ASSASSINATIONS AND THE NEWS MEDIA COVER-UP
Assassinations and Cover-up
WHO KILLED ROBERT KENNEDY?
Part Two
Convincing Evidence of Cover-up
Because the (autopsy) evidence also shows that Sirhan could not have been in back of Kennedy or close enough (one to three inches) to shoot him and create powder burns behind the ear, someone else actually murdered the senator.
With political assassinations, it has been a longtime standard operating procedure to establish the diversion of another shooter in order to take the spotlight off of the real culprits. In Dallas in 1963, someone fired diversionary shots from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, but the evidence proved it was not Lee Oswald (either of them. See Feb. 01 M/B). While James Earl Ray-handler "Raoul/Paul" (see May '01 M/B) emerged from the bathroom of the cheap hotel across the street from the Martin Luther King, Jr. murder scene, with the rifle in hand that Ray had purchased in Birmingham only days before, the testimony of three eyewitnesses showed that it was not Ray in the bathroom. When the alleged ANFO bomb went off in Oklahoma City, it was preceded by a few seconds by an enormous explosion inside the building. The truck bomb, whatever it was and there are still grave doubts as to whether any ANFO was even at the scene, was a diversionary tactic to place the spotlight on Tim McVeigh and away from the implosion inside the Murrah Building.
Sirhan was a participant in the RFK murder, probably unwittingly, as were Oswald, Ray, and McVeigh in some of the other government cover-ups.
In 1973, Investigative journalist Ted Charach produced the best evidence of the cover-up in Los Angeles with what is now a long-forgotten documentary film. Charach interviewed William W. Harper, a 68-year old Pasadena-based criminalist and firearms expert, whose testimony in hundreds of cases had been relied upon by both prosecutors and defense attorneys since the 1930s. In late 1970, Sirhan's defense attorneys enlisted Harper's aid to examine the bullets, trajectory, and other physical evidence entered at trial. Had Harper been called to examine and testify the previous year at the 1969 trial, his findings would have blown the case wide open.
His astounding evidence showed, with blow-ups of the microscopic ballistic printouts, that the bullets removed from Kennedy's body were not fired from the same gun that wounded the other five victims. Harper said without reservation that there was no way (because of the rear trajectory) that Sirhan could have inflicted any of the shots that hit Kennedy anyway. He left no doubt that two guns had been fired with near-simultaneous timing in the room that night.
Charach also proves with an interview with the District Attorney that a second .22 pistol was fired in the room that night and that it was introduced into evidence at trial by the prosecution, no less. LAPD criminologist DeWayne Wolfer testified under oath that he had personally test fired the weapon - an Iver Johnson .22 revolver with the serial number H-18602 - and had found it to be the weapon that had fired the bullets that had been removed from Kennedy's neck and several other victims.
However, the serial number on Sirhan's Iver Johnson weapon was H-53725, and not one member of the defense team caught it! In a complaint to the Attorney General later, Wolfer was accused of "suffering from a great inferiority complex for which he compensates by giving the police exactly what they need for a conviction. He casts objectivity to the winds and violates every basic tenet of forensic science and proof by becoming a crusading advocate. This is rationalized as being entirely legitimate since the accused is guilty anyway. . ."
When confronted with the discrepancy, District Attorney Joseph P. Busch, Jr. went behind closed doors for five months (after saying that he would look at the problem and have an answer in two weeks) before emerging at a press conference to say that Wolfer had made a clerical error. He had mistakenly officially listed (twice) the tested bullets as being fired from the wrong weapon, Busch claimed.
Further, when the serial number on the second weapon was checked at the Criminal Division of Investigation and Identification in Sacramento, the records showed that it had "been destroyed by LAPD in July of 1968" (prior to the trial). Later that date was changed in the Sacramento records to show "July of 1969," again because of a "clerical error." According to LAPD's property card, the Iver Johnson pistol H-18602 Had been originally booked as evidence for an earlier robbery case on March 18, 1967, more than a year before the murder of Robert Kennedy, and it had already been test-fired four days later by LAPD in connection with that prior investigation.
