New evidence challenges official picture of RFK shooting

[nomo]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/ ... assination

New evidence challenges official picture of Kennedy shooting

* Friday February 22 2008


The official record states that senator Robert F Kennedy, like his brother before him, was killed by a crazed lone gunman. But the assassination of a man who seemed to embody so much hope for a bitterly divided country embroiled in an unpopular war still troubles this nation.

Little about the official explanation of the events at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5 1968 makes sense. Now a new forensic analysis of the only audio recording of the fatal shots has given new weight to a controversial theory that there were in fact two shooters, and that the man convicted of Kennedy's killing — Sirhan Sirhan - did not fire the fatal shots.

Following his victory speech to supporters after clinching a tight democratic primary victory in California, Kennedy left the podium in the Embassy ballroom to address a press conference.

But the shortcut he and his entourage took through the hotel's pantry quickly descended into bloody mayhem. As Kennedy turned from shaking hands with two of the kitchen staff, a gunman stepped forward and began firing. Kennedy was hit by four shots including one which lodged in the vertebrae in his neck and another which entered his brain from below his right ear. He died in hospital the following day. Five other people were injured but survived.

Sirhan - a Palestinian refugee who said he wanted to "sacrifice" Kennedy "for the cause of the poor exploited people" - was quickly apprehended. He was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.

"Sirhan was apprehended at the scene with literally a smoking gun," said acoustic forensic expert Philip Van Praag of PVP Designs, who has carried out the new analysis. "At the beginning many people looked upon this as an open-and-shut case. It was one man, Sirhan Sirhan, who was observed by a number of people, who aimed and fired a gun in the direction of Kennedy's entourage."

But the lone gunman explanation has always looked shaky. The autopsy of Kennedy's body suggested that all four shots that hit him came from behind, and powder marks on his skin showed they must have been from close range.

But Sirhan was in front of Kennedy when he fired, and after shooting two shots was overcome by hotel staff, who pinned him to a table. Also, Sirhan fired eight shots in total, yet 14 were found lodged around the room and in the victims.

"There is no doubt in our minds that no fewer than 14 shots were fired in the pantry on that evening and that Sirhan did not in fact kill Senator Kennedy," said Robert Joling, a forensic scientist who has been involved with the Kennedy case for nearly 40 years. He and Van Praag have published a book on the killing this week entitled "An Open and Shut Case".

The inconsistencies in the case have bred numerous conspiracy theories, including the involvement of the CIA and the idea that Sirhan - who claims not to remember the shooting and pleaded insanity at his trial - was a "Manchurian Candidate" assassin who was hypnotically programmed to kill the senator.

Now Van Praag has added new weight to the 'two shooters' theory. He reanalysed the only audio recording of the shooting, which was made by an independent journalist, Stanislaw Pruszynski. "At the time Pruszynski was not even aware that his recorder was still on," said Van Praag.

The recording quality is poor, but it is possible to make out 13 shots over the course of just over 5 seconds, before what Van Praag describes as "blood-curdling screams" obscure the sound. That is more than the eight rounds that Sirhan's cheap Iver Johnson Cadet 55 revolver carried.

Also, there are two pairs of double shots that occurred so close together it is inconceivable that Sirhan could have fired them all. The third and fourth shots and the seventh and eighth were separated by 122 and 149 milliseconds respectively. In tests, a trained firearms expert firing under ideal conditions could only manage 366 milliseconds between shots using the same weapon. And he was not being pinned to a table at the time.

Lastly, five of the shots - 3, 5, 8, 10 and 12 in the sequence - were found to have odd acoustic characteristics when specific frequencies were analysed separately. Van Praag thinks this is because they came from a different gun pointing away from Pruszynski's microphone.

To recreate this he recorded the sounds made by firing the Iver Johnson and another revolver, a Harrison and Richardson 922. At least one member of Kennedy's entourage was carrying this weapon when the killing happened. In the acoustic tests it produced the same frequency anomalies Van Praag had seen in the original recording but only when fired away from the microphone.

He presented his results on Thursday at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meeting in Washington DC.

Paul Schrade, a close associate of Kennedy's who was director of the United Auto Workers union, was at the senator's side in the pantry and was shot in the head. He told the meeting that America lost an outstanding leader and potentially great president that day.

"I think we were in a position of really changing this country," he said. "What we lost was a real hope and possibility of having a better country and having better relations around the world."

He wants to see the case reopened and properly investigated. "We're going to go ahead and do our best to find out who the second gunman was and that's going to take a lot of work," he said.

