No. 2

In his office at the Justice Department late one night last week, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, tie loose and hair tousled, slumped back in his chair and propped a foot up on his desk. "Let's see," he joked, "what am I doing? I've got so many jobs I can't remember." Bobby Kennedy's confusion was understandable enough. What his jobs, both official and unofficial, really added up to was a place second only to the President as the most powerful figure in the U.S. Government.

Throughout the week, Robert Francis Kennedy spent his mornings and afternoons as a member of a four-man panel, headed by retired Army General Maxwell D. Taylor, that the President had appointed to find out just where the CIA went wrong in planning the Cuba invasion, and to recommend changes in the nation's intelligence system. When not digging among the Cuba-invasion ruins, Bobby Kennedy was at the White House, serving as the President's closest counselor. It was usually late in the afternoon before Bobby got to the Justice Department to carry out his tasks as Attorney General. Deputy Attorney General Byron ("Whizzer") White was wearily trying to take as much routine work as possible off Bobby's shoulders, but there were many decisions that only the boss could make, and he worked late night after night.

Bobby Kennedy's crowded new schedule pointed up the most important administrative result of the Cuba disaster: with John Kennedy disappointed in the performance of Government and military professionals, his brother had emerged as a sort of Administration strong man. There is no title for the job, and there may never be one, but Bobby Kennedy is much closer to being an Assistant President than Sherman Adams ever was under Dwight Eisenhower.

What Bobby's official post is going to be is still undecided. The President has offered him the job of heading the CIA, but Bobby has balked at that. He feels that the post is too sensitive for a President to assign to his brother, and that the appointment would bring outcries of protest. Bobby tried to talk up Max Taylor as the man for the job, but Taylor insists that he does not want it. In any event, Bobby Kennedy realizes that Allen Dulles has to go, making way for a younger man who can give the CIA a thorough overhauling. But the Kennedy brothers are not angry with Allen Dulles. Indeed, as a man, Dulles emerged from the Cuba fiasco with high personal honors. Shortly before the invasion, he urged a bigger air strike to knock out Cuban planes on the ground before the invaders landed, but he was overruled at the insistence of Secretary of State Dean Rusk. When the invasion flopped, Dulles took full blame for the CIA's part in the failure, never mentioned that he had argued for a bigger air strike. "Dulles is a man," Bobby says admiringly.

Bobby himself wants to stay on as Attorney General. He has some tasks cut out for himself that he cares deeply about: battling big-time organized crime, combatting juvenile delinquency, pushing for desegregation, and investigating the operations of Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa, his longtime enemy. But much as Bobby wants to stay at the Justice Department, he will take on whatever job his brother asks him to do. And he will bring to it the prestige that goes with being the New Frontier's No. 2 man.

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