fight. It was this deepening political quagmire that in part prompted Bobby’s call to Kenny. The other reason Bobby needed help was that Jimmy Hoffa had just ascended to the top of the powerful Teamsters Union, with the help of organized crime, making him an even more formidable opponent.
Hoffa cared little about those he trampled on in search of power, and he cared even less about associating with the mobsters who kept him in power. Angie Novello remembered the so-called union men who worked with Hoffa wearing loud, expensive suits, too much jewelry, and more perfume than most women. Jimmy Hoffa, like Bobby, was relentless in pursuit of what he wanted.
The McClellan Committee’s immediate focus, and what it became most known for, was a series of epic battles between Bobby and the Teamsters Union. Hoffa had never crossed swords with someone quite like Bobby Kennedy, and the results were dramatically unpleasant, leading to explosive moments both in and out of the hearing room. What concerned Kenny and Jack, however, was the degree to which Bobby personalized the battle. They found Bobby’s obsession with Hoffa disturbing, and while they shared Bobby’s judgment that Hoffa and his mob associates were bad news, Kenny and Jack agreed that Bobby’s approach lacked decorum and was, as Kenny put it, “entirely too personal.”
Jack’s involvement in the hearings contrasted sharply with Bobby’s. His exchanges with the teamsters were noteworthy for what they were not. If Bobby’s idealism and enthusiasm had gotten them into this thing, Jack’s cool detachment and mental acuity would be put on display for the national press and the nation in order to mitigate Bobby’s vociferous depositions. Jack came across as smart, in control, and well versed in labor politics. On almost every occasion, Jack’s grasp of the issues at hand compared with his antagonists was impressive, and his rapid-fire cross-examination of his opponents was extraordinary.
Kenny remembered watching Jack in action. “Everyone (every Democrat anyway) knew that Jack would be a candidate for president in 1960, and everyone had their own agenda. Jack was out there alone. When he went after these witnesses, he knew no Democrat would step up to rescue him.”
Jack would have to play this one out all the way through to the end. “And he did so,” in Kenny’s view, “brilliantly.”
Battling Jimmy Hoffa and the teamsters, however, was relatively easy. Their known mob connections made them appear like natural villains in the press coverage. But with the Republicans pushing hard for an equal investigation into the UAW, things became less cut and dry. Bobby was against a UAW investigation, not for political reasons but simply because he questioned the legal case the Republicans made for opening an investigation in the first place.
The management and business side of the dispute viewed the McClellan hearings as an opportunity to expose Walter Reuther for what they truly believed him to be: a communist. They were sure that Reuther was using the UAW as a front for his ultimate goal of gaining a foothold in the American political establishment. In addition to abuses and mismanagement, business management was sure that the McClellan Committee would find communism rampant within the UAW. The paranoia of the managerial class in the late 1950s had them convinced that Walter Reuther and his labor-organizing brothers, Victor and Roy, were transforming the UAW into a vicious Stalinist organization. As examples, business interests cited the reported beatings of people who had opposed Reuther and indicated that they had evidence that these beatings were carried out at the direct instruction of the Reuther brothers.
Bobby wondered aloud to Kenny, Jack, and Senator McClellan whether an investigation into the UAW actually fell within the purview of the committee. This was too convenient for the Kennedy critics in the press, who hammered Bobby and Jack daily for going after Jimmy Hoffa and the teamsters with incredible zeal while leaving the UAW and the Reuther brothers, strong Democratic allies, alone. The press declared with vehemence that the Kennedy brothers intended to further Jack’s political ambitions by going easy on the Reuther brothers and the UAW.
For his part, Senator McClellan told Bobby and Kenny that he considered Walter Reuther to be, if not a communist then at the very least akin to one. But McClellan, in respect for Bobby’s judgment, had held off the UAW issue for a period of time. Kenny recalled how, at last, “the pressures from the press continued to build to a point where Senator McClellan, whose entire sympathy was with the business community, simply could no longer take it. More than anything else, Senator McClellan resented being depicted as ‘a tool of the Kennedy brothers.’”