Van Praag also wants the case reexamined. "We would hope that the evidence that we have uncovered ... would make a strong enough case to get serious consideration once again by the authorities," he said.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Glad this new book is out BUT this case, minus the audio, was broken open over 30 years ago by William Turner and Jonn Christian in 'The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.'
http://www.amazon.com/Assassination-Robert-F-Kennedy/dp/0786719796

That RFK expose book is amazing because the authors were targeted as they researched and thus became part of the history of the cover-up by LAPD-CIA. Turner was in the middle of assisting D.A. Jim Garrison investigate the JFK murder when RFK was killed.


Best online source on the big political assassinations-
http://ctka.net/home.html

Especially-

The Role of the Media
The media's track record in the JFK [+RFK+MLK] case is abysmal, and this section is one of the most important areas on this site.

ABC-TV
CBS-TV
NBC-TV

The articles you will find via the above links are a comprehensive dissection of the media and its shameful coverage of the political assassinations of the 1960s.

If you are a newcomer to these cases, we strongly recommend you begin to explore the site at this area. You will quickly understand why 1) the mainstream media has a significant credibility problem, and 2) why the press sees these cases one way and the public generally sees them another.

Don't miss the scathing review of Air America's Thom Hartmann's book on JFK, 'Ultimate Sacrifice.' It'll make you wonder what Hartmann is really up to on AAR.


Read anything by investigator William Turner or Probe Magazine's Lisa Pease and Jim DiEugenio.

* Probe V2N5: Thane Eugene Cesar's Gun Found
* Probe V4N1: The Nearness of History: Scott Enyart vs. LAPD on the RFK Photos
* Probe V4N5: Sirhan Says "I didn't kill RFK"
* Probe V5N3: Sirhan and the RFK Assassination: The Grand Illusion
* Probe V5N3: CBS and the RFK Case
* Probe V5N4: Sirhan and the RFK Assassination: Part II: Rubik's Cube
* Probe V5N4: The Curious Case of Dan Moldea

Avoid Dan Moldea or Gerald Posner at all costs.
They are disinformationists.

All the forensic proof of Sirhan's innocence and guilt of atleast one shooter, Thane Eugene Cesar, has existed since right after the June 4, 1968 murder when:

>The LAPD removed doors and ceiling tiles from the murder scene to hide the number of bullets but not before witnesses saw this evidence.

>LA Coroner Thomas Noguchi declared that RFK was shot from 1-3 inches from the right rear of him and below him, precisely where temporary security man Thane Eugene Cesar was at RFK's right elbow. Sirhan was no closer than 3-6 feet out in front of RFK.

>Witnesses saw Cesar pull his gun and fire and he even admitted doing so.

>The high flash and smoke that came from Sirhan's gun probably indicated blanks so the real shooters could safely commit their crime.

>Examination of Sirhan revealed a high susceptibility to hypnotic programming and evidence that he had in fact experienced this often.

>CIA hypnosis expert, William Joseph Bryan, bragged privately about working on Sirhan and Sirhan's notebook had some keywords that could link him to Bryan.

[8bitagent]

The RFK assassination was exhaustively and conclusively proven to be a CIA job, beyond any reasonable doubt in the powerful 2007 documentary "RFK Must Die"
trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ5T7-Gr9ho

This guy went to the ends of the earth to interview a lot of witnesses that were within inches of RFK's last moment, the defense team for Sirhan, his family, CIA veterans, forensic experts, the psychologists who spent time with Sirhan, etc.

There's a few truly "holy shit" moments that have to be seen to believe.
The breakdown of CIA veterans at the Ambassador hotel was intriguing as well

Sirhan Sirhan seemed like a well meaning kid, somehow going from
horse jockey to hardcore Rosicrucian to mere CIA mind control dupe.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

The RFK assassination was exhaustively and conclusively proven to be a CIA job, beyond any reasonable doubt in the powerful 2007 documentary "RFK Must Die"
trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ5T7-Gr9ho
......

Lots of reviews on assassination media at the CTKA website.
These are the most critical reviews due to extremely detailed knowledge of the topics.

Here's a review of that movie from http://ctka.net/home.html
from uber-investigator, Jim DiEugenio, who is more critical of the film for its omissions-

NEW
We weigh the positives and the negatives of a new documentary called RFK Must Die in this review.

http://ctka.net/shane.html

Shane O'Sullivan's RFK Must Die

By James DiEgenio

RFK Must Die is Shane O'Sullivan's new documentary on the assassination of Robert Kennedy. The film, just released on DVD, takes its title from Robert Blair Kaiser's 1970 book on the case. In almost every major aspect it is a one-man show: O'Sullivan wrote, produced, and directed it. He also narrates it, which is the first of some poor choices, since his voice carries a high-pitched Irish lilt.

