All language subtitles for RFK.Legacy.2025.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H (1)

-I am announcing today
my candidacy

for the presidency
of the United States.

I run to seek new policies,

policies to close the gaps

that now exist between
black and white,

between rich and poor,

between young and old.

I run for the presidency

because I want
the United States of America

to stand for hope
instead of despair.

I have traveled and I have
listened to the young people

of our nation
and felt their anger

about the war
that they are sent to fight

and about the world
that they are about to inherit.

- Last week he
criticized the Vietnam policy.

This week he focused attention
on the plight of the poor.

These are not ordinary times

and this is not
an ordinary election.

The fight is just beginning.

- Campaign '68,
the Indiana primary.

This primary would offer
the first toe to toe meeting

between Senators Kennedy
and McCarthy.

- There's more
that we have to accomplish.

I think the deep divisions

within our country
are unacceptable.

I think that we can heal them.

I think that we can do better.

- Senator Robert Kennedy has won

the first primary test.

- He apparently
will have all 23 votes

at the Democratic
National Convention.

- And I intend
to go on trying to do that

in the state of Nebraska
and the state of Oregon

and the state of California.

- Well, it's
a real horse race out in Oregon.

Senator Eugene McCarthy
by a 6% victory margin

over Senator Robert Kennedy.

- Good luck to you,
Mr. Kennedy.

Thank you very much.

- Get 'em, Bob--
good luck to you.

Thank you.

That war still goes on.

Of all of
the presidential candidates,

I was the first one
to speak out against

the way the war
was being conducted.

I'm not going to be satisfied
until that war is over

and American Soldiers are
brought back here.

- An hour and a half
after the polls have closed

in California,

the biggest primary of them all,

a slate of delegates pledged
to Senator Eugene McCarthy.

It's a very tight race now.

McCarthy has 43%.

That small gain,
Kennedy is pulling ahead.

The votes are all in now.

Senator Robert Kennedy
claiming victory in California.

He's entering the ballroom

and you can hear the cheers
from the supporters.

My thanks to all of you,

and now it's on to Chicago
and let's win there.

Kennedy has been shot.

- Robert, do you
think there's a Kennedy curse?

I don't know if there's a curse

or whether there might be a gene

that disposes people
in my family toward risk.

In the summertime
during the Camelot years,

I was raised on Cape Cod
and we lived almost communally

in a compound
where each family had a house

that was next to each other.

All the kids,
there were 29 cousins

and we ate together every night
and we ate at a different house.

And then all the kids played
together during the day.

We had a regimen.

We had to take tennis lessons,
sailing lessons, boxing lessons.

- It's like summer camp.
- Like summer camp.

We played baseball every day
and we played football every day

and we all did that together.

So it was
really like being raised

in one really massive family.

Did your mother ever hug you

or father ever hug you?

-Oh yeah.

There was affection.

-Yeah, there was lots
of affection in our family,

lots of fights
and lots of affection.

- I want to ask
you now about your father.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy

paints a grim picture
of the rise of lawlessness

under the Cosa Nostra or mafia.

This he describes
as the government of organized

gambling, narcotics peddling,
extortion, racketeering

and controlling
of certain trade unions.

He says the income
runs into billions.

- Bobby Kennedy,

I mean,
he was a born investigator.

He was a fantastic investigator,
senate investigator.

What did you do then Mr. Hoffa?

Did you say,
"That SOB, I'll break his back."

- Who?
- You.

You can't remember
what you talked about

and you can't remember
whether he was in your--

-Wouldn't have been anything
of any importance, Mr. Kennedy

and I can't recall it.

- Tell me,
does Bob ever strike you

as a seemingly mild-mannered man
for a rackets investigator?

-Well, I'm awfully surprised
most of the time

when he really keeps his temper,

when witnesses
aren't telling the truth

and being quite frank

or when they take
the Fifth Amendment so often.

-You knew this was going on
for all this period of time.

Mr. Hoffa, it's just beyond
the powers of comprehension

that you can't recall that.

- Just
a matter of great self-control.

Is that right?

-I think so.

- Robert Kenny was
definitely more conservative

than his brother initially

and saw the world in a little
more black and white terms

than JFK did.

Bobby really
didn't like politicians

and didn't want to have anything
to do with politics

and was kind of dragged kicking

and screaming
into supporting his brother

when he first ran for senator.

- My brother Bobby,
who managed the campaign,

perhaps he could give us
some idea more up to date

of what the final figures were.

-I think that what we got
up to about 20 minutes ago,

you were winning
by about 70,000.

- Well,
I'm guess you're glad it's over,

aren't you Bobby?

- I am at that.
- Okay.

It was not his choice.

Bobby had a nice job with
the Department of Justice then

investigating communists
and subversives

and he enjoyed that.

He was good at that.

He didn't want to get involved
in politics.

-I am today announcing
my candidacy

for the presidency
of the United States.

- But he really
came to believe in his brother

and his vision for the world

and what a really good
leader could do for the world.

Now my wife and I prepare

for a new administration
and for a new baby.

In the appointments I have made,

I have sought
the most qualified men,

men of ability and a desire
to serve their country.

It is with great pleasure
that I announce the appointment

of Robert F. Kennedy
as Attorney General.

- That building
across the street

there is
the US Department of Justice.

You may be able to see
lights burning

in the fifth floor office

of Attorney General
Robert Kennedy.

The late night work is a symbol

of the vigor
of the Kennedy administration.

Then Attorney General Kennedy

declared his major mission--

hunting organized crime.

Some of these big time gangsters

corrupt the very system
under which we live

and something
has to be done about it

and the only thing
that's going to be done

is by the American people

and those
charged with authority,

taking some major steps
and doing them now.

The Attorney General, Bobby,

is a very attractive
human being,

but his greatest weakness,

the thing that I've worried
about before he was appointed

is that when he's bent
on what he thinks

is the right course,

he's rather ruthless in action.

- Mr. Hoffa,
Robert Kennedy called

for a broader wiretap law.

-I say that if he can push
through a wiretap,

he can have
a greater police state

than he already has
in this country.

-Have a couple
of words with you, sir?

- An attorney
general like Bobby Kennedy,

he has a personal desire

to destroy those
who may oppose him.

- And was true.

He was a pretty ruthless guy.

He was taken on these,
he was taken on mob figures.

- Would you
tell us if you have opposition

from anybody
that you dispose of them

by having them
stuffed in a trunk?

Is that what you do, Mr. Giancana?

-I decline to answer
because I honestly believe

my answer might tend
incriminate me.

Can you tell us anything

about any of your operations

or you just giggle
every time I ask you a question?

I thought only a little girls
giggled, Mr. Giancana.

He was a crusader

that really didn't care
who he stepped on.

- As the Kennedy
presidency went on,

Bobby Kennedy had to take on
more and more responsibilities.

He was in charge of civil rights.

-These students
are going to attend

the University of Alabama.

- During the most
increasingly hostile

and tense moments
of the presidency.

- James Hood
is the first of his race

to become a University
of Alabama student.

- In fact,
Bobby Kennedy was put

kind of in charge
of the CIA in an informal way.

Bobby began each day driving
from McLean, Virginia,

his estate, past Langley,
the CIA's headquarters

and stopping
to keep an eye on the CIA.

He was also in charge of Cuba.

President Kennedy
gave him the Cuba portfolio

as part of his
anti-communist task force.

Why was Bobby Kennedy
compelled to take on

all this responsibility?

Because his brother, JFK,

couldn't trust
his own State Department,

the Pentagon,
and of course, the CIA.

- And my uncle
and my father realized

that the CIA was a problem.

Dulles had lied to him
about the Bay of Pigs.

Director Allen Dulles

was working on the plan
to invade Cuba

and get rid of Fidel Castro

by enlisting right-wing Cuban exiles

who were living
in Miami and hated Castro.

- My uncle,
he didn't want to do it.

He thought
we would look like a bully

if we had anything to do
with an invasion of Cuba.

And Dulles persuaded him
that the Cuban brigade

would not need US help.

- At a place called
the Bay of Pigs,

a landing was made
by a Cuban exile brigade.

The brigade recruited,
paid, trained,

supplied by the CIA in perhaps
the largest covert operation

in the history of subversion.

But the invasion of Cuba failed

and the Cuban exiles were caught,

a lot of them,
and taken prisoner by Castro.

- The Bay of Pigs
disaster was a military

and diplomatic defeat
for the new president.

- President Kennedy
and Bobby Kennedy figured out

that Allen Dulles
knew well in advance

that the Cuban brigade
were not capable

of pulling off such a mission.

Castro could only be overthrown

if the full might
of the US military came in.

- He had planned
for the operation to fail

in the hopes that Kennedy
would not want to fail

and send in the troops.

There were Navy ships
positioned right off Cuba

ready to go in
and support the operation.

Kennedy is just furious

and he fires Allen Dulles,

this legendary director
who has served

every president
since Woodrow Wilson.

But unbeknownst to the Kennedys

elements of the CIA
and the military were rogue.

They were going off on their own
in order to achieve

what they believed
were the right objectives--

assassinate Castro, take him out.

And in fact, the CIA
kept enlisting mafia figures

and they were the ones
who were helping arrange

for these assassination plots
against Castro inside of Cuba.