McClellan finally felt that he had to go ahead with the investigation into the UAW. Jack and Kenny discussed it at length, and they recognized that they could no longer avoid a confrontation with their powerful union allies. Jack simply could not disagree publicly with McClellan on this point. If Jack were to oppose McClellan, Jack would cause the opposite of his intended effect, merely amplifying cynical newspaper coverage of his motives and subsequently increasing pressure on McClellan to target the UAW.
When they saw Senator McClellan weaken, Republicans were only confirmed in their belief that Bobby Kennedy could not be trusted to conduct a fair investigation. Senator Kennedy was also suspect.
“This was,” Kenny remembered, “the lowest point for Bobby. Bobby was really vilified here as someone who could not be trusted. Senator McClellan, in his usual fashion, agreed to agree with both sides, leaving everyone unhappy.”
If the situation was not tense enough, it was about to become even more so when Joe Rauh, counsel for the UAW, contacted Bobby Kennedy.
“He is not a very happy fellow,” Bobby reported to Kenny as they sat in Kenny’s cramped office, after Bobby had hung up the phone. Bobby was shaken.
“Can you blame him?” Kenny teased. “A lot of people feel that way after they talk to you.” Bobby made a face at Kenny. This was not a time for humor.
There was certainly nothing to laugh at from the UAW’s perspective. Rauh indicated that he would like to see Bobby about the upcoming hearings, telling Bobby in no uncertain terms that he was not pleased and thought this entire investigation was an imposition of government control and political game-playing. Rauh admitted later to Kenny that during that phone call he was very upset, making clear that he felt Bobby was personally behind the investigation. In response, Bobby had been stunned, angry, and overly defensive. He had not wanted these hearings in the first place, but now that they were under way, he intended to pursue them with his normal zeal for correct procedure and the rule of law. This was not what Rauh wanted to hear.
Kenny’s time at the McClellan Committee had been well spent. He had become, as he put it, “a bit of an expert. I had really done my homework. I’d undertaken this with some political calculation in mind, but afterward I became totally convinced about who was right and who was wrong in the conflict between labor and government.”
If Joe Rauh had hoped Kenny would put a stop to the UAW hearings, though, he was ultimately disappointed. While Kenny confided to Rauh his belief, shared with Jack, that the hearings were being used to facilitate Republican grandstanding, Kenny also made clear that there was little either Bobby or Jack could do about it. Senator McClellan had ordered the hearings, and all Kenny could promise was a fair shake. Still, if it would help, Kenny would arrange a meeting with Bobby.
The first engagement that Kenny recalled was when Jack Conway, Reuther’s strategist, and Dave Rabinowitz, a UAW lawyer from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, requested a meeting with Kenny directly. They had been told that Kenny spoke their language and, more important, that he spoke for Jack. They figured that even if there was no negotiating with Bobby, Kenny would listen to reason.
Kenny recalled pressure building into late winter 1957 for the UAW hearings. “Bobby Kennedy and I went and met Dave Rabinowitz and Jack Conway in the afternoon in Bobby Kennedy’s cramped, messy office in the old Senate Office Building. Bobby was from the beginning very cold and unpleasant with them. It was a brutal directness, a cold and confrontational style he employed often at the time. Personally, I felt he often did this unnecessarily. This was one of those times. I was not pleased and did not think it would help the situation.”
Kenny later accused Bobby of either not thinking politically or not thinking at all.
“Bobby told them quite coldly that he had been ordered to investigate and that he would conduct the investigation in a forthright fashion, that all the witnesses he thought should be called would be called. Bobby indicated that he had read everything very carefully and he indeed had. Bobby always did his homework.”
Kenny had also read all the committee documents pertaining to the UAW but did not come to the same conclusions as Bobby. Perhaps he had been influenced by the critical importance of the UAW to Jack’s political future, but Kenny also believed that, in comparison with Jimmy Hoffa, who was up to his neck in mobsters, graft, and corruption, the UAW was being targeted by McClellan for purely political reasons.
Bobby did not agree. He felt the UAW had in fact committed some improprieties. “The one piece of advice that I would like to give to you is that you should come before this committee and not lie to us,” Bobby said. You should be cooperative. You should always be truthful and forthright in your testimony.”
Conway and Rabinowitz were growing angrier by the moment as Bobby went on to say, “You should not invoke the Fifth Amendment if it can be avoided, as that always connotes guilt. Despite your feelings toward me and this committee, the Senate committee will be fair in their judgment of your problems if you in fact told the truth and were honest at all times.”
