The Administration: More Than a Brother

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Republicans still take occasional jabs at him, especially when he ventures beyond the confines of the Attorney General's office. Said New York's G.O.P. Representative John Lindsay last week in a solicitous letter to State Secretary Dean Rusk: "We question whether it is necessary for you and your office to be either burdened or embarrassed by free-wheeling foreign missions on the part of highly placed amateurs." But in an interview on national television. Republican Richard Nixon gave Bobby a surprising plug. Said he: "Iam looking at Robert Kennedy, you have here a man who, except for the lack of experience, which he is now gaining, has many of the qualifications that would make him a very effective leader in the field of foreign policy. He's tough-minded, he's quick, he's intelligent. He is one who has a tremendous will to win." No Pretending. The will to win carried right over from the 1960 campaign against Richard Nixon to the mastering of the Attorney General's job. Says a Justice Department career man : "When you have a large bureaucracy like this, it's hard to instill a sense of urgency and interest in the people down the line. But Kennedy has been able to do it." A graduate ('51) of the University of Virginia Law School, Bob had served as counsel for the Democratic minority on the McCarthy Committee, and later as chief counsel for the McClellan Committee investigating labor racketeering (Bob still turns livid when reminded that he has yet to nail Teamsters' President Jimmy Hoffa). As Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy does not lay claim to legal wizardry. "He doesn't pretend to knowledge he doesn't have," says one of his deputies. "And you'd bet ter not either." At the very beginning, Attorney General Kennedy gathered about him a talented team. The key men: ∙ BYRON R. WHITE, 44, Deputy Attorney General. An All-America halfback at Colorado and later a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, "Whizzer" White met John Kennedy years ago at a U.S. embassy reception in London given by Ambassador Joseph Kennedy. White and Jack later served in the same Pacific PT flotilla; during the presidential campaign, White left his Denver law firm to head the Citizens for Kennedy. White is in charge of the day-by-day administration of the Justice Department. Last spring he handled the on-scene direction of 600 U.S. marshals during the Alabama riots precipitated by Freedom Riders on interstate buses.

∙ ARCHIBALD Cox. 49, Solicitor General. A great-grandson of Andrew Johnson's Attorney General, Archie Cox learned Government law in the Justice, State and Labor Departments and the Wage Stabilization Board. He returned to Harvard as Royall professor of law, was Senator John Kennedy's adviser on labor legislation. During the 1960 campaign, with Fellow Professors Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and J. Kenneth Galbraith, Cox was a member of the Harvard brain trust that fed Candidate Kennedy facts, figures—and politically appealing ideas.

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