Kenneth O'Donnell

Kenneth Patrick O'Donnell (March 4, 1924 – September 9, 1977) was an American political consultant and the special assistant and appointments secretary to President John F. Kennedy from 1961 until Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. O'Donnell was a good friend of President Kennedy and his younger brother Robert F. Kennedy. O'Donnell, along with Larry O'Brien and David Powers, was part of the group of Kennedy's advisers dubbed the "Irish Mafia".

O'Donnell also served as an aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1963 to 1965. He later served as an adviser to Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign.

Early life O'Donnell was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and raised in Boston. Both of his parents were Roman Catholics of Irish descent. He was the son of Cleo Albert O'Donnell, who was the football coach at the College of the Holy Cross Crusaders for two decades, and later athletics director for all sports activities. O'Donnell's older brother, also named Cleo, was a football celebrity at Harvard University's Harvard College during the 1940s.

O'Donnell graduated from high school during World War II and then served in the U.S. Army Air Forces (1942–1945), where he flew 30 missions as a bombardier in a B-17 squadron before being shot down over Belgium. "He was imprisoned, escaped, and emerged with the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with Four Oak Leaf Clusters." After the war, he studied at Harvard College (1946–1949) and met Robert F. Kennedy, where they were roommates as well as teammates on the Harvard football team; O'Donnell became team captain in 1948. The two remained good friends until Kennedy's assassination in 1968.

Following graduation from Harvard, O'Donnell attended law school at Boston College from 1950 to 1951. He later worked as a salesman for the Hollingsworth & Vose Paper Company and then the Whitney Corporation, both in Boston, from 1951 to 1952. O'Donnell later worked in public relations from 1952 to 1957. O'Donnell stated that it was his impression that the shots fired at Kennedy came from the right rear. In their memoir of Kennedy, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, both O'Donnell and David Powers reported hearing only three shots and did not offer any speculation as to their origin. According to a June 15, 1975 report in the Chicago Tribune, an unnamed "Central Intelligence Agency liaison man" told Congressmen that O'Donnell and David Powers had initially told assassination investigators that the shots that struck Kennedy came from a location other than the Texas School Book Depository, but that the two men were convinced, reportedly by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover or his main aides, to alter their accounts to the Warren Commission to avoid the possibility of revealing the CIA's plots to kill Fidel Castro which might result in an international incident. According to O'Neill, he pointed out to O'Donnell that he gave different information to the Warren Commission, and O'Donnell replied: "I told the FBI what I had heard, but they said it couldn't have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn't want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family." O'Donnell's son, Kenneth Jr., stated that his father privately called the Warren Commission “the most pointless investigation I’ve ever seen", and that he claimed shots came from two different directions. In the 1970s the House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that both O'Donnell and Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General and brother of the president, had surreptitiously made inquiries to associates about the possibility of organized crime involvement in the assassination.

After serving as a presidential aide to Lyndon Johnson until early 1965, O'Donnell resigned in order to try to win the Democratic nomination for Governor of Massachusetts in 1966. However, he lost by 64,000 votes to Edward McCormack in a race that was much closer than the polls had predicted.

Marriages and children While at Harvard, O'Donnell married Helen Sullivan in 1947. They had five children: Kenneth Jr., twins Kathleen and Kevin, Mark and Helen. In January 1977, his wife Helen died of the effects of alcoholism. He remarried soon after that to Asta Hanna Helga Steinfatt, a native of Germany. O'Donnell died a few months later. O'Donnell's younger daughter, Helen, later attributed her father's death to alcoholism.

On September 12, 1977, a funeral Mass was held at the Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church in Jamaica Plain. Among the attendees were former mayor of Boston John F. Collins, former Speaker of the House John William McCormack, and several members of the Kennedy family, including President Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Assessments

Praise In his biography With Kennedy (1966), Pierre Salinger writes:

Criticism In his autobiography Counselor, Ted Sorensen, who served as special counsel to President Kennedy, claimed that O'Donnell polarized the JFK staff until it became two factions: the professional "politicians" and the academics (such as Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger). Sorensen also wrote that O'Donnell's antipathy towards him was so great that in 1976/77 he worked to defeat Sorensen's nomination as Director of Central Intelligence for Jimmy Carter.

Memoir In 1998, William Morrow & Co. published A Common Good: The Friendship of Robert F. Kennedy and Kenneth P. O'Donnell. The memoir was written by O'Donnell's daughter, freelance writer Helen O'Donnell, and chronicles her father's friendship with Robert Kennedy. Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (2000, TV): played by Brian Wrench. Parkland (2013): played by Mark Duplass. Killing Kennedy (2013): played by Richard Flood. Jackie (2016): played by Aidan O'Hara. LBJ (2016): played by Michael Mosley. Godfather of Harlem (2019): played by Geoffrey Blake.