Benjamin Cole

Well before Shane O'Sullivan, Patrick Nolan or Lisa Pease.... This documentary was made in 1975, and holds up remarkably well, a bit like reading Sylvia Meagher's book "Accessories After the Fact." Still fascinating to watch. There were some early heroes in the JFKA/RFK1A research community, who endured ridicule, slander and dismissal for their earnest efforts. These giants should be remembered too.

Agreed 100%

Thanks to Jim DiEugenio for his illumination on this topic and all aspects of the JFKA/RFK1A. We have a titan among us. IMHO, the JFKA/RFK1A are the same play, Act I and Act II, with subplots extending all the way to the disappearing Scott Enyart photos in 1996, and now to the Biden Administration snuff job on the JFK Records Act. No LBJ cohort could have done that, or Mossad, or the Mob, or some French assassins etc. No high national elected official will cross the intel-state, aka shadow government or Deep State. The only comfort is, there are nations that are far worse than the US. The Butcher of Tehran murdered 8,000 political opponents, for example.

I have wondered the same thing. All I can glean is (the cover story anyway) that the courier left the negatives in his car at LAX, from which they were stolen. In fact, the courier may not be in on the gag. I would like to know if the courier left, say, a manila envelope in the trunk of his car, and that was stolen....

The year was 1996. LBJ had been dead 23 years. In a nutshell, Scott Enyart was photographer in 1969, in the pantry where RFK1 was assassinated. He snapped three rolls, which were confiscated by the LAPD and never seen again (see this link for a fuller explanation): After much wrangling, it was discovered in 1996 the Enyart negatives had survived, and were in the State Archives in Sacramento, and a judge in L.A. ordered the negatives sent to his courtroom forthwith. The negatives were sent not by mail, or even registered mail Special Delivery, or Federal Express or UPS. The negatives were considered so important, they were sent by courier from Sacramento to the L.A. courtroom. You guessed it. The courier suffered a robbery, and the negatives were lost forever. You might suspect somebody did not want the negatives to be seen by the public. But LBJ, and many of his co-horts had moved on. Long time passing. Who did not want the negatives to become public, and who could execute such a daring intervention? This Enyart photo heist happened after the 1968-9 snuff job done on the RFK1A investigation. Who could engineer the RFK1A and then suffocate an investigation---and follow that up 23 years later by seizing the Enyart negatives? If Sirhan was just a lone nut---really then, the Enyart negatives just happened to disappear in 1996 when en route to L.A. and public disclosure? From the protective services of a courier? The purposes of the RFK1A may have been a few, but likely one was to prevent RFK1 from investigating the JFKA earnestly, once in the White House. What type of group or organization had the resources and staying power, and connections to do a snuff job on the JFKA investigation, then the RFK1A investigation, and then 23 years later, pull off the Enyart negatives heist? That strikes me as well beyond the ken of foreign governments, the Mob, or right-wing racists and so on, or LBJ. Who then? Likely, the same organization that can subvert, evidently in perpetuity, the JFK Records Act.

Well, they mostly make dark allusions, and said there were three fingerprint experts who looked at the Mac Wallace fingerprint, and concurred it was a bona fide Wallace print. And that everyone agreed when Mellon went to Texas she had her mind already made up. In truth, I am disappointed in Groubert on this one. He is a smart guy and interesting, and well read, but sometimes places too much faith in his powers divination. Serious scholars spend decades in this field and are less certain abut everything than Groubert. But he runs a good show.

The "gunsack" sure is curious. No one ever saw such a long gunsack, until after the JFKA.