Bobby Kennedy was furious

when he heard that
the mafia of all people

who he was going after--

Public Enemy Number One--

was working with the CIA.

He confronted the CIA about this.

He said with icy sarcasm,

I hope in the future
that you will have the goodness

to tell the Attorney General
if you're working with the mob.

- The Kennedys
said the assassination plots

against Castro have got to stop,
but they didn't stop.

- Even as Robert Kennedy
is telling the CIA,

"Don't kill Castro,"

they had plots in motion
to kill Castro

and so they just
didn't tell him.

I mean, the insubordination
of the CIA against

the Kennedy brothers
is shocking to me.

- Good evening,
my fellow citizens.

Unmistakable evidence
has established the fact

that a series
of offensive missile sites

is now in preparation
on the island of Cuba.

The purpose of these bases
can be none other

than to provide
a nuclear strike capability

against the western hemisphere.

The world was on the brink

of a nuclear holocaust.

- Unfortunately,
for JFK, all his other advisors,

every single one of them
was advocating bombing Cuba.

- The Kennedy
brothers were determined

not to push this
to the brink as the generals

who just wanted to go in
and bomb the missile sites,

Bobby was the only one who said,

we can't do that.

This is crazy
going in and bombing Cuba.

If we blow them up, there will
be retaliation from the Soviets

and this could quickly
escalate to nuclear war.

It was really Robert Kennedy

who just took command
of this situation.

- He had
the moral clarity to see

that preventing nuclear war
was the greatest good.

- Interestingly,
Robert Kennedy Jr has recalled

that they wanted
the Kennedy family,

all the kids,
to leave the city of Washington

or Hickory Hill
and go into a protected bunker

that had been set up
for high officials

and they didn't do that.

Their father said,
if I pull you guys out of school

and take you to that bunker,
the country is going to panic,

so let's just go on
and go to school as usual

and we'll solve this thing.

- It shall be the policy
of this nation

to regard any nuclear missile
launched from Cuba

as an attack requiring
a full retaliatory response

upon the Soviet Union.

- Robert Kennedy
had a channel to the Russians--

back channel
to the Premier Khrushchev.

- There were two messages
that came in back to back.

- Friday night,
got a message from Khrushchev.

- First one was like,
we will consider your terms,

and the second one was,
we don't accept your terms

and Bobby's like
answer the first letter,

don't answer the second one.

- Have to wait
to see how it unfolds

and there's a good deal
of complexities to it.

And through Bobby's diplomacy,

they worked out a deal.

- Which said
that he would withdraw

these missiles and technicians

and so on providing we withdrew
our missiles from Turkey.

- And we agreed
also not to try to kill Castro,

not to invade the island.

But we don't plan to invade Cuba

under these conditions, anyway.

- The Cuban
Missile Crisis brought the world

closer to a nuclear holocaust
than anything we've seen since.

- Across the world
goes a long sigh of relief,

and with it, the world's first
nuclear showdown is over.

- Without Bobby,
if Bobby hadn't have been there,

there's no guarantee
America would be here today

or any of us for that matter.

He was called ruthless.

But the fascinating thing about
Robert Kennedy was that

he was willing to grow
and change.

- And your father changed
when, then?

- The day
that his brother was killed.

- Hello?

- My father changed
after my uncle's death.

- Ten years
after his death,

Robert Kennedy's widow
and children

and home are still
very much together.

So little seems to have changed.

There still are dogs everywhere
and children underfoot

or airborne and something
happening almost all the time.

Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. is 24 now,

a Harvard graduate
and is entering law school.

- Do you think
your father's career

will ultimately have
an influence on where you go?

- Well,
like I said before,

I think that really we've been
raised the way we've been raised

and I think the way
that most of my family thinks

is that his goals
and a lot of his ideals

were really worth pursuing.

I didn't necessarily say
I was going to go into politics.

I'd always wanted to be
a veterinarian,

but I think I felt some pressure
after my father died

to sort of change my career
to try to do more of

the kind of thing that
he was trying to do.

And I ended up, rather than
going to veterinary school,

going to law school

and really followed
his career path.

I went to Harvard and then
to University of Virginia,

which he had done,

and then I became
an attorney and a prosecutor,

which was kind of what my father
had been doing.

- In the wake
of your father's death,

you try to follow
in his footsteps.

You're going
to the same schools,

you become an attorney,

but it didn't seem to work out
and at this time,

in this area,
you have a drug addiction.

How does that play out?

- I started
experimenting with drugs

when I was 15,
so a year after my dad's death.

I never even had drank coffee
by the time I was 15

and then I was at a party
for the older brother

of a friend of mine
in Cape Cod who had been drafted

and was being shifted off
to Vietnam

and it was his goodbye party.

I was hitchhiking home
from that party

and an older kid picked me up
and he offered me LSD.

And LSD had just come
to Cape Cod

with the Merry Pranksters
that night.

I would not have taken LSD,

but the week before these
older kids had eaten peyote

and they had taken
a hallucinogenic trip

and it had brought them
back in time

where they saw dinosaurs

and my favorite comic book

that I read every month
was called Turok Son of Stone,

which is about these
two Indians.

So I said to this kid,

"If I take LSD,
will I see dinosaurs?"

And he said, "You might."

And I had a trip that lasted
probably for ten hours,

extreme hallucinations

and I had a ball,
I had a lot of fun,

but I was coming home
in the morning

and I was crashing
and I was feeling depressed

and remorseful
and saying,

"I'm never going to do
that again."

Plus, I had to go back
and face my mom

and we had a curfew

and I was going to just be
in misery

and I saw these boys
in the woods,

they were all
on LSD that night.

I said to them
I'm really crashing on this

and feel miserable.

And they said,
"Try some of this,"

and it was crystal meth.

And I took it
so it was like I was in heaven

and it solved all my problems.

And that was the template

for my addiction
for the next 14 years

of me constantly trying to stop

and telling myself
I'm never going to do that again

and then
finding myself doing it.

I ran away from home
when I was 16 years old

and hopped freight trains
across the country,

disappeared for three months.

I worked in a lumber camp
in Colorado.

I hitchhiked and rode the trains
all over the country

and had no contact
with my mother.

- Is this because
she was tough?

- My mother, I had
a very troubled relationship

with my mother
from when I was born.

She had
a chemical reaction to me

and I had the same thing to her

and where my presence
would get her agitated.

- Bobby,
who are you named after?

- You, Bobby?

- Can you get up
and tell the television

who you're named after, Bobby?

No.

Bobby, who are you
putting over your head?

- Percy.

Percy his elephant.

And uh--

I knew him.

He ran away as a kid.

He was kicked out of the house
so many times on his adventures,

but he loved his mother
and his mother loved him.

He was always the favorite.

That's why
when he screwed up so much,

she was so
disappointed with him.

In the family at that point,

he was persona non grata

and ended up
not just getting into drugs

like LSD or marijuana
that were happening at the time,

but also heroin.

He went through law school,

heavily addicted.

He passed his bar exam
after a few tries,

heavily addicted.

I think heroin for me,

it was self-medicating.

I had been so restless before.

I was probably ADHD.

Nowadays they'd
probably give me,

put me on Adderall and stuff
because I could not sit still

and the world
was moving so fast for me.

And then heroin slowed it down
and allowed me to focus

and read and concentrate.

I went from being really among
the worst people in my class

academically
to the top of my class.

But it works
until it stops working

and it turns on you.

-Let's say hello to this
remarkable young man.

-Absolutely.

-Mr. Robert Kennedy Jr.

Be right back.

Come on in here.

Who have you got there, Bobby?

- This is
an American Golden eagle.

What do you think, Joey?

He was functioning,

I mean, I'm sure that
he was not functioning

at his optimal level,
but he was functioning.

He held a job
and stuff like that.

I wanted to ask you about,

you think eventually
you'll go into politics?

-I don't know.

That in itself is a pipe dream.

Through Robert Morgenthal

who'd known his father,

Bobby got a job
with the DA's office

in New York.

- As an attorney,
what were you doing?

-I was prosecuting criminals.

At the same time,

he would go up to Harlem
and enter these tenements

in really rough neighborhoods
and score heroin.

- He went
to rehab about five times.

I drove him to rehab three
or four times

and it never worked,
the times I took him.

It would work for a while

and when
he was trying to get off

and I would try and chase
the drug dealers away from him

to keep them away from him,
but eventually he relapsed.

- At that point,
I really wanted to stop.

I was going out to Minnesota

to a rehab and I OD'd.

I took too much heroin
and I nodded out on the airplane

and somebody saw it
and they reported me

and then I got busted.

And when I got off the plane,
the police were waiting for me.

It's probably the best thing
that ever happened to me

because I had such a fear
that my addiction

was going to get in
the newspapers,

but at this point
everybody knew I had the problem

so I could start
talking about it

and that was the beginning
of my recovery.

When he was sentenced,

part of his sentence
was to go to rehab.

He had been through rehab
a number of times,

but this was his final time

and he suddenly
had an awakening.

- That was a real
turning point for him

and it really saved his life.

I got sober in 1983.

And how old were you?

-I was 28.

-You were still working
as an attorney?

-Yeah.

-And what happens then

after you go through this
period of change?

-When I got sober, I realized

I need to be true to myself.

I wanted to be working
with nature

and I wanted to be outside.

I decided to work
for an environmental group.