The film is divided into four sections: The Last Campaign, The Investigation, The Manchurian Candidate, and Did the CIA Kill RFK? Before getting to its negatives, let me list what I see as the film's attributes. Some of the interview subjects, to my knowledge, appear for the first time. Sandra Serrano, the first witness to publicly discuss the famous Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, makes her first appearance on camera in decades. Sirhan's brother Munir and controversial defense investigator Michael McGowan also appear. And O'Sullivan has unearthed some interesting Ambassador Hotel kitchen pantry photos, which appear to show that someone was digging bullets out of the walls. This would indicate that there were more than eight bullets-the limit of Sirhan's revolver-fired the night of the assassination.

Vincent DiPierro, a part-time waiter at the Ambassador at the time of the assassination, is also interviewed. He reveals that there was a bullet hole in his sweater that night. Any one bullet found anywhere in the pantry would indicate more than eight bullets were fired, and in turn would mean a second gun was firing.

O'Sullivan has arranged for that illustrious expert on hypnosis, Herbert Spiegel, to appear on camera. And Spiegel shows us a taped example of him hypnotizing someone, planting a post hypnotic suggestion in that person, waking him from the trance state, and then not having him recall anything he did while under hypnosis. Which is very likely what happened to Sirhan.

But sad to say, for anyone familiar with the Robert Kennedy assassination, that is about it for the virtues of RFK Must Die. Aesthetically speaking, the film is very simple, straightforward, and, to be frank, kind of dull. I have much more sympathy for O'Sullivan's views on the RFK case than I did for those of Robert Stone, director of the Warren Commission-apologist Oswald's Ghost. But technique wise, Stone leaves O'Sullivan in the dust.

We live in an age where the documentary form has risen to a truly imaginative level of aesthetic approach. This is exemplified by works like Brett Morgan's and Nan Burstein's The Kid Stays in the Picture, and Adam Curtis' The Power of Nightmares. I would say that technically and aesthetically, O'Sullivan's film is a notch or two above sixties pioneers like Emile de Antonio and the Maysles Brothers. This is saying something, of course, since computer graphics now can be done on line and then switched over to digital video, and at a reasonable price. It would seem to me that from my two viewings of the film, O'Sullivan availed himself of very little of these new technologies.

Even this would not be so bad if O'Sullivan had any kind of pictorial eye or sensitivity to things like sound and montage to give the film any kind of distinction of form. But if you take a look at the compositions in the interview shots with, say, Robert Blair Kaiser or Vincent DiPierro, you will see the work of a not very gifted amateur. And the use of sound in those shots is equally revealing. O'Sullivan includes himself, either off screen or back to camera in the on-screen dialogue, usually an unwise practice. But this is made even worse since those scenes were not properly wired for sound. So his voice comes in decibels lower and he is harder to hear than the subject.

I would have been willing to forgive most of the above if the content of the film had some real howitzers in it. For example, the Discovery Times special on the RFK case was not done at a much higher technical level than this was. But it had some pieces of information in it that were new, quite relevant, and which the film used with real force. That cannot be said about this current effort. What can one write about a full-length documentary on the RFK case which does not mention the name of infamous LAPD firearms expert, DeWayne Wolfer?

If that's not enough for you, the film fails to mention William Harper. Without Harper there may never have been any critical movement in the RFK case. (For those not familiar with the RFK case, this would be like doing a documentary on the JFK case and leaving out both Mark Lane and Arlen Specter.) There is no mention or interview of Scott Enyart, either. Enyart was the high school photographer who was at the Ambassador Hotel the night of the assassination. He took photos in the pantry while RFK was being shot. Years later he asked to get his pictures back. He never did. In 1996 he ended up suing the LAPD. (See Probe Vol. 4 #1 and #2) He actually won the case in court. Some extraordinary things happened at the trial. New testimony emerged about how the LAPD actually destroyed Scott's film. About how the LAPD had falsely numbered pieces of evidence in the Sirhan trial exhibit log to hide exculpatory evidence. That even as late as 1995, bullet evidence was being tampered with at the Sacramento Archives. (For actual photo documentation of this tampering see Probe Vol. 5 #3, p. 27.)

In 1998, Lisa Pease wrote a fine two-part essay on the case. (Probe Vol. 5 #3 and #4). This article is one of the three best long essays on the RFK case that I know. (The other two were by Ted Charach and the late Greg Stone.) In this work, Pease revealed even more mishandling of the evidence. Namely that bullet fragments left the property room of the LAPD and went to a special agent of the FBI for approximately eight days before being returned to Wolfer. And at the instance of their return, Wolfer had them cleaned and photographed for the first time. Why did they leave and what happened to them in FBI custody? Why were no shells from the gun in evidence recovered from the shooting range Sirhan was reported at on 6/4/68? Even though the LAPD recovered over 38, 000 shell casings from the range!

