 Senator McClellan gave Robert Kennedy extensive control over the scheduling of testimony , areas of investigation , and questioning of witnesses . This suited McClellan , a conservative Democrat and opponent of labor unions : Robert Kennedy would take the brunt of organized labor 's outrage , while McClellan would be free to pursue an anti @-@ labor legislative agenda once the hearings began to draw to a close . Republican members of the Select Committee voiced strong disagreement with McClellan 's decision to let Kennedy set the direction for the committee and ask most of the questions , but McClellan largely ignored their protests . Robert Kennedy proved to be an <unk> interrogator , fumbling questions and engaging in shouting matches with witnesses rather than laying out legal cases against them . McClellan and Kennedy 's goal had been to refer nearly all their investigations to the Justice Department for <unk> , but the department refused to do so because it concluded that nearly all the legal cases were significantly flawed . A frustrated Robert Kennedy publicly complained about the Justice Department 's decisions in September 1958 . 