There has been some discussion in the EF-JFKA that the RFK1A was not an intel-stat op, but rather a lone-nut assassination. For me, the RFK1A is much more a "Rosetta Stone" explaining JFKA, than was Tippit's murder (paraphrasing WC lawyer David Belin). The Tippit murder remains a bog of conflicting information and likely tampered evidence, with few clues pointing to the true perps behind the JFKA. There are several good books out on the RFK1A, and for those in a hurry and on a budget, Larry Hancock's excellent free series on the RFK1A at the Mary Ferrel Foundation website. https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Incomplete_Justice_-_At_the_Ambassador_Hotel.html For those who want a short version as seen by Lisa Pease, book author, here is a review from the Washington Post. (see below). If the CIA did murder RFK1...why? Are the JFKA and the RFK1A the same play, Act I and Act II? ---30--- Was Robert Maheu, an aide to Howard Hughes, responsible for Bobby Kennedy’s assassination? Robert A. Maheu pauses outside federal court in Los Angeles in 1974, where a jury ruled that he had been defamed by billionaire Howard Hughes. A new book claims that Maheu, a longtime CIA operative, may have arranged the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.). (Bettmann/Bettmann Archive) By Tom Jackman February 9 Robert A. Maheu was such a colorful character that it’s widely believed the television show “Mission: Impossible” was based on him and his private investigative agency. As an ex-FBI agent, the CIA asked him to handle jobs it wanted to steer clear of, such as lining up prostitutes for a foreign president or hiring the mafia to kill Fidel Castro. For more than 15 years, Maheu and his Washington-based company were on monthly retainer to “The Agency,” CIA records show. And during much of that time, Maheu was the right-hand man to Howard Hughes as Hughes bought up vast swaths of Las Vegas and helped finance CIA operations. Now, a new book alleges that Maheu may have performed another mission for the CIA: the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.). A spokeswoman for the CIA declined to comment on the book’s allegations, though she acknowledged that Hughes did finance some CIA operations. Maheu would have had access to the CIA’s experiments in hypnosis and mind control, which were being conducted at the time in California and elsewhere. That would have enabled him to frame Sirhan Sirhan as a patsy for the slaying of Kennedy, while other gunmen actually fired the fatal shots, argues author Lisa Pease, who spent 25 years researching her book, “A Lie Too Big to Fail." Pease is not the first person to link the CIA to the June 1968 assassination of Kennedy, in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Sirhan’s lawyers in 2010 accused the CIA of hypnotizing Sirhan and making him “an involuntary participant.” The agency may have feared Kennedy because he opposed the CIA’s expansive use of power and would have pressed the agency for answers in the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, five years earlier, Pease theorizes. [Who killed Bobby Kennedy? His son, RFK Jr., doesn't believe it was Sirhan Sirhan] With Maheu’s contacts throughout the CIA and organized crime, he is “the most credible high-level suspect for the planner of Robert Kennedy’s assassination,” Pease wrote. Maheu died in Las Vegas in 2008 at age 90, after a career that the New York Times once described as having “aspects of a novel jointly written by Ian Fleming and Harold Robbins.” Pease’s book builds on the work of numerous prior authors who concluded that Sirhan did not kill Kennedy but was convicted by the misdeeds of the Los Angeles police and district attorney, and the ineptitude of his defense lawyers, who never challenged any of the physical evidence. Chief among that evidence is the autopsy finding that Kennedy was shot point blank in the back of the head, while Sirhan was in front of Kennedy. Witnesses at the scene of the shooting were adamant that Sirhan never got close enough to fire at close range — he was pinned down by a hotel maître d’ after two shots from in front of Kennedy, and emptied the rest of his eight-shot pistol wildly while he was held down. The courts in California have rejected such claims, and Sirhan has repeatedly been denied parole, most recently in 2016. He is serving a life sentence in a prison outside San Diego and has maintained since his arrest that he does not remember firing any shots at Kennedy. The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office and police declined to comment for this story. A former Los Angeles assistant prosecutor has testified against Sirhan at parole hearings, but he, also, declined to be interviewed. Kennedy speaking at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles early on the morning of June 5, 1968, just past the midnight of June 4. He was shot shortly after the speech. Some critics allege that Sirhan Sirhan was wrongly convicted of the slaying. (Dick Strobel/AP) Pease believes Sirhan had been hypnotized and was firing blanks, and she quotes witnesses who told police they saw shredded paper fluttering through the air as the shots were being fired, indicative of casings containing an explosive charge but no bullets. Pease cites witnesses, such as the wife of author George Plimpton, who said they saw gunmen behind Kennedy. One of those, an armed security guard named Thane Cesar, had previously worked for Maheu in Los Angeles, Pease found. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the slain senator, said he thought Pease was “a great researcher.” He said he had done “a lot of research on Robert Maheu, talked to his friends,” and read Maheu’s autobiography, “Next to Hughes: Behind the Power and Tragic Downfall of Howard Hughes by His Closest Advisor.” “I don’t think there’s any doubt he had the means, opportunity and the motive,” Kennedy said of Maheu. “The question is, how much was he involved?” Kennedy said that his own investigation, which included meeting with Sirhan in prison in December 2017, showed that “Sirhan could not and did not fire the gun that shot and killed my father.” But in an interview with The Washington Post, Maheu’s son, Robert G. Maheu, denied that his father had any role in the case. “He had nothing to do with any assassination,” Robert G. Maheu said of his father. “He knew them [the Kennedys] all very well. I was at functions where the Kennedys always ran over to hug my dad and kiss my mom. There was no animosity toward them at all. . . . There’s all kinds of lies and stories and conspiracies that are all made up.” He agreed that the 1960s show “Mission: Impossible” was based on his father. “That is true,” the son said. “His detective agency handled all the cases that the CIA couldn’t handle.” [Obituary: Robert Maheu, 90; Tycoon's aide, CIA spy] Others disagree about Maheu’s role in the Kennedy case. Among the skeptics is John Meier, who worked with Maheu in the Howard Hughes organization in the late 1960s and was one of the few people actually to work with Hughes in person. (Maheu never did.) In 2015, Meier published his decades of diary entries detailing his suspicions about Maheu and Hughes’s connections to the assassination. Meier is now in poor health, but his son, Jim Meier, spoke to him for this story. “My father did confirm,” Jim Meier said, “that he absolutely knows that Hughes was supporting Maheu’s operation to assassinate RFK.” John Meier wrote in his June 1968 diaries that Maheu was ecstatic upon learning of Kennedy’s death, and that Maheu was “furious” when Meier began asking about the connection between Maheu and the security guard Cesar, the former Maheu employee who escorted Kennedy into the hotel pantry. John Meier also told Pease that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover “knew that Robert Maheu was behind the assassination of Robert Kennedy,” and said so to him. Lisa Pease, author of "A Lie Too Big to Fail," a new look at the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. (Lisa Pease/Lisa Pease) Author Jim Hougan interviewed Maheu at length for his 1978 book “Spooks,” about ex-CIA agents who ran private operations after leaving the agency. “If Lyndon Johnson was correct when he complained,” Hougan told The Post, “shortly after assuming the presidency, that the government ‘had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean,’ then Robert Maheu was surely that firm’s chief operating officer.” The evidence Pease presents about Maheu’s involvement in RFK’s assassination “deserves serious consideration,” he said. ‘Too many holes’ On June 4, 1968, Robert Kennedy won the California Democratic primary for president. Shortly after midnight, on the morning of June 5, he gave a victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel. He then was shot in the adjacent pantry, as were five other people standing behind him, all of whom survived wounds inflicted from the front. But Kennedy’s shots were from the back: One shot went through his jacket without hitting him, one went into his back and stopped below his neck, one went through his armpit and one went into his brain and fragmented. The neck bullet was recovered, as were bullets from two of the wounded victims. [A busboy held Bobby Kennedy after he was shot. The photo haunted him until his own death.] Kennedy survived for a day and died June 6, 1968, with his wife and children by his side. They had flown out from the family home in Virginia. Sirhan was captured in the pantry, but seemed unusually calm in police custody and seemed to have no idea why he was arrested, authors who have listened to his taped statements have said. In addition, his .22-caliber pistol could hold only eight bullets. But in addition to the four shots into Kennedy and five into the