by Lisa Pease
490 Khoury letter to “Dear Bea,” no further identification, dated July 8, 1967, in the LAPD files.
491 LAPD.
492 LAPD Progress Report on John Antoine Khoury, July 18, 1968.
493 John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), p. 253.
494 SUS Final Report, p. 443.
495 SUS Final Report, p. 444.
496 LAPD Daily Summary of Activity, July 16, 1968.
497 LAPD Daily Summary of Activity, July 16, 1968.
498 LAPD taped interview of John Khoury, July 15, 1968, California State Archives.
499 NARA Record Number: 104-10308-10287, “Review of ZR Rifle file,” October 1976, www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=17029. This document was first brought to my attention by Hank Albarelli and is mentioned in his book A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination (Trine Day: 2013).
500 William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (London: Zed Books, 2004), pp. 96–97.
501 “Secrets of his leadership: an interview with Said K. Aburish,” www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saddam/interviews/aburish.html
502 Roger Morris, “A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making,” The New York Times, March 14, 2003.
503 FBI interview of Ernest Vallero, September 17, 1968.
504 LAPD interview of Freddy Plimpton, June 5, 1968.
505 LAPD interview of Freddy Plimpton, June 5, 1968.
506 LAPD interview of Bill White, July 18, 1968.
507 FBI interview of Winfred Holder, June 24, 1968, dated June 26, 1968.
508 SUS Final Report, Interview summaries, Winfred Holder entry.
509 Faura, p. 113. Juan Romero was shocked by this when I mentioned this to him and said the Ambassador Hotel did not employ people off the street. But Faura was certain they had.
510 SUS Final Report, Interview summaries, Winfred Holder entry.
511 Kaiser, pp. 304–305.
512 SUS Final Report, Interview summaries, Winfred Holder entry.
513 SUS Final Report, Interview summaries, Winfred Holder entry.
514 FBI interview of Winfred Holder, 6/24/68, dated 6/26/68.
515 FBI memo from Special Agent [Redacted] to Special Agent in Charge, Los Angeles, October 1, 1968.
516 LAPD interview of Marsha Kirz, August 6, 1968.
517 LAPD interview of Marsha Kirz, August 6, 1968.
518 LAPD interview of Betty Connolly, October 7, 1968.
519 FBI interview of Juan Romero, June 6, 1968. The names of the two FBI agents who were present for this statement are blacked out in the document I have, but in Bill Turner and Jonn Christian’s book, they identify one of the agents as William Bailey. When I talked to Juan Romero as this book was going to press, he did not remember this and wondered if someone else had said this and he reported the incident second-hand.
520 FBI telephone report of Mrs. Rose Julia Gallegos, June 6, 1968. When reporter Fernando Faura questioned Gallegos, he pegged the date as June 4, not June 2, and Gallegos did not correct him, but it’s not clear that she paid attention to that part of Faura’s question, and there are several records for both her and her daughter that indicate this happened on June 2, not June 4. Faura, p. 65.
521 LAPD interview of Aida Laffredo, December 6, 1968.
522 Faura, p. 66.
523 Faura, pp. 68–71.
524 LAPD interview of Karen Ross, June 6, 1968.
525 LAPD interview of Karen Ross, June 6, 1968.
526 FBI memos from redacted to SAC, Los Angeles, dated June 5 and June 7, 1968. The June 5 memo describes an interview of the redacted woman’s son, and the June 7 memo reflects a conversation with the woman herself.
527 Ibid.
528 LAPD transcript of Gloria Farr’s interview, June 21, 1968.
529 Melanson, p. 313, quoting Dan Moldea’s 1987 interview with Cesar.
530 Jerry Cohen, “‘Polka Dot’ Girl Hunt Called Off,’” Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1968.
531 FBI interview summary of Dr. Marcus McBroom, dated July 11, 1968.
532 LAPD interview of Dominic Gezzi, July 18, 1968.
533 Prepublication PDF version of Fernando Faura’s book, The Polka Dot File on the Robert F. Kennedy Killing (Walterville, OR: Trine Day LLC, 2016), p. 144, provided to the author by Fernando Faura.