- He started with the
Natural Resources Defense Council,

which is the leading
environmental group

in the country.

This is how he became
an environmental lawyer.

- I took all
the training that I had

as a district attorney,
as an attorney and a prosecutor,

and started prosecuting
environmental crimes

by taking polluters to court.

- That also awakened
something deep inside him.

When he was an 8-year-old kid,
he loved animals

and he loved the fishes

and all the animals in the wild,

and all of a sudden
he had a chance

to have a career of this
and that was thrilling for him.

When I was young,

nature to me was always
something that was important.

It was a connection
that I had with my father.

- Bobby's father
used to organize

whitewater rafting trips
starting when he was very young.

- All of these
rivers in the United States

that we've traveled down,

I think it's a great
natural resource

that I'd like to have
the children see and enjoy.

What you like the best, Bobby?

- I liked it
when we went on the hikes

and I caught a lot of reptiles.

Bobby caught a rattlesnake,

and put it in a bottle,

which was very nice
for all of us.

- In 1966,
his father had taken him

to the Hudson River

and his father was appalled
at what he saw.

You couldn't eat the fish
from the river.

Commercial fishermen had
all been put out of business.

Oil spills from Exxon Mobil,

the pollution from
the General Electric Company

and Monsanto.

I mean, it was just terrible.

- Well,
he told me he was determined

to clean it up.

- Bobby ended up
joining a new organization

called the Riverkeepers.

- Riverkeepers
was started by a group

of commercial fishermen,

eager to protect their environment.

They decided long before

the word
environmentalist was coined

that they were going
to do something about

oil spills, sewage.

They were going to
stand up and fight.

Then the Riverkeeper asked me

to come and work for them
as their full-time attorney.

- And Bobby was there
on behalf of the NRDC

and began to patrol the river
with John Cronin.

They became partners
and they would actually,

they'd really get out there
and look for polluters

- And I found about
24 different polluters.

I photographed them.

I took samples
and I then brought lawsuits

against all 24 polluters.

Bobby Kennedy was suing

under the Clean Water Act.

- It's illegal
to pollute the waters

of the United States.

You have to pay a high penalty
if you do pollute.

- And it outlawed
things like dumping PCBs

into the Hudson River.

Soon after
he joined Riverkeepers,

he was out gathering
some fish with the nets

and I went out with him.

We had big boots on and stuff

and he told me we just won
a $2 million judgment.

They had sued Exxon for
polluting the Hudson River.

I realized that he was
onto something big.

- In the face
of enormous industrial pressure,

we've been able
to save this river.

We came here in 1985.

We found it really
a polluted cesspool,

but now it seems pretty clean

and there's a relative
abundance of fish in it.

Today, the Hudson River is

one of the cleanest in the country

and you can eat the fish again.

And it was the efforts
of Bobby and John Cronin

and Riverkeeper
that made that happen.

- To travel up
this magnificent river,

such a landmark
throughout the United States

and see the amount of pollution
that's taken place.

I think that we should do
something about it.

Bobby was sober

and really dedicated
to his causes.

This was the passion
that he had.

This was his mission in life.

In those early years,
he really was fearless.

Do you think the Spotted Owl

put a lot of people out of work?

- First of all,
that is an exaggeration.

Okay, I just asked.

- He was lionized.

He wrote a book at the time.

It was a big bestseller.

- Crimes Against Nature
is now out in paperback.

It's on the bookshelves now.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

He was changing the world

and I think that he felt that
and he was committed to that.

And by the early 2000s,

Bobby was the leading
environmental lawyer

in the United States.

He was taking
on Smithfield Foods

and suing them for dumping waste
from their industrial hog farms.

There's no right to pollute.

The polluter pays.

This battle that we're
all fighting for today,

this is the battle
against ignorance and greed.

- 2004, he was asked
at the Democratic Convention--

the Bush administration
was in power

and he was taking them on.

He has put polluters in charge

of all the regulatory agencies
that are supposed to protect

Americans from pollution.

The second in command
of EPA is a Monsanto lobbyist.

-Time magazine called him
a Hero of the Planet.

-Please welcome
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

- Good to see you
again, Mr. Kennedy.

- I took a lot
of river trips with Bobby

and a small river
was being poisoned by

a paper mill upstream.

All the animal life
around the river

were being poisoned by mercury,

and I think he
was very affected by that.

- Mercury, it's a very,
very dangerous chemical.

In 17 states,
it's now unsafe to eat

any fresh water fish
because of mercury.

It's coming from
coal burning power plants.

- We are
the Saudi Arabia of coal,

are we not?

- I think I've got
a good sense of who I am

and I'm very proud of my father,
of my uncles,

but I don't feel
competitive with them.

I love the gifts
that I've been given

and feel like I want to use
those in whatever way

that I'm supposed to,

like my father did with his gifts.

-Please welcome Robert F.
Kennedy Jr to the program.

Robert, nice to see you.

-Likewise.
-As we adjust our chairs...

Normally known more
for environmental causes

and I guess to a certain extent
this is apropos of that.

Most recently you're talking
about the link between autism

and vaccinations.

Pretty controversial.

Back in the early 2000s,

Bobby was giving talks
all over the country,

like 200 talks a year, just about.

And he began to find
that there were all these women

showing up at his talks
sitting in the front row,

and some of them began coming up
to him afterwards and saying,

"What you're saying
about mercury

"from coal burning
power plants is true

"and it's all well and good, but...

"somebody has got to look
into the fact

"that mercury
in childhood vaccines

"in a preservative
called Thimerosal

"is causing neurocognitive
deficiencies in our kids,

including an outbreak of autism."

Bobby wanted nothing
to do with this,

but they kept coming up to him.

And finally there was a woman
named Sarah Bridges

whose son had autism.

So she came to Hyannis
with a big box of evidence.

-Brought a banker's box.

I gave him an impassioned one minute--

I thought it was really compelling,

what happened to my son.

How he was a totally normal
four month old

who received nine vaccines

and he had a two hour seizure.

The ER doctor pulled me aside and said,

"You've had a classic
vaccine reaction"

and acknowledged that he had
been brain damaged by his vaccines.

And Bobby looked at me
and said, "I'm not interested."

And I said, "Would you just
read some of these articles?"

And he said, "I will read a few."

And unbeknownst to me,

he sat up and read
the majority of them that night.

He said,
"Something's wrong here."

"I'm going to get involved in this.
I'm in."

- In the beginning,
he didn't want to do it,

but nobody was willing
to take this on.

Who else was gonna do it?

-Between 1989 and 2003,

almost all of our vaccinations
included a material

called Thimerosal,

which breaks down to form mercury.

It was a preservative,

it was unnecessary
to add to the vaccines.

And we saw during that period
a dramatic increase

in neurological disorders
among American children

speech delay, language delay,
Dyslexia, and autism.

- When he was born,
my son was very alert.

He was born
with a head full of hair

and then my son had been
vaccinated for hepatitis B.

His hair fell out.

He was just not as alert.

I was trying to read everything
I could get my hands on

to find out
what happened to my son.

And there was a young lady
in the hospital

who had given me a pamphlet on
what the vaccines might contain

and the mercury just stood out.

-When we had our meeting with CDC

and we shared all of our concerns,

they sat and listened patiently

and then at the end
of the meeting,

they handed us
this one page paper

saying that they had looked
at this already

and they found
no evidence of harm.

Everything was fine.

So we decided
to file FOIA documents

to get all of the records
not only from CDC

but also from FDA at the time.

And it took a while
to get those,

but when we did get them

it was obvious
going through those records,

along with all
their internal emails,

that Mercury is incredibly toxic.

And they were very concerned

and they had actually found
statistically significant

associations between exposure

to Thimerosal and ADD, ADHD,

speech and language delays
and also autism.

What I've been saying is

people are going to be
frightened about vaccines

if they don't trust
the federal regulators

to be honest
with the American people.

There was one arm of the FDA

that dealt with
over the counter products

and they had done
all these investigations

back in the eighties

and found out that Thimerosal
used in contact lens drops

and over the counter
products actually wasn't safe.

And so, they had made
a recommendation

that it be removed
from over the counter products,

but CBER,

the Center for Biologics
Evaluation and Research,

which is the ones who
oversee vaccines,

they left it in.

So how can you have one arm
of an agency

saying Thimerosal is toxic
and we shouldn't be using it,

and another arm of the agency
injecting it into our children?

- And this convinced
Bobby that the agency, again,

that was supposed to be protecting people,

was in league with these
pharmaceutical companies.

So it became
a big part of what he began

to speak about publicly.

- If these
vaccine makers are allowing

a certain compound
into these vaccinations

that's causing autism
and they now know it,

why are they fighting so hard?

-Well, how many of us
would want to admit

that a decision we made
had poisoned

a whole generation
of American children?

- Now Thimerosal
was taken out of vaccines

after this outcry began.

- I appreciate you
getting the word out.

And I know parents of kids
with autism truly appreciate it

and I know that it's a very
difficult thing for them

to be dealing with, so I'm sure they
appreciate the help.

- The NRDC was not happy

with his taking on
this vaccine issue,

nor was these various groups
that he had worked with

for many, many years

and people began to urge him
to get away from this issue

and he refused to do it.

So he wrote a big article
for Salon and Rolling Stone.

What Bobby discovered
was back in 1986,

during the Reagan years,
the vaccine manufacturers

were granted no liability
from prosecution.

