In September 1983, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fell ill on a flight to Rapid City, South Dakota. The pilot radioed ahead for medics. By dint of his famous name, Kennedy, then 29 and fresh out of law school, was taken to a VIP room at the airport, where investigators found heroin in his luggage.

1983年9月，小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪在飞往南达科他州拉皮德城的航班上突发急症。飞行员用无线电提前通知了医护人员。肯尼迪当时29岁，刚从法学院毕业，凭借这个赫赫有名的姓氏，他被送到机场的贵宾室，在那里，调查人员发现了他行李中的海洛因。

By his own account, Kennedy, who later pleaded guilty to a felony charge of possessing heroin, had become addicted to the drug in his teens, as he struggled to cope with the assassination of his father. Two days after the airplane episode, he checked himself into a New Jersey drug treatment center. He says he has been sober ever since.

肯尼迪后来承认犯下持有海洛因的重罪，按他的说法，自己在十多岁时因为父亲遇刺身亡而备受打击，因此染上了毒瘾。飞机上那一幕发生两天后，他进了新泽西州的一家戒毒中心。他说，从那以后自己没有再碰过毒品。

Now Kennedy is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be health secretary, a nomination he landed after a renegade presidential campaign in which he cast his life as a redemption story. He told a conservative Christian radio host this year that as an addicted and troubled young man he had undergone a “spiritual awakening” and “knew he had to change at a deep, fundamental way.”

现在，肯尼迪是候任总统特朗普的卫生部长人选，这一提名是在他进行了一次背叛原党派的总统竞选后获得的，在竞选中，他把自己的人生描绘成一个关于救赎的故事。今年，他告诉一位保守派基督教电台主持人，作为一个吸毒成瘾、麻烦缠身的年轻人，他曾经历了一次“精神觉醒”，“知道自己必须从根本上进行深刻的改变。”

Yet Kennedy’s early fight for sobriety was far from the end of his battles with demons and self-destructive impulses. An examination of his life, gleaned through interviews with more than a dozen people, court filings and his own statements, reveals his distinct pattern of cycling through extremes — including his early drug addiction, compulsive sexual behavior and deep dives into conspiracy theories — all while under the microscope of fame.

然而，肯尼迪早期为远离毒品而进行的斗争远非他与内心的恶魔和自我毁灭冲动斗争的终点。通过对十几个人的访谈、法庭文件和他自己的陈述，对他生活的审视揭示出他从一个极端到另一个极端循环的独特模式，包括早期的毒瘾、强迫性性行为，以及对阴谋论的深信不疑——所有这些都发生在名声的显微镜下 。

At midlife, Kennedy won public acclaim as a crusading environmental lawyer who sued corporate polluters, cleaned up rivers and lobbied to protect New York’s drinking water. But he was also a serial philanderer who kept a journal chronicling his encounters and assigned numerical scores to women, even as he berated himself for his inability to control his actions.

中年时，肯尼迪作为一名坚定的环保律师赢得了公众赞誉，他起诉污染企业，清理河流，并游说对纽约饮用水进行保护。但他也是一个风流成性的花花公子，他写日记记录艳遇，给女人打分，尽管他痛斥自己无法控制自己的行为。

His infidelities contributed to the breakup of his second marriage, according to interviews with people who knew the couple. A former nanny who worked for his family during this time also has accused Kennedy of making sexual overtures toward her and touching her without consent.

根据对认识肯尼迪夫妇的人的采访，他的不忠导致了第二段婚姻破裂。一位在此期间为他家工作的保姆也指控肯尼迪对她有性暗示，并在未经同意的情况下触碰她。

肯尼迪于2023年4月以“肯尼迪派民主党人”的身份开始竞选总统，但后来他离开了民主党，以独立候选人的身份参选。

As an anti-vaccine advocate, Kennedy has plunged into dark and conspiratorial views of government, the press, scientific institutions and especially the drug industry. He has promoted wild and debunked theories.

作为一名反疫苗倡导者，肯尼迪陷入了对政府、媒体、科研机构，尤其是制药行业的阴暗和阴谋论的观点中。他一直在宣扬一些荒谬的、已被证伪的理论。

Kennedy declined a request for an interview. Friends and close associates say his choices are best understood as a quest to live up to the legacy of his father and namesake, Robert F. Kennedy, the former attorney general, senator and liberal icon who was assassinated while running for president in 1968.

