by David Wayne
“Robert Kennedy was fired upon from two distinct firing positions.
Firing Position A, the position of Sirhan, was located directly in front of the Senator, with Sirhan face to face with the Senator. This position is established by more than a dozen eyewitnesses. A second firing position, Firing Position B, is clearly established by the autopsy report. It was located in close proximity to the Senator, immediately to his right and rear. It was from this position that 4 (four) shots were fired, three of which entered the Senator’s body ... It is extremely unlikely that any of the bullets fired by Sirhan’s gun ever struck the body of Robert Kennedy.”410
It should also be noted that after Sirhan was convicted and sentenced, Harper later proved to a scientific certainty that the bullets removed from Senator Kennedy and the bullet removed from newsman William Weisel were fired from two different guns.411
Harper’s findings were later corroborated by an LAPD document, kept secret until its release in 1988 from LAPD to the California State Archives where the document can currently be viewed. The document confirms that LAPD ran its own independent analysis of the two bullets using a Hycon Balliscon camera. The following are the verbatim critical conclusions of LAPD Criminalist Larry Baggett:
▸ HYCON BALLISANIC CAMERA
DIFF. OF 1/2 DEGREE IN RIFLING ANGLES KENNEDY BULLET FIRED FROM BARREL WITH SHARPER RIFLING THAN WEISEL
▸ CONCLUSION
1.KENNEDY AND WEISEL BULLETS NOT FIRED FROM SAME GUN.
2.KENNEDY BULLET NOT FIRED FROM SIRHAN’S REVOLVER.”412
Later research has also revealed that LAPD used a substitute gun (not the gun that Sirhan had actually fired) in its test comparisons that were used as evidence at trial, apparently to attempt to establish linkage to the bullets which hit the Senator.413
Three audio tapes recorded that night were examined and tested by top foren- sics acoustics expert, Dr. Michael H.L. Hecker of the Stanford Research Institute. Dr. Hecker’s study determined that a minimum of ten gunshots were fired (the gun of Sirhan was only capable of firing eight rounds):
“On the basis of auditory, oscillographic and spectrographic analyses of these three recordings, it is my opinion, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, that no fewer than ten gunshots are ascertainable following the conclusion of the Senator’s victory speech until after the time Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was disarmed.”414
The LAPD adamantly maintained their official position that, other than Sirhan’s, there were no guns fired in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel during the shooting of Senator Kennedy. Clearly there were other guns fired, as we know that Sirhan’s .22 only held eight shots and that more than that were fired.415
In addition, several eyewitnesses testified that they saw men in plainclothes with their weapons drawn at the time of the assassination. The obvious assumption is that they were Secret Service, but there were no Secret Service agents protecting Robert Kennedy in 1968. The next most obvious assumption is that they were LAPD or off-duty officers working security for the Senator. But Kennedy did not have any armed bodyguards and LAPD said they were not theirs either. Yet there they were: The terminology that one eyewitness used was that he was “absolutely positive” that there were other men in plainclothes with guns drawn at the time of the shooting.416
When Sirhan was arrested he appeared normal but his complete disorien- tation and disassociation with the events that had taken place were noted by authorities and the issue came up at his trial. The Prosecution asked:
“Do you remember later on in that same conversation you said to Mr. Howard, ‘I have been before a magistrate, have I, or have I not?’ Mr. Howard said ‘No, you have not. You will be taken before a magistrate as soon as possible. Probably will be tried.’ ... You didn’t ask Mr. Howard at that time, ‘Tried for what?’ did you?”
“I don’t remember, sir, if I did or not.”
“Sirhan had not said, ‘Tried for what?’ to Mr. Howard, but his question as to whether or not he had been before a magistrate was a clear indication that he was disoriented. He appeared to be normal, yet he did not know if he had been before a judge. Had Grant Cooper been running an aggressive defense, Mr. Howard would have been on the witness stand explaining what in Sirhan’s behavior just hours after the murder had caused the assistant DA to repeatedly ask the prisoner if he knew where he was.”417
No one has been more at a loss to describe Sirhan’s motive for the act than has Sirhan himself:
“If I had wanted to kill him,” says Sirhan, again questioning whether he ever had planned to murder Robert Kennedy in the first place, “would I, sir, have been so stupid as to leave that notebook there, waiting for those cops, sir, to pick it up?”418
The LAPD Summary Report of the eyewitness statements to the RFK assassination contained blatant and total fabrications. Take the case of Booker Griffin, director of the Negro Industrial and Educational Union. Griffin, as he himself pointed out, was a perfect witness:
“I am a trained newsperson and I had been taught to watch details ... I was not there with a lay eye, I had covered, you know, shooting stories and others, and I was raised in a neighborhood situation where seeing people shot and being around bullets was something I was used to, and I was always taught to keep a kind of cool head. I’m not blind. I’m not a dishonest person. I know what I saw.”419
Evidence Exonerating Sirhan Bishara Sirhan of Murder in the First Degree
1.Ballistics-testing by noted criminalist and ballistics expert, William W. Harper, determined that the bullets that hit Senator Kennedy did not come from Sirhan’s gun.
