c-span: and bobby kennedy was 27 at that time? >> guest: it was a young, brash, youthful, fresh-faced team. this was--this was the image that was being presented here about them. kennedy and cohn hated each other. they came to--they came--they came--almost came to blows, in fact, later on, and kennedy resigned--reluctantly resigned from the committee because he realized that there wasn't room for both of them on the--on--on mccarthy's staff. c-span: and a young man named david schine who was 25. >> guest: that's right. c-span: and i want you to tell us who he was--but why is there no picture of him in here that i could find? >> guest: there's only so many pictures you can get in. that's one reason why. c-span: but is there a picture of david schine around? >> guest: oh, yeah. he's--you can--you can find him in--in--in a number of books, roy cohn's book, for example, but he was a kind of--he was engagingly handsome, not very bright, came from a millionaire family from florida, and roy cohn seems to have been quite enthralled by him.

i confirmed with his children on the record that he would lend his personal car to bobby kennedy to go see marilyn monroe. i suspect he broke up with her before the death. that is just one of the secrets of the fbi. host: clearwater, fla., you are up next. caller: why would you reveal this confidential information to alert the enemy? why should the enemy and those who do evil things be aware of this? guest: some fbi agents did raise their eyebrows because this has been so secret over the years. nobody has been given access to this. the executive assistant director of the fbi knows a great deal about what could or could not be revealed. he decided to do this. he consulted with other top people at the fbi. he ultimately got the approval of the fbi director to give me this. if the fbi does not know what should or should not be secret, we are in big trouble. they certainly did not give me everything. it is four chapters of the book. it is so unbelievable. you would not want to put it in a movie because no one would believe it. there are some techniques that are still secret. they gave me a

and it is bobby kennedy. he says, what is wrong little man? "i cannot find my mommy." so he took me off the elevator at the next floor and helped me look for my mom. then we got the capitol police. and he waited there with me and spoke to me. and it was very comforting. with something, i'm sure he was very busy that we, because that week my mother and my sisters and i got to sit in the house and senate galleries. in one house, they were debating the voting rights act of 1965. and in the other house, they were debating this crazy idea of providing free health insurance for old people. it was called medicare and for poor people -- medicaid. so i was watching those debates. and kennedy was in the middle of both of those. he was taking the time to help this lost child. so it had quite an impact on me as i was growing up occurr. tavis: with the gang of kids he had, he knew something about young girls and boys. the vote shed some light on your childhood, but it also comes into adulthood and the chapter that i was anxious to get to was the part about what actually happened af

michael moore were both tremendous agents of change are in fact so were martin luther king and bobby kennedy i've always found it fascinating some people think that if a movement has no public face and no public leader it will be more effective but have you ever heard of frederick douglas or susan b. anthony or f.d.r. now on the other hand please name for me any movement that actually produced real change in america that either didn't organically select for itself or wasn't brought into the forefront by a few people who either volunteered for or were forced into the limelight rosa parks worked for over a decade and nonviolent resistance training it's before she was before she stepped into that night so well it's really really important that we don't fetishizing leaders to a high profile figures after all it is people to. it's equally true that your anarchist ideal has never really worked and never will even anarch anarchist revolutions end up with leaders and often they're the ones who produce the worst results re read your history the french revolution please that's it for your take my take

he puts the paper down, and it's bobby kennedy, and, of course, even at 11 years old, i know it's bobby kennedy because being raised in an irish-catholic household, you're schooled in everything irish and catholic and kennedy, and he says, well, what's wrong, young man? and i said, oh, i lost my mommy. he say, well, i'll help you find her. he does. he takes me by the hand, doors open on the next floor, and we find a capitol police officer. he says, senator, we'll take care of it from here. he says, no, i'll stay with him here for a little bit until he finds his mom. he stayed there and talked to me and had this great conversation that i recount in the book, and then it came across the police radio they found my mother. he said i think it's time for me to go, and the final word to me were, you know, to never lose sight of your mom and it was at 11 years old, it was something that really stayed with me for some time. >> did your irish-catholic mother vote for jfk in 19601234 >> guest: she did not. this was just almost blase fa mouse to my fare who was irish catholic also. remember at that

i can say that about bobby kennedy, as well. i think there's a group of leaders emerging.ral vision and were politically very smart. >> what i liked about them, those two names they were fearless. they were people prepared to stand-up to anybody. they didn't care about the consequence of themselves or political consequence. they were driven. do you see that anymore in modern leaders? >> no, i do not. it's what is truly absent. a lot of guys are politically smart. they can play the chess game. they have lost moral compass. it's the absence of that moral vision and the absence of that courage we suffer from. i don't see anyone out there that i can say would be able to pick up that legacy and move forward. >> did you think briefly that barack obama was going to be that person? how did you feel hen he got elected? >> i hoped he appeared to be that person. i must say hastily say that i think he can still be that person. i'm not quite sure who is going on in this period, in this time when he is finessing the game. he got so caught up in the game, he's not translated the vision.

