by Lisa Pease
The Wenke panel members noted a pronounced “defect” in Sirhan’s gun barrel and saw a “similar” defect in the bullets produced, but the more minute markings were different. For these reasons, I’m inclined to believe the victim bullets were “forged” using gun H58725. As noted earlier, given the presence of three identical numbers in the serial number, “725” may have represented the coded date of manufacture. If true, then Sirhan’s gun (H53725) and the mystery gun (H58725) could have been only five guns apart coming off the manufacturing line. If there were a defect in the barrel of one gun, the defect may have persisted across a few barrels in sequence, making it an ideal candidate for forging fake victim bullets.
If that were the case, using the H58725 gun in court would have helped Wolfer, because he would have been telling the truth when he said the bullets came from that gun and no other. It would explain why the prosecution had Uecker, who only saw the gun during the struggle, identify the serial number as being correct in court rather than Rafer Johnson, who had the gun in his personal possession before turning it over to the police. It could also mean Wolfer was telling the truth when he said he belatedly asked for the Sirhan gun and was given the wrong gun number. Maybe he really didn’t have gun H18602 until June 10. Maybe the number on both sets of test bullet envelopes should have read H58725!
If Wolfer was this smart and this foresighted, someone might ask, why didn’t he forge the bullet markings on the bases to match? Perhaps he saw no need. After all, in the five years since John Kennedy had been killed, not one researcher had publicly challenged whether the markings on the bullet in evidence as CE 399, the so-called “magic” bullet said to have passed through Kennedy and Johnson while remaining nearly pristine, matched the markings of the bullet as it had originally been logged into custody. It wasn’t until decades later that researchers started checking the chain of possession on that bullet and found that the bullet in evidence in the JFK case, too, appeared to have been substituted.354
That said, had Wolfer tried to match up the markings, a flip through the evidence log would have shown the marking for only one of the three bullets. There was no indication in the evidence log of the marking on the Kennedy neck bullet or the Goldstein bullet, but there was a marking for the Weisel bullet listed: LMO. That’s the only bullet today that has the marking indicated in the original record, but as you just saw, that’s likely because the bullet was switched before it was entered into the log.
Nailing down exactly who knew about problems with the bullet evidence is problematic, but it’s clear that someone knew there was an issue with the sheer number of bullets recovered in this case. The Goldstein bullet’s evidence sheet has “CONFIDENTIAL” stamped in large letters across the bottom of it. That inscription only appears on two of the log pages—the Goldstein bullet page and the page for item 106, four live rounds of “Super X” ammunition found at the site of Kennedy’s speech at Valley College on May 28, 1968, where “CONFIDENTIAL” was handwritten across the bottom in large letters. Perhaps the LAPD kept all bullet evidence “confidential” until they could figure out how many bullets they had to account for, disappearing any that put the total over the eight bullets Sirhan’s gun was capable of firing.
The Goldstein bullet might prove this hypothesis correct. It was initially logged as evidence item 1, as shown by Wolfer’s log. At 1:45 P.M. in Wolfer’s log, we find this entry: “Item 1 – 22 cal. slug (Goldstein).” Why, then, in the master evidence log, does the Goldstein item appear as item 113? The log sheet shows clearly this evidence was taken into custody just hours after the shooting, at 4 A.M. on June 5 and received into evidence June 5, 1968 at 5:20 A.M. By rights, this evidence should have been given a much higher log entry. The Kennedy bullet went to the property division first, where it was logged and then given to Wolfer. But the Goldstein bullet appears to have been deliberately kept from the record initially, perhaps because so many bullet holes were found at the scene and initially, the total number of bullets hadn’t even been pulled out of bodies yet. Maybe someone knew that recording any of the bullets until all of them could be accounted for could present a problem.