534 Tape of LAPD interview of Eve Hansen, June 17, 1968.
535 Ibid.
536 Ibid.
537 Ibid.
538 Ibid.
539 FBI interview of Darnell Johnson taken June 6, 1968.
540 Ibid.
541 Faura, p. 112.
542 LAPD interview of Evan Phillip Freed, June 14, 1968. In later years, an affidavit signed by Freed circulated through the research community that stated Freed had seen a second gunman near Kennedy. But when I contacted Freed and faxed him a copy of that affidavit for comment, he struck out all the parts about the second gunman until the statement matched what was reported in his original report as quoted here. He did not explain how his signature came to be on that other document.
543 SUS Final Report, p. 1069.
544 LAPD Officer Norris’ interview notes of Francis Critchley [sic], June 6, 1968; FBI interview of Francis Critcheley (the correct spelling), taken on June 19 and summarized on June 26, 1968.
545 FBI memo quoting the tape of the LAPD interview of Serrano taken June 12, 1968.
546 LAPD Officer Norris’ interview notes of Francis Critchley [sic], June 6, 1968.
547 Ibid.
548 Melanson, p. 230.
549 Booker Griffin, “Fatalism, Destiny: Fear Now Real,” Los Angeles Sentinel, June 9, 1968.
550 SUS report, p. 977.
551 Melanson, p. 233.
552 Melanson, p. 226.
553 LAPD interview of Katherine Keir, August 7, 1968.
554 Author interview with Katherine Keir, December 3, 2016.
555 Author interview with Katherine Keir, December 3, 2016. Keir said when she talked to CNN.
556 LAPD interview of William Rands, August 7, 1968.
557 LAPD interview of Roy Mills, June 6.
558 LAPD interview of Roy Mills, August 9, 1968 (the document lists both his June 6 and August 9 date but the bottom date of the typist is August, so presumably this reflects his comments in August).
559 LAPD interview of Bernyce Matthews, April 20, 1969.
560 LAPD interview of Bernyce Matthews, April 20, 1969.
561 Handwritten letter from Bernyce Matthews to the LAPD, September 16, 1968.
562 LAPD interview of Francis Critcheley (misspelled as Critchley in this document), June 6, 1968.
563 LAPD interview of Judy Groves, June 28, 1968.
564 Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office memo from Clayton Anderson to George Stoner, June 10, 1968.
565 LAPD interview of Albert Ellis, August 22, 1968. Ellis also reported hearing a woman yell “We shot him” to his rear as he stood in the Embassy Room, but his position is vague and he didn’t get a good glimpse of the woman.
566 Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office memo from Clayton Anderson to George Stoner, June 10, 1968.
567 LAPD interview of Judy Groves, June 28, 1968.
568 LAPD synopsis of Mary Wall’s taped interview of June 17, 1968.
569 LAPD interview of Terri Trivelli, June 6, 1968 and Telephone Interview sheet of this interview with the added date “Polka dot dress info” added to it.
570 FBI interview of Albert Le Beau, June 26, 1968.
571 Ibid.
572 FBI interview of Mrs. Felecia Maas, June 26, 1968.
573 The FBI interview of Le Beau.
574 Transcript of Fernando Faura interview of John Fahey, June 12, 1968.
575 Faura, p. 119.
576
577 LAPD interview of Ray La Scola, “an MD specializing in hypnotism,” September 12, 1968. Faura had taken Fahey to La Scola in the hopes that Fahey would agre
e to be hypnotized. In the end, Fahey did not want to be hypnotized, but he talked about the girl and how during their conversation she had had shown him a picture of her child.
578 LAPD interview of Chris Gugas, September 13, 1968.
579 LAPD interview of Chris Gugas, September 13, 1968. Gugas was recounting what Fahey had remembered when Gugas gave him a polygraph test,
580 LAPD interview of John Fahey, September 9, 1968.
581 Ibid.
582 FBI interview of Russell Davis, dated June 20, 1969 (yes, after Sirhan’s trial was over). Davis was interviewed at the FBI facility at Quantico. This interview can be found in sub file X-8, volume 21.
583 LAPD Complaint Applications Log, 5:45 A.M., June 5, 1968.
584 LAPD Telephone Calls Received by Rampart Detective Division, 5 Jun 1968 thru 11 Jun 1968, 7:45 A.M. entry relaying information received from Lt. Lewis of the Intelligence division regarding what “that Att. Paul Burke” had said on the phone.
