Morley and Talbot on RFK1A

[Benjamin Cole]

JFK Facts cross-posted a post from The Kennedy Beacon

Jefferson MorleyMay 30 · JFK Facts

In which David Talbot supports RFK Jr.s effort to free Sirhan Sirhan, the man he says is wrongly accused of killing the candidate's father in 1968. The quote from Thomas Noguchi, LA coroner who performed the autopsy on the slain Senator, is strong evidence in his favor.

Who Killed Robert F. Kennedy Sr.? 

MAY 30

READ IN APP

By David Talbot, Columnist, The Kennedy Beacon

“I know you didn’t kill my father.”

That’s what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said to Sirhan Sirhan on December 19, 2017, when he met the man convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy. 

RFK Jr.’s father was shot nearly 56 years ago, in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. Senator Kennedy’s son shook hands with Sirhan in a visiting room at a state prison near San Diego, talking with Sirhan for over two hours. The historic meeting was arranged by Sirhan’s then attorney, Laurie Dusek.

Sirhan knew that the younger Kennedy was an experienced lawyer and he wanted to plead his innocence. But by then RFK Jr. had already studied the case thoroughly and had made up his mind.

“They talked about a lot of things,” recalls Dusek, who attended the meeting. “Sirhan kept apologizing. Finally, Bobby said, ‘You don’t need to say you’re sorry.’ Sirhan said, ‘But if I hadn’t been there…’ He has guilt. He’s a very intelligent person. Not a violent person at all.”

Later, Kennedy called Sirhan “very sweet.”

In December 2021, four years after meeting with Sirhan, Kennedy agreed with the California parole board and called for his release – the truth, he stated, that surmounts his family’s trauma. “The pain that we all feel from my father's death should not prevent us from pursuit of the truth,” he wrote in a San Francisco Chronicle opinion column. “I firmly believe the idea that Sirhan murdered my father is a fiction that is impeding justice.”

But California Governor Gavin Newsom, blowing with the prevailing wind, overrode the state parole board, insisting Sirhan was a dangerous assassin. Now 80, Sirhan – who has spent most of his life behind bars – is again seeking parole in August. His release is again opposed by Governor Newsom, who prefers political expediency over evidence.

As any credible researcher who studies Robert Kennedy’s assassination discovers, Sirhan was framed for the murder. He’s the Lee Harvey Oswald of the RFK case. 

After delivering his victory speech, RFK was making his way from a ballroom stage to meet the press, when an explosion of gunfire erupted in the kitchen pantry of Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel. By the accounts of eyewitnesses and experts, Sirhan was several feet in front of Kennedy, and not in a position to fire the fatal shot, which was delivered at point-blank distance to the rear of the senator’s skull. Sirhan’s gun held eight bullets, but there was evidence that at least 12 shots were fired that night, proof there was at least one other gunman. “Thus I have never said that Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy,” concluded Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the coroner who performed the autopsy on the slain leader.

Noguchi and others who closely examined the case speculated that Sirhan, who appeared to be in a trance or hypnotic state that night, was a decoy for a second shooter who assassinated Kennedy. The true guilt of Sirhan, who was 24 the night Kennedy was shot, is that he was easily hypnotized and victimized -– the fall guy in a plot he couldn’t comprehend.

So if Sirhan Sirhan didn’t kill Robert F. Kennedy, who did?

The prime suspect for organizing the assassination of Senator Kennedy is Robert Maheu, a private investigator whom the CIA employed to recruit Mafia leaders to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Maheu also was involved in other plots, including lethal ones, ordered by the CIA, which is legally banned from operating on U.S. domestic soil.

I interviewed Maheu for my 2007 book, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, at his Las Vegas home, as golf balls from an adjacent course occasionally plunked off his roof. I found the shadowy investigator, who died in 2008, to be a charming snake. He made no secret that he hated JFK and RFK.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Maheu told the Church Committee in 1975, “those volunteers who got off the boats (at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs) that day (in April 1961) were murdered.”

