In high school, i went to high school with his middle child, david, who would later die from an overdose. Bobby kennedy was a big piece of who i was as a massachusetts kid. That was only half of it. The other half was that my mentors in journalism, people like bill codith and others were about the most rhinoceroshided journalists that i knew. All three of them fell in love with Robert Kennedy and i wanted to understand why. Brian you were last here in 1998 for your book on the man who started the Public Relations business. You have done a lot of books since then and they are all over the place. How many have you done since 1998 . Mr. Tye a total of six since the first one. Brian what is your favorite . Mr. Tye this one. This one was 25 better than the one before because it let me interview more than 400 people, most of whom were heroes of mine growing up. Theres nothing else that are than doing that. The good news was that i got the 400 people. The sad news was that easily a third of them died in the three years that i was writing this book. Bobby kennedy would have turned 90 last november so his family, friends, and colleagues are old. Brian it is hard to believe that he was 42 when he was murdered. And that his murderer is still in prison. Mr. Tye i dont think any of us will ever think of him as anything other than that 42yearold forever young guy. Brian 88 years old. Ethel kennedy, still alive and you spent a lot of time with her. Mr. Tye i did two interviews, and each was two hours. It was extraordinary. It let me test out every theory that i had on bobby. There is a kennedy mythmaking machine which tries to suggest that the mccarthy era was a footnote or an aberration. Ethel was too old and too honest to ever have that be the final word. She explained among other things that joe mccarthy might have looked like a monster to the rest of america but to Bobby Kennedy, mccarthy was a guy that came over and played with their toddler kathleen and who was their friend as well as his boss. Brian where did you interview her and how is she doing . Mr. Tye i wish i could tell you that i interviewed her and she had not agreed to be interviewed by authors for many years and she spoke with me because i am charismatic and irresistible but i think it was because she was sensing her mortality and i showed up on her doorstep. The doorstep was in palm beach. A house nearby their family a house nearby their family mansion. We had an extraordinary time. At the end of my first interview, the then 85yearold ethel walked outside with me in her bare feet and offered to drive me to the airport and make me a sandwich. I figured she was going to kick me out of the house after 15 minutes, so after two hours i counted myself lucky. Brian what impact did the 11 children that she had have on her life and her life with Bobby Kennedy . Mr. Tye she was having children pretty regularly during the 18 years of marriage. The impact i think they were trying to outdo rose and joe who had nine children. They had 11 and they relished them. The one real escape that bobby had whether it was during the cuban missile crisis or the freedom riots in alabama and mississippi, the one outlet that he had was to play a game of tickle tumble with his kids. He adored them. It was an extraordinary joy to them. And a joy to ethel after bobby died but the idea of raising on her own 11 kids, the oldest of which was a young teenager was an extraordinary thing for her to do. Brian what has she done over the last 50 years in regards to her husband . What kind of role has she played . Mr. Tye one is the role of trying to memorialize him through concrete things. The Robert Kennedy center for human rights. The Journalism Award given out in his name. The kinds of things that perpetuate the values that he stands for. She has been politically active. And most importantly, i asked her at one point if she had ever considered getting remarried. She was clearly one of the most eligible women in america at the time of bobbys death. She pointed to her wedding ring and said i have been married all of this time. And she pointed up. She is an extraordinarily devout catholic and she pointed up and she says bobby is watching me and he is with me. She has remained true to him in terms of his values and in terms of being his wife. Brian what did you learn from her . Mr. Tye i learned about mccarthy. I got to test every theory that i had including the question i think Bobby Kennedy had one of the most profound and real political transformations. The idea of going from a joe mccarthy cold warrior to a che guevara liberal in america was an extraordinary change. She helped me understand what about him let him make that change. She also helped me understand his relationship with his brother jack, the defining relationship in his life. I think it was not just a clicee that they finished one anothers sentences. They did not even need to utter a word because they understood through body language and knowing what the other would think about situations. They had that kind of communication. The closest thing we ever had to a copresidency were the kennedy brothers. Brian when john kennedy was elected president , how old was Bobby Kennedy . Mr. Tye Bobby Kennedy when he became attorney general he died at age 42 and eight years earlier when he became attorney general he was 36. He was the third youngest attorney general in American History and he may have been the least qualified for that position ever appointed. His qualifications were that his father told his brother to hire him as attorney general. And jack would have defied anyone on anything except for his dad. Bobby had never tried a