By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 17, 2001; Page A02

President Bush plans to name the Justice Department headquarters for former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy in a bipartisan gesture that will bring together two political dynasties for a ceremony on Tuesday, administration officials said yesterday.

Bush has developed an apparently deep friendship with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), and Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has often cited Robert Kennedy in speeches since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

Several Kennedy family members will join Bush as he signs an executive order in the Great Hall of the Justice Department building, which takes up the block between Pennsylvania and Constitution avenues and Ninth and 10th streets.

"The president, when he was governor of Texas, always was finding ways to reach out to Democrats," an administration official said. "This is part of that same tradition of honoring people over politics."

Tuesday will be the 76th anniversary of Kennedy's birth. That morning, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights will name the year's laureate of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Kennedy was appointed attorney general by President John F. Kennedy, his brother, in 1961. Robert Kennedy resigned in 1964 to run for the Senate in New York and was assassinated while running for president in 1968, at age 42.