A Lie Too Big to Fail

by Lisa Pease

  Charles Collier, who had photographed the pantry for Wolfer, photographed the autopsy as well. Years later, copies of these photos would inexplicably turn up in the possession of James Angleton, the CIA’s infamous 25-year counterintelligence chief.140

  The autopsy ended at 9:05 A.M.141 The official write-up of the autopsy, however, would not enter the record for many months, literally days before the trial was initially set to begin. The obvious reason for this appears to be that the autopsy results, as you will soon see, did not support the official story of events.

  Wolfer’s log for June 6, 1968, shows his shift ended twice that day: once at 4 P.M. and again at 1 A.M. the following morning. What happened in the interim to keep him there so late?

  Wolfer received the non-fatal bullet Noguchi had retrieved from Kennedy’s neck in good condition at 3:15 P.M., per his log. He had received the gun the day before. His next step was to do what any criminalist would do: ensure that the bullet he was handed came from the gun in custody. Wolfer fired test bullets from the gun recovered in the pantry. Although it is not noted in his log, we have to presume he attempted to make a match between the Kennedy bullet and the test bullet. Yet nowhere in his detailed log is such a comparison indicated. Wolfer clocked out at the end of his shift at 4 P.M.

  For some reason, Wolfer returned to the lab for a second session that night. The reason for his return was probably related to the next item in his log: his 9 P.M. “comparison of the Kennedy bullet and Goldstein bullets.” What he found was not noted in his log, nor is there mention in the log of a photograph comparing two bullets (called a photomicrograph, as it was taken through a type of a microscope) that was taken in his lab that night and deliberately kept secret for years. Whatever the reason, his activity around this entry kept Wolfer at the lab until 1 A.M.

  Seven years later, a panel of experts would uncover a deliberate deception in this photo. It would take many more years before one intrepid researcher would discover an additional layer of deception that even the experts had missed.

  On June 7, 1968, Deputy District Attorneys John Howard, Morio Fukuto, and John Miner brought witnesses before the Los Angeles County Grand Jury to tell the story of the assassination as they understood it to date, which wasn’t well.

  Kennedy’s death was the first topic. Miner asked Dr. Cuneo to point to the place where a bullet had entered Kennedy’s head. “The bullet entered approximately in the midportion of the right mastoid process, right—just in back of the right ear.”142

  Coroner Noguchi gave the specific cause of death as “gunshot wound of the right mastoid, penetrating the brain.” He also described two other gunshot wounds, neither of which would have proved fatal. Kennedy had been shot four times: three shots had entered his body, and a fourth shot had passed through his clothing.

  Noguchi numbered the shots “Gunshot Wound 1,” “Gunshot Wound 2” and “Gunshot Wound 3,” taking care to note that number was purely for identification purposes and was not intended to designate the actual shot order. A fourth shot to Kennedy, which passed through his coat but did not penetrate his body, was not discussed.

  The fatal shot, Gunshot Wound 1, entered behind Kennedy’s right ear. Gunshot Wound 2 entered the back of the right armpit, “and the Gunshot Wound 2 [sic] was also found very close, approximately—it’s about half inch below the Gunshot Wound Number 2,” Noguchi said, confusing the Foreman. Miner clarified that there were two separate wounds under the right armpit, within a half-inch of each other, e.g., the lower of which was being designated Gunshot Wound Number 3.

  Miner asked Noguchi to describe the path of the bullets through the body. Noguchi explained that the bullet in Gunshot Wound Number 2 penetrated tissue and muscle both in a “right to left direction” across Kennedy’s back and in an “upward, and back to front direction.” This bullet, which entered under the armpit, exited at the front of the right shoulder at a steep upward angle. The track of Gunshot Wound Number 3, Noguchi stated, was “almost parallel … to the Gunshot Wound Number 2 pathway,” except that this bullet “was found lodged in the area called the sixth cervical vertebra and slightly to the right … at midline, the lower portion of the back of the neck.” This was the bullet Noguchi had marked and given to the police.

