Kennedy knew that only the powers that come with winning the presidency could provide the perception needed to figure out the assassination. Bobby could also attempt to fix the problems of the war in Vietnam and civil unrest in America if elected president.
Johnson, who no doubt saw the value of a president-appointed commission with the Warren Commission, attempted to sway the American public opinion on the problems in American cities with the Presidents Special Commission on Civil Disorders. Johnson had expected the findings of the Commission to support the Administration’s strides to aid urban communities. When the Commission report was released, it ran contrary to Johnson’s expectations, finding the federal government giving a less-than-sufficient effort to mend inner-city turmoil. If something was not done, the report found, the result would be the “continuing polarization of the American community and, ultimately, the destruction of basic democratic values.”36 Johnson did not endorse the Commission report and sent Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey out, nearly a week after the release of the findings, to openly question them.
“This means,” Bobby said, “that he’s not going to do anything about the war, and he’s not going to do anything about the cities either.”37 The findings of the report and President Johnson’s unwillingness to acknowledge them further bolstered Bobby’s decision to run for president.
Johnson’s fears of Bobby taking the presidency from him had returned. To steer Bobby from the course of candidacy, he suggested yet another commission: this one to explore the country’s course in Vietnam. Both men entertained the idea, but neither did so seriously. Kennedy, suspicious of the motives of the proposed commission, felt that “if it were more than a public-relations gimmick, if both the president’s announcement of the commission and its membership signaled a clear-cut willingness to seek a wider path to peace in Vietnam, then my declaration of candidacy would no longer be necessary. Ending the bloodshed in Vietnam is far more important to me than starting a presidential campaign.”38
Bobby Kennedy knew that Johnson had money and interest in Vietnam, which went far beyond what public sentiments or the findings of a commission could dictate. The prospective candidate felt that it was “unmistakably clear that, so long as Lyndon B. Johnson was President, our Vietnam policy would consist of only more war, more troops, more killing, and more senseless destruction of the country we were supposedly there to save.”39
On March 16, 1968, Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy. It was more than Lyndon Johnson could handle. Wracked with guilt over the assassination of JFK as well as war policies that he was forced to employ and recognizing the cruel joke of being bookended by Kennedys, Johnson announced his decision to not run for re-election fifteen days later.
“I’m tired,” Johnson privately confided. “I’m tired of feeling rejected by the American people. I’m tired of waking up in the middle of the night worrying about the war. I’m tired of all these personal attacks on me.”40
With Johnson out of the picture, Kennedy now had a clear path to the presidency, a path that would afford him a deeper look into the death of his brother.
Nixon foresaw RFK’s death. He watched Kennedy’s announcement from a hotel room in Portland, Oregon, where the former vice president was campaigning for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination. John Ehrlichman, one of several aides in the room with Nixon, later wrote, “When it was over and the hotel room TV was turned off, Nixon sat and looked at the blank screen for a long time, saying nothing. Finally, he shook his head slowly. ‘We’ve just seen some very terrible forces unleashed,’ he said. ‘Something bad is going to come of this.’ He pointed at the screen, ‘God knows where this is going to lead.’”
William Sullivan, then the number-four man at the FBI, in his posthumously published memoir The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI, describes a high-level FBI meeting in the spring of 1968. “Hoover was not present, and Clyde Tolson [FBI’s number-two man] was presiding in his absence. I was one of eight men who heard Tolson respond to the mention of [RFK’s] name by saying ‘I hope someone shoots and kills the son of a bitch.’”
