by Lisa Pease
None of this means Wolfer was directly or even indirectly involved in any conspiracy to kill Kennedy or that had any idea who the actual conspirators were. It could simply have meant he saw gaps and felt the need to improvise to smooth the police’s way to a speedy conviction of the only identified shooter. However, an alternate possibility cannot be ruled out: that conspirators planned the assassination in Los Angeles because they knew they had a trusted contact in DeWayne Wolfer.
Similarly, it’s hard to believe FBI agent Nolan didn’t know by this time that a photographic supervisor and photographer from the FBI had already captioned their photographs of the doorframe holes in the pantry as “bullet holes.” It strains credulity that Nolan would attend a meeting as the official FBI representative without having informed himself as to the core evidence uncovered to date.
Another meeting participant who had reason to believe there was more than one shooter was Deputy District Attorney John Miner. When Wolfer mentioned to the group that the shot that killed Kennedy had to have been fired from “less than one inch” from Kennedy’s head, Miner confirmed Wolfer’s conclusions. But what Miner didn’t say, even though he apparently understood, was that no witness had put Sirhan close enough to Kennedy to have fired those shots. Remember how at the Grand Jury hearing, Miner had asked Noguchi if he’d change his testimony to say feet, not inches. Such a change would have brought Noguchi’s testimony in line with that of the pantry witnesses. Miner clearly understood this was an issue. But there is no evidence that Miner brought this issue to the attention of the meeting participants.173 Miner, too, seemed not to want to raise any evidence that could prove a conspiracy had been at work.
Why would anyone want to hide evidence of conspiracy? There are innocent and sinister answers to that question. Consider the simplest one: it’s much easier to prosecute a single person for a crime than multiple individuals. And only one person had been arrested. Did the LAPD or D.A.’s office want to look incompetent, letting other conspirators go free? It was simply easier to ignore or hide evidence of multiple shooters. For whatever reasons, innocent or sinister, that, as we will see, is what the LAPD and D.A.’s office did in this case.
Similarly, Sirhan’s legal representatives weren’t interested in finding out whether Sirhan acted with others. And Sirhan, for his part, proposed no alternative. He had no conscious memory of events in the pantry. He named no co-conspirators. In the absence of a memory to the contrary, Sirhan accepted what he was told: that he had fired a gun in the pantry and killed Kennedy. As one of his original defense team members would say to me years later, how could a lawyer hope to save his client’s life by arguing he had participated in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy?174 The easier argument was to assert that Sirhan was experiencing some sort of temporary insanity.
What about the FBI? Wouldn’t it have been an impartial party? Not necessarily. For example, when the FBI traced the ammunition used in the assassination of President Kennedy to a batch ordered by the U.S. Marine Corps for weapons that the Marine Corps did not possess, an FBI agent’s memo said that fact gave rise to the “obvious speculation that it is a contract placed by the CIA with Western under a USMC cover for concealment purposes.”175 The FBI never told the public this. The document describing this part of the story was only released as part of a broad FBI dump of files related to the Kennedy assassination many years later, where it has remained largely invisible.
The media, too, largely avoided suggestions of conspiracy. For one, little of the vast evidence of conspiracy was known at the time. But there was another reason as well. A little over a year earlier, the CIA had sent a dispatch to its media assets at home and worldwide encouraging the framing of any conspiracy evidence in President Kennedy’s assassination as a “conspiracy theory,” as if a conspiracy could never be real, but only ever a theory, and laying out alternate explanations to use instead. These explanations (such as that people couldn’t keep something so big a secret, for example) are still echoed in the media coverage of both Kennedy assassinations at the time of this writing.176 (It’s worth noting one would not be allowed to work for the CIA unless one could keep such big secrets for life.)
Truly, there wasn’t a single official investigator in this case or mainstream media spokesperson who had a motive to find a conspiracy, and many motives not to find one. That, by far, is the simplest explanation for what happened next, as a general rule. In other words, you don’t need to believe that any of the people who covered up evidence of conspiracy were part of the conspiracy or had any idea whose conspiracy they were covering up. It was simply not in their best interests to find a conspiracy. It’s important to understand that mindset from the outset. People will rarely find what is inconvenient for them to discover, even when it’s staring them in the face.