  Miner handed Noguchi Grand Jury Exhibit 5-A, an evidence envelope which carried a bullet. Noguchi examined the bullet and confirmed this was the bullet he had personally pulled from Kennedy’s neck. Miner asked how Noguchi could tell it was the same bullet.

  “Well, I placed my identifying mark, T.N., my initials, and [the] last number of a Medical Examiner Coroner’s Case Number 68-5731 so I placed ‘31,’—it is very clearly visible on the base of this bullet,” Noguchi explained.

  Under Miner’s questioning, Noguchi explained it was “unlikely” that the bullet retrieved from Kennedy’s neck had caused Kennedy’s death. Bullet fragments had been recovered from the fatal wound, where the bullet had entered from an inch behind the right ear and shattered inside Kennedy’s brain. This was the fatal shot. Noguchi described seeing “blackening discoloration, indicating what we call powder tattooing and still grayish black powder deposited on the surface of the edge of the right ear, and this was about one inch in longest dimension.”

  Miner said he had no further questions. But a juror did, and evidently the wording of the juror’s question, which does not appear in the transcript, caused Miner some concern, for Miner interceded.

  “Before we look at the Grand Juror’s question, Mr. Foreman, may I reopen my examination of this witness?” Miner asked. The Foreman consented.

  Miner asked Noguchi, “Do you have any opinion as to what might have been the distance from which that bullet was fired?”

  Noguchi qualified his response first by saying he had not been able to fire the gun, but “the position of the tattooing and the powder on the edge of the right ear indicate that the … muzzle distance was … very, very close.” Miner pressed him for the maximum distance the gun muzzle could have been to produce those patterns. “I don’t think it will be more than two or three inches from the edge of the right ear,” Noguchi said, but he added that he would like to study this further before answering it definitively.

  “I think that the question—one question asked by a Grand Juror was answered,” Miner said. After an additional question, Noguchi was dismissed.

  Something must have nagged at Miner, however, because he followed Noguchi into the hall and asked him had he meant inches or feet, regarding Kennedy’s head wound. If Noguchi had misspoken, Miner indicated, Noguchi might want to change his testimony.

  “My goodness, it’s an inch, not feet, because of the black powder behind the ear,” Noguchi responded.143 Miner didn’t press the matter. But the fact that Miner asked the question suggests that Miner understood the significance of the autopsy evidence: none of the witnesses had put Sirhan close enough to have fired a shot from that close a range.144 Years later, at a 1974 hearing, Noguchi noted that he didn’t have to concern himself with witness testimony—only the physical evidence.145

  Noguchi was smart enough to understand he had better be able to back up his assertion with harder proof. That afternoon, while the Grand Jury proceedings were still continuing, Noguchi surprised a lab technician with a request for seven pigs’ ears.

  On June 10, Noguchi had lab technicians attach the pigs’ ears to muslin-covered “skulls,” which were then fired upon by an LAPD officer at the Police Academy on June 11.146 He found an exact match to the powder pattern on Kennedy’s head at one position, proving the gun muzzle must have been “one inch from the edge of his right ear and three inches behind the head.”147

  At 10 A.M. on June 7, not far from the room where the Grand Jury sat, U.S. Attorney William Matthew Byrne, Jr. hosted a high-powered interagency meeting.

  Several of the government officials involved in this meeting would go on to fame and fortune. In addition to Inspector Powers and a couple of deputy chiefs from the LAPD as well as William Lynch,
head of the Criminal Division under U.S. Attorney General Clark, Byrne met with Warren Christopher, then the Deputy Attorney General under U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and later Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter; and Chief Deputy District Attorney Lynn D. “Buck” Compton, who was later appointed to the Second District Court of Appeals by then-Governor Ronald Reagan, and whose World War II exploits as part of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division were immortalized in the HBO series Band of Brothers. Byrne himself later presided over the Daniel Ellsberg trial regarding the leaked Pentagon Papers, two years after having been appointed as a judge to the U.S. Federal Court.