with 9 -- the demonstrators it escalated after martin luther king's assassination and that of bobby kennedyown and it was over-the-top in chicago. could we be looking at that? do they escalate? >>guest: if they are not properly organized. this is a free-floating situation, where people are coming from all their reasons. well, remember when this first started when the war was popular people listened because they were concerned about it and as it became more radical and more violent that was the beginning of negativity. >>neil: when the middle-class and upper middle class and college age kids got involved --. >>guest: that was the late 60's. the problem is it went from the substance to the violence. we are nowhere near that. we had teach-ins. >>neil: i was too young. >>guest: they were having teach-ins and people explained the war. that went fine. and then, what happened, the opposition became more radical and more violent. and that is set the middle of the country off. >>neil: so if you were president obama or --. >>guest: and let me say the antiwar movement was more organized and was more,

it is bobby kennedy. of course even at 11 years old are nobody kennedy because being raised in an irish catholic household you are schools and everything irish and catholic and kennedy. he says what is wrong? young man? i said i lost my mommy. he says i help you find her. he took me by the hand and the doors open up and we find a capitol police officer who says we will take care of it from here. he says i think i will stay with him for a little bit until he finds his mom. so he stayed and talked to me and had this great conversation that i recount in the book. then they found my mother and it is time for me to go. his final words to me were something to the effect of never lose sight of your mom. at 11 years old it was something that really stayed with me for some time. >> host: did your irish catholic mother vote for jfk? >> guest: she did not. this was almost blasphemous to my father who was fdr democrat and are rich catholic also. at that time we never had a catholic president. we had been a country for

do i end up in these places whether i'm 11 years old and i'm in the elevator with bobby kennedy and ierience with him and all through i'm having this encounter with ronald reagan and another one with nixon and i'm nobody really. i'm just this guy from michigan. i find myself caught in a terrorist incident in vienna in the 1980s with abu nidal, the osama bin laden of his time. and, you know, one day i get a call from john lennon. these are all stories that are in this book and again this was all before i'm a filmmaker. i'm just a kid. and there's this forrest gump-like thing where no one person from the midwest who doesn't have any connection to anything should really be in this many encounters with these many people. right up until the very guy who teaches me how to be a filmmaker, then brings me into another whole, you know, mish-gosh since we're in the big way. >> host: roger & me came out and here's a little part of it. >> guest: we filmed a family being evicted from their home the day before christmas eve. would you be willing come up with us and see what the situation is like in

and i would also be a little bobby kennedy.o to appalachia, be seen not just as fund-raisers but get out there and mix with the american people. the secret service may not like him to do that, but i think he's electrifying in person and we need to feel that obama has had his moment. he troyed triangulation. the debt ceiling debate over the summer showed nobody wants to do business with him, that mitch mcconnell was right when me said, we don't want to do business with barack obama. obama has to fight for the history of the democratic tradition of franklin roosevelt and to abandon it by a kind of mele mouthed middle course would be a mistake. there is no grand bargain. this is war in 2012 and obama has to win. >> sam, respond to that. >> i think actually doug, who's a historian, who's my good friend and historian i really admire, i think is getting a lot of that right. what we are confuing at this moment is partisan politics and ideology. if you look at the last several elections, you look at the successful inincumbents, the one

. >> it was bobby kennedy. thank you for that, sir. he's doing it there. he sure is.alk, is a heck of a problem. >> he's not much of a debater, no doubt about it, and i think that's a fairly smart strategy to turn away from that. most importantly for him, go back to a texas strategy that did work. he's a much better retail politician than he is a debater. and the other problem is, these day, debates have completely defined him. he's not been able to get any real earned media out of anything else. he finally laid out a tax plan last week and got some good press on that. all the other stuff, most of the bad press he's been getting has been from debates. what the heck. you might as well announce you're not going to do every debate they ask you to do. >> he behaves strangely in debate, with that big collar of his. sometimes i think it's going to retract -- his head is going to retract into the collar like a turtle. he doesn't seem to like being there physically. >> you know what this is, chris, it's the strategy, the ropeadope strategy without a rope. if people are concer