“I’ve looked over the situation carefully,” Bobby continued, “and while I am aware that this does not fall into the category of my other cases, I still feel it of necessity that the UAW should be called before the committee.” Bobby went on to say that they should not impede the investigation in any way; but he also wanted to be clear that they would be treated like any other union that came before the committee.
Kenny groaned as Bobby finished his instructions to the union representatives. By the look on Conway’s and Rabinowitz’s faces, Kenny understood that Bobby’s approach had just made gaining their support for Jack Kennedy in 1960 a hell of lot harder.
Conway and Rabinowitz were upset at the manner in which Bobby spoke to them—Rabinowitz less so than Conway. Conway was a tough man who had worked his way up through the ranks and saw Bobby as some snot-nosed rich kid trying to score political points by pushing around the UAW.
Kenny tried in vain to point out that this was hardly the best approach to take with Bobby, but Conway was too enraged with the investigation and with Bobby’s tone to hear him. Conway made clear to Bobby, in an equally cold and very tough manner, that he felt the committee was strictly an instrument for punishing labor, expressing his disgust with McClellan’s exploitation of the UAW for political mileage.
By now both men were standing, and Kenny rose as well, just in case Conway decided to take a poke at Bobby, which was not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
“Conway told Bobby point-blank and with great hostility,” Kenny recalled to Jack later, “that nobody in the UAW would lie to Congress or the committee, but he also told Bobby quite angrily that the UAW would not under any circumstances cooperate with the committee or with Bobby or with his investigation. The union would do what they had to do to protect themselves and their members from a prosecutorial committee and chief counsel, ‘Meaning you,’ Conway said, pointing at Bobby, should his intentions be missed. Conway felt the committee was abusing its congressional powers and authority.”
“You and your committee are on a witch hunt against labor,” Conway said, nearly spitting out the words. “You’re not just after us but all of labor, including the teamsters.” Rabinowitz tried to calm Conway, but it was too late. Conway went on to tell Bobby that he was not happy with the committee and felt that Bobby was personally responsible for not only the hearings on the UAW but also the attacks on the teamsters as well. Conway then made it as plain as possible that Bobby’s action and attitude in this and other labor matters amounted to a price his brother would pay in 1960.
With that, the meeting came to a dramatic close. Bobby was furious at Conway for attacking him personally and for invoking his brother. What made Conway’s attack even harder to stomach, though, was the fact that Bobby had resisted McClellan’s hearings on the UAW in the first place, though he never said this to Conway, fearing it would sound disloyal to Senator McClellan. It fell to Kenny to give Conway and Rabinowitz the background later.
Sitting with Bobby afterward, Kenny handed him a beer and tried to lighten the mood. “Well, that went well.”
Bobby shook his head. “I am worried that by doing my job, in fact I will be hurting Jack’s chances for 1960.”
Kenny pointed out it was a bit too late to start thinking like that. But Kenny believed that Jack’s future “always played in the back of Bobby’s mind, though it never impeded or changed his actions, either with this committee or in later conflicts, much to everyone’s frustration. Bobby was always his own man, whether you agreed with him or not.” It was a quality that Kenny found both admirable and infuriating in equal measure.
Kenny admitted later, “There was no question in either my mind or Bobby’s that this was the most ridiculous set of congressional hearings that had been held by this committee, especially in comparison to the very serious work we had been doing previously. In the end, the hearings became almost ludicrous before they were through. However, neither Bobby nor I could say this to Conway, so Bobby took quite a hit verbally from him. Given Bobby’s hostile approach, though, this was not surprising.”
For a first meeting, at least from Kenny’s perspective, things could not have gone worse. On the other hand, Jack Conway was the first union official who seemed to really make an impression on Bobby Kennedy. As Kenny remembered, “Bobby was really quite struck by the fact that Conway looked completely different than what he had grown to expect in previous hearings from a labor union guy. Jack Conway did not come in with pearl studs in his shirt, an expensive suit, cashmere coat, and bathed in cologne. Conway was obviously a real union leader, and he was going to fight the committee on principled grounds. He was a guy’s guy. He was very impressive to both Bobby and me in terms of the way he was able to articulate his views and his union’s positions. He had no fear whatsoever of the committee, which also impressed both Bobby and me tremendously. He was not a thug. He was a genuine union fellow.”
