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Oral history
John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection
JFKOH-RFK-01
In this interview Robert F. Kennedy [RFK] discusses beginning John F. Kennedy's [JFK] presidential Administration with no political obligations; carefully picking Cabinet members, specifically Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury; RFK’s decision on what role to play in JFK’s Administration; JFK’s unhappiness with Dean Rusk as Secretary of State; JFK’s advisers and other presidential appointments; Cabinet meetings; Department of Justice organization under RFK; the first 100 days of the Kennedy Administration; the role of the Vice President, according to RFK; JFK’s relationship with Lyndon B. Johnson and why JFK put Johnson on the ticket in 1960; what JFK was most concerned with as President; domestic programs versus foreign affairs in the Kennedy Administration; Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.’s role during JFK’s presidency; the Bay of Pigs, the aftermath, and its effect on JFK; how JFK approached problems as President; dealing with Georgi Bolshakov; negotiating with the Soviet Union in Vienna, over Laos and Cuba, etc.; JFK’s relationship with foreign heads of state; State Department staff and U.S. Ambassadors; the military coup in Vietnam; the Berlin crisis of the summer of 1961 and the Berlin Wall; RFK’s 1961 trip to the Ivory Coast; and Soviet and American nuclear testing, among other issues.
Photograph folder
White House Photographs
JFKWHP-1962-10-11-B
AR28, ST14, KN24
Photograph
White House Photographs
JFKWHP-AR7535-E
President John F. Kennedy (seated) signs the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Standing (L-R): Secretary of Commerce, Luther H. Hodges; unidentified; Representative John J. Flynt, Jr. (Georgia); Representative Hale Boggs of Louisiana (partially hidden); Representative Wilbur D. Mills (Arkansas); Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara (in back, mostly hidden); Senator Robert S. Kerr (Oklahoma); Representative John W. Byrnes (Wisconsin); Senator Mike Mansfield (Montana); Senator Russell B. Long (Louisiana); Senator John O. Pastore (Rhode Island); Secretary of State, Dean Rusk (in back); Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (Minnesota); Representative Cecil R. King (California); Secretary of the Treasury, C. Douglas Dillon (in back, mostly hidden); Representative Howard H. Baker (Tennessee); Representative Eugene J. Keogh of New York (in back, mostly hidden); Special Assistant to the President for International Trade Policy, Howard C. Petersen; Secretary of Agriculture, Orville L. Freeman; Under Secretary of State, George Ball. Fish Room, White House, Washington, D.C.