U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy
Hicke
Let me switch subjects just a little bit, if I might. I have here a picture of you shaking hands with Bobby Kennedy when he
was here in 1961, and you held a joint press conference.
Poole
I went to the airport and met him. [Poole removes his microphone and is somewhere across the room, searching for another photograph].
My daughter Pat wanted to come with me, so I said, okay. Some photographer took a picture of the three of us there, and she's
trying to keep up with us.
Hicke
Charlotte was there too?
Poole
Yes. She graduated from the School of Journalism, University of Minnesota. She came to Pittsburgh where I was living. That's
how I met her.
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Hicke
Yes, you've told me a little bit about that. Anyway, we're back to when Bobby Kennedy came in 1961 and found San Francisco
was less troubled than most big cities. Did you talk to him often or see much of him?
Poole
I used to talk with him if there was something to talk about. Sometimes I had some disagreements with the people in the Department
of Justice, and I would challenge them on what they were suggesting was the thing to do. They would say, "This is Bob's idea,
you know." I'd say, "Well, maybe I can talk with him." They'd put him on the phone. We'd have our discussion. He was accessible.
My feeling about it was that the fewer times you had to bring the attorney general directly into something, the better it
was for all.
Jimmy Hoffa
Poole
I remember when we had initiated a grand jury investigation into Jimmy Hoffa, who was a labor leader. There had been a sale
of the property where the Whitcombe Hotel was; it was the Whitcombe, now it's something else on Market Street there between
Eighth and Ninth. He [Kennedy] was really after Jimmy Hoffa, and they thought that this transaction smelled, and they thought
that what had happened was the Teamsters, of which Hoffa was the head, had vastly exaggerated its worth and, therefore, had
succeeded in getting a large loan for more than its reasonable worth.
Hicke
Did this have to do with the pension fund?
Poole
Yes, pension fund. So they were all hopeful that they could do something with this. I had assured the attorney general that
I would work personally on this thing, you see. So, I did. What I did was to get some impartial appraisers, and I told them,
"Given all the conditions—and if you need any information I can supply you with the details, but I won't tell you what it
is or what it's about—I want you to look at this transfer, and I want you to give me your straightforward opinion. What I
want to know is what would be a reasonable maximum figure, given your own appraisal of the financial stability of the parties
or the lack of it."
I got two or three different people who didn't know the existence of the others, and—I've forgotten the figures now—what they
told me made it very clear that the appraisal that had been fixed on this building was not one that you could say was so entirely
out of line that you could say it was a dissipation of
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the [pension] fund assets. When I reached that conclusion, I called them, and I talked to—
Hicke
You called the Department of Justice?
Poole
Yes, I think at that time it was Ramsey Clark I was talking with. He was the assistant attorney general in charge of the Land
and Natural Resources, and then there was the—
##
Hicke
Okay, we were just talking about Ramsey Clark.
Poole
Yes, Ramsey Clark, and then there was the assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division, and they had some
bureau chiefs who were working on things like labor unions, racketeers, and that kind of thing. I told them that based upon
everything that I had heard from people whose judgment I had no reason not to respect and trust, this wasn't going to work.
You can't do anything. It may look like it's on the high side—at least one of them had told me that it was on the high side,
but nobody had said it was off the wall. They said, "Will you tell Bob that?" And I said, "I sure will."
So he got on the phone and he said, "Why don't you come back here and bring what you've got there, and let's let these experts
I've got here go over it with you?" And I said, "Sure."
I went to Washington. They said, "Did people [the appraisers] know who were the parties?" And I said, "If they did, they didn't
let on. I didn't tell them. Obviously, nobody in this office knew it except myself and my chief assistant," who at that time
was a fellow named Elmer Collette, "and his chief guy, who was Bill Spohn. Other than that, nobody knows anything about it."
I just didn't see any reason why it should be discussed. I hadn't gotten the Criminal Division people in on it yet, because
I wanted to cut down on the number of people that had to be bothered with it, and that was going to be my next step. I didn't
go right away. It seemed to me they had something down in Dayton or something that they thought might work as an alternative.