Kenny, trying to find a way to mend fences between labor and the Kennedys, decided that Conway at least was a good place to start. Conway was exactly who he appeared to be, and he might be Jack’s in with the UAW, despite their less than auspicious first meeting.
Kenny felt Conway had spoken truth to power, that he had stood up to Bobby in defense of himself and his union. Unlike others they had dealt with in the past, Conway was at least honest. Angry but honest, as Kenny described him to Jack.
Kenny made clear to Jack that he “believed the UAW under the leadership of Reuther and Conway was an upright, decent union, which had made some mistakes but overall was led by good men who were simply seeking better wages, benefits, and working conditions for their men. They made clear that they were not going to be put upon or used by either a congressional committee or company management.”
Kenny needed to figure out how to balance Bobby’s obligation to follow through on the hearings with Jack’s need to ally himself with the UAW. Conway, Reuther, and the rest of the UAW leadership needed to believe that the Kennedys were not siding with the Republicans and big business in an attack on labor. They were not out to get the unions in general but were only after those who were corrupt. The challenge was conveying this to Conway and Reuther, who after this first meeting were even less inclined to trust anything that came from the Kennedy brothers.
All three men were convinced that the Republicans’ strategy was an attempt to damage John Kennedy and to adversely affect his relationship with labor, which the Republicans well understood would be crucial to Jack’s presidential ambitions. In the end, Kenny felt the best strategy was a direct one. He would set up dinner with Conway and Rabinowitz.
So a few nights later, at Duke Zeibert’s restaurant near Connecticut and K Street in Washington, DC, within walking distance of the White House, Kenny, Conway, and Rabinowitz discussed the hearings at length. As dinner wrapped up, Kenny was confident enough to have Bobby join them.
Kenny, now having the lay of the land, over drinks with Conway before the dinner, began to get the UAW to listen to Bobby’s viewpoint. Kenny felt his job was to get Conway to meet and see the authentic Bobby Kennedy, not the media-created individual. Conway and Rabinowitz were surprised because the Bobby Kennedy the media wrote about and the person they had met the other day was unfair, bloodthirsty, and ruthless. They were stunned to see that he was a regular guy, who could be tough when necessary but fair-minded and not intent on destroying the unions in this country.
“Kenny,” Jack joked, “often made a better case for Bobby than Bobby did for himself.”
While getting Jack Conway and Bobby to at least listen to each other and understand each other’s problems was in no way a solution to Jack’s larger political problem, Kenny felt good that he had at least opened a line of communication. They were talking to each other instead of at each other, even if major disagreements would remain for some time.
The UAW leadership was beginning to understand that Bobby and Jack viewed the McClellan investigation of the UAW as a political problem, just as the union itself did. The Reuther brothers and the UAW slowly realized that they were being used as a political football to do as much damage as could be done to Jack Kennedy’s presidential aspirations. Kenny reflected on this fateful dinner: “I think within an hour that Dave Rabinowitz, even more Jack Conway, admitted they got the surprise of their lives when they met Bobby Kennedy that night for the second time. While they came away still not liking him personally very much, they were more convinced that all Bobby Kennedy wanted was to be fair. This time Bobby was more controlled. He was less biting and more willing to both give and take.
“Bobby made clear that he had no control over the hearings, that they were in fact a political exercise, and his candor on that point surprised them; but since we were now in a position where the hearings were going to be held no matter what, Bobby made clear that the hearings would be even-handed and the union would be treated properly.”
While this did not mean that the UAW would support Bobby’s brother in a potential presidential campaign, it did mean they understood where Bobby was coming from. More importantly, the UAW had no intention of being used in this way by the Republicans or even by well-meaning Democrats.
“What was fascinating to me as the meeting unfolded,” Kenny said, “was that Bobby and Conway began to realize that neither was the person that they had perceived the other to be.
