Richard Nixon considered Ted Kennedy such a threat that he tried to catch him cheating on his wife, even ordering aides to plant secret service bodyguards to spy on the senator's behaviour.
Tape recordings from the Nixon White House betray a preoccupation with the Kennedy mystique and how that might be used against the Republican president by the last surviving brother, who died on Tuesday aged 77. Nixon wanted a sharp and private eye kept on Kennedy's movements after the Chappaquiddick scandal, hoping to catch him with a woman other than his wife, Joan.