An on-scene newsman recalls RFK's shooting

Sen.  Robert Kennedy was assassinated just after midnight on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

NBC News’ Sander Vanocur, one of the country’s most prominent political reporters during the 1960s, was covering the California primary and interviewed Kennedy on the evening of June 4, when the results of the primary were still unclear and just hours before the senator was shot and mortally wounded.

NBC News’ coverage of the primary had just ended when the shots rang out. Vanocur immediately returned to the scene to report for NBC and interviewed many of eyewitnesses of the attack.

Vanocur discussed what it was like to cover the historic event with msnbc.com.

How did you learn that Kennedy had been shot? What did you do?
I was watching the victory speech on a TV upstairs, because I thought I’d get a better view of it than trying to fight the crowd (in the ballroom). I was standing in the Kennedy campaign suite up there – with Milton Berle. Suddenly we saw something was wrong and I dashed downstairs.

I got into the ballroom and saw it was chaos. You couldn’t get near the senator then because they were taking him out and it was sheer chaos. We really knew nothing but the fact that he had been shot. But his condition? No, we didn’t know.

I then got on NBC and just stayed at the microphone in front of the camera until early in the morning — we went right into the TODAY show.

But I didn’t know his condition until I think Frank Mankiewicz, his press secretary, came out in front of the hospital the next day.

Like an old reporter covering police beats — the hardest thing to get a handle on is a scene like that. There are people who say they are “eyewitnesses,” but nobody really has the straight answer because it is such chaos.

All the reporting was live back and forth to New York. They asked questions, and if I knew the answer, I’d give them an answer, and if I didn’t, I’d say, "I don’t know." And I think we had other people on from the ballroom talking about it, but I can remember who it was.

After Kennedy died, you rode back to New York on the plane with the Kennedy entourage. What was that like? 
It was a lot of talking back and forth. In situations like that where you are trying to avoid grief, there was some banter back and forth. The coffin was up in the front of the plane.  So there was that banter of everyone trying to avoid talking about what had happened.

Ethel was on the plane and she was trying to bolster the spirits of people on the plane. That was her nature, to try to look after others. She’s very good at that.

A Time magazine article about the broadcast coverage of the assassination titled “What Was Going On,” published on June 14, 1968 highlighted your calm demeanor in the midst of the crisis, writing, “NBC anchorman Frank McGee shared with Sander Vanocur the credit for the coolest and ablest reporting on any channel.” What aspect of your reporting do you think lead to that assessment?
Well it is very flattering to be associated with the late Frank McGee, for whom I had the highest regard. And I think the tone was set by Frank and the tone was right.

But you see, at the conventions in the sixties — ’60, ’64, and later at ’68 — Frank, me, John Chancellor and Ed Newman were called the “four horsemen” because we covered the floor of the conventions — so I had a lot of experience talking with Frank. Especially after the conventions were over, we’d sit down each night and Huntley and Brinkley (Chet Huntley and David Brinkley the anchor team for NBC’s evening news program “The Huntley-Brinkley Report”) would ask us questions. So Frank and I had a good rapport with one another.

What was gracious about David and Chet — they really let us finish sentences and were quite generous with their time. We could reflect on what had happened that evening, in a way we couldn’t do it during the proceedings themselves.  We tried to put it in context, that’s what we tried to do. That’s why doing it with Frank worked — he facilitated everything, as did the people behind the scenes.

MORE FROM RFK: 40 YEARS LATER

RFK: 40 Years Later Section Front

Key RFK figures: Where are they now? Brokaw on RFK: 'In the presence of greatness'   A nation halts:  Remembering RFK Newsweek:  What if RFK had become president?   RFK: Life, campaign and death On-scene NBC newsman recalls RFK's shooting TODAY:  Journalist friend remembers RFK   On the trail with RFK: A photographer remembers RFK, 40 years later:  Share your thoughts on Newsvine RFK: 40 Years Later Section Front   Add RFK: 40 Years Later headlines to your news reader: