Original subtitles

1968 was a year of anger.

I wasn't well -worn too, fella. Do I have a son that's going to go into the

army? Nobody could accept anything.

The United States is becoming two countries.

One white, one black.

We stand on the eve of a black revolution, brothers.

Well, if there's going to be another riot, I want to be prepared.

And do what is necessary.

We can't continue to live in a nation every summer going up in flames.

Every day killing up people in Vietnam like we're killing. We are trying to

this nation.

The Tet Offensive broke out in January.

Vietnam spun out of control.

The Vietnamese New Year check.

The enemy chose this occasion to unleash well -coordinated attacks in several

areas of the Republic.

Now demonstrators shout down government officials,

and the government grasp protesters.

Anarchists threaten to burn the country down, while tanks have patrolled

American cities.

and machine guns have been fired at American children.

Truly, we seem to fulfill the vision of Yeats.

Things fall apart.

The center cannot hold.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Is it fair to say, then, that you are dissatisfied?

I think you have to be dissatisfied.

I don't think that we should turn to violence. I don't think that we should

to war as the answer to solutions to problems.

So I'm dissatisfied with our society. I suppose I'm dissatisfied with our

country. I'm dissatisfied with the fact that perhaps that I don't do enough

personally.

The chaos spurred me into sitting down and writing a letter to my friend Bob.

Dear Bob, I had wanted to write you a long letter explaining why I thought you

should make a run for the presidency this year.

Campaigning is underway in the New Hampshire presidential primary coming up

Tuesday. On the Republican side, Richard Nixon is urging New Hampshire

Republicans to give him a big standoff in his quest for the GOP presidential

nomination. They have failed in so many areas that we need a new team in

Washington. I don't think we can afford five summers of blood.

You should run because if you won, the country might be saved.

If we have LBJ for another four years.

There won't be much of a country left.

Sir, we see an organization and clubs springing up all over the place

Senator Robert Kennedy.

Do you have any comment on that? Well, I've been going to support President

Johnson and Vice President Humphrey in the election of 1958.

Action in the Democratic Party began when Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy

openly challenged the policies of the Johnson administration and declared

himself a candidate for the Democratic nomination.

What we're doing is laying down a challenge.

to control the presidency of the United States of America.

Robert Kennedy believed that Eugene McCarthy might win some primaries and

give Johnson some trouble. He was never going to be nominated or elected

president of the United States.

March 10th, two days before the New Hampshire primary.

Cesar Chavez was on a hunger strike.

Cesar says he won't stop his strike unless Robert Kennedy comes and breaks

with him.

The next day, we're sitting in this small plane flying up to Delano.

He's thinking about whether he's going to run, and he has one foot in the old

politics and one foot in the new politics.

And he was torn between those two ways of thinking.

He had learned from his father that you didn't do things that you weren't going

to win.

Getting his own brother nominated as president using all the old tools.

But the new politics said you do the cause, whether you win or not.

And the cause in his mind is the pursuit of justice.

And Robert Kennedy says to the three of us, I'm going to run for president.

Senator, how are you?

Senator, there are increasing reports out of Washington that your advisers are

now telling you that you should run against President Johnson this year. I

no plans. I have no plans to change the statement that I've already made. Will

you endorse President Johnson this year, sir? I've already made all the

statements I'm going to. There's nothing I have to add. What about a report,

sir, that you're going to meet with top California Democrats later today?

No, I'm coming out for the...

strike at Delano for Mr. Chavez, and I'm going back this afternoon.

He's been on a hunger strike and is committed to nonviolence, and I think

terribly important.

We picked the senator up at the airport, and then we went and took him to the

place where Cesar was fasting.

And of course, once we got there, it was nearly, I mean, everybody wanted to

touch the senator, so the whole crowd pushed in.

The farm workers have suffered. People are frustrated.

There has to be this explosion.

What in the last analysis is the answer is that we pass the laws that will

remedy the injustices. That's what those of us in Washington should do. We

shouldn't just deplore the violence, deplore the lawlessness. We should pass

laws that remedy what people riot about.

People were just exuberant.

There was just a lot of hope.