victims — one bullet was theorized to have hit two people — other bullets were found in the wood frames of doors in the pantry. Los Angeles police criminalist De Wayne Wolfer would later say that there were no bullets in the frames and that the holes had been made by the impact of kitchen carts. In 1969, the police destroyed the frames, even though the case was on appeal. Pease and others argue that there were simply “too many holes” in the pantry for Sirhan to have been a lone gunman, and that witnesses were certain the holes in the frames were caused by bullets. She even found a video in an archive at the University of California at Los Angeles that appears to show bullets in the frames. Wolfer’s work as a crime scene analyst was later harshly discredited by California authorities. [Did L.A. police and prosecutors bungle the Bobby Kennedy assassination?] But Sirhan’s defense team elected not to challenge any of the physical evidence, ignoring the autopsy report by famed coroner Thomas Noguchi showing the Kennedy shots were fired just inches from his back and head. Pease found witness statements from people who saw men with guns behind Kennedy, and who saw other men flee the pantry, including one woman who suffered a broken front tooth from a man’s crashing into her while running out of the hotel. But Los Angeles police and the defense team did not pursue those leads. Sirhan’s lawyers instead conceded his guilt and tried to avoid a death sentence by focusing on Sirhan’s mental health. This failed, and Sirhan was sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted when California invalidated the death penalty. Not long after the trial, a ballistics expert examined the three bullets recovered from the scene and found that they did not match Sirhan’s gun. A subsequent retesting was done, but the bullet removed from Kennedy’s neck by Noguchi had vanished, and no ballistics match was ever made between the bullets and Sirhan’s eight-shot pistol. Though many authors have argued that Sirhan is innocent, Pease’s book goes further and tries to answer the question: If not Sirhan, who? Howard Hughes’s ‘alter ego’ Robert Maheu was born in Maine in 1917 and joined the FBI during World War II. After the war, Maheu set up his own company in Washington, Robert A. Maheu and Associates. According to a memo written in 1975 for a Senate committee investigating CIA abuses, “In 1954 Maheu was recruited by the CIA for use by the CIA’s Office of Security for ‘extremely sensitive cases.’” The memo recounts projects Maheu undertook for the CIA including providing “female companionship” for a leader of another country, and also wiretapping Aristotle Onassis’s phones in New York, part of a larger harassment campaign that led to Onassis’s losing a massive oil shipping contract with Saudi Arabia. Maheu told The Post in 1978 that the Onassis job wasn’t initiated by the CIA, but “I wouldn’t take the assignment until I cleared it with” the agency. [From 1978: Maheu admits '54 anti-Onassis drive] In 1957, Maheu took on Howard Hughes as a client and “agreed to be his alter ego,” Maheu told an interviewer in 1992. But he communicated with Hughes only by phone or handwritten memos, never in person. “As early as 1960,” authors Larry DuBois and Laurence Gonzales wrote in 1976, “Maheu had Hughes’s blessing in taking on one of the agency’s most sensitive assignments: the assassination of Fidel Castro.” That year, according to a CIA internal memo, the agency set out to hire the mafia to kill Castro. The CIA contacted Maheu, the memo states, who enlisted West Coast mobster Johnny Roselli. Roselli organized a meeting for Maheu and a top CIA official with Sam Giancana of Chicago and Santo Trafficante Jr., the former mob boss of Cuba, CIA records show. Giancana suggested using a friendly contact in Cuba to poison Castro, and the CIA provided “pills of high lethal content.” But Castro suddenly changed restaurants, and the pills were never tried. The plot was revealed, along with other CIA excesses, in 1975. Sirhan Sirhan, third from left in blue, reaches to shake the hand of victim Paul Schrade, second from right, at the end of a parole hearing in 2016. Schrade was wounded while standing behind Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, but believes Sirhan did not fire the shot that killed Kennedy. (Gregory Bull/AP) ‘Radio Man’ By 1968, Howard Hughes had moved from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and Maheu was his frontman as Hughes bought the Desert Inn and numerous other casinos. Maheu moved into a mansion called “Little Caesars Palace,” where he entertained senators and celebrities, maintained a yacht in Newport, R.I., and flew around the world in Hughes’s jets, according to a 1971 profile in The Post. At the same time, the CIA was experimenting with programs such as “Bluebird” and “Project MKUltra,” tests on unwitting people to see whether their