EVERYONE remembers where they were when John F Kennedy was shot, it is said.

But for the President’s nine-year-old nephew, it was a crushing moment that helped to define his future.

In an exclusive interview, Robert F Kennedy Jr recalls how his mother, Ethel, picked him up from school on the day of the assassination as the American flag outside was lowered in respect for the man he called Uncle Jack.

He says: “While we were leaving, we saw a man in front of the school lowering the flag to half-mast.

"I asked my mother why he was doing that. And she said that a bad man had shot my uncle, Uncle Jack.”

Now, 60 years on, RFK Jr is embarking on a remarkable presidential run of his own.

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And after both his uncle and father were assassinated during their political careers, he is the first to admit that there are “risks”.

But he believes his rich life experience — which includes grappling with a “conning, baffling, powerful” drug addiction — makes him perfectly placed to take on the White House.

His uncle’s tragic slaying by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963, remains immersed in a tangle of conspiracy theories.

And today he reveals that his own father and JFK’s brother, the politician and massive civil rights campaigner Robert F Kennedy, initially suspected an inside job.

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Kennedy Jr, 69, said: “My father that day, the first call he made was to the CIA desk chief and he asked him, ‘Did your people do this?’. That was his first thought.”

When young Robert and his mother returned to their Virginia mansion, he found his father in the garden with the then-director of the CIA, John McCone.

After interrogating the intelligence chief, Robert Sr ran up to the family and held them in an emotional embrace.

‘EMPTY SPACE INSIDE’

Kennedy Jr recalls: “We hugged my dad because we could see how upset he was, that he was destroyed. It took him many, many months to recover. He walked around like a ghost.”

Dubbed the “dark horse” of the Presidential race, RFK Jr has polled as the most popular candidate, beating both Joe Biden and Donald Trump in one survey, by The Economist and YouGov.

But making the decision to run against Biden for the Democratic nomination wasn’t easy.

Knowing all too well the dangers of life in the spotlight, Kennedy Jr had several conversations before standing with his wife, Cheryl Hines, 57, of Curb Your Enthusiasm TV fame.

The father of six says: “Everybody in my family is aware of the risk. Life is filled with risks.

“Once Cheryl was convinced there was a path to victory — because I have a passion to solve some of these problems for the US and I am in a unique position to be able to do that — she gave me the green light.”

Kennedy Jr has long had to deal with threats, receiving horrifying hate mail growing up in Virginia with his ten siblings.

He says: “We received hundreds of letters a day from people at that time. I remember showing a letter to my brothers, David and Michael, and it said something about killing Ethel and her ten little pigs.”

Tragedy struck again when Robert F Kennedy Sr was gunned down on June 5 1968 while making his run for the presidency.

The New York senator was shot by Sirhan Sirhan in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles — Kennedy Jr was 14.

He recalls being woken at 5am by priests at his Washington boarding school before flying to California. He is grateful for those final moments at the Good Samaritan Hospital, revealing for the first time: “I was with my father when he died.”

Kennedy Jr was a pallbearer at his father’s New York funeral.

He said: “I remember while we were carrying, a black woman collapsed on the steps . . .  she was waving a handkerchief at the coffin and saying, ‘Well, you’ve done your best. You’ve done your best’.

“It was a moment that stabbed me in the chest.”

RFK Sr’s body was then transported by train to Washington, as millions of Americans lined the tracks. Kennedy Jr said: “People were holding American flags.

“People were holding their children, their babies up to see the train.

"And people were holding signs that said, ‘Goodbye, Bobby’ or ‘Pray for us, Bobby’.”

It was a difficult time for Kennedy Jr, who started using heroin to fill “an empty space inside”.

But he insists: “I would not blame drugs on those tragedies. It may or may not have contributed. I feel like I was born an addict . . . that I was an empty spiritual hole.”

Candidly discussing his addiction to the Class A substance for the first time, he admits: “I was shooting, I was doing intravenous heroin from when I was 15.

“And I could not understand why I could not stop.

‘WALK ON WATER’

“The most demoralising feature of addiction for me was that incapacity to keep contracts with myself. I tell myself, ‘OK, I’m never going to do that again’, at nine o’clock in the morning.

“I’d say it honestly, sincerely, earnestly. And at four o’clock that afternoon I’d be doing it. I could not understand why that was happening. It is conning, baffling, powerful. I had iron willpower in every other part of my life.”

The addiction held Robert in its grip for 14 years before he finally got clean in September 1983, shortly after he was arrested for heroin possession.

With the news splashed across the papers, Kennedy Jr embarked on a 12-step programme with Narcotics Anonymous — where recovering addicts meet regularly to discuss their progress.

He explains: “It had an immediate effect. I had a spiritual awakening a couple of months in and that compulsion that I had, it just disappeared. It was almost like I had never had it.

“For me, it was as much a miracle as if I had learned to walk on water.”
RFK Jr believes his experience puts him in a strong position to understand the problems America faces.

He says: “It is not just addiction — our country needs healing. The levels of mental illness, the levels of addiction to psychiatric drugs or dependence on psychiatric drugs.

"We have a major public health, mental health problem, and nobody’s dealing with it.”

In running to be President in 2024, Kennedy Jr is putting himself at odds with his family — with five of his relatives closely involved in Biden’s presidency.

He has drawn criticism from his siblings over his scepticism of vaccines and America’s military support for Ukraine.

He said: “I love my brothers and sisters. They do not agree with me on the war. They do not agree with me on the censorship issue.

“They do not agree with me on foreign policy and the neocons now running the White House, and they are fine with that and I am not.

Joe Biden has been a friend and ally of my family for more than 40 years, and he has a bust of my father behind him in the White House. In my family, there’s tremendous affection for him.

“But I see our country going in a very bad direction and I see the Democratic party going in a bad direction on many issues.”

Tragic bond with Eric

WHEN it comes to star power, the Kennedy name still has the old magic, writes Daphne Barak.

JFK ran with the Rat Pack of 1950s singers and actors that included Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and was serenaded by movie idol Marilyn Monroe for his 45th birthday.

Robert F Kennedy Jr has his own Hollywood appeal. I can reveal that Eric Clapton will be performing a special set at a campaign event next month.

But what connects the election hopeful to one of the world’s greatest guitarists?

I believe it is their experiences with grief that have united them.

Eric lost his four-year-old son Conor when he fell from the 53rd floor of a New York high rise in 1991.

I interviewed both Eric and Conor’s mother Lory Del Santo about their loss.

“I want the world to remember him,” Lory said.

Eric ensured that would be the case when he wrote Tears In Heaven for his son.

Tragedy is synonymous with the Kennedy name. When Robert Jr described the moment his father died, I could see the pain on his face.

Grief is the ultimate leveller – money, connections and fame mean nothing when you lose someone you love.

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• Daphne Barak is a documentary filmmaker whose interviewees include Nelson Mandela, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

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