Benjamin Cole

The opening segments of this Mark Groubert presentation feature an old c. 1977 interview of Frank Sturgis, the CIA operative and Watergate burglar. See Spartacus for a rundown on Sturgis. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKsturgis.htm Long before James Hougan's excellent book on Watergate came out in 1984 (Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA) Sturgis is laying out the "real" reasons why Nixon is getting booted from the White House---in part, the CIA does not like Nixon demanding to see the Bay of Pigs files and the truth about the JFKA. This tension between Helms of the CIA and Nixon regarding the "Bay of Pigs files" later became documented with the release of the Nixon White House tapes. Sturgis also names Alexander Butterfield, E. Howard Hunt and Haig as CIA assets inside the White House---all points more-or-less assented to today, but not back then. Bob Woodward is the willing media side of the equation. Of course, the names Hunt and Sturgis also come up in various versions of the JFKA, with Hunt late in life stating he was on a back-up team in Dallas. Sturgis was regarded as a notoriously unreliable source and observer. So like everything about the JFKA or RFK1A, a wilderness of mirrors. My take-away is the the CIA, or intel-state, will depose Presidents they do not like, whether by force or otherwise.

RB- Thanks for your comments. Obviously, at this late date it difficult to prove anything. IMHO: But to have Sirhan armed with a pistol firing blanks seems like a huge risk. 1. If bystanders had seized Sirhan only moments earlier, there would have been blanks left in the pistol. That would raise questions, to put it mildly. Maybe the LAPD would cover that up too, but it seems like a gigantic risk. 2. The wild pattern of shots in the pantry seems to validate the idea that Sirhan was spraying shots around, as bystanders wrestled for control of the weapon. 3. There are no shots that entered RFK1 from the front of his body. Only from the rear. So, the purported second gunman fired randomly at the crowd and ceiling? 4. It is true, there was a fleeting risk to Cesar during the RFK1A event. Cesar might be in the line of fire from Sirhan, although that is hardly certain. But Cesar had two advantages. He knew what was coming, and could use RFK1 as a shield, which he did. My guess is the RFK1A plan was that Cesar was to return fire at Sirhan, possibly killing Sirhan and RFK1 (the latter by "mistake"). But when the smoke cleared, Cesar realized he was scot-free. Cesar's work may have been hazardous. I knew a guy that drove trucks in wartime Iraq for $170k a year. He figured it was 1 in 10 that he would not come home. Guys go down into coal mines for a lot less.

PB--thanks again for your comments. Yes, the LAPD's tests on RFK1's clothing seem to have disappeared between the cracks. No doubt Noguchi ran an earnest and skilled autopsy. Nevertheless, just one type of test by one expert...well, doubts can exist, in this case or any case. The LAPD test was an entirely different type of examination and procedure, by another party---and came to the same conclusion: RFK1 was shot at nearly point-blank range. If one says, "Well each test is likely accurate at 10-to-1 odds," then we reach the 100-to-1 odds level that RFK1 was indeed shot at vert close range. To give Lisa Pease her due, perhaps she acknowledges the separate LAPD test in her excellent volume, and she has 850 footnotes in that book, and who knows what is contained therein. It has been a while since I read her book.

M- I agree, Israel had nothing to do with the JFKA or RFK1A. Some of the people touting such perspectives are likely Jew- and Israel-haters. But some may be just enthralled with an idea, the same way there are some who posit the Mormon Mafia perped the JFK. ---30--- Regarding friendly fire incidents. During WWII, the Gela incident--- "It seemed as though every Allied gun battery on the Sicily beachhead and offshore was blowing (American) C-47s and C-53s out of the sky. The US Army’s own official history reads, “The slow-flying, majestic columns of aircraft were like sitting ducks.” Dozens of transport planes were hit. One exploded in midair. Others, on fire, tried to ditch to save the paratroopers. At the time, the shoot-down over Gela was the worst friendly-fire incident in US history. Three hundred eighteen American soldiers were killed or wounded. Twenty-three transport planes failed to return; others limped back to Tunisia badly damaged, one riddled with 1,000 holes; many landed with blood all over their floorboards. Brigadier General Charles L. Keerans, Jr., the 82nd Airborne’s assistant commander, was aboard a plane that was lost at sea. Why did Americans kill so many of their own over Sicily?" ---30--- Yes, it is true, US gunners shot 23 US transport airplanes out of the sky. Not one or two. US planes that were taking a prescribed route, and were identifiable as US airplanes. The scholars say globally about 20% of casualties in war are friendly fire. Pilots and soldiers feel adrenaline, make mistakes, or some are just poor soldiers. If you ever worked in a large organization, you know there are also a clump of guys you would not trust to run a McDonalds or drive a school bus. So it goes.