Besides serving the CIA, Maheu was also running Howard Hughes’s Las Vegas empire at the time of the RFK assassination, a lucrative position (Hughes paid him an annual salary of $500,000, over $4.5 million today) that cemented his ties to the spy agency, which used Hughes business accounts as a piggy bank. Maheu's executive role in Hughes's Las Vegas operation also allowed him to keep doing business with organized crime figures.

As Lisa Pease, author of A Lie Too Big to Fail, a 2018 book on the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, wrote, Robert Maheu “seems the obvious choice” for the organizer of the RFK plot, ticking off all the points for the “required comprehensive planning” that was necessary to pull off the assassination and to pin it on the hapless Sirhan.

“Maheu had friends in the deepest, darkest corner of the CIA, the Office of Security, the component that ran the mind control programs and bugged CIA employees to prevent them from leaking to others,” Pease observed. “He was extremely well-connected at the highest realms of power in the country, had access to nearly unlimited funds, and had provable experience in running assassination plots for the CIA. He had mob contacts through (Johnny) Roselli… Maheu also had friends in the LAPD and (Los Angeles County) Sheriff’s office. He had run CIA operations in conjunction with the LAPD in the past.”

Maheu and his Las Vegas security chief Jack Hooper, who ran the Bel Air Patrol and other private security firms, also employed Thane Cesar, the guard who led RFK into the Ambassador Hotel pantry that fateful night and who discharged his revolver, which wasn’t later tested by Los Angeles police inspectors.

John Meier, a top aide to Howard Hughes from 1966 to 1970, was stunned to hear Cesar’s name on a news report after the RFK assassination, because he connected him to Maheu and Hooper. But according to Meier, Maheu sternly warned him to never mention Cesar’s name or his connection to Bel Air Patrol.

“Bob Maheu called and told me to come over to his (Las Vegas) home at 8:30 P.M. that evening and I did,” Meier wrote in what he called a June 14, 1968 journal entry. Meier read from the journal to Pease and me at his Vancouver home in 2015 – an entry that Pease later quoted in her book. “He was furious and wanted to know why I was checking up on Thane,” Meier wrote. “I was stunned at his anger and he said to me that if I kept discussing this matter, he would see that I was no longer around the Hughes operation.”

Pease and other RFK assassination researchers have speculated that Cesar played a key role in the operation, either holding Kennedy in place for the assassin’s bullet or firing the gun that killed him. Cesar, who died in the Philippines in 2019, maintained his innocence until the end. But he never sat for deep questioning, demanding payment for an interview.

Maheu also declared his innocence in the RFK assassination, calling Meier a “14-carat phony” during my interview with him. Maheu pointed out that Meier served prison time for forgery and was accused of skimming money from Hughes’ mining deals. (Meier claims he was framed by powerful U.S. officials.)

But, as I wrote in my 2015 book The Devil’s Chessboard, which explored CIA involvement in the Kennedy assassinations, “it was Maheu himself who was the biggest crook in (Hughes’s) Nevada organization. Hughes told the press after fleeing Las Vegas in 1970, Maheu was a ‘no-good, dishonest son of a bitch (who) stole me blind.’”

As I wrote, while running Hughes’s gambling casinos and other operations in the desert, Maheu “had made sweetheart deals with mobsters and allowed the CIA to pay off politicians with Hughes cash and to exploit the Hughes corporate empire as a front for spy activities.”

Maheu might have hung out with mobsters. But he was first and foremost a spook. And a proud assassin – at least he was honest about his underworld conspiracies to kill Castro, another threat (as he saw it) to U.S. interests.

There was a flurry of media interest in Maheu when Pease’s book was published. The CIA might have used Maheu, who was “such a colorful character that it’s widely believed the television show ‘Mission: Impossible’ was based on him and his private investigative agency,” reported the Washington Post in an otherwise thoughtful article about the RFK assassination in February 2019.

