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How RFK Junior Stabbed His Mentor in the Back [1]

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Date: 2024-03-02  

Today’s Washington Post has a remarkable story on the falling out between RFK Jr and his onetime mentor, Robert H. Boyle – a legendary New York State environmentalist. Some of the details were reported contemporaneously in New York-area papers, but the Post manages probably the most thorough retrospective account of the dispute, including details up until Boyle’s death in 2017.

Here is the link, which I recommend reading in full. Otherwise, I’ll try to summarize judiciously.

Boyle was a giant, who spearheaded efforts to clean up the Hudson River in the 1960s. He used his Sports Illustrated column to illuminate the dangers of pollution and global warming well before they were widely understood. And, he brought a very troubled Junior on board his organization, Riverkeeper, after the latter was charged with heroin possession in 1983. Junior encountered Boyle and Riverkeeper while serving two years of community service (we might ask how he’d have fared with a less privileged background). After a period of volunteer involvement, Junior joined it outright. His talents as an attorney and an educator helped Riverkeeper – he put them in touch with a number of his well-heeled friends.

But there were troubling signs. Boyle’s son, Alex, warned his father after Junior threw a tantrum, warning him that he had a “rattlesnake” on his hands.

The two ultimately split after Junior hired a scientist convicted of animal smuggling. Boyle angrily observed that this was like asking the fox to guard the henhouse, but Junior refused to back down. He managed to sway the Riverkeeper board, and Boyle and his allies resigned (contemporaneous coverage). Boyle never spoke to Junior again. Profoundly embittered by the experience he moved to Cooperstown, very far from the river he’d done so much to protect. His NYT obituary captures the full range of his accomplishments.

So, what does this add? The details of the animal-smuggling scheme are disgusting. They involved snatching bird eggs, some of which belonged to rare species. If the eggs hatched before delivery, the chicks were to be disposed of.

Interviewed by the Post, Junior claims (of his hire):

Every species that he smuggled was a vermin species that the Australian government was paying people to destroy,

Prosecutors, however, had anticipated this line of argument earlier and written:

Of the seven species at issue, several are genuinely rare and probably endangered in Australia

Another bird, while sometimes a rural pest, could not be killed without government permission.

I’m troubled, meanwhile, by Junior’s use of the phrase “vermin species.” Does that term have any biological standing?

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