#edwin guthman

[thelittleslowmoon]

Despite the passing years, Bob's appearance and mannerisms remain vivid in my memory ─ the perceptive blue eyes, the tousled brown hair, the large forearms and his hands, trembling during a speech; the sloping shoulders and the hunched, leaning walk; the angular nose; the quizzical look and his broad, crinkling smile; the vulnerability that a child could penetrate, but an adult could not...

We Band of Brothers by Edwin Guthman

[thelittleslowmoon]

I watched him walk slowly up the stairs, briefcase in hand, his shoulders hunched. Near the top, he turned and waved, and I don't know why, but when I think of him now, that is the image that comes to my mind again and again: the lean figure standing in the late-afternoon sun near the top of the steps, arm outstretched, waving.

We Band of Brothers by Edwin Guthman looks back Cuban Crisis

[thelittleslowmoon]

“I get some credit when FBI agents do something good. I'll take the heat when they goof.” He issued a brief statement saying that he took “full responsibility” for what had happened.

Edwin Guthman looks back steel crisis in 1962

Sep 30, 1962

The big difference — it was just a phenomenal difference to me — of going from the FBI to work for Robert Kennedy was that with the FBI you knew that J Edgar Hoover would never back you up, and with Robert Kennedy you knew that he would. It was all the difference in the world. You talk about nervous stomachs, you know, a lot of FBI agents have ulcers and what they call “Bureau” stomachs. And I did. I didn’t realize at the time, I don’t think, until all of a sudden I didn’t anymore. I just attribute it to that one thing, the personal security in knowing that as long as you do a good job and do your best that you’re going to get backed up, as opposed to being constantly afraid that if you embarrass the Bureau you’re going to get transferred, or whatever, censure and all that crap.

Walter Sheridan

[thelittleslowmoon]

“In that last year, during his campaign up in New York, every morning I’d get a call from the FBI that there was a death threat from someplace, and Bobby would do nothing about it. After a while, I didn’t even bother to tell him anymore. If you look, you’ll see photographs of him campaigning in places like Rochester, and you can’t see him really, because he’s surrounded by photographers. When we were going into an area where we had a death threat, I told the photographers, and they shielded him with their bodies. That’s an unusual thing, but it’s true.”

─ Edwin Guthman

RFKennedy: Bobby, as We Knew Him by William Plummer