What Burned Bobby

Blazing mad, New York's freshman Democratic Senator Bobby Kennedy demanded a hearing before his colleagues. Cried he to a judiciary subcommittee investigating invasions of privacy by federal agencies: "There was an implication across the country that I had acted improperly, and I resent it."

What burned Bobby was a charge that as Attorney General he had tried to plant in LIFE magazine a derogatory story about Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa at a time when Hoffa was under federal indictment for mail fraud.

The Memo. The charge came about in a curious way. The committee was taking testimony about how the U.S. Post Office Department two years ago put a watch on the mail of an old Kennedy foe, New York Attorney Roy Cohn, then under federal indictment for perjury (he was later acquitted). A Cohn lawyer told the committee that in connection with that case he had subpoenaed the LIFE file on a 1963 story about Cohn. Somehow, in the midst of that file was a confidential memo written by LIFE'S then Washington bureau chief, reporting that he had received a call from Attorney General Kennedy, who offered to put him in touch with one Sam Baron, a disgruntled Teamster official who wanted to write an expose about Hoffa.

In his appearance before the committee, Bobby explained that Baron "was in fear of his life. He felt that if anything happened to him, if he was killed, he wanted to make sure his story was told. He asked me to put him in touch with somebody who would relate what he had undergone as a Teamster official. I made that arrangement. I did nothing else. Nothing, in fact, was ever published until Mr. Baron was physically beaten by Mr. Hoffa." LIFE Editor Edward K.

Thompson concurred. Said he: "Senator Kennedy's statement on this matter is basically correct."

But Committee Chairman Edward V. Long of Missouri was unimpressed. "Do I understand," Long asked Kennedy, "that you take the position that it is proper for a representative of the Justice Department, or the head of that department, to arrange for Mr. Baron to make contact with newspapers or magazines?" Replied Bobby: "That is not what was done, now, Mr. Chairman. There was a connection between Mr. Baron and LIFE magazine over which I had no control."

A What? Committee Counsel Bernard Fensterwald Jr. tried to clarify matters. "This was an arrangement," he said, "whereby, I understand it, you were putting what would normally be described as a 'fink' in touch with TIME-LIFE to write a magazine article?"

Kennedy: Normally described as what?

Fensterwald: Fink, FINK.

Kennedy: I never heard that.

Fensterwald: A stool pigeon. Does that word strike a chord?

Kennedy: I thought Baron was a citizen who was reporting information and evidence in connection with illegal activities. Let me say I am shocked to hear that. I think there have been a lot of loyal people that provided information to the U.S. Government in connection with Communist activities, underworld activities, narcotics activities, at great risk to their own lives.

As for Sam Baron himself, he is now a public relations man in Montreal, and he obviously agreed with Bobby's view. At week's end he said that it was he who had suggested an article for LIFE to the Attorney General. "My decision to go to the then Attorney General was based on the belief that I had an important duty to my country."

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