I think it was about ten days or so before I went to Washington.
I went back to Washington and we went over it. Bob was disappointed in it, but everybody agreed, before I left, that this
wasn't the door to open. In fact, this was an alternative anyhow, and I think they made their move in Kentucky. I think that's
where they started nailing Hoffa.
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Eventually, some of that got out, and I got a few calls from people who were interested, a couple of whom I had known for
many years. They were saying, "I've got to have lunch with you." You know, one of those things. So I had lunch with them,
and they said, "I want to ask you, we've heard some rumors." And I said, "Well, I'll tell you, you hear rumors with your ears,
but when you start putting them in your mind, that's when they weigh down heavily on you. Are they good rumors, are they bad
rumors, or what are they?" They said, "We thought maybe—would you feel free to talk about some of the concerns of your office?"
I said, "If it's something that concerns my office, I'd want to know about it." They said, "Not that. We think that the Department
of Justice is being pretty heavy on labor." I said, "Gee, who?" They generalized, you know.
I said, "Let me put it to you this way. There are some things I know about, some things I don't. There isn't any need for
me to know about much because it isn't affecting me. But if you want to tell me what it is you have in mind, I can either
tell you yes or no or nothing, or that it's not something I can discuss with you." They said, "Do you have a grand jury inquiry
going into any—not any labor people around here, but elsewhere?" I said, "You know I couldn't answer that question. If it
were true, I couldn't answer it."
Then they finally said, "We understand that there was an effort made to persuade you to take some action against Hoffa." I
said, "There isn't a day passes that I don't get somebody's suggestion about Jimmy Hoffa one way or the other. He's a very
popular man on everybody's tongue. But I wouldn't say a word at all in response to any questions about him. I wouldn't say
anything at all that would involve something less than absolute certainty. I know, what you're saying is that you think they've
got something to bring on back in Washington. That's where you'll have to find it out, because I won't discuss it with you."
Hicke
What did they think they were going to accomplish?
Poole
I think people often want to be knowledgeable so that they can be looked up to by others for their knowledge and information
and expertise. I get the feeling that something had been heard by one of the people I talked to. There was a story in the
papers about the proposal on the Whitcombe Hotel. It wasn't a big story, because my recollection is it never did come off.
But if it had come off, I guess there would have been a lot of speculation about what this meant. If it were true that there
was an overvaluation of it, gross overvaluation, there could have been some heads roll. I could not believe that it would
be that simple. I just wasn't convinced that we had anything out here. When I got through
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talking with these people [appraisers] about value, and they told me what they did, I said to the people in the department,
"Anything else about this that I don't know about that you want to tell me?" They said, "No, what we heard was a possibility."
So eventually they did get him and they put him away—Hoffa.
Hicke
But you weren't any help on that score?
Poole
No, we didn't have anything to do with it, no. We had nothing to do with it.
Ramsey Clark
Hicke
How would you compare Bobby Kennedy with Ramsey Clark, for instance, or other attorneys general?
Poole
I was very friendly with Ramsey. He eventually became the attorney general.
Hicke
Right, that's what I meant, as attorney general. How did they compare?
Poole
Ramsey was not a person given to dramatic expeditions into relieving us of a lot of our criminal aches and pains. He was a
very decent guy, a warm person. I liked him a lot. I've got one of his autographed pictures here too someplace. You could
always depend on him. The only time he and I had a real difference of opinion was, he wanted to put one of those strike forces
out here.
Hicke
That was the early seventies?
Poole
No, Ramsey was the attorney general.
Presidential Campaign, 1968, and Bobby Kennedy's Assassination
Poole
You remember, after the president was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson became president; that was in 1963, I think, the 22nd of
November. Johnson and Bobby were never close friends, so with the president gone, as far as Bob was concerned, his future
in the Department of Justice was limited. Lyndon Johnson would want to have his people there, and Bob was not temperamentally
able to mesh it all out with Lyndon Johnson. He mourned his brother's death, and he was anguished over what he thought was
the difference in the
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administration's balance and what the administration would be like under Lyndon Johnson, who, at that time, did not have the
track record that he ended up having on lots of things. He and Lyndon had never gotten along well, so he resigned as attorney
general and went to New York and reestablished citizenship there, and then ran for and was elected senator.