But in the last five years, the media has gone back to sleep on Senator Kennedy’s killing. Sometimes it seems only a dwindling few still care about the assassinations of the 1960s, even though they tragically altered the course of American history.

Now and then Robert F. Kennedy Jr. points out the sheer perversity of President Biden denying him Secret Service protection when his father and uncle were assassinated. As has been commented upon many times, Biden even displays a bust of RFK, one of his (safely dead) heroes, in the Oval Office.

What will Biden say if RFK Jr. is shot? Will it register? Will he even care?

 

 

[Matthew Koch]

@Lori Spencer has another view on this and she put out a-lot of counter info on Twitter. 

 

[W. Niederhut]

      Since Ben Cole persists in posting redundant Biden-bashing/RFK, Jr. promotional threads on the JFKA forum, it's worth reminding people that the entire Kennedy family and former RFK, Sr. staffer, Robert Reich, have a decidedly different opinion about the notion that RFK, Jr. is "finishing what his father started."

      Robert Reich's counterpoints* about RFK, Jr. belong on the Political Discussion forum-- and so does Ben Cole's latest RFK, Jr. fluffing thread.

* Friends, I knew Robert F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is no Robert F. Kennedy.

The growing disgrace and danger of Robert F. Kennedy Junior (substack.com)

      

Edited May 31 by W. Niederhut

[Benjamin Cole]

3 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

@Lori Spencer has another view on this and she put out a-lot of counter info on Twitter. 

 

Lori Spencer--

Thanks for your (as usual) intelligent and collegial comments.

I have seen such thoughts before, that Sirhan Sirhan was an early terrorist. It is a fascinating consideration. Many inscriptions in his notebook point in that direction. 

However, "Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born into an Arab Palestinian Christian family^[10][11] in Mandatory Palestine, in Jerusalem's Musrara neighborhood, and became a Jordanian citizen after Jordan annexed the West Bank"-Wiki

As you probably know, Christians have not fared well anywhere in Islamia after WWII, including in Lebanon, Iraq, and Sirhan's Jordan (and presently Coptic Christians are under the gun in Egypt, but that's another story, post Sirhan Sirhan). 

Many (almost all) of those persecuted Christians have migrated elsewhere, including into Israel, which has a growing Christian population. 

But...who knows what went on in the mind of Sirhan Sirhan in 1968?

Was Sirhan Sirhan brainwashed to believe Israel had harmed Christians, and RFK1 was an Israel supporter, so Sirhan had to shoot at RFK1? 

Or, like many (nearly all) terrorists, was Sirhan Sirhan very suggestible, violent and weak-minded, and easily set on the path to violence? That is, the terrorist's joy was in the violence, and murder, and sense of power, not the cause. 

My guess (and it is a guess) is that Sirhan Sirhan was put up to his act, whether his emotions were fanned by anti-Semitism or not, and that Thane Eugene Cesar was the likely true culprit, as postulated by Talbot and Worley in their important article (see above). 

Just IMHO, as always. 

 

 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

3 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

That's why this thread should go elsewhere.  Imho.  In the interest of transparency lets give it a day or so as to why not.

[Matthew Koch]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Lori Spencer--

Thanks for your (as usual) intelligent and collegial comments.

I have seen such thoughts before, that Sirhan Sirhan was an early terrorist. It is a fascinating consideration. Many inscriptions in his notebook point in that direction. 

However, "Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born into an Arab Palestinian Christian family^[10][11] in Mandatory Palestine, in Jerusalem's Musrara neighborhood, and became a Jordanian citizen after Jordan annexed the West Bank"-Wiki

As you probably know, Christians have not fared well anywhere in Islamia after WWII, including in Lebanon, Iraq, and Sirhan's Jordan (and presently Coptic Christians are under the gun in Egypt, but that's another story, post Sirhan Sirhan). 

Many (almost all) of those persecuted Christians have migrated elsewhere, including into Israel, which has a growing Christian population. 

But...who knows what went on in the mind of Sirhan Sirhan in 1968?