This could explain how other bullets, such as the one the police told a reporter had been recovered from the pantry doorframe, disappeared from the record. Maybe that bullet had been on a sheet also marked Confidential, and ultimately disposed of when the number of bullets found equaled eight. The press had reported that Goldstein had been shot and that a bullet had been recovered, so the Goldstein bullet could not remain hidden. The four found at the scene of Valley College didn’t damage the official story so those didn’t need to stay hidden either. But any bullets recovered from the ceiling, walls or doorframes in the pantry would have had to have been kept from the record to keep the bullet count down to eight. That would also explain the delay in the Weisel bullet making it into the official log. It’s very possible other bullets were recovered and kept separate on confidential sheets, only to be disposed of when the already-made-public bullet count reached eight.
There’s a reason the truth about convoluted matters rarely surfaces. Too few people research cases this closely, and the authorities have worked hard to stay ahead of the revelations so they can find some new “explanation” to wave it away. It’s taken me years to find, evaluate, and understand this evidence. Now that this information is being made public, will the media have the guts to report it? Will the LAPD give the case a new investigation? Will Los Angeles County?
I doubt it, after the Kranz Report. The Kranz Report proved that the lies in the Robert Kennedy assassination had become too big to fail, and that any explanation, no matter how insubstantial, would do where the truth could not be told.
After District Attorney Busch died unexpectedly in office in mid-July 1975 at the age of 49, private attorney Thomas F. Kranz approached then acting District Attorney John Howard and said he had always had some concerns about the Robert Kennedy case, and he would like to seek appointment to the role of District Attorney should the County Board of Supervisors find themselves deadlocked over a successor. Howard himself had angled for the D.A.’s job after Busch’s death but had been thwarted by Baxter Ward.355
After Schrade and CBS filed suit to gain access to the evidence, Howard called Kranz in and asked if he would consider being a special counsel instead, not so much to look into the case but, as Kranz noted, to satisfy the public that there was no cover-up. Kranz wrote:
The problem confronting Howard, as with Joe Busch, was not the validity of the verdict in the Sirhan case, but the erosion of public confidence in the system of justice in Los Angeles County due to the many questions that were continually being raised in the Sirhan matter.356
Howard proposed Kranz serve as “an independent special counsel” who “would work with the District Attorney’s office in the preparation and presentation of all evidence in the pending court hearing.” But that doesn’t sound “independent,” does it?
Kranz conducted interviews from January to March in 1976, and drafted a report from March to May 1976. But it took until March 1977 for Kranz to complete the final version. The goal appeared in part to be to head off a Congressional investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The HSCA had been pressured by Rep. Lowenstein and others to include an investigation into the Robert Kennedy assassination. Ultimately, the HSCA focused solely on the assassinations of President John Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Kranz’s report, though replete with errors, attempted to explain away all evidence of conspiracy. Kranz’s goal was clear: to bolster the official story. It was the County’s way of doubling down on the cover-up. That so many books have been and are still being written about this case at the time of this writing indicates that Kranz’s report failed.
In fact, in some ways, Kranz’s report added to the suspicions that we have not been told the full truth. For example, Kranz inadvertently suggested there were in fact many more than the three holes reported by Wolfer in the ceiling tiles,
in a statement that at least maps to Wolfer’s original comment about how there were an “unbelievable” number of “damn holes” in the ceiling:
In discussing ceiling panels, Wolfer stated he had found holes that had been made by fragments of fired bullets from Sirhan’s weapon. These fragments had exploded, being hollow point Mini-Mag ammunition, and had split as they penetrated the ceiling tiles.357
Kranz also made reference to the four bullet holes noted in FBI Special Agent Greiner’s report, but noted as well that “in the other 802 pages of the FBI files” there was no other reference to these holes. Well, if the FBI had decided to go along with the LAPD’s cover-up, as they clearly did, what would one expect to find? Clearly the caption had been a mistake, not from an evidentiary point of view, but from a political point of view. Finding more bullets than Sirhan’s gun would allow meant a conspiracy, and the FBI had already proven willing to cover up the conspiracies in the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Why would they act any differently in the Robert Kennedy case? (The main reason for this obsequiousness on the part of the FBI will be discussed in a later chapter.) As with the police who told a reporter bullets had been removed from the pantry doorframes, the FBI, at the time of the photos, didn’t know there was anything that needed to be covered up, so they just told the truth: bullet holes had been found in the pantry doorframes.