His next thing was to run for the presidency. His running for the presidency caused Lyndon Johnson a great deal of anguish,
and it divided a lot of people who were sort of caught between their feeling about Bob Kennedy and their obligations to the
president, especially people in the administration. I was one of them, not that I was important. I guess I thought it quite
possible that Bob Kennedy might very well beat Johnson. But I thought the best thing for me to do was to continue doing what
I had to do, and to do it as well as I could, if the president remained Johnson or if the president were Kennedy. While personally
I felt warm toward Bobby, there was no occasion for my office and its functioning to be at all involved in whatever their
differences were, and that's the way we did it.
We would have meetings of the United States attorneys, and I'd go back, or I'd have to go back on business, and that sort
of thing. Remember Lyndon Johnson had only about a year to go after Kennedy's death, and he ran against [Barry] Goldwater.
He just crushed Goldwater, so that settled a lot of people down. There wasn't any doubt that Johnson was a formidable candidate.
But Bob just kept going, and so it became very clear that there were two people against each other—Johnson and Kennedy.
Then in early 1968, Lyndon Johnson made his famous speech in which he said he was not going to run for a second term. That
then changed the focus. Vice President Hubert Humphrey was going to run, and it became quite clear that Bobby Kennedy was
going to run. It became clear that Richard Nixon was going to run.
Back at the Department of Justice that put a lot of people in a difficult position. I felt that when Lyndon Johnson said he
wasn't going to run, I didn't have to channel my internal feelings about it anymore, because I knew Bob was going to run,
and I knew also that I had to stay out of it, but I could hope. So this is 1968 now, and earlier that year Johnson nominated
me to be a district judge. I said, I've got to reach for that first, before I do anything. I ran into difficulty with the
senator [George Murphy; see above].
Hicke
You told me about that.
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Poole
Yes. But in any event, when Bob Kennedy came to San Francisco, two days before he was assassinated, I went to the airport
to meet him, along with some others. He and Eddie Guthman, who was his companion, went to the Fairmont [Hotel] and they had
a reception there. I went to the reception and spoke to Bobby, shook hands with him. People were saying the Democrats are
split. Sure they are, but this was a primary we had in front of us. So I thought he was going to make it, and he had such
an enthusiastic welcome from people that it looked very good.
The night before, we had been to this reception. I got up early and thought maybe I could go to the airport, but there wasn't
any room, so I said goodbye to him, and then I went back to my office. That night, Charlotte and I were both tired. We had
been to several things, some for Bob. They had the big rally and reception [in Los Angeles]. It was going to be televised,
so we decided to sit up in bed and watch the part that was televised.
So we're sitting up there in bed when he starts walking through. You could see him waving, and then we heard the shots. People
were frantic, running back and forth. The prognosis was never good, so finally they announced that he was dead. I couldn't
believe it. John Kennedy assassinated, and now Bobby was killed. You know, Martin Luther King had been killed in April. It
seemed like things had just gone crazy. I thought of all the times when you would have expected violence, and it just hadn't
come about. And there it was. All that weekend that is what they were talking about.
They flew him to New York. Then they had this long train ride. I'm trying to remember if the train was from New York to Washington
or from Washington to New York. But remember, people put coins on the railroad tracks and that sort of thing. It just didn't
seem possible in the Ambassador Hotel with all of these people around, and this crazy man comes up and—
Hicke
You can certainly be sure that you did your share to keep violence from overtaking people.
Poole
Those were some strange times, I'll say this. Johnson was still the president and people were booing him. Hubert Humphrey
was running against Nixon, and they had that terrible time in Chicago at the Democratic Convention. It was just weird.