Was Sirhan Sirhan brainwashed to believe Israel had harmed Christians, and RFK1 was an Israel supporter, so Sirhan had to shoot at RFK1? 

Or, like many (nearly all) terrorists, was Sirhan Sirhan very suggestible, violent and weak-minded, and easily set on the path to violence? That is, the terrorist's joy was in the violence, and murder, and sense of power, not the cause. 

My guess (and it is a guess) is that Sirhan Sirhan was put up to his act, whether his emotions were fanned by anti-Semitism or not, and that Thane Eugene Cesar was the likely true culprit, as postulated by Talbot and Worley in their important article (see above). 

Just IMHO, as always. 

 

 

 

 

I don't think Sirhan willingly did the shooting, that being said. I think that the people who selected him should be given more credit than they have, because he was a very good selection as a patsy. In fact, I didn't know about the Robert Frost interview until recently or the stuff Sirhan said that makes him look bad.. 

 

Edited May 31 by Matthew Koch
Forgot a word

[Mike Aitken]

I’m not very well-read on the RFK assassination, but considering all of the inconsistencies in the case, alleged tampering with evidence, eyewitness testimonies, etc. it’s hard to believe Sirhan is still in prison.  
 

Where I live and work, people receive significantly shorter sentences for crimes that are at least as heinous and violent, and sometimes walk or get 10-20 years.  It just comes across as a double standard.  If RFK hadn’t been famous, a person of influence, etc. would the suspect allegedly involved in their murder still be in prison almost sixty years later…at eighty years-of-age?

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Mike Aitken said:

I’m not very well-read on the RFK assassination, but considering all of the inconsistencies in the case, alleged tampering with evidence, eyewitness testimonies, etc. it’s hard to believe Sirhan is still in prison.  
 

Where I live and work, people receive significantly shorter sentences for crimes that are at least as heinous and violent, and sometimes walk or get 10-20 years.  It just comes across as a double standard.  If RFK hadn’t been famous, a person of influence, etc. would the suspect allegedly involved in their murder still be in prison almost sixty years later…at eighty years-of-age?

MK--

Thanks for your thoughtful comments. There is lot going on with the RFK1, and that is why it is important to address the topic from time to time.

Many people, such as Talbot, believe the same team that perped the JFKA then perped the RFK1A.

If so, the topic of the JFKA is bigger than we think. IMHO

 

[Robert Morrow]

In my rarely humble opinion, there was no conspiracy in the RFK assassination (although Lyndon Johnson in particular sure was glad that Robert Kennedy was dead). I think Sirhan Sirhan ALONE murdered Robert Kennedy.

Sirhan Sirhan murdered Robert Kennedy because he was enraged at RFK for his support of Israel and in particular giving fighter jets to Israel

 “The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy,” Joseph Palermo, Boom California, June 5, 2018

 https://boomcalifornia.org/2018/06/05/the-killing-of-robert-f-kennedy/

 QUOTE

 This “lettergram” of 13 June is the first glimpse within the Sheriffs’ logs that Sirhan had any feelings about what the reaction to his deed might be in the Arab world. At 2:30 that afternoon, he wired a Western Union telegram to F.A.I.R.’s office at 57 West 10th Street, New York:

Respected Sirs: Grateful for $ [sic] enjoyed “Insight” Please send more issues. Anxious about Mideast reaction. Sirhan 718486[30]

Obscured by fifty years of reporting and commentary on the RFK killing, Sirhan chose to transmit his first communication to the outside world to a fringe anti-Israel group in New York City. And he didn’t want the public to know about it:

[13 June 1968]

On this date at approx [sic] 12:40/P I/M Sirhan asked “Can the contents of this telegram be kept from the press?” I assured him that I felt this could be done. In I/M Sirhan’s presence, I stated to Sr. Dep. Montague, “He wishes that the contents of this telegram be kept from the press.” Sr. Dep. replied, “Sure.” When the door was closed again, I/M Sirhan said to me, “You’re a good man, Mr. Greene.” I smiled and said nothing.[31]