Pharma went to Congress

and worked out a deal where
there would be a fund set up,

the vaccine injury fund,
that pharma pays no money into.

So the government,
they're handing out these

multimillion dollar awards
to children damaged by vaccines,

but simultaneously saying
they are unequivocally safe.

- There was a turning point

where Bobby Jr. and Sarah Bridges

went to a meeting
at the New York Times

to try to get the New York Times
into the vaccine issue.

- The main editor
said, can't do it.

Not, you're wrong.

Not, let's look more
deeply into this.

Said, "Can't do it."

"Big pharma is our biggest donor."

And that was the end of that.

- Suddenly
he couldn't write op-eds anymore

and he couldn't even
eventually get a letter

to the editor published

after writing op-eds

about environmental issues
for the New York Times

and many,
many places for years,

being declared
a Hero of the Planet.

And then in 2011,
Salon retracted the article

that he had written back,
some years before.

- Suddenly the
New York Times would be like,

these are crazy people.

And that's when
the label of anti-vaxxer

and conspiracy theorists came about.

- And what Bobby's
about is making vaccines safe.

And it's not about
not having the vaccines.

That's a part of a conversation
that always gets pushed aside.

-It's pretty stunning to see

how quickly Bobby moved from
person of the year

on environmental issues,
such a thought leader,

to a total pariah.

- It was the beginning
of a very painful period.

- Just haven't
decided what I'm going to do

in the future.

Well, I just don't know
what I'm going to do

and I just have
to leave it like that.

I just don't know what I'll do.

Oh, well, I might like to be
associated with a university.

Teaching, maybe, going
to school perhaps.

I don’t know.

After his brother's murder,

Bobby Kennedy's prone
to great bouts of depression.

I think Bobby was
suicidally depressed.

And during this dark time,
he's asked again and again,

did Lee Harvey Oswald really
kill your brother on his own?

Do you believe
in the lone gunman theory?

And this has to be painful
for Bobby Kennedy

because he alone knows that
he's probably the only one

who can get to the bottom
of what really happened

to his brother.

- Something has
happened in the motorcade route.

Standby please.

- Bobby Kennedy
got a call from J. Edgar Hoover,

the head of the FBI,
who coldly informed him

that your brother's been killed.

That was it.

Hoover hung up the phone.

Immediately, Bobby Kennedy

realizes two things.

The man that he's deeply devoted to,

his brother who he loves dearly,
is now dead.

And number two,
whatever authority he has

as Attorney General is now
disappearing by the minute.

He has only hours maybe

to get to the bottom of the crime.

Did you shoot the president?

-I didn't shoot anybody. No sir.

I'm just a patsy!

He immediately suspected

there was not a lone gunman

because the people there that day,

his closest aids
who were World War II veterans,

knew the sound of gunfire

and told him
we were riding into an ambush.

It was a crossfire.

So where did he look
in trying to figure out

what had happened to his brother?

His first call was to the CIA

and said,
"Did you guys kill my brother?"

Bobby was worried that they
had pushed the CIA really hard

on not invading Cuba
after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And that had been the response.

- Report that the
president was hit in the head.

Bobby Kennedy also suspected

that the right wing anti-Castro
exiles were involved somehow.

Exiles who were embittered

by what had happened with JFK
during the Bay of Pigs

and then coming
to an accommodation with Castro

during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

- And who was the
third party that he suspected

in the assassination
of his brother?

- There is Leo.

He's been shot.

Lee Oswald has been shot.

There's a man with a gun.

-I was standing
in the White House

in the East Room

and we were standing next
to my uncle's casket.

Lyndon Johnson came in
and told my father and Jackie

and my mother
who were standing there with me

that a man named Jack Ruby
just killed Lee Harvey Oswald.

And after they
absorbed that information,

I said to my mom,
why did he do that?

Did he do it
because he loved our family?

And so I think anybody who saw
what happened with Jack Ruby

would have that same question.

Why did he do it
in a police station wide open

when he was bound to be caught?

And of course he didn't have
a love for our family.

He had the opposite.

- Who's Jack Ruby?

Bobby Kennedy puts people
on this right away

and they report back to him within hours.

Jack Ruby is mobbed up.

He's a mob errand boy.

And Jack Ruby's phone records

on the month before the murder
were many, many calls

almost entirely to people
that my dad had indicted.

-I thought only little girls
giggled Mr. Giancana.

- So Bobby Kennedy
suspected the CIA.

He knew the mob
was involved somehow

and of course
in the Cuban exile underground,

all three of which
were working closely together,

they were working together
to kill a Fidel Castro in Cuba.

And of course Bobby Kennedy
came to the conclusion

they turned their guns
on his brother.

He has a lot of guilt
about the assassination.

He thinks he should have
protected his brother.

He thinks he should have seen
this plot coming.

The family all convened
at the White House

preparing for the funeral

and Bobby had said to the family
that day in confidence

we know Jack was killed
by a conspiracy.

We know there were
very powerful forces.

It was a domestic political conspiracy,

but we can't do anything.

My plan is to run for public office

and eventually get back
to the White House

and then I'll have the authority

to get to the bottom of the crime.

But imagine how difficult
that path was for him.

He knew that was years away,

but he knew he had to be patient
and bide his time

until he could bring official resources

to the investigation.

- Who actually fired
the shots that killed Kennedy?

Was there a conspiracy?

The new president, Lyndon Johnson

ordered these questions answered.

- Here you have
this blue ribbon commission

that's supposed to independently
get to the bottom

of what really happened in Dallas

and right away, it's compromised.

- Basically the
Warren Commission

was run by Allen Dulles of the CIA.

Dulles was still very angry

and bitter about his firing
by President Kennedy.

-Fired by Kennedy,
he becomes the most influential

member of the Warren Commission

investigating what happened to Kennedy.

-The Warren Commission
makes these major findings.

Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated
President Kennedy.

He did it alone.

- There is no
credible evidence

that Lee Harvey Oswald
was part of a conspiracy

to assassinate President Kennedy.

- And Bobby Kennedy
knew if he said,

I suspect the story
is bigger than that,

that powerful forces did it,
all hell would break loose.

And he knew it would actually
be traumatic for the country.

- It would have
impeded his capacity

to participate in public life.

So you really, he didn't want
to pick that fight

and he stayed silent about it.

- Can you tell us a few
memories of Jack?

Was he warm with you?

- My Uncle Jack
was part of my life

from when I was born.

He knew how to talk to children.

He was wonderful with children.

But for example, I sat next to him

on the way back
from the convention in 1960.

I sat in the seat next to him
on the airplane

and he talked to me
the whole time

and he had a lot of other things
to do at that point.

- Well,
I think really he made

Americans feel young again.

I think that he gave all of us
more confidence in the country

and that we were dedicated
to certain principles and ideals

and that we would live up to them

and if necessary fight for them.

In the course of this,

Bobby is still trying
to come to terms with

what do I do now?

What was I going
to do with my life?

- Well,
I've thought some of my future

over the period
of the last few months

and some people from
New York and elsewhere

have spoken to me
about running in New York

and it's possibility
that I'm considering

as I'm considering
many other possibilities.

- Bobby Kennedy
then stepped down

as Attorney General
of the United States

and ended up running
for the Senate in New York.

- In 1963, the people
in the Plattsburgh area

paid $12 million
in taxes for schools.

If my opponent had his way,
your area would've lost...

I stumbled on it.

If my opponent had his way,
stop it.

Go ahead. Tell me.

I need your help
and support in November.

- He appreciates
this tremendous reception,

but he has a message
to give to you

and the American people.

- Chairman McCormick,
I accept your nomination.

But the gladness
of this high occasion

cannot mask the sorrow
which shares our heart.

So let us keep burning
the golden torch of promise,

which John Fitzgerald Kennedy
set aflame.

Let us tomorrow
turn to our new path.

Let us be on our way!

- And now
it is my privilege and honor

to introduce Robert Kennedy.

Mister Chairman.

Mister Chairman.

- I request the delegates

to be seated

- My father was
shattered after Jack's death.

And at that convention,

my father got this
extraordinary outpouring of love

and he cried.

One of the few times
anybody had ever seen him cry.

And he realized that, okay,
maybe I have a future.

- We want Bobby!
We want Bobby!

-President Kennedy said
that we have the capacity

to make this the best generation
in the history of mankind

or make it the last.

I think we can make it
the best generation

in the history of mankind.

I think all of us
joined together

can make that difference.

- He fights
through the depression.

Am I a senator now?

- You will be.

I expect that, but...

- Reading poets
and ancient Greeks

who give him kind of more
perspective on life

and history and tragedy.

Parts of the Greek myths,

the flawed hero
who gets meaning from life

by acting heroically
even if everything fails

and the plays of Shakespeare.

And he began reading all of these

and incorporating them
into his own cosmology.

And Senator Bobby Kennedy,

he also had
a spiritual awakening.

- Bobby Kennedy became
a truly compassionate individual

and that set him apart from
other people running for office

and from the way he had been
perceived when he was younger.

And it was true,
he was a pretty ruthless guy.

That was no longer true

and he was a fighter
for the people.

- I desperately
needed that we raise

the minimum wage to $1.50
an hour here in the state.

To focus attention
on the poisonous fumes

inflicted on the people
who live in this area.

We've been discussing federal
legislation governing rifles,

shotguns and hand guns,
aftercare program

for narcotics addicts.

The average Indian income is $1,500,

75% below the national average.

We don't think
that it's acceptable,

as I've said before,

with the gross national product
that this country has,

with the great amount of wealth
that this country has,

that we still have people
who can't find jobs.

We still have children
who don't have enough to eat

and don't have clothes to wear.

- The attribute
he most admired in someone was

if they had moral courage,

if they were willing
to stand on their ideals

against all odds sometimes.

- And he decided,

that he would buck
the Democratic party,

the Democratic establishment

and the military industrial complex.

We had, we'd been waging
this stupid war for so long

and 50,000 Americans died

and he didn't care
what happened to him.

-A Southeast Asia
dominated by communist power

would bring a third world war
much closer to terrible reality.

Since I reported to you last January,

the enemy has been defeated
in battle after battle.

- At this point
in the Democratic party,

it was wrong to speak out
against the Vietnam War.

- The war
in Vietnam has escalated

at a fantastic rate.

- Do you see
any immediate solution?

- There will be some
who will become frustrated

and bothered and break ranks
under the strain

and some will turn
on their leaders

and on their country
and on our own fighting men.

-Would you be inclined to oppose

further escalation of the war?

- I think first
that we should make this major

kind of effort
to find a peaceful solution,

and I think that's vital

no matter what the turn of events

might be in the next few months.

- The holiday was Tet--

the Lunar New Year.

The enemy, very deceitfully

has taken advantage
of the Tet truce.

The Viet Kong had chosen

a number of strategic targets,

a suicide attack
in the American Embassy.

The Tet Offensive in 1968

showed that
we were not winning this war

as we'd been assured by the
powers that be in Washington.

It was an awakening,
especially for Bobby.

- There is no
real dialogue about Vietnam.

We frequently won't let those
who disagree with us speak.

I think it's a very, very bad mistake.

The whole country suffers
and our society suffers.

- After the Tet Offensive,

the establishment
was still behind Johnson

and trying to keep the party together.

We will stand firm in Vietnam.

- But Bobby
quickly saw that the war

was turning into a disaster.

- This will make it
necessary to raise

a monthly draft call
from 17,000 to 35,000 per month.

Somebody wrote on the pyramids

at the time
they were being constructed,

the words and no one
was angry enough to speak out.

I think people should be
angry enough to speak out.

if one feels involved in it,

that one should try to do
something about it.

Our people and this nation

must be told the truth
about this war

in all its terrible reality,

both because it is right,

both because it is right

and because the progress
that we have claimed

toward increasing control
over the country

and the security
of the population

is largely illusionary.

The best way to save our most
precious stake in Vietnam,

the lives of our soldiers,

is to stop
the enlargement of the war.

And that the best way
to end casualties

is to end the war.

This was an earthquake

that Bobby would come
out so much against the war.

This sent shock waves
through the establishment

and people were furious at him
for speaking out about this.

-President Johnson said,

if you persisted in that line,

it would end
your political career rapidly.

- All of it makes
Bobby look like a great hero

and makes me look like
a son of a bitch.

- Suddenly there
was tremendous opposition

to the Vietnam policies
that Johnson was advocating.

We don't say that we're never

going to disagree.

I think that there's much
to disagree about,

and I think it's within
the Democratic party

that we should have dissent.

I am at the moment
reassessing what I should do

as not only as a member
of the Democratic Party,

but more importantly
as a United States citizen.

- And then
Robert Kennedy announced

he was going to run
for president.

-I run to seek new policies,

policies to end
the bloodshed in Vietnam

before it further saps our spirit.

- Civil rights,
poverty in America,

the war in Vietnam.

That's why he's running
mainly for the presidency.

Those major themes.

- Two weeks after
Robert Kennedy announced

he was going to run for President,

Johnson saw
the handwriting on the wall.

-I shall not seek

and I will not accept
the nomination of my party

for another term
as your president.

- Lyndon Johnson
was bowing out of the race--

that opened it up.

- The Senator
has spoken out often on Vietnam,

civil rights, and poverty.

And each time he has taken
a minority position.

- I think we can find
answers to these problems.

I think we can make progress.

- Robert Kennedy
is the only man

that can do the job
that we need done.

- Is there a second choice?

-There is no second choice
as far as we're concerned.

Senator Robert Kennedy,

he was foreseeing a country
that was leaving

a lot of people behind.

He was making alliances
with small businessmen,

with farmers,
with union members,

with Republicans.

- At the same time,

Bobby Kennedy took on
the military industrial complex.

- I don't accept
the idea of Vietnam

as just a military action,

that this is
just a military effort.

Every time we have had
difficulties in South Vietnam

and Southeast Asia,
we have had only one response.

And that's to send
more military men

and increase our military power.

And I don't think
that's the kind of a struggle

that it is in Southeast Asia.

America was a great force
in the world

with immense prestige

long before we became
a great military power.

The generals in the army,

they knew him.

They didn't like him,
they didn't trust him.

They felt he had
a completely different agenda.

He wanted to end the war,
bring our troops home.

And Bobby also saw that
Bell Helicopter and Hughes

we're making a fortune
selling helicopters

to the army in Vietnam.

And the CIA,
they're running drugs,

they're trying out new tactics.

They're trying out
expensive new weapons

like Monsanto's Agent Orange.

There is a ton of money
being made off this terrible war

and the military
industrial complex,

they didn't want it taken away.

Agent Orange was a defoliant,

one of those new weapons of war

supposed to turn the tide in Vietnam.

It was sprayed over
5 million acres of South Vietnam

from 1962 to 1970.

- It was one way
we were going to win the war--

dump herbicides
all over the jungle

so the Viet Kong
would come out and fight.

Its use was restricted in 1970

because tests showed
the ingredients in Agent Orange

caused cancer and birth defects.

- Newly-released
court documents indicate

that the companies
which manufactured Agent Orange

knew as far back as the 1960s
that one of its ingredients

contained the toxic contaminant dioxin.

- A lethal
ingredient in Agent Orange.

The government has now agreed

to pay $8 million a year to veterans.

Over the next six years,

the fund will pay out at least
a quarter of a billion dollars

to veterans and their families,

including children not yet born.

Monsanto has been involved in

some of the worst environmental
catastrophes in this country.

It was the creator
of Agent Orange.

It was the creator of DDT.

I've been litigating
against Monsanto

since I became an environmental
lawyer 35 years ago.

- You have quite
a long history with Monsanto.

I mean there's the Monsanto
story in your life

seems to start because
of Rachel Carson's book,

Silent Spring.

Was that the origin?

-You know,
when I was a little kid,

I'd wanted to be
a scientist or a vet.

I wanted to be like a field
biologist like Rachel Carson.

One night,
my uncle Jack and my father

had her over to Cape Cod.

I got to meet her
and that was really important

because she really became my hero.

Biologist Rachel Carson,

worked four years
in the preparation

of Silent Spring.

What she wrote has been called

the most controversial book
of the year.

Up until that time,

nobody had any problem
with pesticides like DDT.

- These insects
can now be completely wiped out

by manmade fogs,
loaded with DDT.

- Pesticides
and the chemical industry

were putting us on top
of the world.

We were going to have
abundant food for everybody.

We were going to get rid
of all the pests.

And Rachel Carson came along
and said, yeah,

but actually pesticides,
were imposing huge costs

that we're not seeing.

Rachel Carson wrote
Silent Spring in '62

and it alerted people
for the first time

that DDT is killing
not just the predatory insects,

it's killing all the insects,
killing the worms.

The fish are dying,

the songbirds are disappearing.

The spring is going to be silent

because there's going to be
no bird song.

She became an enormous threat
to the pesticide industry.

Monsanto, which was the
manufacturer of DDT,

they mounted a nationwide
campaign against Rachel Carson

to discredit her.

They had Life Magazine,
Time Magazine all write attacks,

vicious attacks on her.

They used the same talking points.

She's a quack.

She's anti-science.

- This
courageous woman had taken on

the powers that be showing
the dangers of DDT

and was just vilified
and taken apart by Monsanto.

-They had scientists
going around the country

doing speeches condemning her.

- The major claims
in Ms. Rachel Carson's book

are completely unsupported
by scientific evidence

are gross distortions
of the actual facts.

This became the blueprint

for all the other industries
for how do you discredit

and destroy your critics.

Rachel Carson
never defended herself

because she was dying
of cancer at the time.

And my uncle
commissioned a group.

He got Jerome Wiesner,
who is a scientific advisor

to bring together
a group of scientists

to actually read her book line by line.

The administration announced

that the government pesticide program

would be reviewed by a panel

of the President's Science Committee.

-I think particularly, of course

it's Ms. Carson's book,

but they are examining the matter.

-She gave three references
for virtually every fact

in her book.

So she really...

-So she knew the stakes.
-Yeah.

She knew she was going
to be attacked

and they went
through her book line by line

and they issued a report
that validated everything.

And it exonerated her.

And Silent Spring became
one of the greatest bestsellers

in history.

And then my uncle planned
an Earth Day.

He was going around the country
to talk about,

to promote
the first day Earth Day,

and it was his last
big campaign.

I'm very proud that my uncle
vindicated Rachel Carson.

- Because of her book,
Silent Spring,

DDT was banned.

She didn't live
long enough to see that,

but it was outlawed
in 1973 in this country.

Monsanto, they needed something
after DDT got outlawed.

So they came up with glyphosate,
which is now a known carcinogen,

and they began using this
in their Roundup herbicide.

It was jarring to see

that there was this chemical, glyphosate,

that was causing cancer

because it was a pesticide
that was so commonly used.

It was so pervasive
in our agriculture

and our food systems
and residential uses.

And no one's being warned about it.

-Even though over the years
we saw this propaganda

where they'd say
"Roundup is safe enough

to drink, basically."

There was this commercial

where this guy’s walking
around in shorts

and a t-shirt shooting weeds
on his driveway,

like fun little
western-style commercial.

-Home gardeners, and they're
wearing shorts and flip flops

and they're spraying Roundup.

They're going to get it
on their skin

and it's going to be
absorbed by their skin.

- So then in 2017
there was a groundskeeper,

Dewayne "Lee" Johnson,

he had the glyphosate
Roundup Ready on his back.

I was applying the herbicide

and the hose snapped
and it started to funnel out.

And the stuff was going everywhere,

it got on the outside of my suit,

it got inside my suit,
it was on my face,

it was everywhere.

And that's where I got exposed.

And he ended up suffering

and almost dying
from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma,

which is a form of cancer
that's very deadly.

Glyphosate was responsible,

so he was one
of the first clients

that this legal team
took on Monsanto.

- Our lawsuits
were about proving that

Monsanto knew
and their failure to warn.

- Monsanto for
years and years

and years since Agent Orange,

they're very involved
in politics and lobbying

and so they just had an attitude
in the United States

that they were untouchable.

- We really
didn't have the resources

to take on a company
like Monsanto.

So we started
calling people that we knew

could help us fight this fight.

Because we knew we were
outgunned and outmanned

and out moneyed for sure.

One of first people
we called was Bobby

because he had gone up
against Monsanto before

and he had known
a lot of their tactics.

He'd known
just how nasty they could be

to individual scientists,

particularly in water contamination

and his work
with the Waterkeeper.

So he joined us
right from the very beginning

and helped us develop
this strategy and the process

through which we'd actually
prosecute this case.

- For 40 years, Monsanto knew

that Roundup was carcinogenic
and it made great efforts

to hide that
from the American public.

The relationship with the EPA,

particularly as it relates
to Roundup, is a tortured one,

to say the least.

- The EPA initially
we're going to classify

glyphosate as a class C carcinogen,

and that's when Monsanto kicked
the lobbying into high gear

and really fought that classification.

-And the political will
to oppose Monsanto disappeared.

-Interactions between Monsanto scientists

and people actually within the EPA

is really how glyphosate got approved.

When I first got involved,

I believed in the EPA,
just naively as I may have been.

I thought, oh, well,
they must be mistaken.

And it was Bobby
who explained to me,

no, they know what's going on.

You cannot litigate
this case as though

the EPA is ignorant or mistaken.

You have to litigate this case
as though the EPA is in cahoots,

and he was right.

- We came across
discovery documents

that showed that
it was an email exchange

between the executive officers
of Monsanto Corporation

with the head of the pesticide
division EPA for over a decade.

So the head
of the EPA pesticide division

was actually under Monsanto's control,

and they were telling him,
you have to kill this study,

you have to falsify this science.

- Bobby was really good
at understanding the nuances

through which corporate America
manipulates science.

Monsanto denies any link between

the active ingredient
in Roundup and cancer.

- In court,
Monsanto would just come in

and take an absolute position,
no evidence at all whatsoever.

-Monsanto didn't warn because
glyphosate-based products

don't cause cancer.

But in one of the emails,

Donna Farmer, one of the head
scientists from Monsanto said,

we can't say
it doesn't cause cancer

because we just haven't done
the studies to prove that.

Of course, that was a dynamite document.

- Monsanto chose
to tell the world

that this product is as safe
as table salt.

If Monsanto had warned
our client, Lee Johnson,

we wouldn't have had a case.

-Late today, a California jury
awarded nearly $300 million

to a former school
groundskeeper who sued Monsanto

claiming its weed killers,
including Roundup,

gave him non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

- The unanimous
jury here in San Francisco

has told Monsanto - enough,

you did something wrong
and now you have to pay.

And Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

who was in the courtroom
for today's verdict.

-And I'm so glad that this jury
held them accountable.

- It's kind of amazing
that this one groundskeeper

from Northern California
has essentially brought

this venerated institution to its knees.

- I want to say one last thing,

which is that this case was
personally gratifying to me.

My hero, Rachel Carson,

was under a vicious sustained
assault by Monsanto.

I watched that happen
as a little boy,

and I was so happy
that I got to be

part of this historic trial,

which once and for all
brought Monsanto

finally to justice
in front of an American jury.

- We've heard
the benefits of pesticides,

but very little about the hazards,

very little about the failures,

the inefficiencies.

And yet the public was being
asked to accept these chemicals,

was being asked
to acquiesce in their use

and did not have
the whole picture.

So I set about to remedy
the balance there.

- Along came COVID,

and this is when
Bobby began taking on

the pharmaceutical industry

and its connections to the CDC,

the Food and Drug Administration
and big media

When it comes to COVID,

what is it that they got wrong
in your opinion?

-The fact that we mismanaged
COVID is indisputable,

and the best evidence of that
is that for 50 years

there's been protocols
for managing global pandemics,

and they all say--

the WHO,
the European Medical Agency,

CDC, et cetera,

they all say in a pandemic

what you do is
you isolate the sick,

you take care of the vulnerable,

but you don't lock down a population

for a respiratory virus

because it's more likely
to spread indoors.

The lockdowns actually
end up killing more people,

so they were violating
their own protocols.

- Bobby was talking early on

about the fact that this virus
most likely escaped

from a lab in Wuhan, China,

which had been funded by Dr. Anthony
Fauci's National Institutes of Health.

But now we know that that's
pretty much what happened.

During the pandemic,

it was very clear
that there was one narrative

that anyone was allowed to discuss

and anything counter to that narrative

we were made to believe was dangerous,

uninformed.

- I knew back in May of 2020

that the COVID vaccine was not
going to prevent transmission.

I went through the evidence,
I read the monkey studies.

They were basing the whole study
on a handful of monkeys

and they were giving
half of them the vaccine

and half of them a placebo,

and they were
exposing them to COVID

and the vaccinated monkeys
had the same amount of COVID

in their nasal pharynx
as the unvaccinated monkeys.

And when I said the monkey study

showed the vaccine
doesn't prevent transmission,

I was called a conspiracy theorist

and silenced for it,

taken off of Instagram.

- He was removed
from Facebook, Twitter.

He was just blackballed, basically.

- It's scary that the
pharmaceutical companies

have grown into 70% of
the advertising on television.

- Seventy-five
percent of evening news

from pharmaceutical companies

and I can't get on
any of the networks,

so all they hear about me
is the defamations

and the pejoratives and insults

and the name calling,

and you know, he's a racist,

he's an antisemite,
he's got a brain worm,

he eats dogs.

He's anti-vaxx.

I did a quick Google search

and only saw very negative
articles about Bobby,

and I realized that
there was something going on

with the media trying to censor
what he was trying to say.

What he was pointing out was

a lot of people died from
side effects of these vaccines,

or at least their illnesses
were exacerbated

by taking the vaccine
rather than cured.

We now know when President Biden
came into office,

he and Mark Zuckerberg got together

and Biden requested
that they take Bobby Kennedy off

their social media.

-These people from the Biden
administration pushed us

and said,

anything that says that vaccines
might have side effects,

you basically need to take down.

Our government is telling us

that we need to censor true things.

It's like, this is a disaster.

-It's terrible what they did
to suppress Bobby's free speech.

His family broke with him,
a lot of people broke with him.

Hate speech has consequences.

Distortion of the truth has consequences.

-You don't have the right
to a platform

to promote idiotic
bigoted messaging.

This is not the kind of
free speech that I know of.

- Mr. Kennedy,
do you think it was easy

for Jewish people to escape
systematic slaughter of Nazis,

yes or no?

- Absolutely not.

- Okay, good.

Do you think it was just as hard
to wear a mask during COVID

as it was to hide under floorboards

or false walls so you weren't murdered

or dragged to a concentration camp?

-Of course not. That's ridiculous.

-That's a comparison that you made.

I did not make that comparison.

Mr. Kennedy,
the measures taken--

The time is mine.
I'm reclaiming it.

Please ask the witness
to stop talking.

You asked me a question.

-Protective measures were taken

to take down disinformation
about vaccines,

and no matter what you may
think, Mr. Kennedy

and I revere your name,

you're not here to propound
your case for censorship.

No.

It's an opportunity
to have a conspiracy theory

and it makes me profoundly sad.

I began my political interest
with your father

and it brings shame
on a storied name that I revere.

- I just want to respond--
- Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair.

- May I, Mr. Chairman?

- You may not, you may not.

- I don't think--
- Time's out.

We're done.

- I want to say this
while I'm on the record,

while I'm under oath.

I've never been anti-vaccine,
but everybody in this room

probably believes that I have been

because that's the prevailing narrative.

I believe vaccines should be
tested with the same rigor

as other medicines and medications,

and my views are
constantly misrepresented.