Busch, fast-talking and deceptive, claimed that LAPD had purposely gone to their gun bin and chosen a similar weapon to use in tests at the Ambassador because it would have taken a court order to obtain the Sirhan gun. In such a high-profile investigation, what's so hard about that? said the reporters privately. Dr. Thomas Noguchi said that the bullet fragments removed from Kennedy's head were too mutilated not only to test but to determine the precise caliber. Yes, it could have been a .38 but none on the other guns in the room that night were tested to see if they had been fired, including the .38 service revolver that Cesar admitted drawing.
KNXT-TV newsman Don Schulman not only confirmed that Cesar pulled his weapon but that he fired it. Schulman was pilloried by the judiciary and the press for years but has always stuck by his story. He also found his testimony to be altered by LAPD to reflect that he had not seen what he knows he saw. Three years later, KNXT ignored its own previous story and announced to its viewers that not only had Schulman never made such a report from the scene in 1968 but that he had not even been in the kitchen area at the time of the shooting.
And There is More
Herbert McDonald, Director of the Laboratory of Forensic Science in New York, was and still is world renowned for his ballistics testing and investigation of high profile cases. He had studied the evidence of the Sirhan case and came to this succinct conclusion: "The revolver taken from Sirhan, considering all of the physical factors, could not have been the one that fired the projectile removed from Robert Kennedy."
Amateur photographer Scott Enyart,15, was at the Ambassador with friends that night, more to be around the excitement than anything else. But when one of his young buddies swiped several "Press" badges, he and they began move where the action really was. He snapped a 36-shot roll film, mostly of Bobby and Ethel at the podium during the speech. However, his last ten photos were taken in the pantry at the Ambassador kitchen during the melee. Scott trailed the entourage by only 15 feet and held the camera high over his head, aiming at the senator. However, the young photographer would never learn exactly what his last ten pictures might have memorialized.
Immediately after the shooting, Scott was accosted, interrogated, held for a lengthy time by six LAPD cops, and ordered to surrender his film "as evidence." When he tried to retrieve it a year later, they had never heard of him. Finally, through the efforts of his father's lawyer, he was able to get 26 of his pictures returned. The ten from the assassination scene had disappeared, and no negatives were returned. In 1988, Enyart was informed that his pictures were likely among the group of 2,400 destroyed by LAPD immediately after the trial.
LAPD was stumbling all over itself. When Ted Charach and William Harper had clearly illustrated the plausibility of the second gun, District Attorney Joe Busch attacked the physical integrity of their investigation but continued to perpetuate the confusion by barring access to the evidence, thus denying Charach and Harper a chance to vindicate their claims.
However, the publicity they had raised did lead to a Los Angeles County Grand Jury inquiry in August of 1971. Charach and Harper and others testified in an attempt to prove that the evidence presented at Sirhan's trial was tampered with after the trial. The Deputy District Attorney John Howard, who had interrogated Sirhan two hours after the crime and stayed with the case all along, opened up with this stunning testimony:
"The gun was an eight-shot revolver and there were six casings inside, which indicated that there had been six bullets fired. So we had both the live bullets from the gun and the six casings, as I recall."
This, of course was an outright admission that more than one gun had been fired. But when they were confronted with it, Howard and Busch passed it off as "just another mistake." (It is not known whether or not they, along with Dewayne Wolfer, are now working for the FBI.) John Howard was soon promoted to Chief Deputy District Attorney.
At trial time, chief defense attorney Grant Cooper forfeited many times the opportunity for full disclosure and meaningful cross-examination by stipulating to vague facts and agreeing to just about anything short of the gas chamber for his client. For example (the trial transcript shows), talking about the fatal, fragmented bullet while Wolfer was on the witness stand, Cooper declared, "We will stipulate that these fragments did come from Senator Kennedy. We will further stipulate they came from the gun."