585 Conversation recreated from three records: the June 5 LAPD telephone log entry (11:30 A.M. under Wiggins, citing Officer Don Kringen’s account of the call, the LAPD interview of “Kristine Destutels” [sic] on June 25, 1968, and the FBI interview of Christine De Sautels.
586 SUS Final Report, p. 288.
587 FBI memo from [Redacted] to [Redacted], July 16, 1968, found in the L.A. FBI Field Office files, 56-156-1382.
588 Letter from R.L. Bannerman on behalf of the CIA Director to The Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, stamped 1 April 1964, NARA Record Number: 1993.07.26.18:08:25:000590, viewable at www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=103975&search=Nagell#relPageId=83&tab=page.
MIND GAMES
“I find no explanation for Sirhan as satisfactory as the hypothesis that he has been acting and talking under hypnosis or in posthypnotic suggestion.”
SO NOW, WE FINALLY COME TO SIRHAN HIMSELF. HE FIRED AT Senator Kennedy and was clearly part of the plot. But what was his level of guilt? Was someone manipulating him?
Sirhan claimed to have no memory of the events in the pantry, and neither the defense psychologist, Dr. Bernard Diamond, nor the prosecution psychologist, Dr. Seymour Pollack, could retrieve a clear memory of the shooting from Sirhan’s mind, even after repeated attempts with hypnosis. Medical examinations ruled out the possibility of some physical impediment or brain damage. So why couldn’t Sirhan remember?
If Sirhan has been lying all this time, we have to ask, 50 years later, what’s the point? He’s already in jail for life with no likelihood of parole. Why keep up the charade, if that’s all it is? Why not just tell what happened? Who could he be trying to protect? All his family except his youngest brother are now dead.
But if Sirhan were lying, that would also mean he was conscious of the plot. Why, then, would he volunteer to be a patsy in it? Why did he fire no bullets at all in the pantry? This is why it is important to study the ballistics evidence first. Once you understand that if he had fired even a single bullet, the police would have kept, not switched, at least that bullet, instead of switching all the bullets the experts examined in 1975, you begin to understand what really happened. To suggest Sirhan was lying simply does not fit the physical evidence.
If Sirhan is telling the truth about not remembering the shooting scene in the pantry, what prevents him from remembering? He didn’t have brain damage, and no one reported seeing Sirhan drunk. Could Sirhan have been under the influence of a drug? If so, it was nothing the LAPD recognized or, perhaps, wished to acknowledge, because Chief Reddin assured the public Sirhan was not under the influence of any drug.
The most likely cause of Sirhan’s memory loss was hypnosis. Some people are more hypnotizable than others, and amnesia can be caused by hypnosis. A hypnotist can also instruct some people to forget what was said under hypnosis. And people in a deep trance often have no conscious memory of what transpired in that state, regardless of whether an instruction to forget was issued. That would explain why Sirhan cannot remember clearly what happened. It would also explain why he doesn’t remember being hypnotized. (He couldn’t even remember being hypnotized each time Diamond hypnotized him.)
It would explain why Sirhan could not identify any co-conspirators. It would also explain his strange state upon arrest, not understanding fully where he was or even that he had been arrested. It would explain why he couldn’t honestly answer if he had a wife or not—he truly couldn’t remember. Being in a trance state would also explain his unusually calm and cool demeanor that witnesses noticed during the events in the pantry.
Most researchers on this case who get this far believe that Sirhan was in a hypnotic state or acting out a post-hypnotic command at the time of the firing. But why would any conspirator go to the trouble to program an assassin when so many were readily available for hire? Wouldn’t a man in a hypnotic state pose a risk? What if someone inadvertently said something that brought him back out of hypnosis? It’s a risky variable.
In addition, using a mind-controlled assassin in a crowd with multiple shooters never made sense to me. What if your mind-controlled puppet missed and killed your more skilled assassin by mistake? That would be a dumb risk to take. And if you were an assassin, would you willingly participate in such an assignment, knowing someone might be firing real bullets in your direction but in a hypnotic state? No one in their right mind would agree to participate in such a plot. But if you were told the man firing at you was only firing blanks that would pull focus so you could shoot Kennedy unseen and escape, that’s a plot an assassin could be comfortable with.
