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Oral history
John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection
JFKOH-ROWK-05
In this interview Komer discusses working with McGeorge Bundy; the “inner circle” of the Bundy State Department; Komer’s major contacts; the intelligence system; the power and responsibilities of the State Department; how Bundy screened what President John F. Kennedy [JFK] would see; relations with other key officials; Robert F. Kennedy and foreign policy issues; the Bundy State Department and White House staff; the “little State Department” in the White House; the bureaucratic role of the State Department; U.S. foreign policy in Asia; relations with key U.S. Ambassadors; handling Arab-Israeli issues; domestic pressures of American-Jewish community on JFK; Arabists in the Kennedy Administration; working with Myer Feldman on Israeli issues; the United States, Saudi Arabia, and oil; filling the power vacuum left by the British; dealing with Congress on foreign aid matters; counterinsurgency; and looking back at programs during the Kennedy Administration, among other issues.
Textual folder
Kennedy Family Collection
KFC-070-001
This scrapbook, compiled by Joseph P. “Joe” Kennedy, Jr., documents his travels, family life, political work, and naval career between 1938 and 1941. The gold stamped title on the cover reads, “Scrap Book.” It contains newspaper clippings, photographic prints and postcards, handwritten and typed letters, and printed ephemera related to his travels in the United States and Europe, including a 1939 visit to Spain at the end of the Spanish Civil War; his involvement with the Democratic Party, including as a Massachusetts delegate to the 1940 Democratic National Convention; his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., and his diplomatic work as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom; his family's travels between the U.S. and England; his naval training at the Squantum Naval Air Station in Quincy, Massachusetts; and other news and current events of the time. Other Kennedy family members mentioned in clippings include Joe, Jr.’s mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy; his siblings, John F. Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy; grandparents, John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald and Mary Josephine Hannon Fitzgerald; aunt, Margaret L. Burke; uncle, Thomas A. Fitzgerald; cousins, Marion Eunice Fitzgerald and John F. “Jack” Fitzgerald; and his sister Kathleen's future husband, William "Billy" Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington. Photographs feature Joe, Jr., attending unidentified events, with fellow trainees at the Squantum Naval Air Station, and holding a fish. An additional photograph shows an aerial view of the Kennedy family home in Palm Beach, Florida. Photographic postcards feature images of canals in Xochimilco, Mexico, and of Joe, Jr., in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Senders of typed and handwritten correspondence include British politician Arthur Greenwood; politician and Democratic National Convention Chairman, James A. Farley; journalist Arthur Krock; Executive Director of the Massachusetts Committee on Public Safety, J. W. Farley; and Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby. Printed ephemera include a dance card with a pencil attached by string; a flier advertising a debate on Lend-Lease policy; a printed menu and seating chart for a dinner attended by Chairman of the London Stock Exchange, R. B. Pearson; a ticket book for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, in July 1940; and a printed booklet published by the Squantum Naval Air Station titled, "Flight 62 / Knocks It Off," and dated August 7, 1941. Another item of note is a paper bag printed with Spanish text; bags of this type originally contained loaves of bread and were part of a campaign by General Francisco Franco in which airplanes dropped bread over Madrid, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. Original notations are written in blue and black ink and pencil on the rectos and/or versos of some of the clippings. This scrapbook contains 75 newspaper and magazine clippings, nine photographic prints and postcards, six pieces of correspondence, and seven other pieces of printed ephemera.