“It became evident to both men that they had been dealing with stereotypes of each other’s character. You could not help but see after a while that Jack Conway was an honest union leader. This really struck Bobby. He was shocked by the difference between teamsters Hoffa and Jimmy Cross and men like Conway and Rabinowitz. Bobby had given up hope that there were any honest union men left in any of these organizations. Conway and Rabinowitz were equally shocked that Bobby Kennedy was not this ruthless, unhinged dismantler of unions. They saw, as Bobby talked, that he was faced with real political problems of his own. They were also surprised to see he was very familiar with the UAW and had done his homework.”
As Kenny noted later to Jack, “In the end, both men had, to some degree, overcome their misperceptions of each other. They could then begin to talk as equals.”
As they turned to leave, Bobby suddenly said to them, “If you have a problem or something comes up, if you find out something that you think I should know, come to me. My door is always open.”
This surprised them, but they felt he was sincere. According to Kenny, “Bobby told them they could reach him whenever they needed. Even going so far as to give out both his and my home phone numbers should they need to talk to either one of us. This was the Bobby Kennedy I knew”—and the one Kenny wanted the union men to know and come to trust.
For their part, Conway and Rabinowitz walked away somewhat relieved, extremely surprised, and feeling that Bobby Kennedy was going to be fair with them, which was the best they could hope for in a bad situation.
Perhaps the first thing all parties understood, beyond the fact that hearings were going to be held, was that they were dealing with a common enemy: the Republicans. Kenny hoped to use this to forge a bond, even a tentative one, between Jack Kennedy and the UAW.
Bobby and Kenny’s initial strategy was to go directly to the senators on the committee and challenge the need for the hearings. At a closed-door hearing, in which Kenny sat next to Bobby, the two could not have been clearer. “Bobby told them in his view that they were making a grave mistake, that the hearings would end up being an embarrassment to the committee, and to the Republicans especially. He told them he believed firmly that while hearings needed to take place, this was in fact the wrong committee to hold them. The senators listened quietly and I think the Republicans, led by [Senator Barry] Goldwater, appreciated Bobby’s view and wanted to think about it.” Republican senator Karl Mundt, however, who really did not like Bobby or Jack, leaked to the press that Bobby had tried to kill the hearings.
Once the story hit the newspapers, all hell broke loose, and the committee reconvened. Everyone agreed now that they had no choice but to hold the hearings. In the end it was Senator Kennedy who offered the motion to convene the hearings. Politically, it was the best move he could make under trying circumstances.
“We had to make the best out of a bad political situation before it got worse,” Bobby said later.
With that unceremonious start, the hearings on the UAW and Walter Reuther were under way, but, as Kenny remembered, “Nobody was particularly happy about it”—least of all Jack and Bobby Kennedy.
With Jack’s profile steadily on the rise since 1956, what they could hope for at this early stage was that the unions, in the end, actually grew to like John Kennedy. It was a situation that could easily have played out another way, if Bobby and Kenny, with Jack’s approval, had not handled themselves and the situation correctly.
At this point, Kenny and Bobby in Washington and Larry O’Brien, who had remained in Boston working the political operation, were well aware that Jack was always in the top polls; between ’56 and ’58 he was always in the top four. The Republicans, of course, assumed that John Kennedy would be a candidate for the nomination; however, none of the Republicans, and certainly few Democrats, believed he would win the nomination. There was a lot of speculation about him, but underlying any discussion about John Kennedy’s potential candidacy was the conventional wisdom that the Democrats would not nominate a young Catholic senator from Massachusetts who was related to Joe Kennedy. This would be political suicide on the part of the Democrats.
“Of course,” Kenny noted later to Sandy Vanocur, “the rap became that the Kennedys were trying to use the hearings to protect their labor allies. The reality was they were not allies of the Kennedy brothers, at least not going into the hearings. If anything, the UAW disliked and still distrusted the Kennedys.” Kenny’s job remained to change that scenario.
Kenny made clear, “Jack was under attack from all sides, including but not limited to other ambitious Democrats, the Republicans, and the unions that had an image of him not in the least bit connected to reality. I don’t think anyone understands that we faced obstacles of every size and variety at every turn. Everyone was distrustful, suspicious, and wanted to prevent John Kennedy from going any further. We were once again the outsiders trying to find a way in.” Some observers and historians would later argue, though, that Jack, Bobby, Kenny, and Larry were at their best politically under those circumstances.