Ironically, a researcher of the Kennedy assassination tried to bring evidence of a conspiracy to kill JFK to Robert Kennedy’s attention in May, 1967. For years, assassination researcher Ray Marcus had been trying to get public officials interested in the Kennedy assassination. Marcus got in contact with RFK Press Secretary Frank Mankiewicz and succeeded in scheduling a meeting with Mankiewicz.41
At the meeting, Marcus showed the Moorman photograph of the “Badge Man” shooter on the grassy knoll. At the conclusion of the meeting, Mankiewicz invited Marcus to show the photo to Kennedy aide Adam Walinsky. Both Mankiewicz and Walinsky confirmed their belief that these were images of men on the grassy knoll at the time of the assassination. When Marcus expressed his belief that Robert Kennedy should publicly dispute the Warren Report, Walinsky was dismissive.42
“What good will it do the country for Robert Kennedy to stand up and say, ‘I don’t believe the Warren Report,’” Walinsky asked.
Mankiewicz, though, promised Marcus that he would bring the photograph to Robert Kennedy’s attention. As we know, he became an eyewitness to RFK’s startling disclosure that he would reopen the investigation into his brother’s death, but whether or not Kennedy saw the photo will never be known.
Bobby was shot and killed a little more than a year later, on June 5, 1968, following a speech in the Embassy Room at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just claimed victory in the California primary. The message from the candidate that night reflected his brother’s, and ran contrary to those whose particular interests led to those of his brother death, who made their money from destruction and violence.
“The country wants to move in a different direction,” Bobby said. “We want to deal with our own problems within our own country, and we want peace in Vietnam.”43
Despite the death of his brother five years earlier, Bobby wanted to continue the initiatives of peace and equality that John had championed during his presidency. Though they had cut off the head of the dog, the tail was still wagging.
“He was an activist,” wrote Frank Mankiewicz for Look magazine, “and those who disliked him were not concerned that if he got power, he wouldn’t do what he said; they feared that indeed he would.”44
Bobby finished his speech and took a shortcut through the hotel kitchen on his way to the Colonial Room for a news conference. In the crowded kitchen area, shots rang out. Much like the death of his brother, Bobby’s slaying was attributed to the work of a lone gunman, Sirhan Sirhan. Similar to the evidence incriminating Lee Harvey Oswald, the evidence of Bobby’s death pointed away from Sirhan as the killer.
The official truth in Robert Kennedy’s death, much like his brother’s, would be reached by distorting facts, destroying evidence, devaluing contrary testimony, and harassing naysayers.
When County Coroner Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi performed Bobby’s autopsy, he found that the three bullets that had hit Kennedy had entered from the rear.45 Sirhan fired his .22-caliber, eight-shot revolver a few feet in front of Kennedy, yet the fatal shot was fired from “less than one inch from Kennedy’s head, behind his right ear.”46 Noguchi also found that the bullets had entered Senator Kennedy at an upward angle.
Noguchi’s autopsy confirmed that it would have been impossible for Sirhan, who was standing to the front of Kennedy and whom not a single witness would testify was shooting any closer than one-and-a-half to two feet away from Kennedy, to have fired any shot, never mind the fatal shot with the gun barrel nearly pressed to the back of the senator’s head. One of the closest witnesses to the shooting, busboy Juan Romero, saw the gun of Sirhan “approximately one yard from Senator Kennedy’s head.”47
Investigators’ responded to Noguchi’s autopsy evidence by slandering the doctor. Law enforcement officers investigating the assassination accused the doctor of intentionally cooking up the autopsy report for self-promotion.
“I h
ope he dies because if he dies, then my international reputation will be established,”48 Noguchi was reported to have exclaimed with Kennedy on his deathbed. He was also alleged to have been a drug user, who displayed “erratic behavior” and danced around Kennedy’s corpse with apparent delight.49 His reputation was damaged, and he was temporarily fired due to the allegations.
“Some people believe that the problems I had resulted from my work on the Kennedy case,” Noguchi later said. “One of the charges was that the Kennedy autopsy was ‘botched up.’ The first thing they did was withdraw that particular charge. There were sixty-four charges in all. They were prepared to show a shock value. They didn’t expect me to fight back. And I was fully vindicated in the end.”50
Investigators also had to control witness testimony. One witness, Sandra Serrano, who was the co-chairwoman of youth for Kennedy in the Pasadena–Altadena area at the time of Bobby’s assassination, had been standing outside of the Ambassador on the terrace during Kennedy’s victory speech when “this girl came running down the stairs and said, ‘We’ve shot him!’ ‘Who did you shoot?’ And she said, ‘We’ve shot Senator Kennedy.’” Serrano went on to describe a woman with light skin, dark hair, a funny nose, and a white dress with polka dots.