  Also at the meeting was Evelle Younger, the Los Angeles District Attorney. Earlier in his career, Younger had run the FBI’s National Defense section before being “co-opted by the Counterintelligence Branch of OSS for service in the Far East.”148 The OSS was the forerunner to the CIA. Curiously, John Garrett “Gary” Underhill, an OSS small arms expert who had done “special assignments” for the CIA, blamed the CIA’s “Far East section” for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Underhill died in a “suicide” that appeared to be a murder.149 The CIA did admit to planning assassination plots in the Far East against the Chinese leader Chou En-lai,150 Indonesia’s leader Achmed Sukarno,151 and Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.152 Desmond Fitzgerald had run the CIA’s Far East Division from 1957 to 1962, after which he headed up the Cuban Task Force which was tasked by President Kennedy to find a way to overthrow, but not kill, Castro, a point we’ll return to much later.

  Byrne’s group discussed jurisdictional responsibilities of their respective agencies, how information would be exchanged among agencies, and “ramifications in investigations which might engulf areas of the Mid-East.”153

  What ramifications did they fear? One year earlier, Egypt and Israel had been gripped in what became known as the “Six-Day War.” And just as the Cuban Missile Crisis, one year before President Kennedy’s assassination, had almost led to nuclear war, the Arab-Israeli conflict, one year before Robert Kennedy’s assassination, almost turned nuclear as well.154

  One year to the day before Robert Kennedy was shot, Israel had launched a preemptive strike against what they asserted was the threat of imminent attack by Arab forces from Egypt, Syria and Jordan. The popular young Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser had expelled UN advisors from the Suez Canal zone in May 1967. Israel read that as preparation for an attack on Israel, so Israel struck first. In preparation for their attack, Israel had also attacked the American intelligence ship U.S.S. Liberty, professing not to see the American flags it was flying nor the clear markings that it was an American vessel. The Israelis quickly struck against Egyptian air forces, crippling their ability to respond. Israel then seized control of the Golan Heights, Sinai Peninsula, and the Gaza Strip. The Soviets immediately threatened the U.S. that if it did not pressure Israel to immediately cease military actions, the Soviets would attack Israel.155 Israel, for its part, was hurriedly trying to complete the building of its first nuclear weapon.156 By 1968, President Johnson may well have feared that discovering some sort of Arab-led conspiracy might have led to a nuclear conflict in the Middle East.

  After President Kennedy’s assassination, when evidence surfaced suggesting (falsely) that Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist, President Johnson told the Warren Commission (which should have been named the Dulles Commission, after its most active member, the deposed CIA chief Allen Dulles) that he didn’t want to find a conspiracy that might lead to war with the Soviet Union. If any of the participants in Byrne’s meeting willingly participated in a cover-up of aspects of conspiracy, it’s possible a similar inducement was provided, that blaming the Arabs might lead to a nuclear confrontation in the Middle East.

  At the end of this meeting, a second meeting was scheduled, to include Chief Houghton, DeWayne Wolfer, and others, for June 9.

  Back at the courthouse, Officer Travis White described to the Grand Jury entering the pantry at the direction of people in the hotel and seeing eight to ten people holding down a suspect on a steam table. He guessed there had been between 75 to 100 people in the pantry when he entered.

  Although it took several people to subdue the suspect in the pantry, Officer White said the suspect gave them no trouble at all once they got to him, and he did not struggle when they put the handcuffs on.

  The first shooting witness to testify was 17-year-old Irwin Stroll, who appeared in a wheelchair, as he was still recovering from the gunshot wound to his left leg. Irwin had been asked to guard the northernmost of the two swinging doors at the west of the pantry. Sergeant Albert La Vallee had earlier introduced into evidence a diagram showing the layout of the pantry he had made in his official capacity as the officer in charge of the Survey Unit in the Scientific Investigation Division (SID). Howard had Irwin show the Jurors where he had been standing, the northwest door of the pantry, and marked his location S-1. A security guard covered the southernmost of the two swinging doors, marked S-2.

  Irwin was just outside the northwest pantry door as Kennedy and his party came through. Two press people beat him to the door. As he followed them into the pantry, he heard something “like firecrackers, just pop, pop, pop, all over the place—and smoke.” He pushed Ethel Kennedy to the floor and covered her. He felt “a kick in the knee” but then saw blood, and realized he had been shot. He didn’t see the shooter.

