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Robert F. Kennedy: The Case Reviewed
Our gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
RFK, University of Kansas, 3-18-67
RFK: Speeches of a Dream
The Crime Scene/Investigation
The Grand Illusion
"It sounded as if there was more than one gun being used at that point."
– Booker Griffin to the LAPD, 7/25/68.
The Grand Illusion
"My God, he had a gun and we let him go by."
– Joseph Klein, referring to a man leaving the pantry in the hurry while Sirhan was being subdued, to LAPD, 7/3/68.
The Grand Illusion
"The guy with the gun could have left. No one seemed to pay any attention."
– Darnell Johnson to LAPD, 7/24/68.
Lies and Lies and Even more lies
DiEugenio and Pease, The Assassinations, p. 588. It should be noted that Gizzi (Chairman of Youth for Kennedy) was actually in the company of six young girls who all supported her report. The girls had all been interviewed on June 6 by Ramparts detectives. However, an LAPD memo (apparently of August 5) instructed that all these persons were to be re-interviewed, informed that the Serrano story was false and offered a “tactful” opportunity to correct their statements. The memo goes on to record that each girl was re-interviewed “in the presence of their parents”.
Several of the girls (unnamed) retracted or qualified parts of their earlier remarks – although all of them still insisted that the individuals they had seen and reported stood out to them because of their behavior. And, and in particular, the young man’s clothing was very out of place. During the re-interview, the young woman were unable to identify a “new” mug shot of Sirhan as the person they had seen.
This summary LAPD memo states that various individuals interviewed during the investigation had made strong statements abut seeing Sirhan accompanied by other individuals. “However, each individual was re-interviewed in depth and has either retracted their statement after they have been proven false or have voluntarily modified their previous statements.”
The forgotten terrorist
Dan Moldea believes a rational answer can be found in reports about Republican Max Rafferty's party which was held in the same hotel that night. Apparently, as Moldea suggests, there had been considerable opportunity that night for alcohol - fueled friction between the thousands of liberal supporters of RFK and Alan Cranston and that of right-wing Max Rafferty supporters. An FBI report reveals how, on the night of the shooting, a group of young people had been handing out bumper stickers in the hotel lobby. They were reddish orange in color with black lettering. According to Ambassador Hotel Security Chief William F. Gardner the leaflets made reference to JFK's death. New York reporter Jimmy Breslin believes the sticker said, “Expose The Kennedy Death Hoax.” Dan Moldea argues this report is crucial as it shows how anti-Kennedy activists were at the Ambassador that night and may have been the source of the gleeful cries that Serrano said she heard.
Serrano may also have been witness to an innocent cry of “We [i.e. the American People] shot Kennedy”; a natural response reflecting the intense concern Americans had at that time to the growing senseless violence that had become a societal phenomenon during the 1960s.
Owen
Another strange story in the RFK case concerns Jerry Owen, the "Walking Bible." Owen himself went to authorities shortly after the assassination, with the story that he had happened to give Sirhan and another man a lift, and had subsequently gone to the Ambassador Hotel to collect $300 for a horse he was going to sell to Sirhan. Owen said he encountered there a blonde girl and two other men.
In the end, the LAPD determined that Owen, whose background of criminal violations included a conviction for arson in conjunction with a church building, was telling a tale. But why would he make up such a story?
Authors Bill Turner and Jonn Christian researched the Owen story and interviewed Bill Powers, a cowboy who ran Wild Bill's Stables less than a mile from where Owen lived. Powers told them that Owen had told him, before the assassination, about a horse trainer named Sirhan, and further that Powers had seen Sirhan in the back seat of Owen's car during a visit where Owen flashed large bills to pay off a pickup truck Powers had sold him.
If Owen knew Sirhan, was his story a pre-emptive cover story for meeting up at the Ambassador Hotel, possibly to supply a getaway vehicle?
The Theories
Did the CIA kill Bobby
Morales was a legendary figure in CIA covert operations. According to close associate Tom Clines, if you saw Morales walking down the street in a Latin American capital, you knew a coup was about to happen. When the subject of the Kennedys came up in a late-night session with friends in 1973, Morales launched into a tirade that finished: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." From this line grew my odyssey into the spook world of the 60s and the secrets behind the death of Bobby Kennedy.
We move to Washington to meet Wayne Smith, a state department official for 25 years who knew Morales well at the US embassy in Havana in 1959-60. When we show him the video in the ballroom, his response is instant: "That's him, that's Morales." He remembers Morales at a cocktail party in Buenos Aires in 1975, saying Kennedy got what was coming to him. Is there a benign explanation for his presence? For Kennedy's security, maybe? Smith laughs. Morales is the last person you would want to protect Bobby Kennedy, he says. He hated the Kennedys, blaming their lack of air support for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
Thane
Thane Eugene Cesar was a security guard assigned to keep the pantry area clear for Kennedy. As Kennedy walked through the pantry, Cesar was immediately behind him on his right side. Autopsy results and other analysis indicated that the shots that hit Kennedy came from a few inches away, hitting his right rear side, and were fired at a sharp upward angle. Cesar was behind Kennedy's right side, close enough to touch him. He said later that he crouched behind Kennedy as the shooting began. And he drew a gun that he had been carrying. By all known witness accounts, Sirhan was never closer to Kennedy than three feet, was always in front of Kennedy, and was firing in a straight line, not upward. However, Cesar passed a 1994 polygraph examination related to the possibility that he shot Kennedy.
My Theory/Closing Statements
Kennedy Speech
I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence their evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization -- black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love. For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States; we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black. So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate to ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
CIA document and page number: 190684, pp. 1, 4
Title: Outline of Special H Cases
Date: 7 January 1953
In a general request for volunteers [deleted names] volunteered for H [hypnosis] experimentation and were originally tested on 21 May 1951. Both girls, at this time, were nineteen years of age. These subjects have clearly demonstrated that they can pass from a fully awake state to a deep H controlled state via the telephone, via some very subtle signal that cannot be detected by other persons in the room, and without the other individuals being able to note the change.
It has been shown clearly that physically individuals can be induced into H by telephone, by receiving written matter, or by the use of code, signal, or words. Control of those hypnotized can be passed from one individual to another without great difficulty. It has also been shown by experimentation with these girls that they can act as unwilling couriers for information purposes, and that they can be conditioned to a point where they believe a change in identity on their part even on the polygraph.
including a young boy who apparently was behind the senator and taking pictures and video at the time (never recieved his pictures or video back and they were never used in the investigation).
For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.