That said, it’s important to look specifically at what was buried or deliberately misrepresented, and by whom. For a few individuals, these innocent explanations may no longer suffice.
In the June 9 interagency meeting, Wolfer claimed that at least three of the victim’s bullets “definitely” came from Sirhan’s gun:
[W]e have three bullets that definitely come [sic] from the gun taken from Sirhan, one from Kennedy’s sixth cervical vertebra, one from Goldstein and one from Weisel. At this point I can’t be too sure about the rest of the ballistic evidence. We have bullet fragments from Kennedy’s head, but right now all I can say for sure is that they’re mini-mag [sic] brand ammunition—the same kind Sirhan is supposed to have bought, and the kind that’s in the other victims.177
This comment was, like so many others of Wolfer’s, disingenuous. Wolfer kept a log of his various tests and examinations. Nowhere in his detailed log does he mention comparing bullets taken from Kennedy or any victim to bullets test-fired from Sirhan’s gun. The omission, if indeed there was such a test, is bizarre in light of how acutely aware Wolfer was that the record would likely be examined in the years to come. And it’s difficult to argue that Wolfer was simply sloppy, given how meticulously he recorded other events that transpired. How could he simply have forgotten to record the most important evidence of all?
Wolfer also appeared to be, at best, confused when he stated that bullet “fragments” removed from Evans’ head were of the same “Mini-Mag” ammunition that had fragmented in Kennedy’s brain. While the evidence log reports “fragments” were recovered, a surprising number of records referred to the Evans “bullet,” not “fragments.” An FBI report refers to the “bullet,” not fragments, taken from Evans’ head. A Pasadena Police report indicates “The bullet entered the scalp of the forehead, just below the hairline … X-rays indicate that the bullet flattened itself against the skull. … [the doctor] decided to leave the bullet in the scalp and have a surgeon remove it later….”178 Dr. John Garner, who retrieved the “bullet,” gave it to “Lt. M. K. King” of the Pasadena Police Department.179 Evans herself later sought the “bullet” for a souvenir. Wolfer even contradicted himself on this point: his official report on the bullets stated that a bullet, not fragments, had been recovered from Evans’ head.
The FBI report added a twist as well: “The bullet causing the wound to Mrs. Elizabeth Evans cannot be entered into evidence as continuity of the bullet [i.e., the chain of possession] has been lost.”180 Had the chain of possession truly been “lost,” indicating extreme sloppiness in the most important case the LAPD had ever investigated? Or had the chain of possession deliberately been broken to prevent the Evans bullet from being examined? If the Evans bullet had been of a different ammunition type than the bullet retrieved from Kennedy’s body, that would also have been strong evidence that two gunmen had been firing in the pantry and reason enough to swap the “bullet” with “fragments,” thereby preventing future bullet comparisons.
Shortly after the interagency meeting, the LAPD began constructing a separate unit, initially dubbed “Special Operation Senator” to investigate the assassination. Captain Brown was asked to assign two lieutenants to head the
group. Within two days, the unit would be renamed “Special Unit Senator,” (SUS) perhaps because the term “special operation” has often been used to denote an intelligence operation.
Houghton “specifically recommended” only one person to Captain Brown: Manny Pena.181 Why did Houghton want Pena there so badly?