Kranz used for the holes the same logic he had just used about the ceiling panels: since the LAPD said there were seven bullets recovered and one lost in the ceiling space, that meant only eight bullets had been fired, end of story. Any other evidence just had to be wrong, in Kranz’s view. That’s like saying, since my energy bill this month is $15,000, I must have used $15,000 worth of energy, rather than saying wow, my energy bill is never that high—my bill must be wrong! Kranz accepted the preposterous notion that kitchen carts had made bullet holes in the pantry doorframes. The kitchen carts had rounded ends, not sharp, .22 caliber bullet-like projections on the ends of them capable of penetrating three-quarter-inch-thick pine wood and burrowing into the post behind the facing. (Someone online floated the notion that the holes had been made by Vince DiPierro based on a comment he had made about poking at a hole in the wall. I showed DiPierro the FBI’s photographs of “bullet holes” and asked him specifically if he had made any of those holes. “Oh no,” he replied, clearly surprised anyone would suggest that.)
Kranz uncritically accepted the word of every law enforcement official who had every reason to lie, but disbelieved witnesses to conspiracy who had no reason to dissemble. The Kranz report was clearly meant to close the door on conspiracy. For example, Kranz noted that the ceiling tiles from the pantry were destroyed because they had no value, without explaining why, then, they had been taken into evidence in the first place. He believed and recorded everything Wolfer said, without challenging him seriously (and without any apparent knowledge of the evidentiary issues raised in this chapter).
Kranz reported that a thorough examination of the pantry had been made in 1975, the “Great Pantry Raid” that Lowenstein had appropriately ridiculed. Kranz seemed satisfied that, having found the pantry devoid of bullet holes a full seven and a half years and many alterations later, none could have been there in 1968. This despite the fact that the man who removed the wood facing from the center of the swinging doors reported not only seeing two holes there but noting that they went through into the center frame of the doors. Kranz rebutted that by noting a second carpenter had inspected the west side of the center panel and hadn’t seen exit holes on the west side. In Kranz’s view, if bullets didn’t go all the way through, bullets hadn’t been fired into the pantry doorframe, a nonsequitur that wouldn’t have passed muster in a junior high school logic class. Clearly, the bullets made it through the front facing and had lodged themselves into the wood block of the doorframe without passing all the way through, after which they were dug out and hidden from the record. This isn’t rocket science.
Kranz commented that he always wondered about where the two bullets with wood embedded in them found in Sirhan’s car came from. But he dared not suggest what Harper had naturally assumed, knowing the police as he did: that someone dug them out of the center doorframe and put them in Sirhan’s car in a hope to link him to the shooting.
Kranz did the job he set out to do, to write a report designed to instill confidence in the local government. Too bad he didn’t try harder to find out what the truth really was.
But our loss was Kranz’s gain. Like so many before him, Kranz saw his fortunes rise in the wake of his activities in this case. His online résumé lists his additional positions as “Principal Deputy General Counsel, Department of the Army, Department of Defense, The Pentagon, 1985–1989. Special Assistant to the President [George H.W. Bush], The White House, 1989–1990. Associate Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1990–1992. … Member, Council of Foreign Relations.” He was also a Member of the American Bar Association’s “National Security Section,” begging the question of how closely he has worked with intelligence agencies over the years.