I was there in Delano at the end of Chavez's path.

I remember Chavez was so sick and so weak from the fact.

And the senator made this beautiful talk.

We here in the United States are lucky and fortunate to have produced a man so

committed. to justice, to compassion, to honesty, to truth,

and to service for all humanity.

And that's Cesar Chavez.

I was translating for the senator, and they had given me his script, and of

course he kept going off script, you know.

Is that all right, Cesar?

Am I destroying the language?

Should I translate that into Spanish?

I remember, Bobby, breaking the fast with bread.

And then after the mass ended, it just got crazy.

And so then we had to get people around the Senate and say, we're going to crush

him, you know.

And it got really wild.

People telling him, Kennedy for president, Kennedy for president. He

announced it to anybody.

I was afraid for the Senate's safety.

We were always very careful about security because Caesar had a lot of

on him.

I was there with a senator and he saw a man and he said, who is

that man over there?

And I looked and it was somebody I didn't recognize.

And so they went right away and they got that man out of there.

And then I got more security from the senator.

The news conference of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, live from Washington.

Good morning. We are broadcasting this morning the announcement of Democratic

Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York that he will be a candidate for the

presidency. The senator is doing so in the face of almost solid opposition from

the Democratic Party professionals.

He's also making the announcement in the opposition of thousands of young

Democrats who claim that Kennedy has become an opportunist trying to cash in

the courage of Eugene McCarthy.

The whole thing is one of the most extraordinary political and human

think, in the history of American politics.

I am announcing today my candidacy for the presidency of the United States.

I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course.

I have seen the inexcusable and ugly deprivation.

causes children to starve in Mississippi, black citizens to riot in

Indians commit suicide on their reservations because they've lacked all

and proud and able -bodied families who wait out their lives in empty idleness

in eastern Kentucky.

Loppy went into the fight for the nomination overnight.

There was no big planning basis, no big offices around the country, no money

raised.

overnight he suddenly had to run a presidential campaign that was already

full blast.

I was a coordinator of field operations,

so people had to come to me, get the buttons, get the petitions.

The first strategy was, Lyndon Johnson is going to play hardball, get ready.

You're taking a big risk here. You are going against a sitting president, a

powerful, vindictive, mean.

Sitting president, a war president, a powerful president who hates you.

You're taking him on.

And there was a sense of foreboding.

So there was nervousness. And a lot of phone calls coming to the office.

How dare he do this? He promised he wouldn't use this as a stepping stone,

yet he is.

And why did he wait? McCarthy is doing very well now. Why is he stabbing

McCarthy in the back? Why is he doing this?

What do you think about Bobby Kennedy?

I know that I wouldn't vote for him and I don't particularly care for his views

and what he's running for.

I think that he has a rather poor national image.

I'm absolutely against Bobby Kennedy and I'm against all the candidates. I think

we've had our fill.

I think we can find answers to these problems.

I think we can make progress.

I don't come to the American people and say that the problems are easy.

or that the solutions will come easily. But I do think that we can do better.

He's been held back for months, wanting to take on Johnson, and it's just ready

to come out.

I think what we have to accept is what President Kennedy said in 1963.

This is their war.

We can help them, but we can't win it for them. And I think over the period of

the last three years, we've decided that we can win it for them, that it's a war

of attrition, as General Westmoreland said.

We'll kill 10 of them for every one they kill of us, and therefore we win. I

don't think that's a policy that makes any sense, and I don't think that it'll

have any success.

This is no time to tear the nation apart when we are not only in a desperate

Vietnam War, but an undeclared war with communism all over the world.

You know, Bobby, reminds me of Bugs Bunny.

Jumping around in the Family Foundation jet plane from place to place with

screaming crowds of youngsters, dividing the country at the wrong time.

I stand with my president and I stand with my government and I think that the

time has come when we got to close ranks.

Eugene McCarthy became the symbol of the anti -Vietnam movement.

The killing in Vietnam could be brought to an end.

And that cost Robert Kennedy a lot.

Young people who should have been his natural allies, who Bobby should have

counted on a year before, who would have been marching in the streets for him,

really felt angry.

