Robert Kennedy on reopening the JFK assassination

[Douglas Caddy]

Robert Morrow today sent me the following, which I am pleased to post:

Robert Kennedy, just before his assassination, said that he would re-open the investigation of the JFK assassination

“I thought I’d be prepared, once RFK had been elected president, to make my findings available to him, especially after he answered with a laconic yes to a student’s question at an open meeting at San Fernando Valley State College at Northridge, a few days prior to the California primary, “If you are elected, will you reopen the file on who killed President Kennedy?”

[Frank Mankiewicz, So As I Was Saying: My Somewhat Eventful Life, p. 259]

Robert Kennedy campaigned at San Fernando Valley State College on March 25, 1968 https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/SWPC-001-021.aspx

Robert Kennedy aide Frank Mankiewicz  his views on the JFK assassination, from his autobiography As I Was Saying:

“I think I bought and read every major and a few minor books on the subject, looked into prior histories and records, and decided early - a view I retain - that the assassination - the shooting -  was the work of a hired high school dropout named Lee Harvey Oswald, perhaps aided by some other gunmen, who was engaged and run by a person or persons unknown from any or all of three groups: anti-Castro Cuban exiles, “rogue” CIA or ex-CIA agents, and leaders of organized crime. Certainly all three had good - indeed, overpowering - motives…”

“…The more I read and gleaned from interviews, the more I became convinced the single-bullet and single-gunman theories were simply impossible, not just unlikely. I sought answers: How and why could this high school drop out from Texas, in his application for a passport, list as his travel objective to study at the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland? Why, when Oswald returned to the United States from his stay in the Soviet Union, was he met in Dallas by George de Mohrenschildt, almost certainly a long-term CIA agent or asset? Why did Oswald describe himself when arrested as “a patsy?” Why did Oswald pose, often and openly, as a member of a virtually nonexistent pro-Castro front, one created and maintained at the address of a CIA agent? Why did a Cuban-American woman, Silvia Odio, testify she was once introduced, in Dallas, to Lee Harvey Oswald as “Mr. Oswald, from the CIA? Why did some man standing at the side of the JFK motorcade, as the car passed him, raise and lower his umbrella - and in broad daylight? What was the involvement of the Mob chieftain Carlos Marcello, and what were his connections to mafiosi John Rosselli, who was murdered just before he was scheduled to testify in front of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about his involvement in a plot to kill Castro? What prompted Governor John Connally to say, immediately after both he and JFK had been shot, “They’ve killed the president”? Why was Jack Ruby, a small-time hoodlum with clear organized crime connections, allowed into the Dallas Police Station, armed, at exactly the same moment the perpetrator of the crime of the century was being moved? How could the famous “single bullet” have performed so many changes of course and erratic deviations and even a one-second pause in its flight though the bodies and limbs of President Kennedy and Governor Connally? Why did Lee Harvey Oswald deny the crime, when every prior assassin had proudly proclaimed his guilt and motive?”

[Frank Mankiewicz, So As I Was Saying: My Somewhat Eventful Life,  pp. 257-259]

 

[James DiEugenio]

Was this book published posthumously?

Frank Mankiewicz died in 2014, yet the hardcover pub date on this is 2016.