Moments later, Wolfer testified about one of the same bullets: "Because of the damage, I cannot say that it was fired from the same gun, that is Sirhan's gun," which publicly displayed how foolish Cooper's stipulation had been. Throughout the trial, it appeared that the burden of proof was on the defense rather than the prosecution. Thanks to the deficient defense, the State of California did not have to prove the crux of its case, and Sirhan did not get a fair trial.
Later in the trial proceedings, even Sirhan smelled the proverbial rat and stood up to say that he was firing his attorneys and demanding competent counsel. The trial judge ordered him to sit down, that he was not allowed to speak, and threatened to bind and gag him if he did not comply. His request was for new counsel was ignored.
Sirhan's attitude has recently changed from resigned to his own guilt to pursuit of the truth. At every parole hearing he ever had - up until the last one - he has apologized to the board with great remorse and always saying he still does not know why he did it. However, in 1999, undoubtedly after reading some of the evidence presented above, he pleaded for his release on the grounds that he had been "framed," but his parole was denied one more time.
What Really Happened?
Because LAPD and the infamous FIB (Federal Investigation Bureau) have suppressed so much evidence for so long, and in so many cases, the following scenario can only be submitted and accepted as speculation. However, it appears that Sirhan B. Sirhan was somehow pre-established as a diversionary patsy and that drugs and hypnotism aided in the setup. The evidence shows that even if he fired the .22 handgun all eight times, it would not equal the holes in bodies, walls, and ceiling. (Doors and ceiling panels mysteriously disappeared before and after trial.)
Not only do we have apparent duplicity on the part of the defense but a strong case could be made for complicity by LAPD prior to and after the fact.
A gun that had been under the control of LAPD over the previous year was documented twice by their expert as being the murder weapon. Perhaps it actually was. Then it was pulled out again for the tests in order to cement the frame of Sirhan. If this were the case, Dewayne Wolfer's "clerical error" then could have been that he wrote the correct serial number on the evidence envelope rather than the one he meant to - that number from Sirhan's revolver.
The behavior of the cops at the scene, with the illegal confiscation of film and the failure to confiscate all the guns on the scene for test-firing, indicates the potential for prior knowledge, as well.
A Never-mentioned Motive
The question always looms in an assassination case, what was the motive? And the answer always seems to be multiple choice. The Kennedys had been at war with the Mafia and the Teamsters, to mention only a couple of their numerous fronts. And not only did Bobby Kennedy make more political enemies in a much shorter career than did his brother Jack, he had an arrogant, abrasive way about him that provoked much more personal dislike. While the president's personality was warm and magnetic, Bobby's public image was far more likeable than his private one.
Longtime mob lawyer Frank Ragano brought the point home to this writer during a luncheon interview in Tampa two years before he died. As an attorney for Santos Trafficante, Carlos Marcello, and Sam Giancana at various times, Ragano was the natural choice for Jimmy Hoffa to hire in the early sixties to aid with the problems he was having with then-Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.
Hoffa harbored an enmity for Kennedy that was expanding by the hour. One morning in the Attorney General's Washington office in 1962, it was inflating by the mili-second. Hoffa and Ragano had a ten o'clock appointment with Kennedy to discuss a plea bargain. Kennedy was late. At 10:15, the secretary told them that she didn't know where her boss was but was sure that he would arrive shortly. At 10:30, as the two men sat cooling their heels, Ragano noticed Hoffa becoming more and more agitated as the big clock on the wall ticked away their morning. They had another appointment soon and had hoped to dispose of this one in short measure. Finally at almost eleven, Kennedy walked in with his Chihuahua on a leash, removed his overcoat and began to hang it on the clothes tree in the corner by the entrance.
"I'm sorry I am late, gentlemen," he said, "but I was walking my dog."