The idealistic youth kind of resent his stepping in after McCarthy put his

career on the line and then made a good showing, and then all of a sudden

Kennedy's in there, sort of.

At least it looks like he's trying to push him out of the way. Do you think

entrance of Senator Kennedy into this is making your job more difficult? And, of

course, Senator McGrath? Yes.

Meanwhile, Johnson would make the argument, I've done one hell of a job

everybody had to admit except for Vietnam.

I think what we've got to do is...

Get out of the posture of just being the war candidate that McCarthy has put us

in and Bobby's putting us in, the kids are putting us in. Yes, that's right. I

think you put your finger right on it so that we can say we're the peace

candidate, but we're the true peace candidate.

But no one could believe what happened next.

On Sunday evening, March 31st, President Lyndon Johnson almost casually set the

stage for one of the most startling and unexpected announcements ever made by an

American president.

I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination

of my party for another term as your president.

I'll never forget the night Lyndon Johnson dropped out.

What a night that was. I will never forget that for as long as I live. We

stunned.

It was euphoric. I can't believe this happened.

It's like, you know, ding dong, the witch is dead.

And yet we had this sense that this is going to make it harder in many ways.

McCartney's not the enemy.

And then Robert Kennedy comes to LaGuardia, and we were screaming, going

He had a look on his face I'll never forget, and it was a look of, now what?

I don't have someone to run against.

Now what do I do?

And he knew right away, his political brain was processing, this is not all

that Johnson has dropped out.

Vice President Humphrey joined the fight. I shall seek the nomination of

Democratic Party.

Hubert Humphrey was a much tougher candidate in many ways than Whitney

because he had a reputation, a liberal, decent, wonderful man, and he had the

normal Democratic Party behind him.

Great national interest swung to Indiana when it became evident this primary

would offer the first toe -to -toe meeting between Senators Kennedy and

McCarthy.

Good afternoon, Kennedy headquarters.

When he announced that he was running for president, I sent a telegram to him

saying I'm ready to help whatever I can do.

And they asked me to go to Indiana to organize a rally in Indianapolis.

People started gathering.

In some way, we heard that Dr. King had been shot.

And there was some debate about whether Robert Kennedy should come and speak.

It may be too dangerous for him.

I, for one, insisted that he must come and speak to this crowd.

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.

Could you lower those signs, please?

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.

Martin Luther

King dedicated his life

to love and to justice.

between fellow human beings.

He died in the cause of that effort.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with

hatred and distrust of the injustice of such an act

against all white people, 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 he was killed by a white man.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus.

He once wrote, even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart until in our own despair,

against our will,

comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

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 and a feeling of justice

toward those who still suffer.

within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

On that evening, he didn't have a manuscript.

It wasn't a written statement. He had a little piece of paper that he quoted a

poem.

After the rally was over, he invited several of us to his hotel room.

But several of us cried with him.

And when he came to Atlanta before the funeral, Robert Kennedy was one of the

few white politicians in America to be able to walk

through the heart of the African -American community in downtown Atlanta

hundreds and thousands of people.

I stayed in Atlanta for a few days after the funeral.

Then I got back on the campaign trail.

Leading into the May 3rd Indiana primary, the heart of his support

is people of color, African American.

Indiana,

who's a conservative state.

that had the establishment against them.

I think we've got to preserve the family -type farm so that the farmer and his

wife can pass the farm on to the next generation. And I'm co -sponsoring the

bill, giving farmers the right to bargain. How can we make the people in

city understand our problem?

If the farmer does well in Indiana, we're going to do better in New York.

But white working -class people, of whom I was one, there was something about

him being a tough guy.

that we liked. He wasn't like a bleeding -heart liberal.

That was the expression back then. He was a tough dude.

Unlike

others

who would try to pit the working class against the poor.

His theme in 1968 was reconciliation.

I've seen children here in the United States starving, whether it be in

Kentucky, whether it be on some of our Indian reservations, or whether it be in

the Delta area of Mississippi.

Young children starving to death.

We can't afford to hate each other. We can't afford to be divided.