PM--My apols! I know nothing about Mark Chapman, but as they say...keep an open mind.

Well, since we are posting personal remembrances... I got the LA Times from the driveway and showed my mother the headline. RFK Shot. She already knew, of course, but seeing the deadline, she took off her glasses and wiped her face.

PB--- Thanks for your collegial comment. I concur with you. I felt compelled to present additional evidence, found through original research, that RFK1 was shot at close range.

KB- 1. It seems unlikely that Israel would want to assassinate not one but both strong, high-profile proponents of Israel. 2. It seems doubly unlikely that Israel had ties into the LAPD to enable and effect a cover-up. The whole point of my series on the RFK1A is that we see again a cover-up of a high-profile important assassination, five years later, and in a different jurisdiction. A lot of the same stuff too---bullet-slugs that had ID marks, marks that disappear, but nevertheless are accepted as evidence. IMHO, a Russia, a Cuban government, the Mob, and a tiny country like Israel does not have the resources and staying power to pull that off. The US intel community has that kind of resources.

MK- I would not be too harsh on JFK, nor is it necessary to valorize him. Yes, JFK made mistakes, such as ever green-lighting the BoP invasion or sending any troops to Vietnam at all. My take is that on the big-stuff, JFK was right. BTW, JFK obviously believed in the use of military force, and even personally participated in WWII, and thought the only problem with beating Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany was that it was not done sooner and harder. Who knows what a JFK would counsel today about a Putin or Hamas? He might advocate an early and strong smiting of such ghouls.

Joe Bauer- Thanks for your collegial comments. I felt compelled to present some original research on the RFK1A, and that is the separate LAPD finding---which underlines the finding of the autopsy---that RFK1 was shot at very close range. The LAPD finding involved a wholly different type of test, and came to same conclusion. Yet no one has ever heard of the LAPD finding. Then, somehow, the government investigations and the conclusion of the Sirhan trial was that Sirhan acted alone, likely a physical impossibility. This strongly suggests a government cover-up. Yes, I am fleshing out the idea that the JFK and the RFK1 are linked, that only an organization with resources and staying power could flummox two high profile investigations, five years apart, in different jurisdictions. In other words, the RFK1A suggests not the Russians, or Mob, or Cuban government. (The Mob may have been a cat's paw in elements of both the JFK and RFK1, but not the true power).

Most JFKA and RFK1A junkies know that Los Angeles Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Thomas Noguchi's autopsy found that RFK1 had been shot a very close range, evidently from behind. Noguchi found powder burns near RFK1's ear and performed experiments, and found such burns indicated a near point-blank shot. RFK1 was assassinated in L.A. on June 5, 1968. But the LAPD also had strong reason to conclude RFK1's assassin had shot at very close range. On July 8, the LAPD Lt. DW Mann filed a report with this paragraph in it: "A Walker's H-acid test was conducted on Senator Kennedy's suit coat in the area of the entrance wounds. This test indicated that the muzzle of the weapon was held at a distance between one and two inches from the coat at the time of all firings." http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Meagher Sylvia Folders/Stone Greg 1988/Stone 1988 15.pdf As widely noted, multiple witnesses concur that Sirhan was one to two yards from RFK at the time of shooting, and even his outstretched arm was never closer than 18 inches, and that was a minimum. What to make of this? Both the LAPD and Noguchi conducted different types of tests and concluded RFK1 had been shot at nearly point-blank range, and yet no one saw Sirhan close enough to deliver such a shot. So, what is the rest of the story?

I like that. An "exclusive" discussion with Sachs. Very rarified.