Lieutenant Manual Pena had been a member of the LAPD for 22 years. He taught criminal investigation at a local college. Pena was trilingual in English, French and Spanish, and “had connections with various intelligence agencies in several countries.”182 Ironically, Pena had some peripheral involvement with the investigation into the assassination of President John Kennedy, specifically regarding the ordering of the sight on the rifle that Oswald had allegedly used to assassinate President Kennedy.183
Despite his apparent qualifications, Pena was an odd choice, as he had retired in 1967 in a publicly reported ceremony at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in the San Fernando Valley in 1967. According to an article in the San Fernando Valley Times,
Pena retired from the police force to advance his career. He has accepted a position with the Agency for International Development Office of the State Department. As a public safety officer, he will train and advise foreign police forces in investigative and administrative matters. After nine weeks of training and orientation, he will be assigned to his post, possibly a Latin American country, judging by the fact that he speaks Spanish fluently.184
During the Senate (“Church Committee”) and House (“Pike Committee”) investigations into the CIA’s domestic and foreign activities, we learned that the Agency for International Development (AID) often served as a front for CIA activities and officers. FBI agent Roger “Frenchy” LaJeunesse, a Los Angeles FBI agent deeply involved in the KENSALT assassination investigation, told his friend and former FBI agent Bill Turner that Pena had gone to a “‘special training unit’ at a CIA base in Virginia,” and that Pena had “done CIA special assignments for a decade, mostly under AID cover.” Pena’s own brother told reporter Stan Bohrman that Manny was proud of his service to the CIA.185
When Betsy Langman, an actor and journalist who later married writer Budd Schulberg, asked Pena in 1977 if AID was connected to the CIA, Pena told her, “not to my knowledge.”186 Given how public the knowledge was that AID provided cover to CIA activities by that time, and given Pena’s work for them, Pena’s answer is simply not credible, unless he was, in fact, working for the CIA. If he were a CIA employee or contract agent, that is what he would have had to say. All CIA employees and agents must sign a secrecy agreement in which they promise never to divulge their work for the agency or any of the agency’s secrets. If they violate this oath, they can be stripped of all retirement benefits, fined and even prosecuted. One CIA insider, E. Howard Hunt, notorious for his role in the Watergate affair, even said the CIA had an assassination team that ended the life of CIA employees who gave away CIA secrets.187 If anyone can keep a secret forever, it’s a CIA employee or asset. If they couldn’t, they wouldn’t be employed there.
For whatever reason, Pena’s stint with AID was cut short. Fernando Faura, a local journalist on the police beat, asked him why he had returned when he saw him back at the LAPD after the assassination. Pena told him the job wasn’t what he had hoped it would be.188 Pena denied in later years that his return to the LAPD had anything to do with Robert Kennedy’s assassination. The problem there is, if he had come back to help the CIA in some way regarding the assassination, he would have said the same thing. He would never have been allowed to admit to his CIA work without violating his secrecy oath, so his denial isn’t useful evidence. The man who would function as Pena’s close partner on Special Unit Senator, Sergeant Enrique “Hank” Hernandez, also had ties to the CIA and was involved in their police training activities in Latin America.189
While Pena and Hernandez were getting started with the newly formed Special Unit Senator (SUS), Sandra Serrano and Vincent DiPierro were brought, separately, to the LAPD to look at a set of polka dot dresses the LAPD had purchased. Each was to identify the dress that most closely matched the dress of the girl each had seen with Sirhan. DiPierro remembered the dress as being “form-fitting” with a “wide collar” and Serrano recalled the dress was “A-line” (fitted at the top but looser at the bottom) with a “bib collar.” Serrano remembered the sleeves as being ¾-length (mid-forearm) but DiPierro thought the sleeves were shorter. Serrano picked out dresses three and six as being the most similar to the dress she had seen. DiPierro picked out dresses four and seven.
The LAPD would later make a big deal of the differences between their identifications. But since none of the dresses were an exact match, it makes sense that the witnesses would not necessarily agree on which dress was the most similar. But both said that the dress was white with dark polka dots, form-fitted on the top, with a bib-like collar and sleeves. In addition, both would tell the authorities, in different words, that the girl had a “very shapely” (Serrano) or “good” (DiPierro) figure and a “turned-up” (Serrano) or “pug”190 (DiPierro) nose. They both described the girl as a Caucasian with brunette hair in her mid-twenties. And both described her in the company of someone whose description matched Sirhan’s.
After this session, Serrano was taken back to the hotel by FBI Special Agent Richard Burris, Deputy D.A. John Howard and Dan Johnson, another Deputy D.A. She was shown the stage area where Kennedy had spoken, and then shown the route Kennedy had taken to enter the pantry. They informed her there were some 1,100 people in the room between where she had been sitting and where the shooting had occurred and told her the distance was about 170 feet. They then mentioned that she had reportedly heard six gunshots, a few seconds after which a girl in a polka dot dress ran out saying “We shot him.” Burris then asked if she still felt she had heard gunshots. Serrano replied “she had never heard a gunshot in her life and never claimed she heard gunshots,” a true statement.