Lowenstein, who in 1977 was appointed an Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, was disappointed in Kranz’s work on the case, to put it mildly:
Ambitious politicians far more scrupulous than Mr. Kranz have yielded to the temptation to recite fiction as fact at convenient moments, so one doesn’t wish to be too harsh about his performance. Nevertheless, he left the case in worse shape than he found it, which was not easy to do. One had the right to hope for something better, but that of course is a summary of this whole distressing history.358
As the House Select Committee on Assassinations was enmeshed in its investigations into the JFK and MLK assassinations, Lowenstein not only described what had happened in the Robert Kennedy case but also, presciently, how the cover-ups would be effected in the HSCA as well:
Despite all the obstacles, new facts have come out about what FBI agents, policemen, and other reputable persons said about the matter of bullets in doorframes, and it seems fair to say that there is now a rebuttable presumption that more than one assassin was involved. But what is even clearer than that is that nobody is making a serious effort to rebut that presumption. The notion seems to be that the presumption can be waited out, that unanswered questions will fade, given time, and that the best way to deal with awkward new facts is to ignore them until they can be denounced as “nothing new” and then dismissed; as if awkward facts somehow become less awkward or less pertinent with age.359
Perhaps Lowenstein summed up the mood of all who had looked with honest intentions into the case by this point when he wrote in the Saturday Review in 1977:
I do not know whether Sirhan acting alone murdered Robert Kennedy. I do know what happened when we tried to find out. Eventually, reluctantly, against all my instincts and wishes, I arrived at the melancholy thought that people who have nothing to hide do not lie, cheat, and smear to hide it.360
In March 1980, Lowenstein himself was shot and killed in his office by a former protégé, Dennis Sweeney, who claimed, among other crazy-sounding things, that he had received messages in his head broadcast by a CIA transmitter. After Sweeney shot Lowenstein, Sweeney calmly waited in Lowenstein’s office to be arrested. He was deemed insane and sentenced to a mental hospital.361 Like Sirhan before him, Sweeney was deemed to have been a “paranoid schizophrenic with hallucinations and delusions.”
According to Robert Vaughn’s autobiography, at the time of the shooting, Lowenstein was on the verge of getting a commitment from President Jimmy Carter to reopen an investigation into the Sirhan case if Carter were re-elected to a second term that November. But, as Vaughn put it, “Al died, Carter lost to Reagan, and the official veil of silence over the RFK murder has remained intact.”362
264 Unpublished manuscript by Allard Lowenstein, provided to the author by Paul Schrade.
265 Fortunately, the Freedom of Information Act intervened, moving the deadline up
several years. And after Oliver Stone’s film JFK caused a public outcry as the facts screamed out for more serious investigation, a government body was created called the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) which sought to release many of the documents well in advance of that original deadline. Many more records were released in 2017. But the CIA continues to withhold records researchers such as former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley and former intelligence analyst John Newman deem important to the historical record.
266 See Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America (University of Texas Press, 2013) for coverage of the propaganda war advocating the lone nut position in the JFK assassination and the CIA’s subsequent efforts to turn the phrase “conspiracy theory” into a pejorative worthy only of ridicule. See also Jerry Policoff’s excellent essay, co-written with Robert Hennelly, “JFK: How the Media Assassinated the Real Story,” www.assassinationresearch.com/v1n2/mediaassassination.html.
267 John Dean has never fully explained his comment captured on the Watergate tapes on March 13, 1973, about the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident, where he said “if Kennedy knew the bear trap he was walking into ….” Questioned years later, Dean said only this was related to “Tony U,” the nickname of Tony Ulasewicz, a former New York Police Detective who had worked in the NYPD’s Bureau of Special Services and Investigations (BOSSI, the intelligence branch). Tony U had been sent to Chappaquiddick ostensibly to investigate what had happened, but allegations were made that he was spotted on the island before news of the accident had been made public. Had Tony U helped set up the accident? Was that why Dean seemed slightly concerned on the tape that there was a financial link to Chappaquiddick in relation to Tony U’s employment? The Watergate investigators do not appear to have pursued this information. E. Howard Hunt, who had aided the Watergate burglars, was also on the island after the incident as well, although as with Tony U, some suspected he had been on the island in advance.