Sept. 3, 1964 | RFK Resigns as Attorney General

Sept. 3, 1964 - Robert F. Kennedy closed the door today on his career in the Cabinet and prepared to begin in earnest his quest for a career on Capitol Hill.
Kennedy went to the White House just before noon to deliver to President Johnson his resignation as Attorney General, the position to which he was appointed by his brother, President Kennedy, three years and eight months ago.
In a letter that began with the salutation “Dear Bob,” Johnson said his regret was “tempered by satisfaction” that Kennedy intended to remain in public life. “You will soon be back in Washington where I can again call upon your judgment and counsel,” the President added.
Kennedy is the Democratic Senatorial candidate in New York. His opponents are Senator Kenneth Keating, a Republican, and Henry Paolucci, a Conservative.
On a nostalgic final day as head of the Justice Department, Kennedy listened to speeches by schoolchildren he had helped, ate lunch with other Cabinet members, received a Bowie knife from a delegation of Special Forces soldiers, and thanks his staff members for their loyalty.
Several times, he reminisced about his term in the Cabinet — especially about the days when his brother was alive, when he often served as the stone against which President Kennedy sharpened his ideas and policies.
“When I think of all the things that have happened since that snowy inauguration day in January,” he told 2,000 members of the Justice Department at a reception, “I like to think our role has been the one that is suggested in an old Greek saying: ‘To tame the savageness of man, make gentle the life of the world.’”
At a brief news conference in the White House driveway, Kennedy said he was leaving the Administration “with some regret — perhaps more regret than the enthusiasm I felt when I took over.”
Asked whether he had designs on the White House himself, he replied with a smile: “I think there’s someone there. I keep reading that, and I never see any statement that he is willing to move out. I think he’ll be there for some time.”
Kennedy will be succeeded, at least temporarily, by his deputy, Nicholas Katzenbach, a 42-year-old former law professor who led Federal marshals in their tear-gas defense against hostile crowds at Oxford, Miss., in September 1962.

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