minds could be manipulated by drugs, torture or hypnosis. Colleges, hospitals, prisons and pharmaceutical companies participated in the project, records revealed in the 1970s showed, with the CIA hoping to be able to manipulate foreign leaders and other important figures, or program others to commit acts of espionage. [From 1977: Lengthy mind-control research by CIA is detailed] During this time, Sirhan was working as a horse walker at the Santa Anita racetrack, which Robert Kennedy Jr. said was owned by Roselli, and then began riding horses at a ranch in Corona, Calif. He said Sirhan told him he had no experience riding and took several falls, including one that required minor medical treatment. But Sirhan’s family said he disappeared for more than a month, and Pease found a long list of doctor’s appointments Sirhan had that were inconsistent with a minor horse fall. Kennedy, who has come under attack for his ties to the anti-vaccine movement, said this was the period when Sirhan may have been hypnotized. He was repeatedly introduced to a man he knew only as “Radio Man.” Some have theorized that “Radio Man” hypnotized Sirhan into repeatedly writing “RFK must die” in a journal found in his room, words Sirhan said he did not remember writing. An expert in hypnosis from Harvard Medical School, Dan Brown, began meeting with Sirhan in 2008 and found him not only easily hypnotized, but also still easily triggered to re-create aggressive shooting moves out of nowhere. Brown submitted affidavits for Sirhan’s appeal stating that he believed Sirhan was an actual “Manchurian Candidate,” manipulated to perform bad acts against his will. In 1994, Sirhan told journalist Dan Moldea, “It’s probably too diabolical to suggest that I was controlled by someone else — but I don’t know. I only know that I don’t remember anything about the shooting.” In rejecting the theory, a federal judge wrote, “Whether or not the theory that a person can be hypnotized to commit murder, and then to lose his memory of committing that murder is scientifically credible … [Sirhan] has not provided any reliable evidence that this actually occurred.” [The assassination of Bobby Kennedy: Was Sirhan Sirhan hypnotized to be the fall guy?] Robert Kennedy Jr. also believes the CIA was involved in the Los Angeles police investigation, to quash any hints of conspiracy. “It’s undisputable by rational people,” Kennedy said, “there were invasive connections between the CIA and Special Unit Senator,” the investigative team assembled by the LAPD to handle the assassination. Two Los Angeles officers in particular, Sgt. Enrique Hernandez and Lt. Manny Pena, appeared to have CIA backgrounds, though both denied it, and they helped run the daily operations of Special Unit Senator. “The guys running the SUS, they were full-blown CIA agents who had been involved in really ugly stuff,” Kennedy said. Both men have since died. Could Maheu have arranged for both the hypnosis of Sirhan and his placement at the Ambassador Hotel that night, and for other actual gunmen to be there as well? Pease argues that Sirhan served as a distraction in front of Kennedy, firing blanks and drawing witnesses’ attention, while the actual shooters shot Kennedy from behind and escaped. Audiotapes uncovered in 2004 seem to reveal 13 shots being fired, rather than just eight. It doesn’t appear that anyone ever asked Maheu about his role in the Kennedy assassination, though Meier, his colleague in the Hughes organization, always suspected him. Maheu, who was in Las Vegas when the shooting occurred, does not mention it in his autobiography. [The Bobby Kennedy assassination tape: Were 13 shots fired or only eight?] Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrives with his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, for a commemoration of his father's life at Arlington National Cemetery in June 2018. Kennedy believes his father's assassination has not been solved. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) Sirhan is reading Pease’s book now, said his brother, Munir Sirhan. The Sirhan family always accused the defense team, led by Grant Cooper, of not fighting hard enough to prove Sirhan’s innocence, his brother said. “The poor guy’s been stuck in jail for almost his whole life,” Pease said of Sirhan, “for something he didn’t do. And that’s just not right.” Pease and Kennedy both signed a recent petition calling for a “Truth and Reconciliation Committee” to reexamine the assassinations of Robert and John Kennedy, Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “It all stinks,” Kennedy said. “It’s the whole country that’s getting screwed. These assassinations put us down an ugly road.” Note: An earlier version of this story reported that author Shane O’Sullivan also alleged that CIA operatives were at the Ambassador Hotel, but O’Sullivan subsequently withdrew that claim after further investigation.