kennedy, bobby kennedy, even though he wasn't in the white house. >>> what's the proof of that? >> joan quigley was arguably the most -- not joan quigley, jean dixon. joan quigley was the reagan psychic adviser. jean dixon first advised fdr, told him about how the world was going to be after world war ii. also predicted the date he was going to die. jean dixon predicted to a crowd in 1956 that a democrat with big blue eyes and bushy brown hair would be elected president in 1960. it was john f. kennedy, predicted the day he was going to be assassinated. and through rosemary woods, richard nixon's secretary, jean dixon used to advise richard nixon. in fact, there's a recording in the library of congress of president nixon talking to secretary of state kissinger, and he said, you know, rosemary talks to that soothsayer. >> i suspect that we will find out whether the current residents of the white house consult psychics, but not for a few years to come. i want to mention your book, "never letting go," but mark anthony. it's doing very well on amazon.com. >> it's on sale and well on

what i know is that he was a deeply committed supporter of bobby kennedy and a positive american politicianho was elected u.s. congressman from utah and died working for peace in the middle east. i can say the same of senator frank moss of ute for whom i worked in my first job in the senate and whose personal endorsement won me my job working for the u.s. senate budget committee, which led to my working in the white house. what a fine, good man he was. and all the years i knew him i found him to be a solid liberal. i could say the same of the great udall family and harry reid and any number of other good mormons who are also good democrats, along with the many more who are conservative republicans. i bring all this up to make a simple practical point. there are good reasons to vote for and against mitt romney for president. his religion is neither because it is in my experience hardly a guide to his politics. i've known enough of mormons -- enough mormons to know that. and more importantly, i've known enough people in my life of a variety of faiths to know enough of each faith to know their

there will be an emotional -- before you know it, bobby kennedy will be your running mate. the president on the phone and called watson and said it moved kennedy from day one today for. hubert humphrey became the running mates instead. he was in his death until the day he died. >> they were social friends. >> they were social friends. >> they spent parts of winter together. i even went to the races with them. >> we are all out of time and gentlemen. i want to thank the both of you for being our guests and talking to our viewers. talking about thomas e. dewey. are contenders in our 14th week series. i want to thank all of you for calling in. a big thanks to everybody. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> our series returns next friday. we will be in illinois to talk with historians and take your calls about the campaign and they stevenson. it airs friday night at eastern on c-span. you can see tonight's program again at 11:00 p.m. eastern. for more information, go to our website, c-span.org. you wi

. >> after i asked bobby kennedy.ar. >> and it going to be trouble. >> it is going to be trouble. i was like lord. and because i couldn't do it but i watched them work and at 12 noon i heard somebody say testing one, two. >> that was good. what it was like as you were watching the 200,000 people come on to the mall and you are up there on the stage right there behind dr. king. what was that feeling? >> it was like the children of israel coming across the red sea. and when i saw america black and white and red and brown and yellow together marching together, it was worth all of the pain and all of the anxiety that i had endured. >> what do you see from your angle, you are 78? >> 78, yes. >> 78. by the way, you're looking great, man. >> that is because i keep myself physically fit and mentally awake an and morally straight. >> this guy is aning ecktive of a big company and just got out of a fancy car. what do you think of these guys? >> i thought fo shout for joy i remember the dream that we had. when said one of these

duke ellington, paul robeson, muhammad ali, alina horn, eleanor roosevelt, president john and bobby kennedy being deeply moved by his intellectual capacity, it was his humility and the kind of humanity he revealed whenever he walked into a campaign and was deeply concerned about whether or not he was doing the right thing. not morally but tactically because always there was the threat that people might get hurt, somebody might be taken out, and he felt a great sense of responsibility and burden for making decisions that would put people in harm's way. those of us who sat in his circle had to continually reinforce the sense that what he was doing was not only morally correct but socially necessary. and he took some comfort in the fact that we encouraged him. >> you encouraged him in becoming a civil rights leader yourself. and you write in your book why had i jeopardized in some ways damaged a career trajectory that had made me at 30 the world's first so-called black matinee idol? how do you answer your own question? >> i would say a lot of it is good fortune, the coincidences. i cannot ever

reward of it is what drove me to the payoff, but the world in which i live and i reside, i look at bobby kennedyt we were about found the way to expectation and love. we became very close. one of the men i most admired and still do. all these things are very warp for becoming engaged and involved in the human condition. with that much reward, what's there to deny? >> you know, so many stories that you talk about in this book and so much of the focus is on your role as an activist, but you also, interestingly enough, say one of the reasons why you wrote this book was because marlin brando passed away without recalling a lot of the great stories from broadway. this is not just about your role as an activist, but also as your role as an entertainer, as well. talk about some of the other reasons why you wanted to write this book and what people will find when they read it? >> when i became an artist, it was quite by accident. i had no ambitions to be in the theater. when in your life did you become an activist? the question should become t thr way. i just came out of the second world war navy and i

there will be an emotional -- before you know it, bobby kennedy will be your running mate. the president on the phone and called watson and said it moved kennedy from day one to day four. hubert humphrey became the running mate instead. he was in his debt until the day he died. >> they were social friends. >> they were social friends. >> they spent parts of winter together. i even went to the races with them. >> we are all out of time and gentlemen. i want to thank the both of you for being our guests and talking to our viewers. talking about thomas e. dewey. our contender in our 14th week of the series. i want to thank all of you for calling in. a big thanks to everybody. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] ♪ >> you will receive the answer in due course. do not worry. >> i will not give you an answer until hell freezes over. >> a former governor of illinois, running twice as the democratic nominee for president, losing. at least even some -- adlai stevenson, this week on "the contenders and." for a