肯尼迪拒绝了采访请求。他的朋友和密友表示，关于他所做的种种选择，最合理的解释是，他希望对得起父亲罗伯特·肯尼迪的声名，这位前司法部长、参议员和自由派偶像在1968年竞选总统时遇刺身亡。

One friend, who like many others interviewed for this article declined to be named, said Kennedy’s self-aggrandizing drive to emulate his father was a “tragic flaw” that gave rise to “the need for adulation, the need for recognition, the need for followers.” The younger Kennedy has long embraced his family mythology and imagined himself as a new hero.

他的一位朋友（与许多接受本文采访的人一样，要求保持匿名）说，肯尼迪自我吹嘘以效仿他父亲的动机是一个“悲剧性的缺陷”，这导致了“对奉承的需要，对认可的需要，对追随者的需要”。小肯尼迪长期以来一直信奉他的家族神话，把自己想像成一个新的英雄。

“Everything that has happened in my life,” Kennedy said in a campaign video, “has led me to where I am right now — the deaths, the tragedies, the addiction, the recovery, finding a deep belief in God.”

“我生命中发生的一切，”肯尼迪在一段竞选视频中说，“把我带到了现在的位置——死亡、悲剧、毒瘾、戒毒，找到了对上帝的深刻信仰。”

But the road Kennedy has traveled led him to an alliance with a man his family and fellow Democrats regard as anathema. Trump brought him into his fold to consolidate his base, and Kennedy entered, telling uneasy allies it was his best chance of effecting real change.

但是，肯尼迪走过的道路，使他与一个家人和民主党同僚恨之入骨人结成了联盟。特朗普为巩固自己的票仓拉他入伙，肯尼迪加入了，他告诉不安的盟友，这是他实现真正变革的最佳机会。

肯尼迪是候任总统特朗普的卫生部长人选，这一提名是在他进行了一次背叛原党派的总统竞选后获得的，在竞选中，他把自己的人生描绘成一个关于救赎的故事。

Other Kennedys have repeatedly denounced him. His sister Kerry Kennedy says her brother has “set fire” to their father’s legacy and called the decision to back Trump “a sad ending to a sad story.”

肯尼迪家族的其他成员多次谴责他。妹妹凯莉·肯尼迪说，他“放火”烧了父亲的政治遗产，并称支持特朗普的决定是“一个悲伤故事的悲惨结局”。

Close friends and supporters see him as a revolutionary, speaking truth to power. They also say he should not be defined by addiction, but by recovery: They note he is disciplined and focused. He has thrown himself into exercise and adheres to a strict diet known as intermittent fasting. More than 40 years after the flight to South Dakota, he still attends daily 12-step meetings, he says.

密友和支持者认为他是一位革命者，敢于对权力者说真话。他们还说，不应该用毒瘾来定义他，而应该用戒毒来定义他：他们指出，他自律、专注。他全身心投入锻炼，并遵循一种被称为间歇性禁食的严格饮食习惯。他说，在飞往南达科他州的航班上发病40多年后，他仍然每天参加强化戒瘾项目。

Del Bigtree, his former communications director, described Kennedy as deeply spiritual, and said he feels “called to make a difference.” Gavin de Becker, Kennedy’s security consultant and close adviser, said Kennedy’s sobriety is a source of his “stamina and commitment and resilience” — “an absolute golden qualification,” he said, for a health secretary.

他的前通讯主任德尔·比格特里形容肯尼迪是一个非常虔诚的人，还说他感觉到自己“被召唤去改变现状”。肯尼迪的安全顾问、与之私交甚笃的加文·德·贝克尔表示，肯尼迪戒毒后的自制力是他“耐力、承诺和韧性的来源”——他称这是担任卫生部长的“绝对的黄金资质”。

Kennedy himself leans into his troubled past. “I got so many skeletons in my closet,” he said while campaigning for president, “that if they could vote, I could be king of the world.”

肯尼迪本人倾向于讲述自己坎坷的过去。“我的柜子里有很多骷髅（意为过往有不可告人的秘密——编注），”他在竞选总统时说，“要是骷髅能投票，我就成世界之王了。”

A Complex Inheritance

复杂的政治遗产

1975年8月在肯尼亚，肯尼迪在一个电视特别节目里训鸟。

Bobby Kennedy was 9 years old when an uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas. The third of his parents’ 11 children, Bobby wanted to be a scientist or a veterinarian.

