Kenneth Patrick O'Donnell (March 4, 1924 September 9, 1977) was a top aide to U.S. President John F. Kennedy and part of the group of Kennedys' close advisors called the Irish Mafia. He was the son of famed Holy Cross football coach and athletic director Cleo O'Donnell, as well as the father of Earthlink co-founder Kevin M. O'Donnell.Born Patrick Kenneth O'Donnell in Worcester, Massachusetts, he had his given and middle names legally reversed in the 1960s. During World War II O'Donnell served in the US Army Air Corps (1942-1945). After the war O'Donnell studied at Harvard College, where he met Robert Kennedy. He later attended Boston College Law School.In 1951 and 1952 O'Donnell worked as a salesman for Holling Sworth and Whitney, a paper company, in Boston. A member of the Democratic Party, O'Donnell helped in the 1952 campaign to get John F. Kennedy elected to the United States Senate. O'Donnell worked in public relations before being appointed as Assistant Counsel to the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Improper Activities in Labor-Management Relations (1957-59).In 1960 O'Donnell was the organizer and director of John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign schedule. The following year he became Kennedy's special assistant and Appointments Secretary. In this role he functioned in many ways as Kennedy's Chief of Staff, a position that Kennedy never filled during his tenure in the White House. O'Donnell was an early critic of the Vietnam War and advised Kennedy to bring an end to America's involvement in the conflict. The recent autobiography Counselor by Ted Sorensen, who served as special counsel to President Kennedy, revealed O'Donnell's role in polarizing the JFK staff into the professional politicians and the academicians (such as Sorenson and Arthur Schlesinger). His antipathy to Sorensen ran so deep that in 1976/77 he worked to derail Sorenson's nomination as Director of Central Intelligence for Jimmy Carter. Shortly after Kennedy was legally declared dead, and the doctors insisted on an autopsy in Texas, O'Donnell allegedly grabbed a doctor by the shirt, and ordered him to allow them to depart with Kennedy's body for Air Force One, still sitting on the runway at nearby Love Field.He and David Powers co-authored Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye : Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1972). ISBN 0316716251O'Donnell ran for Massachusetts Governor in 1966 and 1970, failing to win the Democratic nomination either time. He fared best in 1966, losing by 64,000 votes to Edward McCormack. Apparently the combination of his electoral disappointments and assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy drove him to increasing levels of alcoholism which eventually resulted in his death.Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_O%27Donnell Show less «