I spent 30 years trying
to get mercury

out of the fish in this country,

and nobody ever called me anti-fish.

At that time we were trying
to get mercury out of vaccines.

Mothers were coming and saying,

my child was injured by the vaccine,

and they said, nobody's listening to us.

And I felt like
I should listen to them

and actually read the science.

And that is what got me down into the--

- Time.

-And by the way,
it's the worst career decision

I have ever made.

We have to stop trying
to destroy each other,

to marginalize, to vilify,

to gaslight each other.

We have to find that place
inside of ourselves of light,

of empathy, of compassion,

and above all, we need to elevate

the constitution
of the United States,

which was written
for hard times,

and that has to be
the premier compass

for all of our activities.

Thank you very much.

- Thank you.
- Mr. Chairman.

- We stand in recess.

We stand in recess.

We'll be back in
and right back at it.

Thank you all.

Do they know
about Martin Luther King?

Ladies and gentlemen,

I'm only going
to talk to you

just for a minute
or so this evening

because I have some
very sad news for all of you

and I think sad news
for all of our fellow citizens

and people who love peace
all over the world,

and that is that
Martin Luther King was shot

and was killed tonight
in Memphis, Tennessee.

For those of you who are tempted
to be filled with hatred

and mistrust of the injustice
of such an act,

I would only say that
I can also feel in my own heart

the same kind of feeling.

I had a member
of my family killed.

But we have to make an effort
to get beyond

or go beyond these rather
difficult times.

What we need
in the United States

is not division,

what we need
in the United States is not hatred.

What we need
in the United States

is not violence and lawlessness,

but is love and wisdom

and compassion
toward one another.

A feeling of justice toward those

who still suffer
within our country,

whether they be white
or whether they be black.

Let us say a prayer
for our country

and for our people.

Thank you very much.

- I think that
Bobby Kennedy himself knew

in early 1968 when he fatefully decides

that he must run for president,

that he was doing so under a great cloud,

that he was doing so
at risk to his own life.

And imagine the courage
that it took for Bobby Kennedy

to plunge into the crowds
during the 1968 campaign,

again and again
putting himself in danger.

And why does he do this?

Because he thinks the country

is so mortally wounded
at this point,

is in such a suffering
place after years of war,

and rioting in its inner cities,
of racial strife,

that he alone knows that
he's probably the only candidate

who can heal the country,

so he takes this burden
on his shoulders.

- When Robert Kennedy
came into the race,

people didn't really
give him a chance

and there was a lot of
resentment and opposition,

but he began to win the primaries.

For example,
he went to South Dakota

and there he spent time
with the Lakota Sioux

on the Pine Ridge reservation.

- My father took us
to Indian reservations

everywhere we went.

-Because he wanted you
to see the poverty

or he wanted to see
a different way of life?

-He was just interested in Indians

and he felt, he really believed
America was an exemplary nation,

that we were
the world's exemplary democracy.

But that we'd never live up
to the promise of our nation

if we didn't go back and redress
the original sin of America,

which was the genocide
of the Native Americans.

So he was concerned about
the way that they lived

and the poverty.

- That these
conditions can be allowed

to prevail among a people
uniquely entitled

to call themselves
the First Americans.

A people whose civilization
flourished here for centuries,

before the name America
was thought of,

this is nothing
less than a national disgrace,

-And he's bestowed upon him

an honored chief
of the American Indians.

- When he was on that
Sioux reservation in 1968,

there was 20,000 white people
waiting for him in Rapid City,

and they waited
for about eight hours

and his aides kept saying,
you got to go there.

The Indians don't vote anyway.

And my father was saying,
I'm staying here.

And he spent the day
at the reservation

and didn't get to Rapid City
until the evening,

and he won the state
of South Dakota

and he largely won
because it was the first time

there was a massive Indian vote

and he got almost
a 100% of the vote.

So he won the most rural state
in the country,

which was South Dakota
and the most urban state.

So he had succeeded
in bridging the divide.

- Bobby Kennedy
had a brief and shining moment

where if he had won,

if he'd been elected,

he could have brought
the country together.

During the campaign
he would tell people,

yes, I don't believe
the Warren Report.

Yes, I'm going to reopen
the assassination case.

- Would you welcome
a reopening of the investigation

into President Kennedy's death?

-Well, I don't see that

if there isn't
any new evidence to consider,

you'd ever get away
from the idea

that maybe there was a plot.

We just didn't find
any traces of it.

- All the forces
he felt had killed JFK

could not allow Bobby Kennedy
to become president

because he was going to be
coming after them then,

with the full power
of the federal government.

- This meant that
Kennedy had to go.

- Senator Kennedy
is going down now

to address his supporters as
McCarthy did a short while ago.

Rafer Johnson,
the Olympic decathlon winner,

is on one side of him there.

He's been acting as a bodyguard.

Now he's advancing
towards the ballroom

where he will talk
to his campaign workers

from California.

- Here he is now,
he's entering the ballroom

and you can hear the cheers
from his supporters.

- So Bobby Kennedy,

I'm sad to say,
his days are numbered

from the moment he announces
for president.

In fact, Jackie Kennedy
told him this.

Jackie Kennedy told him
she was crushed by his decision

and she said, "Bobby,
the same people who killed Jack

are going to kill the you."

Kennedy has been shot.

They think Kennedy
has been shot,

appeared to be gunshots

in a little room off to the side.

I was near the Senator.

What appeared--

what appeared to be gunshots

coming from inside
this room in here.

I'm not...
Keep me plugged in.

There's a great deal of blood.

Keep me plugged in.

We don't know what--

- Move back, please!

- Oh, someone else was shot.

Someone else was shot.

We had another person
who was next to Kennedy

who was shot in the forehead.

She's bleeding badly.

Another person is shot near Kennedy.

It's mass chaos here.

We did hear gunfire
from in the hallway,

there are people
running everywhere.

- The individual
we have in custody

is Sirhan Sirhan.

I don't know how many times

the Senator was shot.

His blood is still here
on the floor.

Senator Robert Francis Kennedy

died at 1:44 AM, today

June 6th, 1968.

Now, I want to ask you

about your father's assassination.

And what do you make of it?

- I always assumed
that my dad's murder

was pretty straightforward

because Sirhan confessed
to the murder.

There were 77 eyewitnesses

and many people,
at least a dozen,

testified that they'd seen him
firing the shots at my dad.

Paul Schrade, who was a very
close friend of my father,

a very, very compassionate,
determined labor organizer.

He was standing
beside my father,

maybe a foot behind him

as they walked into
the Ambassador Hotel kitchen.

And the first of the shots at my father

had hit Paul Schrade
and he had fallen down.

He survived.

It's a great personal tragedy

because Bob Kennedy was
a very close friend of mine

and I, not only as a friend,

but expected him
to be a great president.

And then probably 15 years ago,

Paul Schade,
he called me and he said,

"I want you to come
to my house

and read your dad's autopsy report."

And I said, "That's the last
thing in the world

that I want to do."

And he said, "I'm asking you
and I need you to do this."

And because of the role that
he played in my father's life

and because he had taken
a bullet for my father,

I felt like
I couldn't say no to him.

So I went to his home
and I sat at his kitchen table

and I read that autopsy report

and it was transformative for me

because anybody
who reads that report

will understand that Sirhan
could not have killed my father.

- Final totals
will be Kennedy 48%,

Senator McCarthy 41%.

- The mainstream
narrative of June 4th

is that Kennedy wins the primary.

He goes down
to the embassy ballroom

and gives his acceptance speech.

My thanks to all of you.

And now it's on to Chicago
and let's win there.

Thank you very much.

- At that point,

he walks off
the back of the stage

and walks through the pantry.

The cameras are all off
at this point

because the event is over.

There are busboys in the pantry.

There are some campaign
hangers on, there's staff.

And Sirhan steps out,
pulls out a gun,

starts firing at Kennedy.

-And Syrian fired
two shots of my dad.

And then he was grabbed
by Rafer Johnson,

Rosie Greer,
and four other guys.

So six people altogether.

And I talked
to Rafer about this.

Rafer was a gold medal
decathlon champion in 1960.

Very close friend of my father.

Rafer told me they bent Sirhan
over the steam table.

- I'm right here.

Rafer Johnson
has a hold of a man

who apparently
has fired the shots.

He has fired the shots.
He still has the gun.

The gun is pointed
at me right at this moment.

That's it, Rafer, get it!

Get the gun Rafer!

Okay, now hold onto the guy!

Hold onto him!

Take a hold of his thumb
and break it if you have to!

Get his thumb!

Rafer took the gun hand

and pointed the gun
away from my father.

And Sirhan then was able
to fire off six other shots

in the opposite direction
from my father

and emptied the magazine.

- Hold him Rafer!
We don't want another Oswald!

Hold him, Rafer,
keep people away from him!

- And the witnesses again,

who saw them both

and were in a good position
to judge distance,

put the gun muzzle about
three feet in front of Kennedy.

Then we cut to the autopsy report

and the coroner, Thomas Noguchi,

a very competent coroner

who'd done many famous cases
including Marilyn Monroe

and Natalie Wood
and other celebrities.

He was given the body of RFK

and it was clear to him immediately

as it was to the police
because they saw the body.

Kennedy had been shot
from behind the right ear.

He had not been shot
from the front.

