Release of Kennedy documents splits clan

Published on Friday 15 July 2011 13:26

AS ARCHIVISTS prepare to make public 63 boxes of Robert F Kennedy's papers at the John F Kennedy Library in Boston, his family members are considering moving them, believing the presidential library has not done enough to honour the younger brother's legacy.

Many of the papers, dealing with Cuba, Vietnam and civil rights, are classified as secret or top secret. There are also 2,300 other boxes covering every stage of Robert Kennedy's life, including his years as a United States senator and attorney general, most of which have already been opened for research.

But for decades, his family has refused to sign over title to the papers to the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and is now talking openly about the possibility of finding a permanent home for them elsewhere. The family is also having Sotheby's appraise the papers.

"There is a very large building, and there is a remembrance of President Kennedy and there's one for Senator Edward Kennedy," said former Representative Joseph P Kennedy II, one of Robert's sons, describing the presidential library that opened in 1979 and an adjacent construction site for the Edward M Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. "But there is nothing out there for Robert Kennedy."

The presidential library - where many members of the Kennedy family, including Edward, believed the papers should remain - did offer last year to name a new 30,000-square-foot wing for Robert if the family would donate the papers. The almost-finished wing has a classroom, a staging area for exhibits and storage for artefacts like Jacqueline Kennedy's gowns and additional papers.

The family refused. Joseph Kennedy scoffed at the proposal, saying in a recent interview, "They offered to put the name on a hallway."

The decision to open the 63 boxes, held in secret for nearly four decades, was reached in March after years of efforts by library officials and others to persuade Robert Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy, to give control of his papers to the library.

Archivists are now organising and declassifying the papers, which have sat unseen in a climate-controlled vault while Mrs Kennedy had talked of expecting to get millions of dollars from selling some of them, said two longtime family friends who discussed the family's affairs on the condition of anonymity.

In 2004, Mrs Kennedy initiated discussions about donating the papers to George Washington University if it would establish a centre honouring her husband's memory and causes.

No money would have gone to her. But that effort foundered after the university's president at the time, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, asked Senator Edward Kennedy to finance it through a budget earmark for "a few million dollars", Trachtenberg recalled. The senator, who wanted the papers to remain at the presidential library, refused the request, Trachtenberg said.

Robert Kennedy's papers are now being appraised by Sotheby's, which has long ties to the Kennedy family, two people with direct knowledge of the confidential arrangements said. But the appraisal may only be for tax purposes.

Joseph Kennedy, who served in the House from 1987 to 1999, said in a recent interview, "There is certainly no plan to sell anything from this collection at this time." He called seeing the papers permanently housed at the Kennedy Library "the ultimate hope and desire of my family".

Kathleen Kennedy Towns-end, Robert and Ethel Kennedy's first child, said her brother was speaking "for the family."

Ethel Kennedy, 83, received $8.25 million in December 2009 when she sold Hickory Hill, the family estate in McLean, Virginia.

In the interview, Joseph Kennedy emphasised that while the family would prefer to keep his father's papers at the presidential library, for which his father helped raise money before he was assassinated in 1968, "that is not an automatic." He added: "There are other institutions and organisations that may well have an interest," he said. "I have not contacted any of them."

Tension between Robert Kennedy's family and the library goes back at least two decades. In February 1991, a new meeting facility was dedicated there and named for Stephen Smith, husband of Jean Kennedy Smith and brother-in-law to John, Robert and Edward Kennedy. Smith was a presidential campaign manager for Robert and Edward, was close to Edward after Robert's death, and took a lead role in the development of the library.

Paul G Kirk Jr., the longtime chairman of the John F Kennedy Library Foundation, recalled "at the time that the Smith Center was dedicated, they had a kind of a big gala celebration and so forth, and Ethel didn't react positively, put it that way."

The new material from the 63 boxes should be available to the public in six months to a year, said library director Thomas J Putnam.

Scholars welcomed the news. Peter Kornbluh, a specialist on Cuba at the National Security Archive here, said that when the papers are opened, "I will try to be the first in line if I have to stand in front of the library all night long."

He added, "This is one of the few troves of history yet to be put into the public view."