case in a court of law. Three years later, when his tenure ended with the death of his brother, he may have been the best attorney general in the modern era if not forever in terms of everything from the war he waged against organized crime and corruption in unions to what he did for the civil rights movement. He may have been the least appreciated. He put meaning into the department of justice. With everything from bail reform to caring about court defendants. He understood that it was more then just chasing crooks. Brian we have some video of the mccarthy hearings. As you watch it, there are several characters there that you write about in your book. You will see Bobby Kennedy off to the left. You will also see roy cohn. Mr. Tye roy cohn he was Joe Mccarthys most important young, assistant and Bobby Kennedys boss. In more modern terms, he was at an old age, the tutor to donald trump. Brian let us watch this. Senator mccarthy, a republican from Wisconsin Holding these hearings. We can talk about the people that we see. And a former senator from missouri is also there. [video clip] i think i made it very clear to you that neither you nor anyone else will ever get me to violate the confidence of loyal people in this government who give me information about communist infiltration. The officer informant who gave this fraudulent letter was guilty of sending this information to somebody not authorized to receive it. And in so doing, disobeyed the orders of his superiors. In view of the testimony mr. Chairman, i do hope that every effort will be made to find out who was the informant. Brian why was it so important that you write about Bobby Kennedy and senator mccarthy . Mr. Tye partly because of what it it tells us about Bobby Kennedy. There were two sides of Bobby Kennedy. On the one hand, at those Army Mccarthy hearings, it was Bobby Kennedy who wrote the definitive report for the Democratic Senators who were in the minority then. It was such a good report and a complete report on things that mccarthy had done wrong, that the republicans adopted most of it and that was a report that led to the censure of joe mccarthy. But kennedy remained such a loyal friend to him, even possibly more so after the censure, that he turned out at mccarthys funeral in 1957 which was not a place that an aspiring young democrat, especially one that wanted to see his brother elected president should show up. Brian give us the whole story. Mr. Tye as with everything with him, there are contradictory aspects. Let me set the scene. In green bay, wisconsin, near appleton where mccarthy was buried. An enormous plane flies in from washington. 19 u. S. Senators, seven congressmen and a handful of other luminaries get off the plane and are whisked away to appleton. After the airport has gone quiet, one last solitary figure gets off a plane. A young congressional aide named Robert Francis kennedy. He takes a ride to appleton with a reporter. He goes up at the Church Service and watches the funeral from the choir loft. At the grave site, all of the luminaries are over here and Bobby Kennedy is over here where no one will see him. After the funeral, knowing that all of the reporters would write about him in their story, he begged the reporters not to and reporters in those days were obliging especially when the guy asking is a kennedy. Is it the loyal side of Bobby Kennedy that showed up to the funeral or is it the other side, the guy who spins the story and scrubs the records . Brian talk about kennedys relationship with his father who asked him to go to work for mccarthy . Mr. Tye Bobby Kennedy spent his life trying to live up to the standards of his father. His father described him as the runt of the litter. Bobby kennedy wanted to prove to his dad that he could matter. He worked harder at things. He did more of the things that he thought his father would like than any of his eight siblings. By the end, by the time joe kennedy had a stroke, it was bobby that he declared to be the executor of his estate and it was bobby who he said was the most like him. They had an extraordinary relationship. And Bobby Kennedy to the end of his life felt his father had done more for any of them. Brian i wanted to show you some video from the 1968 campaign. I dont think you see this today. We will roll it. It is silent. You can see how people reacted to him in a crowd. You can see it on the screen. People are grabbing at him. You can also see, even a more frantic situation here. What was it about him look at that as he ran that people wanted to touch him . Mr. Tye the press labeled him the fifth beatle. I think it was partly that he represented the sense of camelot lost in the Kennedy Administration. And partly the sense that people really understood that he had that kind of passion, not just to pick up his brothers cudgel but to do a lot more then what his brother was politically willing to do. I like to say that rose kennedy, who as your viewers will remember, lived to be 250 and was the matriarch not only of the Kennedy Family but in a way of americas first family, rose kennedy said she dreamed of one of her sons going into the priesthood. Had jack kennedy gone into the priesthood, he would have been a pope. Had Bobby Kennedy been a priest, he would have been a parish priest. He was a kind of guy that got down with people and loved being there. And he knew that it was not only threatening because his brother had been assassinated and there was no way to protect him in the crowd. He would lose a shoe. His hands would come back bloody. People would grab a tuft of his hair. He understood that people related to him in that way and so even though it was