I guess Nixon and Carter didn't have extra-marital affairs. Clinton was clean as a whistle, no? Is this really what we want to talk about in EF-JFKA/RFK1A? Biden probably is having no extra-martial sex in his first term. That's important!

I do not care about JFK's private sex life, and rumors are only rumors. President George Bush Sr. bonked some lady, and his loyal wife thought about driving her car into opposing traffic. Should we think about that, or...discuss Bush Sr's policies. BTW, some people think the Bushes played a hand in the JFKA/RFK1A miasma....

MC-- Thanks for your collegial comments. I would hope the entire EF-JFKA, regardless of our preferred politics or versions of the JFKA/RFK1A, would demand the immediate and unconditional release of all JFK Records. Surely, any and all snuff jobs on records pertaining to the JFK/RFK1A are intolerable.

I disagree with the Groubert and Nelson assessment of the JFKA, but I do not agree with the peevishly small-minded hob-goblin mindset of censoring that with which I disagree. Why not post interesting views of the JFKA/RFK1A, even if they are not my views? Groubert and Nelson contend the Mac Wallace fingerprint in the TSBD6 is valid, and the Joan Mellon was up to no good in Austin Texas. They say something was fishy about the Mob-tight Jim Garrison. The weakness in the Groubert/Nelson versions are largely-- 1. Most JFKA evidence seems to point back to JMWAVE, Miami, Cuban exiles, US mercs. Read Larry Hancock's SWHT. 2. There were previous assassination plots in Chicago and Miami...again pointing back the JMWAVE. LBJ in Chicago? 3. The RFK1A was also a conspiracy followed by an investigation snuff job---I posit to keep RFK1A from office, where he would bring about an intrepid investigation of the JFKA. I do not see how LBJ could have pulled off the RFK1A and snuff job. That was beyond his ken. But hey--Groubert and Nelson have a different view and here they are:

RM- Thanks for commenting. I may do a separate post more fully explaining the JFKA/RFK1A nexus. Serious scholars, such as Larry Hancock, Lisa Pease, James DiEugenio, Peter Nolan, David Talbot, have reviewed the RFK1A and concluded there was a conspiracy and then a snuff job on the RFK1A investigation. Who would have the resources to conduct the RFK1A conspiracy...then perpetrate a cover-up? By 1968, LBJ was rapidly fading, and if he had hooks into the LAPD, I have never heard or read about it. In contrast, there were members of the LAPD special unit created to handle the assassination who were CIA. In addition there is another flaw in the "LBJ did it" version: The previous assassination attempts on JFK in Miami and Chicago, both of which appear linked to CIA-Miami Beach JMWAVE. But...to show you I am opened minded, I will also post a recent video from Mark Groubert, who agrees with you. As I do not believe in censorship.