Well, back on topic, which is Jeffrey Sachs.... One reservation I have about people like Sachs.... No matter what human-rights oppressions happen in China, Islamia or Russia...they largely go mute. And history shows us that governments that viciously oppress their own populations often extend that suppression internationally. I happen to think the US should have never occupied Afghanistan. But let's face facts: what happens to women and religious and sexual minorities in Afghanistan? Teen girls despair as Taliban school ban continues BBC https://www.bbc.com › news › world-asia-68634700 Mar 22, 2567 BE — According to Unicef, the ban has now impacted some 1.4m Afghan girls - among them, former classmates Habiba, Mahtab and Tamana, who spoke to the ... ---30--- The Taliban are not the good guys. The Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas/UNRWA are cut from the same cloth. Women are 50% of the population anywhere. Can we just whistle in the dark about women's rights, as if such rights are not basic and fundamental? Evidently, for some elements within the US, if the narrative of women's rights in Islamia is inconvenient...then the topic is dropped. See Sachs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZbvDgBpV00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aisW_pWgk4I So Lisa Pease was evidently interviewed at length by the Fox-11 local station in L.A., four months ago, regarding the RFK1A. Pease offers a wealth of information, and there are certainly grounds for a great deal of skepticism regarding the suppression and tampering of evidence in the RFK1A case. There is even a situation of a Sirhan bullet being marked by the coroner, immediately after he removed the slug from RFK's neck---and that slug, when introduced as evidence, does not have the coroner's mark. Replay of the Walker Bullet show? I disagree with Pease on whether Sirhan was shooting blanks. If Sirhan's gun had been loaded with blanks, imagine the result if Sirhan had been seized by others just moments earlier, and, say, four rounds were left in the pistol? The subsequent "Sirhan armed with blanks" headlines would hardly do. But surely Pease is an authority on the topic. The importance of the RFK1A, and the coordinated suppression of evidence, is that it tends to underline that the JFKA was a state action of some sort. If Sirhan was merely a demented lone-nut RFK1 and Israel-hater...then why the cover-up? What was covered up is that there was second RFK1A gunsel. Why? Who has the organizational depth and resources to bring about an RFK1A cover-up? The possibility of an RFK1 presidency raised the specter of an intrepid investigation into the JFKA, and just five years after the event, when many witnesses and knowledgeable people were still alive. In its way, the RFK1A is equally important to the JFKA, and something of a twinned event.

MU-- I will deeply and carefully consider this august issue of "RFK" v. "RFK1." Note: we are pretty much banned from mentioning RFK2 here, so the use of "RFK1" clearly signals I am not discussing what is verboten.

JD--I think something along the same lines. Sirhan was to start gunning, and Cesar to duck, return fire, and strike RFK1. Cesar could claim accidental shooting. But somehow, in the dim chaos, no one even noticed Cesar, so he skated entirely....

I attended Eliot Jr. High School in Altadena CA. One day the teacher said the classroom we were in was the one in which she taught Sirhan (a few year earlier), and that he sat in a "chair right there" pointing near me. I was relieved she did not point exactly at me and my chair.

MK-- You have a point, and also there are speeches JFK gave during the 1960 campaign in which he looked a bit nutty, expounding fervently about the "missile gap." On the other hand, every pol gives speeches out of both sides of their mouth, or uses phrases that can be read in one or more ways. I think the Big Picture is JFK would have avoided losing situations, such as Vietnam, or a nuke war with Russia over Cuba. JFK certainly thought fighting the Nazis and Imperial Japan were very worthy endeavors, and he would likely think the same thing today about Putin or Hamas/Tehran. Just IMHO.

PM-- Somehow, the RR assassination attempt never grabbed me. It is a little spooky that RR's veep was...GeorgeBush1. You can bet your bottom dollar that George Bush1 was a fave in CIA quarters. But, evidently, GeorgeBush1 was running the CIA and intel out of the veep's office anyway, during the RR days. There was some hostility towards RR after this, from which RR just walked away: "On October 23, 1983, Hezbollah killed 220 Marines, 18 sailors, and three soldiers in a terrorist bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon." That was a truck bombing by Islamists. "In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, officials stressed there would be no change in the American military role in Lebanon. Reagan, however, soon contradicted that statement by ordering the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Lebanon and choosing not to retaliate."--Politico. In the Mideast, not retaliating is like saying you want sausage in your posterior orifice, before being massacred again. "Osama bin Laden, the organizer behind the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, later declared that Reagan’s failure to respond to the Beirut bombing and other terrorist outbreaks convinced him that America was a weak nation that could be attacked with impunity."--Politico But the RR assassination attempt was before RR meekly walked away from Lebanon. IMHO, can't say the Deep State needed or wanted to get RR out. But who knows?

