POLITICS: The African Question

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A Matter of Politics. Pennsylvania's acidulous Senator Hugh Scott announced that the students would be coming to the U.S. on a State Department grant, and Jackie Robinson happily reported the news in his New York Post column. Then, when Senator Scott learned that the Ken nedys, and not the Government, would be picking up the tab, he took to the Senate floor in a boiling rage to denounce the Kennedys and their foundation. "The long arm of the family of the junior Senator from Massachusetts has reached out and attempted to pluck this project away from the U.S. Government," Scott rumbled. "At this moment, they appear to have been successful." He hinted at a possible investigation of "the questionable uses to which a supposedly charitable, tax-exempt money pot can be put."

Scott's denunciation brought Jack Kennedy to his feet to denounce him for the "most unfair, distorted and malignant attack I have heard in 14 years in politics." In a voice choked with emotion. Kennedy read a telegram from Montero. It was "regrettable," it ran, "that Senator Scott would attempt to reap political advantage from this nonpolitical educational program . . . The fact is, the State Department has repeatedly turned a cold shoulder to the airlift Africa program . . . On Monday of this week the State Department suddenly took interest in the project." Kennedy had been having hard sledding in Congress all week, but Scott's attack turned sympathy toward him. Minnesota's Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy called Scott's speech a specimen of "Political Murder, Inc." and Nixon obliquely disowned it. Suddenly it was not the Kennedy camp but the Nixon camp that was asked to explain. "Who is Mr. Shepley?" Arkansas' William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, wanted to know. "I tried to get money for students who were to come from Egypt, and we secured only part of the funds requested. I could not do it. How in the world can Mr. Shepley go down to the State Department and within a few days get $100,000 for this purpose?" To get an answer to that question, Fulbright sent an ultimatum to Secretary of State Christian Herter, demanding a full explanation of the reversal.

As the thunder died away toward week's end, it seemed that the only sure winners were the African students.