Ted Sorensen

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Legal Counsel Ted Sorensen
Ted Sorensen (2006)

Theodore "Ted" Chaikin Sorensen (born May 8, 1928 in Lincoln , Nebraska , † October 31, 2010 in New York City ) was an American author and lawyer and the chief advisor to John F. Kennedys .

Until Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Sorensen was considered one of the most influential and important confidants of the US President . He served as legal advisor to the White House throughout his tenure .

Life

Ted Sorensen was born the son of Christian A. Sorensen, a native of Denmark, and his wife Annis Chaikin, who came from a Jewish- Russian family. It was named after the US President Theodore Roosevelt . Unlike his son, Christian Sorensen was a Republican party member and served from 1929 to 1933 as Attorney General of Nebraska.

After graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a degree in law and political science in 1951, Ted Sorensen left his hometown of Lincoln and moved to Washington, DC He began practicing as a lawyer and thus met Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts , who made Sorensen his personal assistant in 1953, barely 25 years old. In the second half of the 1950s, Sorensen devoted himself exclusively to building Kennedy as a presidential candidate. During Kennedy's presidency, because of his Russian family history, Sorensen was predestined to communicate with the Soviets. During the Cuban Missile Crisis , Sorensen wrote a letter to Nikita Sergejewitsch Khrushchev asking him on behalf of the Kennedy government to end the crisis.

After the president's assassination, Sorensen stayed on for almost four months for his successor Lyndon B. Johnson , but had to vacate his post as legal advisor to the White House due to a cabinet reshuffle in February 1964.

In 1970, two years after the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy , Sorensen applied for his previous post as Senator from New York, but was defeated in the party primaries.

In December 1976, the newly elected US President Jimmy Carter nominated Sorensen as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). But the opposition found out that Sorensen had signed a document in 1945, shortly before he should have been sent as a soldier to World War II , stating that he refused to fight as a soldier. As a potential director of the CIA, Sorensen was unsustainable. Another reason was that Sorensen had helped cover Senator Edward Kennedy after his car crash at Chappaquiddick , in which Kennedy's secretary had died.

Most recently, Sorensen worked as a political advisor and advised both the South African President Nelson Mandela and Egypt's head of state Anwar as-Sadat .

Sorensen supported Senator Barack Obama in the intra-party contest for the Democratic presidential candidacy for the election of the US President in 2008 .

Worth mentioning

In his memoir, published in 2008, Sorensen admitted that he was the author of the book Moral Courage , for which John F. Kennedy received the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 .
The film Thirteen Days shows Ted Sorensen as President Kennedy's speechwriter, played by Tim Kelleher .

Publications

Quotes

Kennedy's most famous quote is from Ted Sorensen:

"Don't ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Dallek: John F. Kennedy. An unfinished life , special edition of the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-421-04233-0 , p. 162
  2. ↑ JAMES T. WOOTEN: CARTER STANDS FIRM, SUPPORTS SORENSEN AS DIRECTOR OF CIA; CALLS ATTACKS 'GROUNDLESS' But Senators' Opposition to the Nominee Mounts Over His Use of Classified Materials . In: Special to The New York Times . 17th January 1977.
  3. ↑ http://www.bild.de/BILD/politik/2010/11/01/theodore-sorensen-kenendy-berater-redenschreiber/ist-tot.html

literature

  • Schlesinger, Arthur Meier: The thousand days of Kennedys. Bern 1968

Web links

Commons : Ted Sorensen  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Sorensen, Ted
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sorensen, Theodore Chaikin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author and lawyer, advisor to John F. Kennedy
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Lincoln , Nebraska
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 2010
Place of death New York City