I do not call you an old crank. I like the enumeration for clarity and brevity. Like the JKFA or TSBD6.

RM- Just to be clear, do you think, in truth without sensationalism, that LBJ might have really had just a few small tiffs with RFK1? This sort of thing happens in politics like beer-drinking at a biker rally. Then little feuds get blown out of proportion.

You are correct sir. In my defense, up until Ukraine and Israel, we had (largely) been involved in Vietnam, then Iraq and then Afghanistan. Egads, is that a string of nightmares, and expensive ones too in terms of lives and money? And the upside in any of those three major wars? And yes, the DoD and VA eat money. However, on Ukraine and Israel, we are not sending our troops, and spending (relatively) pennies to what was spent in the three major wars aforementioned. Putin is not a fabricated bad man, he is the real thing. I have thrown in the towel on Putin. On Israel, I understand some people have raw emotions, but after 10.7 I also threw in the towel on Islamist terrorists. In fact, Islamia is largely going the way of Red China and Russia, into greater and greater oppression and violence, except with an overlay of horrible repression of women and sexual and religious minorities. A sea of failed states, 800k dead in Syria, and 450k dead in Yemen in recent civil wars. Lebanon, once a vacation spot, now a permanent crap-hole. I could go on. Greenwald and Mate have proven themselves knee-kerk anti-Americans, no matter the circumstances. You wonder if they would have argued for Hitler's better points, and Germany's point of view. If you want to say, "I told you so," well, now is your chance. PS, for anyone who thinks the Houthis are anything but monsters, please read: https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2024-01-15/houthis-and-yemen

Thanks for your views. In nutshell, I guess I coming to this view: The RFKA1 is even more important than I thought. Why? 1. No matter what anyone believes about the JFKA, there are always uncertainties. Maybe it was a Lone Nut, or maybe the LBJ gang. I look at the Miami-CIA-Cuban exiles and cast suspicion (without excluding higher-ups), but others suspect Russians. 2. But when we look at the suppression and destruction of evidence in the RFK1---that tends to connect the RFK1A to the JFKA. Russians could get to lawyer Skip Miller and get the Enyart photos disappeared? Seems unlikely. And did the Russians care that much about RFK1? The RFK1A suggests an organization, U.S.-based, with some staying power and depth. Why destroy evidence, if Sirhan was a Lone Nut? 3. One could say the Mob did both the JFKA and the RFK1A, but the strange mental state of Sirhan seems to suggest programming, although that is hardly certain. But generally beyond what the Mob could do. And could the Mob get Cesar to shoot RFK1? The CIA can reasonably promise they will compromise a true investigation into the RFK1A, comforting Cesar. Maheu was a possible cut-out link to the CIA. 4. Is the RFK1A something LBJ could pull off? He hated RFK1, or that is the lore. ---30--- Nothing is certain in JFKA-land. A wilderness of mirrors indeed. IMHO, the RFK1A tends to underline that Deep State elements were involved in the JFKA. They felt compelled to follow up with the RFK1A, and had enough resources and cut-outs to make it work. Side note: Sometimes people ask, "But what if RFK1 had not walked through the pantry where he was shot? Wasn't that just random luck?" Maybe Cesar picked the route, or maybe there were yet other gunsels at other locations. Or maybe the assassins would have been foiled on that night, and tried elsewhere.

Well, for once we are the same page. So it goes.

RM-- Thanks for your comments. Keep in mind, eyewitness accounts of rapid chaotic physical events will always vary. Multiple, multiple, multiple eyewitnesses said Sirhan never got closer than two yards to RFK1. There may have been one who said he got closer. I can recall no witness saying RFK1 had his back to Sirhan, even if Sirhan had gotten closer. And RFK1 was shot in the back of the head at close range. I have to say, I give it 20-to-1 odds Cesar shot RFK1.