Despite the intricate description of the woman by Serrano and the corroboration of other witnesses of seeing the same woman, including a couple who immediately reported the incident to LAPD Sergeant Paul Shangara, Serrano’s testimony was distorted and dismissed. Shangara, who was in the area, was responding to an “ambulance shooting” call and quickly made his way to the Ambassador. There, he encountered a frantic exodus of people pouring out of the hotel. An older couple saw Shangara and raced up to him. They described the same woman, wearing the same dress, shouting the same pronouncements about shooting Kennedy.51
Shangara was told by Detective Inspector John Powers to drop the description of the suspects. “We don’t want to make a federal case out of it,” Powers told him. “We’ve already got the suspect in custody.”52
Sandra Serrano, who stuck to her story, was treated much less professionally than was Shangara. She was bullied and badgered by investigator Enrique Hernandez during a polygraph examination:
HERNANDEZ: I think you owe it to Senator Kennedy, the late Senator Kennedy, to come forth, be a woman about this. If he, and you don’t know and I don’t know whether he’s a witness right now in the room watching what we’re doing in here. Don’t shame his death by keeping this thing up. I have compassion for you. I want to know why. I want to know why you did what you did. This is a very serious thing.
SERRANO: I’ve seen those people!
HERNANDEZ: No, no, no, no, no, Sandy. Remember what I told you about that: You can’t say you saw something when you didn’t see it … .
SERRANO: Well, I don’t feel I’m doing anything wrong… . I remember seeing the girl!
HERNANDEZ: No, I’m talking about what you have told her about seeing a person tell you, ‘We have shot Kennedy.’ And that’s wrong.
SERRANO: That’s what she said.
HERNANDEZ: No, it isn’t, Sandy.
SERRANO: No! That’s what she said.
HERNANDEZ: Look it! Look it! I love this man!
SERRANO: So do I.
HERNANDEZ: And you’re shaming [him]!
SERRANO: Don’t shout at me.
HERNANDEZ: Well, I’m trying not to shout, but this is a very emotional thing for me, too… . If you love the man, the least you owe him is the courtesy of letting him rest in peace.53
Serrano and Shangara were not the only witnesses who brought forth the story of the woman in the white dress with the polka dots. Booker Griffin, at the hotel to support Kennedy, also saw her but inside the hotel and in the company of a man later identified as Sirhan.54 Susanne Locke, a Kennedy campaign worker, also saw the woman inside the hotel, as did Cathy Sue Fulmer.55 Thomas Vincent DiPierro, a college student, saw the woman with Sirhan in the pantry kitchen area seconds before Kennedy had been shot.56 The statements of many in attendance of the Kennedy speech synched with the description of a Sirhan accomplice.
These witnesses did not fit the official narrative, which claimed that Sirhan had no accomplice. Certainly not Thane Eugene Cesar, a security guard who was escorting Kennedy through the kitchen. Cesar was in the right position to have caused the wounds to Kennedy and had been carrying a gun, which was not examined by police. Witnesses said that Cesar had fired shots, but their testimonies were neglected. Years later, Cesar intimated to investigators that he was not carrying the type of gun that killed Kennedy. He did say that he had owned the type, a .22 caliber, but had sold it four months before the assassination.57 It was later discovered that Cesar sold the gun three months after the killing of Kennedy. It mattered not. Law enforcement had their man.
Audio expert Philip Van Praag also found an audiotape of the shooting to indicate at least thirteen gunshots58; Sirhan could only have gotten off a maximum of eight. Sirhan, like Oswald, was a minor player in a major plot.