他的伯父约翰·肯尼迪总统在达拉斯遇刺身亡时， 博比·肯尼迪（博比是罗伯特这个英文名字的昵称。——译注）只有九岁。他在11个孩子中排行老三，小时候想成为一名科学家或兽医。

Five years later, in June 1968, his father was killed. He was 14. That fall, he entered ninth grade at Millbrook, a boys’ boarding school in New York’s Hudson Valley. The school was isolated and bucolic; Kennedy, fascinated by animals, was attracted to its small zoo.

五年后的1968年6月，他的父亲遇刺。那年秋天，他进入纽约哈德逊河谷的男子寄宿学校米尔布鲁克就读九年级。那是一所与世隔绝的田园风学校，对动物着迷的肯尼迪喜欢里面的小动物园。

In 1970, when he was 16, Kennedy was expelled from Millbrook for drug use, according to his memoir “American Values: Lessons I Learned From My Family.” That summer, he was arrested for marijuana possession in Massachusetts. The following summer he was arrested again, accused of spitting ice cream in a police officer’s face. He denied the accusation but paid a fine.

根据他的回忆录《美国价值观：我从家人那里学到的教训》(American Values: Lessons I Learned From My Family)，1970年，16岁的肯尼迪因吸毒被米尔布鲁克开除。那年夏天，他在马萨诸塞州因持有大麻被捕。第二年夏天，他再次被捕，被控向一名警察的脸上吐冰激凌。他否认了这一指控，但缴纳了罚款。

Kennedy cycled through two more high schools before graduating, and despite his troubles, was able to follow in his father’s footsteps to Harvard.

肯尼迪在毕业前转学去了两所高中，尽管麻烦不断，他还是进入了父亲的母校哈佛大学。

After graduating with honors in American history from Harvard, he went on to law school at the University of Virginia — again, as his father had done. “When he died, I felt kind of an obligation to pick up the torch that he had dropped,” Kennedy said in a video produced for his presidential campaign, “and so I changed my career trajectory to align it more with his.”

以优异成绩从哈佛大学美国史专业毕业后，他又进入弗吉尼亚大学法学院深造——这与他父亲的经历如出一辙。“在他去世后，我觉得自己有义务接过他丢下的火炬，”肯尼迪在为总统竞选活动制作的一段视频中说，“因此我改变了自己的事业轨迹，以便与他的轨迹更一致。”

In 1982, Kennedy, then 28, landed a plum job in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, but had to resign when he failed the bar exam. Then came his arrest and conviction for heroin possession. He was sentenced to two years’ probation and community service.

1982年，时年28岁的肯尼迪在曼哈顿地区检察官办公室找到了一份不错的工作，但由于没有通过律师考试，他不得不辞职。随后，他因持有海洛因被捕并被定罪。他被判处两年缓刑和社区服务。

By the time Kennedy arrived at the Open Space Institute, a land preservation organization, to complete his service work, he was visibly unhealthy, according to one person who knew him then.

据一位当时认识他的人说，来到土地保护组织开放空间研究所完成社区服务工作时，他的健康状况明显不佳。

Being ‘the Kennedy Who Matters’

成为“有份量的肯尼迪”

The institute put Kennedy to work, helping renovate an old farmhouse in Garrison, New York. The house was later rented by the Hudson Riverkeeper, a group dedicated to cleaning up the polluted Hudson River. Kennedy became passionate about its cause and soon signed on.

研究所让肯尼迪开始工作，帮助整修纽约加里森的一所旧农舍。那栋房子后来被哈德逊河守护者组织租下，该组织致力于清理被污染的哈德逊河。肯尼迪对这项事业充满热情，很快就加入了该组织。

Once he was admitted to the bar, in 1985, he got a master’s of law in environmental studies. He kept a low profile at first, but by the early 1990s, he was back in the spotlight, his name a magnet for reporters. He seemed to embrace it.

1985年获得律师执照后，他又获得了环境学的法学硕士学位。起初，他保持着低调，但到20世纪90年代初，他又回到了聚光灯下，他的名字吸引着记者。他似乎乐在其中。

In 1995, New York Magazine crowned him “The Kennedy Who Matters.” He circulated the article widely, according to someone who knew him at the time. In 1997, he was a contestant on “Celebrity Jeopardy!” Rumors began to swirl that he might run for a U.S. Senate seat.