So what is hypnosis, exactly? Experts disagree on exactly what hypnosis is. Some believe it represents enhanced concentration. Others describe it as a partial sleep state, hence the common appearance of the term “somnambulism” in the literature. The common understanding is that hypnosis is a state in which people are more susceptible to suggestion, but the level of suggestibility varies widely from person to person and by the depth of the trance state. Someone only lightly hypnotized will remember everything that happened under hypnosis. Someone in a deep trance may not remember anything that happened under hypnosis. Experts agree that roughly one in five people, or about 20% of the population, are so susceptible to suggestions under hypnosis that you can get them to perform extraordinary acts that the other 80% of the population would never do.
Just about every hypnotist you ask will tell you authoritatively that people cannot be hypnotized “against their will.” But this really isn’t the issue. The problem is that people can be hypnotized “without their knowledge.” For example, a simple relaxation exercise can be a means to hypnotize someone without their realization that this is occurring.
You will hear that no one can be made to do something under hypnosis that they wouldn’t do outside of hypnosis. This is both technically true and dramatically misleading, because people can be tricked under hypnosis into believing the facts are other than they really are. People can be made to do terrible things when they believe that alternate reality. A skilled hypnotist can make a highly suggestible subject do just about anything. Allen Dulles, the infamous CIA chief responsible for creating the CIA’s formal mind control programs, described the influence one person could have over another under hypnosis in this manner: “[T]he brain … becomes a phonograph playing a disc put on its spindle by an outside genius over which it has no control.”589
In response to the notion that one cannot be made to do something under hypnosis they wouldn’t do outside of hypnosis, one of the CIA’s hypnosis experts, whose name is still redacted more than 60 years later (and who likely died long ago), wrote:
Frankly, I now distrust much of what is written by academic experts on hypnotism. Partly this is because many of them appear to have generalized from a very few cases; partly because much of their cautious pessimism is contradicted by Agency experimenters; but more particularly because I personally have witnessed behavior responses which respected experts have said are impossible to obtain. In no other field have
I been so conscious of the mental claustrophobia of book and lecture hall knowledge. I don’t think we have enough evidence to say positively that hypnotism is a practicable covert weapon, but I do say that we’ll never know whether it is or is not unless we experiment in the field where we can learn what is practicable (materially and psychologically) in a way that no laboratory worker could possibly prove.590
Translation: the author of this memo had already seen cases where people were made to do under hypnosis things they would not do outside of hypnosis. The author ridiculed academics who claimed such results were not possible. The author believed that hypnosis was ready to be tested in covert field operations. And this was 13 years before Senator Kennedy’s assassination. Imagine how much more skilled the Agency’s hypnotists became after an additional 13 years of experience.
Sometimes people in hypnotic states look half asleep, or in some other way “out of it.” You may have noticed this in staged hypnosis demonstrations. But not all hypnotized subjects will look sleepy or unnatural. Some will appear under hypnosis exactly the same way they appear when not hypnotized. According to George Estabrooks, a lifelong experimenter whose prolific contributions on the subject caused others to call him “the father of modern hypnosis”:
We can coach the subject so that in the trance he will behave exactly as in the waking state. Under these circumstances we could defy anyone, even a skilled psychologist, to tell whether the subject was “asleep” or “awake.” There are tests which will tell the story but in warfare we cannot run around sticking pins into everyone we meet just to see if he is normal.591
“Sticking pins” refers to a common test used to determine if someone is faking being hypnotized. With the proper suggestion, a hypnotist can insert a pin into the top of a subject’s hand and the subject will feel no pain. Someone who is faking being hypnotized, however, will usually squeal in pain. In fact, a famous superlawyer of the time, F. Lee Bailey, found something worse than a pin sticking out of his hand at a hypnosis demonstration at the hands of Dr. William J. Bryan, as Alison Winter recounted in her book Memory:
F. Lee Bailey … described meeting Bryan in 1961 in San Francisco at one of Belli’s popular series of one-day seminars, this one featuring Bryan as the main event. Bailey was among a group of volunteers Bryan used to demonstrate his technique. He instructed them to hold out their right arms. He then described their arms as feeling stiff and numb. Suddenly, at a command from Bryan, Bailey became aware that a hypodermic needle had been stuck through his hand. Bryan explained that this was an example of hypnotic amnesia. But there was more: there was no blood where the needle had entered the skin. Bryan then told his subjects that they would soon see a slight drop of blood appear “in response to my suggestion.” The blood appeared as he spoke.592