“Sirhan was set up to be the distracting actor, while the shooter bent down close to Bob [Kennedy] and fired close and upward, with four bullets hitting the senator’s body or passing through his clothing,”59 said Sirhan attorney William Pepper.
Recently, another witness to the murder of Bobby Kennedy has come forward with her claim that there was more than one shooter, strengthening available evidence. Nina Rhodes-Hughes contends that she heard twelve to fourteen shots fired and that the FBI altered her account.60
“What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right,” Rhodes-Hughes said. “The truth has got to be told. No more coverups.”61
Vincent Bugliosi, a fixed critic against conspiracy theories in the deaths of both Kennedys, helped analysts of the Bobby Kennedy assassination find too many bullet holes and wounds for only one gun to have fired. Bugliosi offered this statement in 1978, in much contradiction to his staunch beliefs:
“I have no way of knowing for sure whether or not more than one gun was fired at the assassination scene. And I have formed no opinion at this point. What I will say is this: The signed statements given me perhaps can be explained away, but in the absence of a logical explanation, these statements, by simple arithmetic, add up to too many bullets and therefore, the probability of a second gun.”62
Both brothers died in an attempt to purge their country and their family of the enemy within. The words of Ted Kennedy, then a senator, at his brother Bobby’s eulogy, could have easily been applied to John as well.
“My brother need not be idealized,” Kennedy said, “or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”63
NOTES
1. Goldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pgs. 256–257.
2. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 277.
3. Smith, Jeffery K. Bad Blood, pg. 7.
4. Ibid.
5. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 244.
6. Goldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pgs. 248.
7. Goldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pg. 58.
8. Goldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pg. 255.
9. Heymann, RFK, pg. 346.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 448.
13. Goldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes, pg. 256.
14. Shesol, Mutual Contempt, pg. 118.
15. Fetzer, Assassination Science, pg. 372.
16. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 283.
17. www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php?topic=6785.0.
18. Brown, Texas in the Morning, pg.189.
19. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 119.
20. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 448.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid pg. 220.
23. Heymann, RFK, pg. 368.
24. Goldfarb, Perfect Villains, Imperf
ect Heroes, pg. 302.
25. www.youtube.com/watch?v=01tTeOzPuZQ, ‘Bobby Kennedy appears on Jack Paar Show.’
26. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 322.
27. Gentry, J Edgar Hoover: The Man and his Secrets, pg. 562.
28. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 279.
29. Evans, Robert Kennedy: His Life, pg 284.
30. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 6.
31. Ibid, pg.
32. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 303.
33. Ibid, pg. 305.
34. Stengle, Jaime. NBCNEWS.com January 11, 2013.
35. archive.org/details/Robert F. Kennedy At San Fernando Valley State College.
36. Herbers, John. The New York Times. March 1, 1968.
37. Shesol, Mutual Contempt, pg. 415.
38. Witcover, 85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert Kennedy, pg. 77.
39. Shesol, Mutual Contempt, pg. 424.
40. Ibid, pgs. 437-438.
41. Kelin, Praise from a Future Generation, pg. 452.
42. Ibid, pg. 452.
43. “RFK, Last Speech, Ambassador Hotel, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae7H0aWFWNY&feature=relmfu.
44. Witcover, 85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert Kennedy, pg. 332.
45. Turner & Christian, The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. pg. 162.
46. San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 2008. “40 years after RFK’s death, questions linger.”
47. Moldea, The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy. pg. 96.
48. Ibid, pg. 160.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Turner & Christian, The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, pg. 67.
52. Ibid, pg. 74.
53. Moldea, The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy, pgs. 113–114.
54. Turner and Christian, The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, pg. 68.
55. Ibid pg. 69.
56. Ibid, pg. 72.
57. Ibid, pg. 165.
58. CNN.com, March 12, 2012. “Attorneys for RFK convicted killer Sirhan push ‘second gunman’ argument.”
The Man Who Killed Kennedy Page 36