  UNQUOTE

 June 4, 1968: Kennedy, McCarthy Support U.S. Commitments to Israel, Favor Sending Phantom Jets

 https://www.jta.org/archive/kennedy-mccarthy-support-u-s-commitments-to-israel-favor-sending-phantom-jets

 Senators Robert F. Kennedy, of New York, and Eugene J. McCarthy, of Minnesota, both candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination, agreed in a nationwide telecast Saturday night that the United States must honor its commitments to Israel even though it should scale down many of its commitments elsewhere in the world. Kennedy reiterated his Portland. Ore. proposal of last week to send 50 Phantom jets to Israel. McCarthy said that if 50 jets were necessary to help Israel “rebuild the strength they lost in the most recent war…I am for 50 jets.” The two Presidential aspirants made their remarks in reply to questions on the “Issues and Answers” program which originated in San Francisco where they are campaigning for Tuesday’s California primary elections. It was their first face-to-face confrontation since they announced their intentions to seek their party’s nomination.

Kennedy was the first to refer to Israel. He said that the U.S. cannot continue to be a global policeman and intervene in internal disputes all over the world. But, he said, “I do think we have some commitments around the globe. I think we have a commitment to Israel for instance that has to be kept.”

McCarthy said that he thought America had “clear moral and legal responsibilities in the Middle East and Israel.” He acknowledged that he believed the U.S. should work toward a moratorium on arms shipments to the Middle East but he stressed that “we had to maintain the military strength of Israel against the Arab nations, and I’ve said that we had at least to help them rebuild the strength that they lost in the recent war. If that means 50 jets, well I’m for 50 jets.’ The Minnesota senator said the U.S. obligations to Israel stemmed from the fact that “we were one of the nations that wouldn’t open our doors to Jewish expellees and refugees after the war and suggested that the British take care of it in Palestine and then moved on from there to support in the UN the establishment of the State of Israel and we’ve underscored that commitment time and time again since ’45 or ’47.”

Lori Spencer thread on Sirhan Sirhan and the RFK Assassination:

https://twitter.com/RealLoriSpencer/status/1736035653589070136

When he was arrested after the #RFK assassination, one of Sirhan’s appellate lawyers says there was a newspaper clipping in Sirhan’s pocket that discussed the incongruity of Kennedy’s advocacy for the oppressed while also supporting Israel over Palestine

Sirhan blamed his murderous rage on trauma he had suffered as a child in Palestine. At age 4 he witnessed the bombing of Damascus Gate, the death of his older brother, a man disemboweled by a bomb and the family was forced to relocate after Israel was created in 1948.

Edited May 31 by Robert Morrow

[W. Niederhut]

9 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

That's why this thread should go elsewhere.  Imho.  In the interest of transparency lets give it a day or so as to why not.

This thread is, basically, a veiled 2024 RFK, Jr. promotional ad grafted onto the bottom of old RFK assassination facts.

We all read and discussed A Lie to Big to Fail a few years ago.

It's a variation on Ben Cole's multiple threads that are prefaced with redundant accounts of the JFK Records suppression-- followed by RFK, Jr. promotional ads.

The forum has already discussed Lisa Pease's definitive, outstanding analysis of the RFK assassination in great detail-- including our old George Estabrooks thread about Sirhan's hypnotic programming as a Manchurian Candidate.

Nothing new here, other than the specious claim that RFK, Jr. will "finish what RFK started"-- presumably by helping right wing billionaires sabotage the Democratic Party.

[Benjamin Cole]

4 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

In my rarely humble opinion, there was no conspiracy in the RFK assassination (although Lyndon Johnson in particular sure was glad that Robert Kennedy was dead). I think Sirhan Sirhan ALONE murdered Robert Kennedy.