scary, it was inspiring to him. Brian who did you learn the most from . Mr. Tye i probably expected a lot and got even more from a guy named john who, by the end of his life, was probably Bobby Kennedys closest friend. He was a journalist from nashville, tennessee. He was a mentor and a guy who understood Bobby Kennedy. He had worked for him at the Justice Department and he had helped him take time off after his fellowship. He had advised bobby and helped rescue his California Campaign when he was running for president. He gave me a sense of a melding. People knew Bobby Kennedy as a friend or as a professional. He helped me see the Bobby Kennedy that traversed the different worlds, personal and professional, and he so adored him but adored him from the take as a journalist. He helped me understand most of all the question that i went into the book with how could these half journalists fall in love with Bobby Kennedy . If i could tell you one brief story. And it is one of a guy that covered Bobby Kennedy in 1968 for the washington post. A guy named dick harwood. An exmarine. Harwood was assigned by ben bradley to cover the 1968 campaign because bradley believed he would be the one guy that would not fall in love with the kennedys. One of his first experiences was to go out and play touch football with Bobby Kennedy. He came back with a badly bloodied nose. He thought bobby had played unfairly. He watched bobby during the campaign where he would go out and speak to white and black audiences. And he would say the same thing to all. He spoke with rich and poor and said the same things to each. He would tell people exactly the opposite of what they wanted to hear and it was what he thought they ought to hear. By the end, harwood said he was the opposite of a demagogue and he went to ben bradley and said i have fallen in love with Bobby Kennedy and you have to take me off the campaign. Bradley told him to stick it out. The most eloquent of all of the obituaries that i read about Bobby Kennedy was by harwood. Brian his son is very visible. Go back to john. We got to know him here. As the publisher of usa today. He came here and talked about james polk. Go back to the circumstances surrounding your chat with john who lived in tennessee. Mr. Tye i got a contract from random house and the next day i got an airplane ticket to go to nashville to see john because he had colon cancer. I knew he was essential to the book. When i got there, and talked to him, it turned out that he lived about two years after that. He turned out to be not just energetic but inspired because he was talking about Bobby Kennedy. He also did me the most extraordinary favor of anything which was i think it was his word that i was ok that led Ethel Kennedy to talk to me. There had been a circling of the wagons of the kennedys where they tried to keep people from talking to the press. Partly it was that there were fewer people left to circle the wagons by the time i got to my book. And those that did circle the wagons liked john. Everyone i have spoken with, i have been a reporter and an author for 30 years and ive never had an experience where all the 400 people i spoke with, easily half of them at some point during the interview cried. And it was not because of anything mean that i did. It was because remembering Bobby Kennedy and having the sense of what was lost with him dying so young brought back to them the extraordinary hope they had in him. And the sense of what they were doing then several of these people went on to become attorney generals themselves. What they were doing in the Kennedy Administration mattered more than anything. Brian however, from your book, this quote from the number two guy at the fbi who was close to j edgar hoover. Here is what you quote in the book. I hope that someone shoots and kills that s. O. B. Mr. Tye we saw in the clip that you played a moment ago, the way he inspired people. Positively. He did the same thing negatively in a way that jack kennedy and few other politicians have done. You have to go back to fdr to see someone that inspired as much venom as well as hope. Brian why did he not like him . Mr. Tye he understood that Bobby Kennedy given enough time would fire his boss, j edgar hoover. If i could tell one brief story about bobbys relationship with hoover. Bobby kennedy comes in as a young attorney general and he is the boss of the fbi director who has been around for generations and survived a lot of attorneys general. And president s. And Bobby Kennedy wants a hotline. On that line when bobby first tried to use it, in rang not at hoover desk but at his secretarys desk. Bobby insisted that the phone go to hoovers desk. Hoover, much as it pained him to do this, put the phone on his desk. The day after jack kennedy was killed, the phone went back on the secretarys desk. He was sending a message to bobby that he did not matter anymore and that hoover had a direct line to the new president and did not have to worry about an intermediary like the attorney general. Brian here is an oval office tape with Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy from july 1964. There was an accusation being made that Bobby Kennedy was undermining lbj and leaking information. Here is what they are talking about. And it makes sense when you hear it. He sends all kinds of reports to you about me from the department of justice. The planning and plotting of things. No, he has not sent me a report that i remember. I had understood that he had sent reports over about me. No. That is an error. He never said that or indicated that or given any indication of that. Mr. Tyre i definitely do not believe Lyndon Joh