1995年，《纽约杂志》授予他“有份量的肯尼迪”称号。据当时认识他的人说，他广泛传播了那篇文章。1997年，他参加了《名人危险边缘》(Celebrity Jeopardy!)节目，有传言说他可能会竞选联邦参议员。

At his office at Pace University, where he got his master’s and ran the environmental litigation clinic, the wall was covered with photos of him posing with celebrities. He would eventually marry one, actress Cheryl Hines, his third wife.

他在佩斯大学获得硕士学位，并在大学里运营一个环境诉讼诊所，他的办公室墙上挂满他与名人合影的照片。他最终还和一位名人结了婚——演员谢丽尔·海恩斯，他的第三任妻子。

Kennedy became a nationally recognized environmental lawyer. In 1999, he was named a hero of the planet by Time magazine for his work with the Riverkeeper organization.

肯尼迪成为全国知名的环境律师。1999年，他因与河流守护者组织的合作被《时代》杂志评为地球英雄。

Taking On the Powerful

对抗强权

One summer in the early 2000s, Sarah Bridges, a Minnesota psychologist who had gone to college with a sister-in-law of Kennedy, showed up unannounced at his home at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Bridges said her son had suffered a brain injury and received an autism diagnosis, after being vaccinated with a pertussis vaccine that is no longer in use in the United States.

2000年代初的一个夏天，曾与肯尼迪的一位姻亲一起上过大学的明尼苏达州心理学家萨拉·布里奇斯突然出现在肯尼迪位于马萨诸塞州海恩尼斯港的家中。布里奇斯说，她的儿子在接种了一种百日咳疫苗后遭受了脑损伤，并被诊断为自闭症，这种疫苗目前在美国已经不再使用。

Kennedy had been working on getting mercury out of waterways; Bridges wanted him to investigate thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that has been largely removed from childhood vaccines in the United States.

肯尼迪一直致力于将汞从水道中清除；布里奇斯希望他调查硫柳汞，这是一种以汞为基础的防腐剂，在美国，这种防腐剂已基本从儿童疫苗中去除。

Once he dived in, there was no stopping him. Using “my name and my family’s relationships,” he said in a speech at Hillsdale College, he secured meetings with Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the government’s top infectious disease specialist, and Dr. Francis Collins, then the director of the National Institutes of Health.

一旦他投入其中，就再也没有人能拦住他。他在希尔斯代尔学院的一次演讲中说，他利用“我的名字和家人的关系”，与时任政府最高传染病专家安瑟尼·福奇博士和时任美国国立卫生研究院院长弗朗西斯·柯林斯博士会面。

Their answers, he has said, left him convinced that the NIH was little more than “an incubator” for the drug industry. “It was regulatory capture on steroids,” he has said.

他说，他们的回答让他确信，美国国立卫生研究院只不过是制药业的“孵化器”。他说：“这是一种加强版的监管圈套。”

In 2005, Kennedy wrote an article, published in Rolling Stone and Salon, that blamed thimerosal for a rise in autism in children. Both news outlets later withdrew the article after finding that some of its claims were wrong or dubious, and Kennedy was widely criticized by the scientific community. The theory that vaccines cause autism has been widely debunked.

2005年，肯尼迪写了一篇文章，发表在《滚石》和《沙龙》杂志上，指责硫柳汞是儿童自闭症发病率上升的原因。这两家新闻媒体后来发现文章的一些说法是错误或可疑的，撤回了这篇文章，肯尼迪也受到了科学界的广泛批评。疫苗导致自闭症的理论已被广泛推翻。

Yet, Kennedy only saw this as more evidence of the stranglehold the pharmaceutical industry had on the government and on the mainstream media.

然而，这在肯尼迪眼里只是成了制药业控制政府和主流媒体的又一个证据。

He churned out books and founded a nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, turning it into an anti-vaccine behemoth that raked in millions.

他出版大量书籍，创立了非营利组织“儿童健康保护”，将其变成了一个反疫苗的庞然大物，收入数以百万计。

It was the beginning of a new public persona for Kennedy: the hostile anti-media, anti-establishment warrior. In the eyes of his supporters, Kennedy was taking on the powerful, as his father had done.