That's an interesting question. There seems to be wildly proliferating new sections to EF-JFKA, to keep away from the EF-JFKA main-bar such disquieting topics as JFKA book reviews and the RFK1A. The RFK1A has been part and parcel of the EF-JFKA for decades, and appears to have been a twinned killing, but now the RFK1A is lodged in internet Siberia. Maybe we will see a special section on the JFK Records Act. I am planning a series on the Act entitled "The Machinery of Secrecy." There seems to be a lot of misfires in the moderation of the EF-JFKA lately. Maybe someone else has a clue to what is going on.

Sy Hersh seems to have slipped quite a bit. But he was the man that broke the My Lai story.

JD- Well, I try to be cordial or collegial to every earnest EF-JFKA participant. I block one or two, but only after sustained unreasonable personal animosity is expressed. MK has been cordial to me, so I respond in kind. OK, MK is something of an America Firster. BTW, I support higher import tariffs, and limited US interventionism, so I suppose there is a bit of "America First" in me too. I also support a secure border. (BTW, the presidential candidate, whose name cannot be mentioned, is largely on board with these ideas too). I confess I am not up to speed on Naomi Klein or Ira Stoll. I do think we should concentrate more, inside the EF-JFKA, on the JFKA and the RFK1A. I always enjoy your contributions to the EF-JFKA. I read each one twice or more. I deeply respect your studies on JFK's foreign policies. I largely concur, especially on the horrendous results of the wars in SE Asia (six million dead, and infinite human suffering---for what?) But, when we get into legacies, and how the JFKA and RFK1A changed the course of history and so so, we are bound to get into "political" debates. MK is entitled to his views. They are not always my views. As I said, I am re-evaluating what has been America's influence in the world, and what are just seemingly immutable attributes of many nations. Haiti is Haiti, Russia is Russia, Japan is Japan. Islamia is Islamia. I live offshore now. America is seen as important...but not more than that. Domestic forces are much more important within a nation. You are a top JFK and JFKA scholar. You are large enough to be gracious to others who may be struggling a bit. Some things just have to be shrugged off.

MK- Oh, I probably agree the sudden disposal of state-owned Russian assets created a kleptocracy. But lately I have been re-considering the view that everything that happens globally is America's/allies fault, or that there are virtuous people being suppressed. The Russians have a stellar track record of decades upon decades of terrible governments. Nearly all Islamic nations are regressing, from Tunisia, to Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, down the line. Oppression and terror are so common as to be banal in Islamia. Xi is taking China down the road ever-increasing repression. Are Western liberal democracies responsible for all of this? And would you rather live in a Western liberal democracy than any of the aforementioned nations? Maybe Russia is a crap-hole due to the Russian people, Haiti due to Haitians. Lebanon due to Lebanese. The best large nation to live in the world is probably Japan. Does America get credit for that? Well, a little bit, but it was the Japanese that did that.

Ungainly, physically unattractive, filled with self-righteous animosity, and an alcoholic with access to weapons and gunsels.... What's not to like? Someone perped the JFK/RFK1 assassinations. Harvey? Or did it go higher?

Thanks to James Carter and James DiEugenio for bringing to light this volume. The JFK/RFK1 assassinations can never receive too much coverage or thought.

CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys: How and Why US Agents Conspired to Assassinate JFK and RFK By Patrick Nolan, Henry C. Lee (Foreword) I have not been able to read this book---has anyone out there read it? This is the publisher's synopsis, which of course would be favorable--- The US Central Intelligence Agency is no stranger to conspiracy and allegations of corruption. Across the globe, violent coups have been orchestrated, high-profile targets kidnapped, and world leaders dispatched at the hands of CIA agents. During the 1960s, on domestic soil, the methods used to protect their interests and themselves at the expense of the American people were no less ruthless. In CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys, Patrick Nolan fearlessly investigates the CIA’s involvement in the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy—why the brothers needed to die and how rogue intelligence agents orchestrated history’s most infamous conspiracy. Nolan furthers the research of leading forensic scientists, historians, and scholars who agree that there remain serious unanswered questions regarding the assassinations of John F. Kennedy fifty years ago and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. He revisits and refutes what is currently known about Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, and offers readers a compelling profile of the CIA’s Richard Helms, an amoral master of clandestine operations with a chip on his shoulder. Bolstered by a foreword by Dr. Henry C. Lee, one of the world’s foremost forensic authorities, CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys is an unmatched effort in forensic research and detective work. As the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK assassination approaches, Nolan has made a significant contribution to the literature on that fateful day in Dallas as well as shed light on that dark night at the Ambassador Hotel. Readers interested in conspiracy, the Kennedy family, or American history will find this book invaluable. ---30--- This is from the author's website: Nolan’s book, “CIA Rogues”, is based on world-famous forensic scientist Dr. Henry C. Lee’s determination that both Kennedy murders involved more than one gunman. From James DiEugenio, we knew that Lee looked at the JFKA. I did not know Lee also looked at the RFK1A. Lee is regarded as top-flight in his field. My hunch is the JFKA and RFK1A are linked. Why the snuff job on the RFK1A investigation...unless Sirhan was not a "lone assassin"?

Thanks JB for posting this. After recent re-consideration, I more strongly suspect that the the RFK1A was perped by the same people behind the JFKA. The true perps (not the cat's paws) could not risk RFK1A in the Oval Office. The JFKA/RFK1A are the same story. If a play, Act I and Act II. Evidently Davis Talbot was of the view the JFKA triggered the RFK1A. For me...the proof was in re-reading about the snuff job on RFK1A investigation. Why a snuff job if Sirhan was just a demented loner, or even connected to Arab terror groups? I wonder what would have to happen for the truth to come out on these two assassinations.

RM-- Thanks for your collegial comments. Yes, we have different takes on the JFKA and RFK1A. Of course, I do not have divine interpretations of world events and politics, unlike some of our gifted colleagues and moderators. I may wrong on the JFKA and RFK1A. For now, my hunch is RFK's rise towards the Oval Office triggered the RFK1A. And that was necessary, given the JFKA. A lot of these people were still alive back then. Larry Hancock is surely a skilled and circumspect JFKA/RFK1A researcher. See his work: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Incomplete_Justice_-_At_the_Ambassador_Hotel.html I wrote up a post on the RFK1A, since banished by moderators to EF-JFKA Siberia (see below) I enjoy your views on LBJ. He certainly had motives, and character to perp the JFKA. But the RFK1A?

DH-- Thanks for your collegial style of commenting. Well...we are just on different pages on this one, which is one reason I have not commented on your posts. I certainly encourage you to participate and express your views. 1. I suspect the Z-film, if altered at all, was only modestly monkeyed with. 2. I have seen no images or witness statements that a Secret Service man shot JFK with an AR-15. 3. The RFK1A strikes me as a follow-on assassination to the JFK. That is, whoever perped the JFK, had to make sure RFK did not gain control of the levers of government. If the JFK was just an accident and a lone nut acting together, then there would be no reason for a snuff job on the investigations into the two assassinations. Just IMHO as usual.

KG- And after the RFK1A, there was little chance RFK could pursue a true JFKA investigation.

RB-- Thanks for your collegial comment. Certainly Talbot thought the JFKA and RFK1A were part and parcel. Certainly Lisa Pease, Larry Hancock and James DiEugenio have concluded there was a snuff job on the RFK1A investigation. Why would there be such a snuff job, if Sirhan was a "lone nut"? And...who could execute a snuff job on the RFK1A investigation? That is some serious power. Maybe Talbot was right: It was higher ups in the CIA that perped the JFKA, and then they were forced to do the RFK1A, as RFK1 drew closer to the presidency. Until I began reconsidering the RFK1A, I thought likely it was only lower, rogue CIA elements that perped the JFK. But that does not explain the RFK1A investigation snuff job. Nor the Biden Administration snuff job on the JFK Records. Maybe the JFKA went all the way to the top ranks of the CIA. And the RFK1A had to happen to keep that under wraps.