In the end, Kenny said, this was all made easier by the Republicans on the committee, who felt Jack and Bobby were vulnerable with the UAW. In their zeal to assure an outcome detrimental to Jack Kennedy, they made a series of mistakes that would provide Kenny the opening he needed and allow Jack Kennedy to open a door with the UAW. Without the Republicans’ mishandling, this might have been much harder to obtain. Later, Kenny would joke that the best friends they had during those hearings were the Republicans, who simply could not help overreaching. Of course, Jack was ready to take advantage of their stumble, but in no small sense that credit was shared by Bobby and Kenny.
The Republican tactic was clumsy but clear. They were hiring people on the side to deploy against Bobby Kennedy. One of the committee’s former employees, Vernon L. Johnson, who had been fired for withholding evidence, was now out investigating privately, trying to gather information to embarrass Bobby and Jack Kennedy—not necessarily to embarrass them personally, but to embarrass their witnesses.
The strategy was that by calling into question Bobby and Jack’s witnesses, rather than personally attacking them, it would provide a public impression that the Kennedy brothers were not doing their homework. This strategy was to prevent the Kennedys using the hearings as a strictly public relations tool to get Jack into the newspapers.
“Furthermore,” Kenny said, “the Republicans hoped such a strategy would make the Kennedy brothers look as if these hearings were all simply a ploy to promote Jack’s political ambitions.”
The Republicans on the McClellan Committee had initially hired Johnson to investigate a UAW local. Kenny found out that Johnson was turning over only information that management gave him while discarding or destroying any information from the union membership that might have been in the committee’s favor.
When Kenny brought this to Bobby’s attention, a private hearing was held, and Bobby unceremoniously fired the man. Nobody on the committee objected to the decision, and all expressed horror and outrage at the gross violation of Senate rules.
Shortly thereafter, Kenny made a brief visit to Boston to consult with Larry O’Brien on Jack’s upcoming Senate reelection in ’58. On his return to DC, no sooner had Kenny strolled into Bobby’s office and said hello to Angie than a clearly angry Jack Conway charged into the room.
Kenny’s first thought was, Now what has Bobby done?
But Conway’s explanation surprised Kenny. “You said if we ever had a question to come to you. Well, here I am. There is this guy who says he is a member of the McClellan Committee. He came into our office and wants access to all this closed material and says that you and Bobby Kennedy sent him.”
Kenny was stunned. Bobby, Kenny, Conway, and Rabinowitz had agreed to share information, no surprises, everyone making sure everyone else was in the loop, so from the start Kenny was suspicious.
They had come to this understanding in order to prevent the Republicans from playing Bobby and the unions against each other to gain a political foothold. Kenny had struck the arrangement, and taken responsibility for it, which he felt was his role. That way if any heat came, it would not be directed at Bobby. The truth was, as Conway and Rabinowitz would find out, when Bobby and Kenny made a political promise, they kept it. Kenny quickly asked Jack Conway for the man’s name. Kenny was assuming Bobby had sent this guy.
Conway replied, “Vernon Johnson.” Kenny was stunned and asked Conway to repeat it. Kenny thanked Conway and told him to deny all of Johnson’s requests.
Then Kenny called Johnson on the telephone and said, “Vern, I do not want to hurt you, but there is a subpoena in the mail for you. I just want to know physically where you are, and I will send someone right over with it. Senator Kennedy wants you before the full committee tomorrow morning to explain your actions.”
“Unfortunately for Vern, and fortunately for us, he was not a very bright fellow and was caught rather easily,” Kenny noted. It simply never occurred to him that somebody might check with Bobby Kennedy’s office and verify his credentials. Kenny knew somebody had to be paying him, so he said, “Vern, I know you have no job and no money, so who is paying your expenses?” Vernon said to Kenny straight away, “Oh, well, Kenny, Senator Mundt is paying my expenses, but you aren’t supposed to tell Bob or Senator Kennedy, okay?”
“I said, ‘Fine, Vern.’ Then he said to me, ‘I’ll get paid for all this stuff they’ve had me doing, won’t I? Ask Bob about that, because I really do need to be paid for this.’”
