CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys by Patrick Nolan

Author:Patrick Nolan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

7

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, an Involuntary Pawn

ON AUGUST 28, 2002, one of the world’s preeminent authorities on the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, Judge Robert J. Joling of Green Valley, Arizona (formerly of Kenosha, Wisconsin), spoke at the University of New Haven. He had traveled to Connecticut to donate his extensive collection of RFK documents to the university’s Dr. Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science. A gathering of one hundred, including students, faculty, law enforcement officers, and reporters, came to listen to Judge Joling’s findings. The facts of the thirty-four-year-old murder case would surprise many in the room. The forensic evidence showed that the convicted assassin, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a twenty-four-year-old Palestinian immigrant who was apprehended with gun in hand, was not in fact, the killer.937

As we shall see ahead, other respected historians have concurred with Judge Joling’s assessment. In addition, nationally recognized investigators have also concluded—based on eyewitness accounts—that there were two other gunmen, both wearing suits, as well as a uniformed security guard, all with guns drawn.

Sen. Robert Kennedy, forty-two, was ambushed in the kitchen pantry of Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968. He had just delivered a rousing victory speech, having won the California Democratic presidential primary earlier that night. Amidst thunderous applause in the hotel ballroom, he and his wife Ethel and entourage exited the dais and took a shortcut through the pantry on their way to a press conference in another room on that floor. A hotel employee guided Kennedy through the swinging doors of the pantry. Bobby greeted hotel workers as he walked through. Some seventy people—supporters, staff, friends, reporters, photographers, and others—crowded into the kitchen. Witnesses reported that the gunfire sounded like someone had set off a string of firecrackers. Five bystanders were wounded. They survived. Kennedy was hit at point-blank range in the back of the head and the back. He collapsed to the floor with arms outstretched, mortally wounded. The next day, June 6, 1968, at Good Samaritan Hospital, Bobby died.

Sen. Robert Kennedy would have most likely been the next president of the United States. He had won the final primary, defeating Minnesota senator Gene McCarthy, another popular antiwar candidate. Kennedy was expected to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination at the Chicago national convention in August 1968. From there, most pundits felt that Kennedy would have gone on to beat Republican Richard Nixon for the White House in November. As it turned out, following Bobby’s death, the Democrats at the Chicago convention chose Vice President Hubert Humphrey as their party’s nominee. He lost in the general election to Richard Nixon. During Nixon’s tenure, the United States endured five more years of war in Vietnam.

Bobby’s assassination shocked the world. At the crime scene in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen, the apparent assailant, Sirhan Sirhan, had been pummeled and then quickly taken into custody. Sirhan later stated in his jail cell that he had no memory of murder and even when questioned later under hypnosis he had no recall of the shooting.

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