Sirhan Sirhan murdered Robert Kennedy because he was enraged at RFK for his support of Israel and in particular giving fighter jets to Israel

 “The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy,” Joseph Palermo, Boom California, June 5, 2018

 https://boomcalifornia.org/2018/06/05/the-killing-of-robert-f-kennedy/

 QUOTE

 This “lettergram” of 13 June is the first glimpse within the Sheriffs’ logs that Sirhan had any feelings about what the reaction to his deed might be in the Arab world. At 2:30 that afternoon, he wired a Western Union telegram to F.A.I.R.’s office at 57 West 10th Street, New York:

Respected Sirs: Grateful for $ [sic] enjoyed “Insight” Please send more issues. Anxious about Mideast reaction. Sirhan 718486[30]

Obscured by fifty years of reporting and commentary on the RFK killing, Sirhan chose to transmit his first communication to the outside world to a fringe anti-Israel group in New York City. And he didn’t want the public to know about it:

[13 June 1968]

On this date at approx [sic] 12:40/P I/M Sirhan asked “Can the contents of this telegram be kept from the press?” I assured him that I felt this could be done. In I/M Sirhan’s presence, I stated to Sr. Dep. Montague, “He wishes that the contents of this telegram be kept from the press.” Sr. Dep. replied, “Sure.” When the door was closed again, I/M Sirhan said to me, “You’re a good man, Mr. Greene.” I smiled and said nothing.[31]

  UNQUOTE

 June 4, 1968: Kennedy, McCarthy Support U.S. Commitments to Israel, Favor Sending Phantom Jets

 https://www.jta.org/archive/kennedy-mccarthy-support-u-s-commitments-to-israel-favor-sending-phantom-jets

 Senators Robert F. Kennedy, of New York, and Eugene J. McCarthy, of Minnesota, both candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination, agreed in a nationwide telecast Saturday night that the United States must honor its commitments to Israel even though it should scale down many of its commitments elsewhere in the world. Kennedy reiterated his Portland. Ore. proposal of last week to send 50 Phantom jets to Israel. McCarthy said that if 50 jets were necessary to help Israel “rebuild the strength they lost in the most recent war…I am for 50 jets.” The two Presidential aspirants made their remarks in reply to questions on the “Issues and Answers” program which originated in San Francisco where they are campaigning for Tuesday’s California primary elections. It was their first face-to-face confrontation since they announced their intentions to seek their party’s nomination.

Kennedy was the first to refer to Israel. He said that the U.S. cannot continue to be a global policeman and intervene in internal disputes all over the world. But, he said, “I do think we have some commitments around the globe. I think we have a commitment to Israel for instance that has to be kept.”

McCarthy said that he thought America had “clear moral and legal responsibilities in the Middle East and Israel.” He acknowledged that he believed the U.S. should work toward a moratorium on arms shipments to the Middle East but he stressed that “we had to maintain the military strength of Israel against the Arab nations, and I’ve said that we had at least to help them rebuild the strength that they lost in the recent war. If that means 50 jets, well I’m for 50 jets.’ The Minnesota senator said the U.S. obligations to Israel stemmed from the fact that “we were one of the nations that wouldn’t open our doors to Jewish expellees and refugees after the war and suggested that the British take care of it in Palestine and then moved on from there to support in the UN the establishment of the State of Israel and we’ve underscored that commitment time and time again since ’45 or ’47.”

Lori Spencer thread on Sirhan Sirhan and the RFK Assassination:

https://twitter.com/RealLoriSpencer/status/1736035653589070136

When he was arrested after the #RFK assassination, one of Sirhan’s appellate lawyers says there was a newspaper clipping in Sirhan’s pocket that discussed the incongruity of Kennedy’s advocacy for the oppressed while also supporting Israel over Palestine

Sirhan blamed his murderous rage on trauma he had suffered as a child in Palestine. At age 4 he witnessed the bombing of Damascus Gate, the death of his older brother, a man disemboweled by a bomb and the family was forced to relocate after Israel was created in 1948.