And we have the determination, we have the faith, and we have people just so

eager to do everything.

And so I'm sure that he can unite us all.

Mrs. Kennedy is a veteran of the campaign trail. Her appearances at

this helped elect another son president in 1960, and those memories must come

flooding back on days like this.

Hello. Good to see you. How are you?

Thank you. We do appreciate you coming. Thank you very much for coming today.

I want to thank all of those who have involved themselves in this campaign in

Indiana as we talk about just healing divisions.

Whether it's between blacks and whites or between age groups, the fact is that

in this campaign we talked about them openly and truthfully and with candor.

And we talked about what can be done about them.

And I think that's a great step forward.

And I intend to go on trying to do that in the state of Nebraska, in the state

of Oregon, in the state of California.

And I hope to have the same support.

He wins Indiana, he wins Nebraska.

He's on a roll.

F. Kennedy opens his bid for votes in the Oregon Democratic primary.

It won't be easy.

My name is Robert Kennedy.

I was hoping somebody would come along and say, I now introduce you to the next

president of the United States, but nobody seems to have showed up.

Thank you.

Four very loyal supporters.

Brought right from New York City.

What do you think about Bobby Kennedy?

With Kennedy running, I think it will cause a very great split.

And just like Nixon, Kennedy says the war has to end in Vietnam, but he really

hasn't given any positive solutions.

And I've asked myself what Senator Kennedy of New York has really brought

campaign.

Senator McCarthy is outdrawing Robert Kennedy here in Oregon, and all consider

this most unusual.

In fact, it's giving McCarthy more confidence.

I wondered about Senator Kennedy bringing the dog into the campaign.

I have a dog.

I think a better dog than his.

I was working for the Kennedy campaign in Oregon, and everybody knew this was

going to be a tough place to win.

It was a mostly white state, very small minority population, so it didn't have a

natural base.

It's a good umbrella.

There was some stupid incident where Senator Kennedy went running on the

in his bare feet with his dog, and some Oregonians took offense at that.

God knows why. I have no idea.

How well do you expect to do in this primary?

I can't lose.

I mean, I just can't afford to lose if I'm going to remain a very active and

viable candidate.

We were concerned.

Some people probably thought he shouldn't have even campaigned in Oregon

California was coming up a week later. There was no space.

It wasn't like there was going to be three more weeks and this was going to

dragged out. It was like one more week and it was over and everybody, I think,

felt if you win California, that's going to be decisive.

And I think that we can have a success here in the United States. I think we

win here in the state of Oregon.

If

I

hit the right inflection, you know that you're supposed to clap.

He proceeded to lose his first election in Oregon. He lost.

No Kennedy ever lost.

Why did I lose?

Just because I didn't do well enough. I mean, there wasn't any, I could just,

the only fall to blame is me.

I suppose I'd say as Abraham Lincoln said about the man who was carried out

on a steel rail out of the city, and he said that...

Except for the honor, I'd like to have passed it up.

But that's the same way I feel about Oregon.

Except for the distinction of being the first Kennedy to lose.

I just have to do the pass.

This is the beginning of what Senator Kennedy hopes will be a comeback trail,

comeback that will somehow offset his stunning loss to Gene McCarthy in

Kennedy plainly intends to go for broke here in California, where anything short

of a very big win will almost certainly end his own White House dream.

and then the signs that are not as much of my support.

I had a little of that at my own home when I took a poll amongst my children.

I did well. I got four votes.

And two went for my brother Teddy.

Two went for my sister Pat.

And two of them said they were reassessing their position.

So I'm going to tell them I had a nice welcome in San Diego.

Because Jay is a leading contender, Kennedy must not only win in California,

win big.

He knows it.

Good afternoon, Kennedy. May I help you?

Thank you. And that's why he concentrates on these wellsprings of his

strength, the minority group members.

There are millions of them in this state.

Indians, Orientals, more than one million Negroes, one and three -quarter

million Latins.

By past performance and the polls, overwhelmingly for Kennedy.

So only 40 % of the men that live in the ghetto have jobs that pay more than $60

a week.

How can you support a family? How can you bring up children in dignity?