Kenny agreed. “Sure, Vern, you can raise that yourself with Bobby tomorrow morning at the closed hearing. In fact, why don’t you ask Senator Kennedy that question when you are testifying first thing tomorrow morning? Stay right where you are; the subpoena’s on its way.”
“I just hung up the phone and shook my head,” Kenny recalled. “I didn’t know who was dumber: Johnson or Senator Mundt for hiring such a dope.”
Armed with information that caught the Republicans in the act of tampering with evidence, Kenny and Bobby quickly tracked Jack down and brought him up to speed.
The next morning, at the closed committee hearing, Jack wasted no time and jumped right in: “I have received information that you have hired a private investigator to impersonate officers of the United States Senate, which is a violation of every rule that governs congressional committees. These investigators are going around to people and saying that they are officers and using our names and this committee’s authority, the Senate’s authority, to obtain unauthorized material from union locals. This committee is not authorized to obtain such material under the scope of our operations. Furthermore, this material is not relevant to any current or past investigations.”
His statement was greeted with stunned silence. Finally, Senator McClellan said, “Well, Senator Kennedy, if what you are saying is true, it is a clear violation of the rules of the Senate. Can you name a name?”
For the first time since he had been working with John McClellan, for whom he had little respect, Kenny said the man finally seemed very angry about something. “McClellan may not have been terribly brave about a lot of things,” said Kenny, “but he loved the rules and regulations that governed the Senate. This to him was outrageous.”
Looking right at a very pale Senator Mundt, who sat there fiddling with his pipe, Senator Kennedy said, “Yes, I can.”
Then he let the silence build a moment before saying, “The staffer’s name is Vernon Johnson, and he was fired by the chief counsel with the full agreement of every member of this committee for illegal activities and poor performance.”
Senator McClellan said, “Well, what do you mean? What is he doing now?”
Of course, McClellan thought he was going to name the senator responsible, but Senator Kennedy was too smart for that. He did not want it to look as if he were on a witch hunt or that it was a purely political attack on his part. Jack continued on and explained what Johnson had been up to.
Senator McClellan listened and, growing angrier by the minute, finally asked, “Well, who hired him?”
Then Bobby broke in and said, “Mr. Chairman, perhaps you should ask who’s paying him instead of who hired him.”
Senator McClellan looked at Bobby and said, “What?”
Bobby said, “With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, I think the real question is not who hired him, but rather who is paying him.” Bobby and Senator Kennedy knew that if they allowed the question to be who hired him, then the Republicans would find some fall guy staffer they could then ship off to the Republican Committee and pretend to look clean again.
But Bobby had confirmed that the actual paycheck was coming from Senator Mundt. Vernon Johnson, again not too bright, had happily showed the stubs to Bobby and Kenny, assuming this meant that he would continue to get paid.
Senator McClellan said, “Okay, you are right. That is the right question.”
Kenny and Bobby later joked with Jack that Senator Mundt was, as Kenny put it, “not too bright, either, so maybe it never occurred to him that Johnson had told Bobby the truth, because to Bobby and Senator Kennedy’s astonishment, Senator Mundt then said, ‘Hmm. I think the chief counsel is absolutely correct. That is a very good question. We need to find out who is paying this fellow.’”
With the door opened, Bobby then said, “Senators, I would like to ask Ken O’Donnell, one of my staff, to answer that question, as his research has gotten us the answer that we need.”
So Senator Mundt turned to Kenny, who was sitting next to Bobby, and said, “Fine,” puffing his pipe. “Fine, Mr. O’Donnell, tell this committee who is paying this fellow.”
“Bobby and I just stared at each other for a moment,” Kenny recalled. “I think he was as amazed as I that it could be this easy. And I said, ‘Senator, I would be happy to answer that question. You are, sir.’”
By now, all the senators were staring at him, and Mundt said with another puff, “Hmm, hmm, how did you determine this, Mr. O’Donnell?”
Kenny said, “I talked to Johnson, interviewed him yesterday, and he gave me his pay stub.”
Silence.
Mundt continued puffing on his pipe to cover his dismay. “That, young man, is a very interesting story. He told you this, Mr. O’Donnell, he showed you this, did he? He said this to you under subpoena?”
Kenny replied, “Yes, Senator Mundt, I have his whole testimony right here.”