Hoffa went ballistic and sprang to his feet. "You !@#$%, selfish, arrogant %$#@!," Hoffa screamed and went for the throat. "You keep me waiting for an hour while you walk your !@#$% dog?" He choked Kennedy down to the floor, as Ragano and the secretary watched in horror. She yelled for help and Ragano, after he regained his composure and realized he was about to witness a murder, jumped in the pile in a futile attempt to pull the stout and burly union leader off of the greatly over-matched highest-ranking legal officer in the nation.
"I am convinced that Jimmy would have strangled him to death right there in his office, if one of the assistant A/Gs had not run out to help me pull him off," Ragano said. "He went absolutely berserk, and I could not stop him alone. Hoffa was strong. Bobby had about thirty seconds to live. Imagine those newspaper headlines!"
Needless to say that Frank Ragano did not pursue Hoffa's plea bargain delusions any further, but perhaps the point about Bobby Kennedy's aloof personality is made. Even his brother's widow Jackie, with whom Bobby had a brief affair in 1966, was quoted as saying about his ego: "I sometimes wish that Bobby, because he is so wonderful, had been an amoeba, and then he could have mated with himself."
The first thing a detective looks for in a murder investigation is "Who benefits?" Who gets the life insurance? Who gets the estate? Who gets the company? Who wins the most? These are all subsections under the column of "Motive."
While Jimmy Hoffa and other Bobby-haters certainly had the means to complete the operation, even from inside the prison gates, the greatest beneficiary to the death of Bobby Kennedy was Richard Nixon.
In November of that year, Nixon beat the second-best Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey by the second narrowest margin in history. Even the Republican diehards concede that he would not have made it against Bobby Kennedy. The handwriting was on the wall; Bobby Kennedy was about to become the next president. In five more months, Nixon was going to lose for the second time to a Kennedy.
Take that motive for whatever it is worth but before making a final decision, consider what happened four years later.
Nixon's character became evident at the end of his tenure ("Your President is not a crook") as he lied his way deeper and deeper into the trap. But the election events of 1972 reflected those of 1968 more than anyone wanted to realize.
In 1968, George Wallace had garnered ten million votes and was the prime reason Humphrey was able to keep it so close. Most Wallace votes would have gone to Nixon. In 1972, Wallace was threatening in the primaries to double that. It was beginning to appear that Governor Wallace would be the single de-railer of the Nixon train.
If Governor Wallace, the third party candidate, were to grab 20 million votes, it could throw the election into the House of Representatives, as it would prevent any candidate from having a majority. As it turned out, Nixon swamped the Democratic nominee George McGovern that November, carrying 49 states out of fifty. But Wallace was no longer in the race. With Wallace still in, and dividing the vote, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives might have handed the presidency to Democratic Senator George McGovern. The dismal prospects may have been greater than the Nixon camp was willing to face.
On May 15, 1972, the Alabama governor was shot by Arthur Bremer, following a campaign speech in a Laurel, Maryland shopping center parking lot. The attempted murder was as suspicious as the Robert Kennedy case four years earlier.
Bremer carried a five-shot, Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. Wallace was hit four times in the chest and abdomen. However, three other people were seriously wounded - a Secret Service Agent was hit in the neck, a female campaign worker in the leg, and Wallace's personal bodyguard, an Alabama Highway Patrol Captain, was shot through the abdomen. Once again, it fit the pattern of a much larger conspiracy by the simple fact that from a five-shot weapon seven bullets cannot fire.
Also once again, Richard Nixon was the greatest beneficiary of the power move. With Wallace no longer around to swallow up a large percentage of the conservative vote, Nixon won in a breezy landslide.
Was the power structure in 1968, that Unseen Hand, worried about a second "Camelot" arriving with the election of RFK? In any case, Nixon was never implicated. In both of the two high-profile crimes, no one else was either - except the two patsies, Sirhan and Bremer.