这是肯尼迪新的公众形象的开始：一个充满敌意的反媒体、反建制斗士。在他的支持者眼中，肯尼迪是在挑战权贵，就像他的父亲那样。

“I think that he really thinks that things are wrong, that there’s this deep-seated corruption, which is very much the way his father and his uncle viewed the world,” said Tony Lyons, Kennedy’s publisher.

肯尼迪的出版商托尼·莱昂斯说：“我觉得他确实认为这里面有问题，认为存在着根深蒂固的腐败，这与他父亲和伯父看待世界的方式非常相似。”

肯尼迪还是一个花花公子，据说会写日记记录自己的艳遇。

Finding an Audience

找到受众

The coronavirus pandemic gave Kennedy the following that he had long sought. The core of his message — that the federal government was bent on restricting personal liberties, and that pharmaceutical companies were seeking to profit off a crisis — suddenly appealed to a new audience of Americans frustrated by lockdowns and skeptical about a vaccine that was developed and marketed at an extraordinarily fast pace.

新冠大流行为肯尼迪带来了他长期以来一直寻求的追随者。他传达的信息的核心——联邦政府决心限制个人自由，制药公司试图从危机中获利——突然吸引了一批新的美国受众，他们对疫情封锁大为不满，对一种研发和推广速度异常快的疫苗持怀疑态度。

Traffic to the Children’s Health Defense website exploded. Kennedy sold books. He was welcomed at events filled with Trump supporters and appeared with election deniers and Christian nationalists.

“儿童健康保护”网站的访问量激增。肯尼迪的书也畅销一时。他在充斥着特朗普支持者的活动中受到欢迎，其中还有许多否认大选结果的人和基督教民族主义者。

When the Center for Countering Digital Hate labeled him a member of “The Disinformation Dozen,” he was suspended from Instagram — a move that reaffirmed his conviction that Big Tech was conspiring with the Biden administration to suppress free speech.

反数字仇恨中心将他列为“虚假信息十二人”的一员，他被Instagram封杀了——这再次验证了他的信念，即大型科技公司与拜登政府合谋压制言论自由。

Last spring, when he was considering challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination for president, he told advisers that he heard the echoes of history in the decision: His father, disillusioned with Democrats over the Vietnam War, defied party leaders in 1968 to mount a primary against an incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson. His life appeared to have come full circle, he suggested.

去年春天考虑挑战乔·拜登总统的民主党总统候选人提名时，他告诉顾问，他在这个决定中听到了历史的回响：他的父亲因越南战争问题对民主党人感到失望，在1968年不顾民主党领导人的反对，在初选中对时任总统林登·约翰逊发起挑战。他说，他的生活似乎走了一个轮回。

He began his presidential bid as a “Kennedy Democrat” but later left the party to run as an independent, accusing Democratic leadership of corruptly stifling his primary challenge.

他以“肯尼迪派民主党人”的身份开始总统竞选，但后来离开民主党，以独立人士的身份竞选，并指责腐败的民主党领导层扼杀了他的初选挑战。

By this past summer, with his poll numbers in the single digits and his campaign coffers running dry, Kennedy was faced with a choice: continue his quixotic effort, or bow out of the race and endorse Trump. The former president’s allies, concerned that Kennedy would pull support from their ranks, had long been interested in an alliance, the Times has reported.

今年夏天，肯尼迪的民调支持率只有个位数，他的竞选资金也开始枯竭，他面临着一个选择：要么继续他堂吉诃德式的努力，要么退出竞选，支持特朗普。据《纽约时报》报道，前总统的盟友们担心肯尼迪会导致他们的支持者被分流，因此一直有意结盟。

Conversations between the two camps began in earnest after an assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, an event whose echoes in Kennedy’s own life seemed to open the door to unity. And Kennedy felt assured that he would get a powerful seat at the table.

特朗普在宾夕法尼亚州巴特勒遇刺未遂后，两个阵营开始认真对话，刺杀的阴影也依然影响着肯尼迪自己的生活，这似乎为他们的结盟打开了大门。肯尼迪确信自己可以得到一个掌握实权的位置。

His power is now poised to grow. Some of Kennedy’s allies believe he will run for president again.

如今他的力量有望得到提升。肯尼迪的一些盟友相信，他会再次竞选总统。