McClellan, who was furious, interrupted and said, “Yes, and I signed the damned subpoena, and he will be here tomorrow morning to testify!”
Senator Mundt said, “Hmm, well, that is very, very interesting. We really should look into this matter.”
“With that,” Kenny remembered, chuckling, “Senator Mundt got out of that room so fast your head would have spun.”
The next morning, before Johnson was to testify, the hearings into the UAW locals were brought to a sudden halt, and a third set of hearings the Republicans had scheduled were also canceled.
Of course, Johnson mysteriously couldn’t remember who hired him, the pay stub with Mundt’s name on it vanished, and suddenly Johnson accepted a wonderful job far from DC.
“Probably East Alaska,” Jack joked later. As was the Senate way at that time, and still is to a degree, the matter was handled within a private, clublike atmosphere. There were no public hearings about it, and the public never became aware of what Mundt had been up to. This was irrelevant, at least from Kenny and Bobby’s perspective. The important takeaway was that Jack Kennedy took a political situation that could have done him real harm and turned it swiftly to his advantage—and the Republicans knew it.
It was evident that the Republicans perceived him to be a potential threat and would do all they could to damage him in advance of the presidential race. But now they would have to think twice about it.
And the Democrats? Many had their own ambitions or favorite-son candidates. They were happy to allow the Republicans to do their dirty work.
Kenny remembered that this strategy “was typical of the kind of tactics the Republicans used to discredit the unions. The real untold story here is the gross impropriety and really illegal activities the Republicans used to attack the Kennedy brothers with the underlying motivation that they feared Jack would get the support of the unions and the UAW.”
Of course, Jack was happy to be perceived as an ally to the UAW, but he was savvy and realistic enough to recognize the distance between performances in hearings and actually gaining UAW support in a national campaign.
Kenny and Larry thought both Kennedy brothers had handled the situation beautifully. Kenny said later, “I have to say in all candor, never did either brother complain or take any of these internal disputes public. They handled problems as they arose and never, and I mean never, let it dissuade them from doing the job they were both on the committee to do. That impressed the hell out of me and the unions.”
Jack Conway later told Kenny that this made a strong impression on the UAW as well.
It was during this period that Jack’s, Kenny’s, and Bobby’s families began to grow. Caroline Bouvier Kennedy was born in November 1957, much to Jackie and Jack’s relief, after losing one baby and fearing that Jackie might never have children. Caroline brought a particular joy and renewed confidence to Jackie.
This period also saw Jackie and Jack move from Hickory Hill to a Federalist brownstone in Georgetown. Hickory Hill had come to symbolize so much sadness for Jackie that the change did the couple a lot of good, as Kenny recalled. Hickory Hill was sold to Bobby, for whom the sprawling estate was well suited to his growing brood, which was soon joined by Michael LeMoyne Kennedy on February 27, 1957.
As for Helen and Kenny, Helen happily made the move from Boston to Bethesda, a suburb of Washington, DC. Nancy Sheridan helped locate a perfect rental home for the O’Donnells. Nancy was the wife of Walter Sheridan, another of Bobby Kennedy’s investigators on the McClellan Committee. Walter would go on to be the key man in Bobby’s relentless, obsessive pursuit of Jimmy Hoffa.
Around this time, Kenny and Helen also welcomed their own addition to the family. Mark Francis O’Donnell was born in 1956 and joined Kenneth Jr. and twins Kathleen and Kevin to round out the growing O’Donnell tribe.
Ironically, just as Helen got herself and her family settled into their new life in Bethesda, Kenny would soon be headed back to Boston.
It was now early June 1958, near the end of Kenny’s work with the McClellan Committee, and Jack called Kenny over to his office.
“Get back to Massachusetts,” Jack said. “I need you to take charge of the 1958 Senate campaign. You should have been there six months ago instead of wasting your time in all this nonsense. It’s time.”
Kenny gladly closed this chapter in his political life, heading back to Boston to rejoin Larry O’Brien and take the reins of the 1958 Senate campaign. They had survived another attack on Jack Kennedy’s political viability, and while a long way from securing the UAW’s endorsement, they had at least opened the door for union support in a national election. Kenny now had a way in. He was sure that was all he and O’Brien needed, and this alone had been worth his interlude in Washington, DC.