But they feel that their children can't get a decent education.

Do they want to accept that?

In California, I teamed up with Cecil Chavez, the two of us, knocking on

Then we were campaigning for Robert Kennedy, will you support him?

And then we participated in a motorcade.

It was unreal.

People were pulling all sides.

The minute we knew that the Senate was going to run, we just started

It was all so fast, you know.

I was put in charge of just setting up all of these rallies up and down the

valley.

This is Cesar Chavez and his colleagues here in California.

They really started a revolution, which was a revolution for human dignity.

People wanted to see him win.

The only thing is, sometimes we would come back and give our reports, and

several people gave this same report, that when they were knocked on the doors

of some of the older women, they would say, we don't want him to win. Why?

Because the ruins are going to kill him.

uh public view constantly for example when you visit san francisco as you are

today this must be a tremendous drain upon a person don't you sometimes cry

for privacy or do you find it agreeable to be on public view no i think that you

like the privacy and then you have some of that but also i think that what i

say is satisfying and what uh i think makes it worthwhile is just the fact

you feel that you can have an effect and perhaps do some good that involve other

people.

That there is some possibility that we make the right kind of an effort, that

their lives are going to change and that therefore their whole existence is

going to change and their children's lives are going to change.

Are you ever bothered with fears of failure?

Well, I'd rather not fail, but I mean, I suppose that you're always taking that

chance, aren't you?

But I think that in all of these matters, if you're dealing with these

subjects, you're always taking a chance. I mean, you're taking a chance, I

suppose, in political life. But in every aspect of one's existence, you take

some chances. If you take a position on any matter, if you want to bring perhaps

about changes or whatever you want to do, you're going to take some risks in

your own personal life.

He knew every day was a day when you might get shot.

Some Chinese firecrackers went off in that part of town.

And he immediately ducked.

He was constantly aware of it, but he never talked about it.

Because I think you have one time around, and I don't know what's going to

existence in six months or a year.

So I think that you're here on Earth to make some kind of contribution of some

kind.

I'm impatient.

I suppose I would hope everybody be impatient.

Bob spent Tuesday, Election Day, out of John Frankenheimer's house in Malibu.

got up late, recuperating from the intensive campaigning that he'd been on

so long.

After that, John Frankenheimer drove us into Los Angeles.

Frankenheimer drove like a bat out of hell that night. He was all carried away

himself, and most of the conversation was over what was going to happen after

California.

I was doing my union work.

on election day and i was going home because i hated victory parties and

on the radio and heard we were behind on the vote i said oh i better go downtown

to the ambassador hotel i

was a young reporter covering the victory party it was

just wall -to -wall people it was hot And people just kept crowding in and

crowding in and crowding in.

They're waiting for the results, which are coming in very slowly. With 10 % of

the votes counted, we might take a look at those boards and see what the score

is. It's a very tight race now. McCarthy has 43%, just one percentage point more

than Kennedy, with 42 % with that uncommitted slate there in the middle,

leans towards Vice President Humphrey.

I got down there and...

That whole corridor, the fifth floor, the ambassador, was taken over by the

Kennedy campaign.

A lot of media people coming and going, Bob doing some interviews.

Senator Kennedy, how does it look to you in the southern section of the state? I

think it's very difficult because it's not like it used to be 8 years ago, 10

years ago, or 12 years ago.

And maybe you wouldn't even know until tomorrow morning, but all of your

electronic equipment knows much quicker than those of us in politics, so I can't

really tell.

very much more than what I see on the various news works.

News works, all right.

If it works, that's the end of the campaign.

When I found out about Bobby Kennedy's headquarters at Ambassador Hotel, I

planned on meeting him. I was just so happy to be under the same roof, in the

same building.

So the opportunity came that we was going to take him to a buffet table to

room.

We got everything ready and then went up the service elevator.

They opened up the door. Next thing I know, he turns around and just tells,

on in, boys.

I was starstruck.

And then he reached out, shook my hand with both hands.

I felt so American.

As American as everybody in the room.

I walked out of there with my head high.