2.The defendant was never at any point close enough to the victim to have fired the fatal shot. It was determined that the kill shot came from within less than three inches from the victim’s head. Every witness places the defendant much farther away.
3.All the bullets that hit Senator Kennedy traversed his body in a back-to-front direction. All witnesses placed the defendant in front of the victim. Therefore shots from the defendant’s gun hitting the Senator obviously would have traversed the victim’s body in a front-to-back trajectory, not back-to-front.
4.The trajectories of the bullets hitting Senator Kennedy’s body were all at downward angles. From the placement of the defendant by all witnesses, shots hitting the Senator would have necessarily had trajectories at upward angles.
5.The crime was not premeditated because the accused did not possess conscious intent at the moment of the crime; he does not even remember the crime, even under sodium pentothal and intense psychiatric sessions involving hypnotic regression. The last thing in the defendant’s memory is having coffee with a girl. His next memory—quite literally—is being in police custody.
6.The defendant did not possess malice aforethought and, indeed, how could he have? Through months of interrogation, hypnotic regression and even truth serum, no one was ever able to unearth a serious possible motive as to why he would shoot the Senator. The defendant has no memory whatsoever of planning to kill the Senator.
7.No motive existed or has ever been identified. The police and prosecution tried to assert that RFK’s intention of providing fifty jets to Israel was what caused Sirhan to kill him. That is simply impossible because Sirhan started his programmed writing in his notebooks about killing RFK on May 18, prior to the press coverage and the first public statement by RFK supporting the sale of jets, which was on May 21.
8.No memory of crime. Police were baffled by the fact that, even after months of intensive and expert interrogation, Sirhan had no recollection whatsoever of committing the crime, nor had he any coherent explanation of why he would commit the crime. Zero motive. Zero memory.420
9.Police procedures determined that the defendant was clearly operating under the influence of a drug, of which the defendant had no recollection whatsoever. Police shined a flashlight into Sirhan’s eyes after his arrest, which is standard procedure to determine if a suspect is under the influence of drugs. The officer who conducted that check, LAPD Officer Arthu
r Placencia, testified under oath that his pupils did not react to the light, “indicating that he was under the influence of something.”421
10.Sirhan volunteered to undergo multiple psychiatric examinations, hypnosis, and even volunteered for “truth serum” which was administered to him. Testing and extensive interrogation revealed that he had been “programmed” without his own conscious knowledge of the event.
11.There are also other blatant signs that the defendant had been programmed. Under hypnosis, he could be instructed to climb the bars of his cell like a monkey, would perform the instruction by acting it out, and then, after being brought out of hypnosis, would have no recollection at all of what had taken place. He was considered by experts to be the most easily hypnotizable subject they had ever encountered. The repetitious writing of “RFK must die!” in Sirhan’s notebook was a clear example of what is termed “automatic writing”: Under hypnosis, Sirhan would go into a deep trance and then would automatically begin writing “RFK must die! RFK must die!” over and over on the page of paper in front of him (and this is later, while in custody!).
Chief Psychiatrist Bernard Diamond:
“Let me specifically state that it was immediately apparent that Sirhan had been programmed.”422
12.The cover-up was blatant. For example, LAPD Criminalists denied claims that they had themselves clearly delineated in previous statements. They said they recovered bullets and then later denied having recovered them. They stated that there were bullet holes in the pantry walls and door. Then they later denied that there ever were any, after they were the ones who had originally claimed that there were!423
Not true, according to an expert in such matters, who viewed the bullet holes with his own eyes. FBI Agent William Bailey, who was at the crime scene shortly after the shooting, investigating it in preparation for witness interviews, stated :
“As I toured the pantry area I noticed in a wood doorframe, a center divider between the two swinging doors, two bullet holes. I’ve inspected quite a few crime scenes in my day. These were clearly bullet holes; the wood around them was freshly broken away and I could see the base of a bullet in each one.”424
“The arithmetic here is devastatingly simple: the gun taken from Sirhan Sirhan held a maximum of eight bullets; thus, with at least eight bullets already accounted for, there could be no bullets in the walls or doorframe, if only one gun was firing. Any bullets or bullet holes in the walls would be irrefutable proof of a second gun.”425
Crucial evidence, such as the doorframes cited above, promptly disappeared into LAPD’s “evidentiary black hole” and was literally never seen again. They were later described as “accidentally destroyed.” Photographs of the crime scene vanished. Testimonies were dramatically altered.
U.S. Congressman Allard Lowenstein summarized the obvious cover-up bluntly:
“I do not know why those responsible for law enforcement in Los Angeles decided to stonewall the RFK case. But once they had made that decision, the rest followed: facts had to be concealed or distorted and inconvenient evidence done away with, inoperative statements had to be replaced by new statements, until they in turn became inoperative; people raising awkward questions had to be discredited, preferably as self-seeking or flaky.”426
13.Harassment of witnesses was commonplace. As one witness later summarized the effects of her “harassment” (her word) at the hands of LAPD:
“ ... I was just twenty years old and I became unglued. I said what they wanted me to say.”427
Griffin also told police that he saw Sirhan on three different occasions that night. On two of those occasions he saw him with an attractive woman who seemed to be his companion that evening. He noticed the two of them because they somehow seemed like they were “out of place.”
