communism

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Robert Kennedy received credit as the first attorney general to gain control of the FBI. He got the Bureau to act on organized crime and civil rights. But what he really did was cede more power to Hoover as his price for doing so. Kennedy allowed the anti-Communist mania to continue. Although he let the department's Internal Security Division wind down, he didn't put his time and energy into it. And that anti-Communist hysteria that was still part of the American political is what later permitted the wiretapping of the phones of Martin Luther King and his associates.

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Although Dad was draft age during World War II, he was classified as 4-F because of tuberculosis in one eye and chronic stomach ulcers. Then as later, his diet was a mixture of coffee, cigarettes, and sandwiches, and his health fluctuated between fair and poor. He and my mother rode around New York City on his motorcycle in what must have then seemed a Bohemian lifestyle. They often sent me at the age of two or three across the street to bring them back cigarettes from the neighborhood store. Occasionally, I would receive a lemon ice as a reward.