Robert F. Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy was an American lawyer and Democratic politician who served as United States attorney general under his brother John F. Kennedy and, after 1964, as a senator from New York. As attorney general he worked on organised crime, civil rights enforcement and the administration’s response to major Cold War crises.

After his brother’s assassination Kennedy became an increasingly prominent critic of poverty and the Vietnam War. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 and was shot in Los Angeles after winning the California primary, dying the following day.

In Jeff Shaara’s The Shadow of War, Kennedy confront military advice for air strikes or invasion, while Robert McNamara helps organise a naval quarantine intended to stop additional equipment without triggering an immediate war.