When I saw him up in the room, the numbers still hadn't come in. He was

amused. Not definitive, not full of predictions. More like, here he

comes, that Irish fatalism.

McCarthy and Kennedy all evening have been trading one or two points back and

forth.

But McCarthy has never so far surrendered the lead.

Here at McCarthy headquarters, they're announcing a later total now.

126 ,037, 43 % McCarthy.

McCarthy is still ahead.

Finally,

hours later.

Bob got calls in saying that polls had closed in Watt, the African -American

area, and also in the Latino area. So he sent runners out to find out why the

polls had closed.

And runners came back and said the polls were closed because 100 % of the voters

had already voted. So they had no more voters, which had never happened before

in any election.

Final polls will be Kennedy 48%, Senator McCartney 41%.

I was in his suite, and he joked with me.

He said, John, you let me down today.

More Mexican -Americans turn out to vote than Negroes. That's what he said.

Then he said, I'll be back.

I'm going down to speak, and I'll be back.

The last thing he said to me was, how's the food?

That's the food.

The senator asked me to come with him to the podium.

Now, Senator Kennedy is proceeding towards the ballroom where he will talk

his campaign worker.

And here he is now. He's entering the ballroom, and you can hear the cheers

his supporters.

The crowd was really beside themselves.

It was very exciting because by this time we were pretty sure that this was

going to be the next president of the United States.

There was just a lot of hope. It was like everything you could possibly hope

wish for was going to happen.

Thank you very much.

But then when we got to the podium, I thought, where's the security?

There's no security. He just had me security. There was one person that was

walking with him.

Can you hear on any of these?

But I didn't say anything.

Can you hear on that?

Because I didn't want to spoil the moment.

I thank all of you. The old reviewer here.

I want to express my gratitude to...

My dog Freckles has been maligned.

I don't care what they... As Franklin Roosevelt said, I don't care what they

about me, but when they start to attack my dog... And I'm not doing this in the

order of importance, but I also want to thank my wife, Ethel.

I want to also thank all my friends in the...

All my...

All my friends in the black community.

And all of those Mexican -Americans who were such supporters of mine.

And Dolores Huerta, who is an old friend of mine who has worked with the union.

We were in such a dark period then in the United States of America.

And then to have somebody there that was really going to be the savior, you

might say, of our country, and especially for working people.

And somebody that was strong and a real leader and a visionary.

And I want to also, if I may, just take a moment more of your time to express my

appreciation to Paul Schrade.

I'm very grateful to him and the effort that he's made on behalf of the working

man here in the state of California.

It was just a wonderful, wonderful moment.

A lot of young people cheering.

crying and singing.

What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis,

and that what has been going on within the United States over the period of the

last three years, the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our

society, the divisions, whether it's between blacks and whites, between the

and the more affluent, or between age groups, or in the war in Vietnam, that

can start to work together. We are a great country and a compassionate

And I intend to make that my basis for running over the period of action.

So I thank all of you who did all of the work at the precinct level, who got out

the vote, who did all of the effort, brought forth all of the effort that's

required. I was a campaign manager eight years ago.

I know what a difference that kind of an effort and that kind of commitment

makes. My thanks to all of you, and now it's on to Chicago, and let's win there.

Right after the speech was over, I got off the platform through the waiter

doors, and Bob was taken off the back.

The plan was that after he spoke, my job was to take the senator over to the

ballroom. We had a mariachi band that was waiting there for him.

But as we left the podium, they said, Senator, come to the kitchen. And then

of our staff, they caught my arm and said, Hey, Dolores, what's happening?

You're supposed to be taking him to the ballroom.

I said, they're taking him to the kitchen.

And then I couldn't catch up with the senator after that.

He is now moving out of the ballroom with Ethel, his wife.

And there is one more little chore for him before Chicago.

He's going on to New York where he faces several delegate contests there, 123, I

believe.

When they got down to the bottom of the stairs behind the platform, I was

standing in the kitchen pantry area, and Bob came through the door.

I then got right behind Bob as he was shaking hands with a couple of workers

the kitchen.

Bobby came to the kitchen. I could see that he was reaching out to everybody.