  Other pantry witnesses followed. Jesus Perez was so nervous on the stand that Deputy D.A. Fukuto asked him to “relax a bit.” Perez identified a picture of Sirhan as the person he had talked to about half an hour before the shooting. Sirhan had asked Perez three or four times if Kennedy would be coming through that area. Perez had been near the first steam table on the western end, and Sirhan had come and gone from that position.

  Vincent DiPierro testified that he had stayed at S-2, the southern door at the west end of the pantry, right next to where Stroll was standing. Howard asked if DiPierro had seen a “young chap there though at that time, like a guard,” because Stroll had described talking to a guard there.

  “Yes, he had glasses. I recall he was wearing glasses, dark-rimmed glasses.” When the Senator came through on his way to speak, this person asked DiPierro to help hold people back.

  When Kennedy returned to those doors after his speech, roughly 15 minutes later, DiPierro followed him into the pantry. The Kennedy party walked through door S-1, which was propped open and which opened from the pantry into the hallway between the stage and pantry area. DiPierro pushed through door S-2, which opened from the hallway into the pantry. He was about five feet from Kennedy when DiPierro reached the ice machine. There, he noticed “a girl and the accused person standing on…a tray stacker.… Whether or not the second person was involved, I don’t know.”

  DiPierro described that the tray stacker was “four or six inches off the ground.”

  “If I stood on it, I’d have a six-inch height advantage?” Howard asked.

  “Yes, sir, you would.” Even if there were trays on the stand, because the trays were oval, DiPierro explained, one could still get a foothold.

  DiPierro told the jury that the only reason he noticed Sirhan was because “there was a very good-looking girl next to him.” Howard asked why he noticed “the fellow” next to the girl. “Because he was grabbing on with his left hand … [to] part of the tray holder. … he looked as though he was clutching his stomach, as though somebody had … elbowed him.” DiPierro said Sirhan was in a “semi-crouched” position.

  “From that moment on, I just looked at the girl, and I saw him get down off the tray stand. And when I went to turn, the next thing I saw was him holding a gun. He kind of moved around Mr. Uecker … He kind of motioned around him and stuck the gun straight out, and nobody could move. It was—you were just frozen; you didn’t know what to do.

  “And then I saw the first powdering or plastering. When he pulled the trigger, the first shot, Mr. Kennedy fell down.”

  “How c
lose to the Senator was the suspect when this gun started firing?” Howard asked.

  “Four feet—four to six feet.” DiPierro added that he thought the suspect must have been “on his tiptoes” to shoot around Mr. Uecker, who was “quite huge.” DiPierro heard five shots but acknowledged there could have been more. He got blood all over his face and glasses. “And then the man that got shot in the head fell in my arms,” he said, referring to Paul Schrade. “And then the other boy that got shot in the thigh [Ira Goldstein], he fell on top of me, and they pushed me down, they fell on top of me.”

  Asked if he had seen what happened to the Senator before DiPierro himself fell, DiPierro said, “The first shot, he kind of reared back very, very sharply. … Both hands went up like that,” he said, matching what other witnesses had described or would soon describe, of how Kennedy threw his hands up to shield his face at the time of the shooting.

  Asked to describe the suspect’s post-shooting behavior, DiPierro said, “Well, the suspect turned almost immediately … he was trying to escape. He tried very, very hard to get away.”

  Howard showed DiPierro Grand Jury Exhibit 7, the gun retrieved in the pantry, and asked if that was the gun he remembered. “The same gun,” DiPierro said, adding, “the reason is it had the funny little corkscrew here.”

  “That is in front of the gun, below the barrel?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s the same thing I saw.”

  DiPierro described the shot sequence: “The first shot was definitely a distinct shot. I mean, it was a pause in between the next three. It was three rapid ones that were fired. The first one I saw, you know, I was stunned after that.”

  Howard brought DiPierro back to the girl he had seen with Sirhan. Howard asked if DiPierro could identify her if he saw her again.

  “I would never forget what she looked like because she had a very good-looking figure—and the dress was kind of—kind of lousy … It looked as though it was a white dress and it had either black or dark purple polka dots on it.