Thanks Turnbull. I was going to talk about the 1960 election, particularly the Daley connection, but I didn't feel as if I had enough personal knowledge of the situation to give it justice. You filled in the gaps perfectly - your insight is invaluable.

One of the so-called conspiracy angles addresses your question of why JFK was killed instead of RFK. As you pointed out, RFK ruffled many more feathers than his brother. But the argument is that by knocking off JFK, the President of the United States, it would get RFK off the mob's back. Kind of akin to the statement by Tom Hagen in The Godfather. "If you get rid of Sollozzo, everyone else will fall into place." Eliminating JFK would reduce, if not eliminate RFK's power, without his brother around. The next successor, LBJ, would most likely appoint his own Attorney General. Or perhaps even in more simple terms, it might have scared Bobby to the point of not wanting to jeopardize his own life since it had been demonstrated that they could get to the president.

Furthermore, if President Kennedy discovered that the mob did kill his brother, then it would have made his focus on organized crime even more than it was. After the Bay of Pigs, JFK promised to splinter the CIA into "a thousand pieces." If the Mafia would have killed JFK's brother, I presume he would have attacked them with the same gusto.

I'm not saying I buy this argument, but I can appreciate the rationale.