The shots that hit my father--

there were four,

all of them were from behind.

One of them went harmlessly

through the shoulder pad
of his jacket.

Two of 'em went into his back

and one of 'em went into
the back of his head,

which was the shot
that killed him.

And Noguchi says that
all of those shots

were contact shots,

meaning they left
a carbon tattoo

on my father's skin,

which means that the barrel

could not have been more than
a half an inch from his body.

The muzzle distance would be

one inch from the right ear

and no more than three inches.

- And the Sirhan
was never behind him

and never got that close to him.

- So how do you reconcile
three feet from in front

with an inch and a half from behind?

And you don't.

-My father appears to have known

that he was being shot from behind

because the last thing he did
was twist around

and tear off the tie of
the security guard behind him.

The early pictures of my father

show my father lying
on the ground

with the clip on tie.

From day one from moment one,

Sirhan claimed he did not know
what happened in the pantry.

The police asked him questions
like, is this your car?

He's like, I don't know.

They said, what's your name?

He was completely silent.

And so as one of the DA's
assistants is talking to him,

he stops himself midsentence, he's like,

do you know where you are?

Do you know what
you've been charged with?

He knew Sirhan wasn't processing

like a normal person
would process.

Do you remember anything?

-No, no, no.

I don't remember much
what happened after that.

- You don't
remember much about that.

I don't remember.

- And there are
12 points of entry

for the eight bullets
Sirhan's gun could have held.

Two bullets
were removed from Kennedy.

Five other people
had bullets removed from them.

- Five people,
including Paul Schrade.

- But there are still
at least five more bullet holes

pictured from FBI photos
and an AP photo.

- And in the chaos
of what happened there,

people didn't initially question
the fact that there was

a recently-employed security guard

standing behind Robert Kennedy.

- Thane Eugene Cesar
had joined a security company

only a week earlier
who were running security

for the event
that night at the hotel.

And Thane Cesar also was
moonlighting for Lockheed,

who was also working as
a bodyguard for Howard Hughes.

And I went through some
public records databases.

The only employer Cesar
ever listed was the CIA.

So you've got this CIA guy
at Kennedy's elbow.

He's six foot two.

He's stocky.

And he's literally holding
Kennedy's right arm

with his left hand
if he's right-handed,

and he is, no one is in a better
position to shoot Kennedy

under the arm than Thane Cesar.

He's right there.

- Cesar steered
to my father into the kitchen,

and when he was shot,

my father fell on top of Cesar
and Cesar fell as well,

and then pushed my father
off him and stood up.

And he had his gun drawn,

which was visible
to numerous witnesses.

And Cesar later suggested

that maybe he had pulled his gun

to shoot at Sirhan,

but the gun was never taken
by the police.

- At the time,
Bobby had planned

to go to the Philippines

to speak with than Eugene Cesar,

who quite possibly fired the shots

that assassinated the senator.

And Cesar said, "Yeah, I could do that,

but you're going to have to pay me--"

I don't know, I think it was $30,000,

something like that.

It didn't happen.

Cesar backed out
at the last minute

and he has since died.

-It's a dirty story.

But you went to see Sirhan.

- Yeah,
it's occurred to me,

although I don't have evidence,

definitive evidence for this,
that Sirhan was a distractor.

He believes that
he was hypnotized.

-I don't remember aiming
at any human being.

I don't remember any of that.

I've said that from the get-go.

The doctor said that I was
in a dissociated state.

- During the course
of my own investigation,

I got a hold of the CIA
training manual for MK Ultra.

It was about developing
a Manchurian candidate

and using hypnosis
and psychoactive drugs.

And one of the interesting
things it says in there is

it says it's very difficult

to reliably train somebody

to be an unwilling assassin

and that it may
take years of training,

but that you can train a distractor

within a couple of months.

And a distractor
would be the person

who would be visibly
firing the shots

while the real killer was
actually firing the kill shots.

-If that isn't the template
for what happened in the pantry,

I don't know what is.

So again, they didn't have time
to train Sirhan

to be a skilled assassin
in that short of time,

but they did have time
to train him to be a patsy.

- I don't remember.

I'm not saying that to be
dismissive of my responsibility,

but that is really what happened.

- When you're in
the hypnotic state,

sometimes the memory
is not being recorded

or it's recorded,
but it's locked away

and you can only retrieve it
in a hypnotic state.

And so Sirhan's own defense team
had hypnotized him

to try to get him to remember
what happened in the pantry.

- And it turned out
that what Sirhan remembered

from that night
in hypnosis was meeting

a very attractive girl
in a polka dot dress.

He remembers her taking him

to the center in the pantry.

- The choking is
almost killing him.

So that almost brings him out
of hypnosis.

No recollection
of Robert Kennedy at all there.

There were witnesses
who saw this girl

that Sirhan remembered
seeing under hypnosis.

One of them was Sandy Serrano.

Everybody was in the main room,

you know, listening to him speak,

and it was too hot.

So I went outside
and I was out on the terrace.

Then this girl came running down
the stairs in the back.

I can remember what she had on
and everything.

She had on a white dress
with polka dots.

She came running down
the stairs and said,

"We've shot him,
we've shot him."

And I said, "Who did you shoot?"

And she says,
"We’ve shot Senator Kennedy."

- Sandy's
obviously distressed.

So what did the police do?

Hank Hernandez and Manny Pena
were the two people

at the LAPD charged with
the conspiracy investigation.

However, both of them had former
intelligence backgrounds

and ties to the CIA.

They interviewed her
multiple times

and she wasn't
changing her story.

So Hank Hernandez runs
what can only be called

psychological warfare against her.

- Eventually she's like,
I don't know.

Maybe I misheard.

And that's how they shut down
that angle.

However, the topic of hypnosis
and mind control was so powerful

and so sensitive
that when Nixon fired Helms

after the whole Watergate debacle,

Helms on his way out
of the agency,

the one thing
he asked them to destroy

was all the MK Ultra files.

That leads you to conclude what?

-My opinion is really irrelevant.

What's important is
what the facts say.

I've asked for a reinvestigation
of the murder.

- Six of Senator
Robert Kennedy's, ten children

had been with him in California.

They were flown back late today
aboard a government plane.

The tragedy and senseless violence

of Robert F. Kennedy's death

casts a deep shadow
of grief across America

and across the world.

The presidential proclamation
went on to declare Sunday

as a national day of mourning

over the death
of Senator Robert Kennedy.

- The senator's body
was flown back to New York,

and then there was
a train ride that took him

to Arlington Cemetery
to be buried beside his brother.

And Bobby Jr. said
that he would never forget

looking out that train window

at the thousands of people gathered

to pay homage to his father.

Bobby Jr. spent some time
in the office

that his father sometimes used,

and he looked around
at the walls

and there were all these
photographs of Kennedys

and Kennedy relatives,

including his Uncle Joe,
who he never knew

because he was killed
during World War II.

An Aunt Kick
that he never knew either

because she was killed
in a plane crash

in the late 1940s,

and he realized
they're all dead.

My brother need not be idealized

or enlarged in death
beyond what he was in life,

to be remembered simply
as a good and decent man

who saw wrong
and tried to right it,

saw suffering and tried to heal it,

saw a war and tried to stop it.

As he said many times
in many parts of this nation,

some men see things as they are
and say, “Why?”

I dream things that never were
and say, “Why not?”

- My father,
he would give me things to read

all the time and poems

and books, et cetera.

It was about a couple of weeks
before he died

and he said to me,
with this unusual intensity,

I want you to read this book
called The Plague.

The book is about a doctor
who is in a quarantine city

in North Africa,

and there's a plague
raging through the city,

and nobody can go in or out

and it doesn't tell
what the name of the plague is,

and nobody knows,
but everybody is dying.

And a lot of the beginning
of the book

is a conversation that this
doctor is having with himself

about whether he should venture
out of his apartment

because he knows
that if he goes to help people,

he's highly likely to die

and very unlikely
to be able to help anybody

because nobody knows how to help.

In the end,
he goes out and does his duty

and consoles people,

does the best he can
to bring comfort to people.

And so after he died,
I read the book several times

trying to unlock the key

of what message
he had been trying to tell me.

This doctor,
he accepted his burden

and he did his duty.

And it brings
a sense of wellbeing

that you're doing
what you're supposed to do.

And for me, it makes sense

because I find that
the best way for me to live

is to make the effort
to do the next right thing,

to get up every morning,
say reporting for duty, sir,

and then let go of the results,

that the outcome’s in God's hands.

We do what we're supposed to do.

But if the boulder needs
to roll back on us,

then that's okay.
We'll push it up again.

- I've come here
today to announce my candidacy

for the Democratic nomination

for President of the United States.

It is very painful for me

to let go of the party
of my uncles, my father,

but I'm here to declare myself
an independent candidate.

Each time that our volunteers

turned in those towering boxes
of signatures needed

to get on the ballot,

the DNC dragged us into court
in state after state

attempting to erase their work.

- Ultimately, the only
thing that will save our country

and our children
is if we choose to love our kids

more than we hate each other.

- The first thing
I've done every morning

for the past 20 years is to get
on my knees and pray to God

that he would put me in a position

to end the
chronic disease epidemic

and to help America's children.

Ours has always been a family

that has been involved
in public service,

and I look forward
to continuing that tradition.