“When the first shots were fired Griffin was standing just outside the pantry. He noticed the woman and another man whom he had seen earlier with Sirhan run out of the pantry. Something in their motion and demeanor made Griffin blurt out, ‘They’re getting away!’”428
Other eyewitnesses saw the same two individuals, an attractive well-built young woman and an Arab-looking man, running out of the pantry while everyone else was heading in, or toward Senator Kennedy. Their descriptions matched. Some noted that the Arab-looking man was perspiring profusely and held a gun visible beneath a newspaper. Other eyewitnesses reported that once outside, the same two individuals yelled “We got him! We shot him!” More than one witness saw and heard that. Again, their descriptions matched.429
For some reason, LAPD found it necessary to discredit Griffin and his statement.
“The LAPD Summary Report would dismiss Booker Griffin by stating that Griffin confessed “that the story of the male and female escaping was a total fabrication on his part.” This allegation has no basis whatsoever in any of the tapes, transcripts, or summaries of Griffin’s law enforcement interviews. It is so transparent in its goal of discrediting a witness that it serves as further evidence of a hidden agenda on the part of those producing the final Summary Report alleging he had admitted he had lied.”430
Griffin was furious and rightfully so. There was obviously an agenda, and people were going to great lengths to support that agenda.
It was against that backdrop that Sirhan was found guilty “alone and not in concert with anyone else” of Murder in the First Degree. Sirhan later told his attorney:
“Even Jesus Christ couldn’t have saved me.”431
From a standpoint of being framed by the “justice” system, he was apparently right. Incredibly, over forty years after the murder, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan still sits in prison for a crime he could not have committed: Murder in the First Degree requires willful, that is, conscious premeditation and, as we show above, he scientifically and literally could not have fired the shot that killed Senator Kennedy. Either no one has been able to find a federal judge who will look fairly at the exculpatory evidence, or the case is simply too hot to handle—probably the latter.
POSSIBLE SCENARIOS
Some very interesting evidence exists that Sirhan may have somehow been “mentally manipulated.”
Those who saw Sirhan after the murder noted with great surprise that both his facial expression and his demeanor were dramatically opposite his actual situation.
“Writer George Plimpton, who had helped in the struggle to disarm him, was taken aback by his ‘dark brown and enormously peaceful eyes.’ Another witness recalled that he looked ‘very tranquil.’ His detachment seemed almost transcendal, as if he had an inner life that had no relation to the hysteria around him.’432
The LAPD Night Watch Commander who had read Sirhan his legal rights, Sgt. William C. Jordan, was also shocked by the serenity of the defendant in such a hysterical situation. Jordan said:
“There was more than a touch of mob hysteria in the kitchen after the shooting.” Yet the suspect remained less agitated than “individuals arrested for a traffic violation.”433
Legal precedent does exist for murder-by-proxy via hypnosis.434
The linkage between powerful billionaire Aristotle Onassis, known simply as “The Greek,” and the Kennedy family is one that is both curious and possibly very important. The animosity between the two was historically well-documented and extreme in nature:
“When Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. ... asked Bobby what they proposed to do about Onassis’s invitation, the Attorney General answered grimly,
‘Sink the fucking yacht.’”435
As investigative journalist Peter Evans points out, the links can be made from Onassis all the way to Sirhan. The missing portion of Sirhan’s history known as his “white fog” period, coincides exactly with the trips to California of a strong link to Onassis, Mahmoud Hamshari, who also had links to terrorist networks.
Onassis and Hamshari both also link up directly to the infamous hypnotist, Bill Bryan, whose work was even the basis of the film, The Manchurian Candidate, for which Bryan also served as technical consultant.
&nbs
p; Bill Bryan was a “hypnosis superstar,” possibly the best there ever was. He apparently worked on the CIA’s MKULTRA and ARTICHOKE mind control programs and it was verified that, believe it or not, he could make patients “bleed on cue”; he actually did precisely that at a hypnosis seminar for trial lawyers in San Francisco in 1961; the event was witnessed by many and was not sleight-of-hand.436
Onassis was a patient of Dr. Bryan and often referred friends and associates to the famous hypnotist. Most of the records for the CIA behavioral research programs MKULTRA and ARTICHOKE were secretly destroyed and it is not officially known whether they succeeded in creating a successful Manchurian Candidate (programmed assassin) at the time of the projects’ termination in 1964. However, Milton Kline, an expert who worked on the secret projects (and was President, American Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis), summarizes the capability as follows:
“It cannot be done by everyone, it cannot be done consistently, but it can be done.”437
Therefore, the relationship between Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis is not only of historical importance, it also seems somehow linked to the murder of Robert Kennedy.
LBJ reportedly loved hearing news of the marriage because it gave him the revenge against Bobby Kennedy that he craved: