In January 1960, Robert Kennedy, the former chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Rackets Committee, aka “The McClellan Committee,” published his first book, The Enemy Within, a detailed history of the panel’s hearings and investigations of corrupt businessmen, labor racketeers, and major Mafia figures.
It was widely known as “The Great Investigation.”
According to a statement from RFK’s publisher, Harper & Brothers, at the time of publication:
Written right on the firing line in one of the hottest sectors of the fight for law and order, this book is a no-holds-barred report on the work of the McClellan Committee. Covering also the methods evolved by Committee investigators to dig out the facts; the threats, dodges and pressures used to balk them; the strains within the Committee itself, and within the staff, and the significant factors of press and public opinion, it is illuminated by firsthand knowledge and charged with the force of absolute honesty and the fire of personal conviction.
Every member of the McC1ellan Committee knew he might be digging his political grave, but they all went ahead and uncovered a shocking story of venality, greed, corruption and mania for power in the ranks of both labor and management.
Over the course of three years, hearing fifteen hundred witnesses and taking fourteen million words of testimony, the Committee proved that in a frightening number of cases labor leaders. management, the underworld and public officials, sometimes in combination, sometimes separately, had worked to cheat the rank-and-flle union members.
Focusing on some of the highlights of the investigation, Kennedy tells, for example: how an anonymous telephone call sparked a major investigation and led to the exposure of a huge swindle; how a tip from the "friend of a friend" led to the downfall of Dave Beck; why Roy Underwood shot himself; how "democracy" actually operates in Hoffa's captive unions and what happens to the men who dare to stand up to him; how a reluctant witness was persuaded to testify; how two earlier Congressional committees dropped their investigations of the Teamsters Union; how Hoffa was tried on charges of attempting to plant a spy in the McClellan Committee: why an investigator crawled under a bed and another wore a postman's uniform; how unions are bought and sold - and sometimes stolen; how underworld racketeers infiltrate a union; how, to take the Fifth Amendment by proxy; why honest union leader refused to testify; what mistake the author made with a witness once, but never again; what lay behind the “get Reuther” investigation - and why it fizzled.
Kennedy discusses too, with illustrative and fascinating anecdotes, such basic matters as how an investigating committee goes about getting its facts: how a case is prepared for hearing; why it is difficult to assemble a good investigative staff on Capitol Hill; the procedures that in his opinion an investigating committee should follow and what happens when it doesn't; whether a witness should be permitted to hide behind the Fifth Amendment; and how far - and when it is permitted to dig into a man's private life.
Writing crisply, with indignation but also with humor, Kennedy has told a crackling story of the committee’s work and of the revelations that not only toppled some important union leaders and resulted in a healthy number of convictions but also laid the basis for a sorely needed new labor law. It is a story that only Bob Kennedy could have written.
In my opinion, in the aftermath of The Capitol Insurrection on January 6, 2021, the provably corrupt and dishonest Donald Trump and his chief public-relations operation, Fox News, officially became the American embodiment of “the enemy within.”
Since 2015, I have alleged that Donald Trump and his MAGA followers are part of an emerging organized-crime group. And I view Fox News as an established criminal enterprise, especially after Fox settled for $787 million in 2023 with Dominion Voting Systems, a company that had filed a defamation case against Fox, which falsely accused the company of playing a major role in the rigging of the 2020 election against Trump.
Fox knew that this claim was not true but still—in its aggressive defense of Trump—allowed its anchors and reporters to lie to the Fox audience, insisting that the accusation was accurate.
Menacing his critics once again, Trump has escalated the threats to his political enemies by cynically using “the enemy within” as his latest prop.
During an interview yesterday on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures, Maria Bartiromo, the program’s anchor and an accomplished and well-known apologist for Trump, asked the ex-president whether he was “expecting chaos on election day.” Bartiromo described what she called “outside agitators,” such as dangerous people on foreign watch lists or illegal migrants who have committed crimes.
Trump replied, “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics.
“It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen. . . .
"We have two enemies. We have the outside enemy. And then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries."
The upcoming election will determine which view of “the enemy within” is shared by a majority of the American voting public—that of Robert Kennedy or Donald Trump.
To me, the choice is clear and obvious.
Dear cousin Dan I disagree. We now find Dick Cheney Republican, former vice president and CEO of Halliburton, a major military industrial complex company now supporting Kamala. When he was vice president with George Bush Junior, they started the second Iraqi war by lying to the American people that there were weapons of mass destruction we know Saddam Hussein was bad, but he didn’t have the weapons of mass destruction. Him and George Bush Junior also permitted the torturing of Muslim prisoners at Abu Dhabi ! That is something American never did, and it was an ugly stain on our country. They proceeded with their war and the military industrial complex was fed! On the other hand former Di Democrat Robert F Kennedy Jr. did make his bones as a true activist cleaning up the Hudson River. He also started the Children Health Defense. A Respected organization, but big Pharma has Labeled him an anti-VAXxer Millions of Americans who refused to take that untested Covid vaccine love him! And cousin Jimmy is one of them! I would be ashamed that that group of people with Dick Cheney ie the military industrial complex want Kamala a bunch of real criminals!