Burris told Serrano the FBI had interviewed her mother and that her mother had said Serrano hadn’t mentioned anyone connected with the shooting. Serrano told Burris she “always had difficulty communicating with her mother” and that she had asked to talk to her father, but that her father was too upset over the shooting and didn’t want to talk.
Had Burris reviewed her statements, he would have realized that Serrano wasn’t even convinced when she called her mother that Kennedy had been shot, but that she had heard confirmation of that while on the call, at which point Serrano promptly ended the call.
Burris then asked why in her television interview she hadn’t mentioned seeing the same woman who ran down the stairs going up the stairs with Sirhan. “It was pointed out to her that the fact that she claimed one of the men going up the stairs was Sirhan Sirhan was the most significant part of the incident described by her.”
Serrano then accused the people present of lying and trying to trick her. As Professor Phil Melanson wrote later, “Either Burris and his colleagues woefully misunderstood the sequence of events, or they actually were trying to trick her. Miss Serrano had not witnessed Sirhan’s arrest and his picture had not yet been flashed on TV when she went briefly on camera with NBC.”191 She did not, at the point of her TV interview, understand the significance of the third man. And she did mention the third person in her earliest official interview, at 2:35 A.M., shortly after that broadcast and before she ever saw a photo or video of Sirhan. She accurately described his clothes before having been shown his picture.
John Howard then asked if she would take a polygraph. She said she would, and Howard then asked her to reenact what happened on video “to avoid any misunderstanding on anyone’s part on what she claimed to have seen.” Serrano agreed under one condition: that someone not connected with the investigation be present as a witness. By the end of the video, Serrano was “very upset” and “could not continue and requested to be taken home.” Unfortunately, this video appears to have disappeared from the record.192
Ironically, that same day, John Ambrose,
the Deputy D.A. whom Serrano had talked to before her on-air interview, gave statements separately to the LAPD and FBI, in which he recounted to both how Serrano had told him she had seen a young man in a gold sweater and a girl in a polka dot dress run by with the girl yelling, “We shot him.” He mentioned that he had contacted Rampart detectives and left a message about how another witness had also mentioned seeing a girl in a polka dot dress but that no one had ever called Ambrose back for the details. He closed his statement by adding that “Sandra Serrano impressed me as a very sincere girl who had been a dedicated Kennedy fan, not interested in publicity in any way.”193
Ambrose wasn’t the only one vouching for Serrano. Another volunteer for Kennedy’s campaign who had known Serrano for some time described her as “a reliable, level-headed” and “responsible person.”194
The next day, Serrano called Burris at the L.A. FBI office. She had been contacted by someone claiming to be FBI, and she wanted to know if it was a legitimate contact. She also advised that she had changed her phone number and that any further contact should go through one of two attorneys she had lined up to support her.
On June 11, Houghton went on a self-described covert mission to Sacramento “ostensibly to testify before the Criminal Procedures Committee on Senate Bill 203 [but] actually, to interview and solicit the cooperation of key people of State Government in connection with the Kennedy investigation.”195 There, Houghton met with several who would rise to enormous positions of power in later years.
One was Edwin Meese, the legal advisor to California Governor Ronald Reagan. Meese told Houghton, confidentially, that all the resources of the Governor would be made available to the LAPD. Meese would later be investigated on charges that he deliberately covered up President Ronald Reagan’s involvement in the Iran-Contra affair. Reagan himself would, in a few years, be a member of the Rockefeller Commission, formed by President Gerald Ford (a former member of the Warren Commission, who later received CIA funding during his Congressional career196) to investigate the CIA’s illegal domestic activities.197 The media charged the panel was so loaded with CIA friendlies that the commission would produce nothing more than a “whitewash,” a prediction that essentially came true. It was Congress’ lack of confidence in the independence of the members of the Rockefeller Commission that caused the Senate and House to form their own separate investigations of the CIA.