I remember saying to myself, I said, reach as far as you can to make sure you

don't miss shaking his hand.

Once I felt his strong shake, I let go.

That's when I heard a noise.

And when Bobby turns this way, I heard the pops.

I thought they were firecrackers.

I heard like da -da -da, da -da -da -da, da -da -da -da.

At that point, I just saw flashes of light and started trembling

violently.

and fell on the floor.

Senator Kennedy has been... Senator Kennedy has been shot. Is that possible?

Is that possible?

Oh, my God.

He's on the floor.

I seen the senator on the floor.

I thought I could help him get up, you know, but once I stood over him, I could

tell that he was in no shape of getting up, so I kneeled down and tried to

separate the...

His head from the cold concrete, thinking that he was just knocked out.

I put my hand a little below to his neck.

I could feel the warm blood coming.

I just, you know, I couldn't believe it.

That's when I remember that I had the rosary.

I felt my rosary in my pocket and put it on his hands.

I wrapped it around his thumb.

Then I seen his lips move.

So I put my ear next to him, and I distinctly heard him say, is everybody

Is there a doctor?

Is there a doctor? Please come right here. If there's a doctor, they also

to stay right here. Everybody else, please stay back.

Please stay back.

Would a doctor come right here?

The son of a gun gets shot.

He's lying there with his eyes closed.

Mr. Saffo Kennedy is coming in now.

I am right here in Raper, Johnson, as a home of a man who apparently has fired

the shot.

He has fired the shot. He still has the gun. The gun is pointed at me right at

this moment.

I hope they can get the gun out of his hand.

Be very careful.

Get the gun. Get the gun.

His hand is frozen.

Get his thumb. Get his thumb. Get his thumb.

You got to go hold up his thumb and break it if you have to. Get his thumb.

Hold him. Hold him.

Hold him.

We don't want another Oswald.

Hold him, April. We don't want another Oswald.

Police pilot.

Yes, this is the Ambassador Hotel.

Do you hear me?

Yeah, I hear you.

They have an emergency.

We want the police to the kitchen right away.

What kind of an emergency?

I don't know, honey.

Some kind of an emergency. I don't know what happened.

You know, we have a tenant who's never been here tonight.

You have what?

Mr. Kennedy here.

Big deal. I don't know what happened, but it's something.

All right.

You want me to find out where he is? Yes, please.

Hold on.

I think somebody was shot.

Oh, great.

Great. You want me to still try to get him? Yes, ma 'am.

I remember very clearly looking down.

I could see Robert Kennedy's eyes.

There was an accepting look in his face.

Like he knew what had happened.

At 3400 Wilshire Boulevard, the shooting was of Senator Bob Kennedy.

The suspect is in custody.

The suspect is in our custody now.

We do not know who he is. This unknown assailant. There is not yet an official

identification of the suspect.

He refuses to make a statement of any kind.

He does speak and understand English.

He is, of course, being removed to the Los Angeles jail.

And after he'd been seized and turned over to police and taken outside the

hotel, the crowd there seemed to many eyewitnesses to want to lynch him.

But the police did get him into the car.

We're asking the press to also move back, please.

Everybody, please move back.

We have the area around the hotel secured and no one is entering or

We do have the gun.

It's a small caliber pistol.

And we have the names of several people, four people to be exact, who were

injured. Where were you when this shooting occurred?

I was directly behind the senator, about three or four people behind him when I

heard the firecracker barrage of shots.

And what happened?

Well, 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.

All of a sudden, there was a rat -a -tat -tat, rat -a -tat -tat sound, and it

almost sounded to me like eight shots. But I know everybody said there were

fewer, so I must be wrong about that.

The guy must have just squeezed them off as fast as he possibly could. And if

there were two people, that would account for the seemingly sequence of

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

stairs and said, we've shot him. We've shot him.

And I says, who did you shoot?

And she says, we shot Senator Kennedy.

And she had, I can remember what she had on and everything.

She had on a white dress with polka dots. She was light skinned, dark hair.

She had black shoes on.

And after that, a boy came down with her.

He was about 23 years old, and he was Mexican -American.