>> no idea. >> and i'm not trying to put the mantle of bobby kennedy on chris christie, but i'm followingrs attach to people they can relate. >> and many in new jersey have responded. chris, against that backdrop, everything you've just said, i want to ask you about your special tonight, 7:00 eastern, it's called the great democratic debate. what is the great democratic debate? >> well, the republicans are trying to pick a candidate and they don't have a candidate. the democrats have a candidate, what they don't have is a campaign figured out. how do they hold the white house for four more years? and a lot of the people you hear from on msnbc who want a real radical, give 'em hell campaign, and a lot of people come along like mark penn and say you're crazy to do that, the country's not going to join you on the left. it's a center/right country, be careful of a president looking too far left. we're having that big debate. how does obama position himself to get reelected? so we've got michael moore, who you can predict will probably be on the progressive left. you've got mark penn who is wi

there will be an emotional -- before you know it, bobby kennedy will be your running mate. the president on the phone and called watson and said it moved kennedy from day one to day four. hubert humphrey became the running mates instead. he was in his debt until the day he died. >> they were social friends. >> they were social friends. >> they spent parts of winter together. i even went to the races with them. >> we are all out of time and gentlemen. i want to thank the both of you for being our guests and talking to our viewers. talking about thomas e. dewey. our contender in our 14th week of the series. i want to thank all of you for calling in. a big thanks to everybody. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> the contenders returns live next friday. we will be in libertyville, ill., to talk to historians about the provincial campaign of adlai stevenson. the series airs live at 8:00 on friday nights. you can see tonight's program on thomas dewey again this sunday. for more information on our serie

in the '60s he's sort of seminal with secretary stuart udall, bobby kennedy, john f. kennedy on making people understand that conservation and environmentalism was good for public health, that people needed this, that we needed clean air and clean water, and that species needed to be saved. we once had a billion passenger pigeons. there's not one alive today. but a species like the polar bear, for example, who are very stressed right now, the american public has to say, no, enough's enough. we need these species. you saw a minute ago i have three little kids running around here. all little kids love an halls and wildlife, and this book tells the story of how wildlife got saved not just in alaska, but in america. >> walt disney. >> disney's seminal in my book because he did some documentaries on alaska that were game changers. one was about -- he won the academy award, disney, and it had all these seals in it, and it was about stop slaughtering the northern seal out of existence. he did one called white wilderness which rules up until disney was the big, bad wolf. they

jack kennedy played "hardball." he sent bobby in the back room to do it, to beat up these governors who were giving him a hard time. it's amazing how he did it with mike desal and david lawrence and people like pat brown. governor taas. they came out of that room endorsing him. he had a strong brother who was willing to do the tough work, the ruthless work. and jack kept his hands clean. but he got the job done. in that case, here was lawrence. jack kennedy had won the democratic primary in pennsylvania that spring, 70 plus percent. he had walked away in a write-in campaign. pennsylvania wanted him, the democrats -- and here's old david lawrence, the first catholic governor, nervous about a fellow catholic being a candidate, and he's holding back. acting like jack hadn't won the primary. jack walked up on the stage and told those delegates, if you don't give this nomination to me because i'm catholic, this is democratic party is finished and you guys are finished. lawrence goes off the stage practically finished and jack kennedy

kennedy played a role enforcing the skins owner to integrate the team. >> played the dallas cowboys for the playoffs, had to go to the super bowl and knocked them off. >> bobbychell was the first african american player. >> bobby mitchell was our jackie robinson. g rfk was the first major stadium designed for football and baseball. the senators left in 1960. the nats arrived in 2005. only until their new ballpark could be built in southeast, that left only dc united at the aging rfk. ground breaking rfk stadium was held in 1959. the cost, $20 million. in today's money, you're looking at $147 million. it is costing the city $3 million a year to maintain rfk. >> program that we added with the college football games and dc united still playing in the short-term. we think it's well worth the investment. >> this afternoon, as dc leaders met for plans to commemorate its 50th anniversary. could the redskins be lured back to d.c. in a new rfk stadium? >> the future would be that this stadium would be demolished and build a new stadium on this site, retractable roof for the redskins. >> you think the redskins come back to d.c.? >> i hope so. that is anybody that is f