Robert Morrow--

Thank you for your collegial contribution. Obviously, it is an important topic whether the JFKA and the RFK1A  are linked...that is, perped by the same masters, if not the same hand. 

As stated, I suspect even if Sirhan Sirhan acted from some demented hatred of Israel and RFK, that may have only made him useful to other parties. 

The evidence in the RFK1A is very shaky. In particular, the report by Thomas Noguchi, Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles, that RFK1 was shot from behind at close range---when eyewitnesses are consistent that Sirhan Sirhan was in front of RFK1, and by two yards. Tough to square that circle. 

Try reading up on the topic. Like the JFKA, there is a lot there. 

Keep on contributing here. I like your stuff, even when I  disagree. 

 

 

[Roger Odisio]

13 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

That's why this thread should go elsewhere.  Imho.  In the interest of transparency lets give it a day or so as to why not.

I think you have that backwards, Ron.  If you are considering removing the thread from this forum and sending it to politics, it is incumbent upon you to explain why it it *not* relevant to the JFKA.  Why nothing discussed in this thread can help anyone understand anything about the JFKA.

In particular, the question of whether the two murders were related is important. It's clear to me they were, and I'd appreciate any further information on that point.

Any one with even a passing understanding of Bobby's reaction to his brother's murder and his subsequent interest in it for the rest of his life should have no trouble understanding the connection.

Bobby never believed the WR fairy tale, despite what he thought he had to say in public. His first instinct was to call the CIA and ask, pathetically, did your people do this? That afternoon he talked to John McCone, the man who replaced Allen Dulles at CIA when JFK fired him, and probably the most he learned was how out of touch McCone was with what the CIA was doing.   Talbott has shown Dulles was still running essential parts of the agency from his home in Georgetown.

But RFK realized he couldn't do anything about the murder without first having the powers of the presidency behind him.  He knew the killers were that powerful. He was right about that as 60 years of wheel spinning by others has shown.

JFK's killers were not going to let him become president.  Larry King told the story of driving Garrison to the airport one day.  As Garrison was getting out of the car, he turned and said "they're going to kill Bobby too". 

Surely it's now understood as fact that Sirhan did not kill RFK.  He was in front of Kennedy and the fatal shot was delivered from behind, up close and below, as the autopsy showed.  Musings about Sirhan's alleged motives are a worthless distraction. 

 

 

[Matthew Koch]

I agree with Rodgers last comment about this thread. 

[Ron Bulman]

Now and then Robert F. Kennedy Jr. points out the sheer perversity of President Biden denying him Secret Service protection when his father and uncle were assassinated. As has been commented upon many times, Biden even displays a bust of RFK, one of his (safely dead) heroes, in the Oval Office.

 

After discussion between moderators and input from other forum members This is why the thread is being moved.  It Is a recurring thing with Ben, starting a RFK or RFKA thread then slipping the RFKJR campaign into it.  Which is about current politics.  Personally, I have no objection to discussing the RFKA or it being possibly related to the JFKA, I've done so myself.  Start a new thread on the RFKA but leave all of the current candidates out of it.

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

I think you have that backwards, Ron.  If you are considering removing the thread from this forum and sending it to politics, it is incumbent upon you to explain why it it *not* relevant to the JFKA.  Why nothing discussed in this thread can help anyone understand anything about the JFKA.

 

There's nothing new here about the JFK and RFK assassinations, Roger.  We've discussed this historical material at length on the forum.

If you're genuinely interested in the subject, try studying the archival EF material about Lisa Pease's book, A Lie Too Big to Fail, or the George Estabrooks thread on Sirhan and the Manchurian Candidate literature.  Comment on those original threads if you're interested in the subject.

And ask yourself why MAGA Ben Cole is suddenly starting redundant threads about the RFK assassination, which include promotional comments about RFK, Jr.'s right-wing-funded stalking horse campaign to sabotage Joe Biden.  Why now?

 

 

Edited May 31 by W. Niederhut