One of the men who's been traveling with Senator Kennedy and trying to help him

in his presidential campaign is Charles Evers.

His brother, Medgar Evers, was assassinated five years ago when he was

field secretary for the NAACP in Jackson, Mississippi.

Charles Evers was just going into the banquet room this evening when he heard

the shots.

Senator Kennedy had the same feeling that his brother had, that my brother

We've got to change this country and make it a country for all the people.

And America's just not ready for that.

Any man who stands up and speaks out for this and bleeds black or white is

subject to be killed.

At my side here is Dr. Ross Miller.

He is one of the physicians, he's a surgeon from Los Angeles, one of the

who came to Senator Kennedy's side. Can you describe?

My father was at the Ambassador Hotel.

He was one of the first doctors to get to Senator Kennedy.

They were a mass of blood, and he had head injuries.

The extent of them could not be ascertained immediately.

He said, I got to him.

I checked him out.

I made him comfortable.

There was nothing else I could do.

Was he a fully conscious doctor? No.

Please open aisle way. We have a doctor coming through.

There is a spokesman now, Frank Mangowitz, the senator's press

A team of six neurosurgeons will start to

operate on Senator Kennedy in about five or ten minutes.

Breathing is good and unassisted.

His heart is good.

He's unconscious, and the doctors describe his condition as very critical.

They believe the operation will probably take 45 minutes or an hour. Mrs.

Kennedy is with the senator.

Frank Mankiewicz has just returned to this press room with the additional

information that Senator Ted Kennedy was there, too.

Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1 .44 a

.m. today, June 6,

1968.

I was in the hospital and got into surgery.

I came to, bandaged up my head.

Friends told me the bad news that Robert Kennedy had died.

I just turned away from him.

At Los Angeles International Airport, there was a press area set up, and we

watched as the Kennedy clan went on the plane with the casket and then watched

the plane leave.

I dictated my story from there, and I started dictating when the plane banked

for the east, and I cried.

When the plane banked to the east, I knew it was over.

I left the next morning, and I think I cried all the way from

L

.A.

to Atlanta.

And I could still see the snow. Now, this is June.

I could still see the snow on the mountains.

I kept saying to myself, what is happening in America?

To lose Martin Luther King Jr.

and two months later, Martin Luther King Jr.

It was too much.

Jack Kennedy had been killed.

Martin King had been killed.

Malcolm X had been killed.

It was like some kind of shooting gallery instead of a

civilization.

My brother need not be idealized.

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 war and tried to stop it.

Following the Requiem Mass at St.

Patrick's Cathedral, the senator's body will be taken on a train from New York

to Washington.

I remember being on the train, feeling horrible.

It's like losing a

family member.

We walked up and down the train, and then starting in New Jersey, maybe

you started to see people were...

On the train tracks, hanging from the rafters,

nobody had any clue what kind of

reaction there was going to be.

People inside the train were also overwhelmed by the response of average

the people that were out there.

That was the campaign.

You get in New Washington.

I had this feeling I didn't want the train to stop, but I knew we had to

I just wanted to keep going.

We had to take him to be buried.

There we sit.

This is the train sliding slowly at long last.

Perhaps you can hear the bell clanging.

These are old colleagues of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.

Were you able to tell how Mrs. Kennedy is holding up?

Seemed to me to be holding up astonishingly well.

She talked to each of us who had known her or the senator at all over the

had a word for each, remembered the special circumstances of their having

the last time. Really quite remarkable for a woman who's been through what

been through in the last few days.

It came to an end with his lying next to his brother in Arlington

Cemetery.

His death left a tremendous vacuum.

The big question became the future of the Democratic Party and the future of

country.

Now is no time to drop out of politics.

Now is the time for people to pick up the torch to continue the principles

and to try and get those principles adopted, which Robert Kennedy stood for.

This is the site of the temporary courtroom here in the chapel of the Los

Angeles County Central Jail, where 24 -year -old Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was

arraigned on a charge of murdering Robert F. Kennedy.

I'd like to see that this man gets the fairest trial that can possibly be

He's another human being in trouble.