In her article, Pease incorporated some key findings from Sirhan's former investigator Lynn Mangan, such as the photographic fakery of Special Exhibit 10. This photo allegedly reveals a comparison of an RFK bullet with a test bullet form Sirhan's gun. In fact, the comparison is actually with a bullet from another victim, Ira Goldstein, not RFK. Which leaves the question: Could the LAPD not get a positive comparison with Sirhan's gun and an RFK bullet? Her article also showed a fascinating connection between the mysterious Iranian intelligence agent Khaiber Khan and the man who was probably the third gun in the pantry that night, Michael Wayne.

Now all of the above is not meant to (solely) show how proficient Probe was in covering the RFK case. But it is to indicate just how much is lacking from this new documentary. And in addition to not interviewing Scott Enyart, there is no interview with Dr. Thomas Noguchi. In fact, I don't even recall his photo being used. This is the man who, according to Allard Lowenstein, made the earth move under the RFK case when his autopsy results were finally made public.

What does O'Sullivan offer us instead? Well, he gives us living room reconstructions of the assassination with DiPierro and Kennedy aide Kenny Burns. Yet with only one camera on hand, and shot from ground level, I did not find these very illuminating. To illustrate the illogic of Wolfer's eight bullet scenario in the pantry, O'Sullivan pans his camera over the LAPD schematic of the bullet trajectories. In 1993, when Tim Tate did his excellent documentary on the RFK case for British television, he used a very clear and dynamic computer graphic for this demonstration. When O'Sullivan plays the tape of the infamous Serrano/Hank Hernandez polygraph interview, he puts it against a rather static background of still photos of the pair. When Tate did this, he showed us a tape recorder only, against a black backdrop with the words flashing on the screen. And the sound was well modulated to catch the incredible harshness, almost brutality of the session. And the excerpts he picked were better chosen to illustrate that brutality.

O'Sullivan spends a lot of time on the Manchurian Candidate aspect of the case. Some of it is good, but I think he should have spent less time interviewing Spiegel, playing the Sirhan hypnosis tapes, and trying to simulate Sirhan's walk from the coffee table to the pantry (which does not work very well anyway). What I think would have been better was to trace, with documents, how the CIA developed the program in the first place, how it was kept secret, who destroyed the documentary record, and how certain documents point to the exact circumstances which insinuate Sirhan in this crime. And the guy to interview for that would have been either Walter Bowart (Operation Mind Control) or John Marks (The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.)

And this would have been, I think, a better conclusion for the film than what O'Sullivan has decided to end it with. He largely repeats what he did for the BBC many months ago, namely, the alleged identification of three CIA officers at the Ambassador Hotel the night of the RFK murder: George Johannides, Gordon Campbell, and, of course Dave Morales. The accent on this Morales story first began in 1993 with Gaeton Fonzi's book, The Last Investigation. There the clinching quote, through Morales' attorney Robert Walton, was this: "Well, we took care of that son of a bitch, didn't we?" (p. 390)

Please note this quote does not necessarily imply that Morales was part of the plot to kill President Kennedy, or that he even had first hand knowledge of it. What it does imply is that Morales knew people who told him they were involved. But now, through David Talbot's book Brothers and this documentary, the quote has been embellished and expanded in both specificity and quantity. In its current version Walton quotes Morales thusly: "I was in Dallas when we got that mother fucker, and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." [Emphasis added.] Hmm. From Fonzi's version in 1993 and hearing about one assassination, now Morales is actually in on both of them. With the way things grow in the JFK case -- which is where Morales originated -- what will be next? How about: "I was in Memphis when we got that Black Messiah King!"

In addition to the enlargement of the quote, the photo identifications themselves are also weakened. Talbot discovered two photos of Morales, one from 1967, and one from 1969. They do not closely resemble the man alleged to be Morales in the films from the Ambassador. As for the ID's of Campbell and Johannides, O'Sullivan reveals that the LAPD identified the two men as, respectively, Michael Roman and Frank Owens. They were both executives for Bulova watch company. Although both are dead today, Roman's family concurred with the identification, and knew who Owens was. O'Sullivan tries to salvage something from this by saying that Bulova was a recipient of a large amount of Pentagon funding during the sixties. And further that its chairman, Omar Bradley, was a special adviser to Lyndon Johnson for the Vietnam War. He even reaches for the theory that Roman and Campbell may have somehow switched identities. As a fallback, salvage type operation I found this all pretty lame and unsubstantiated.

So overall, the film is a sad and puzzling disappointment. It could and should have been much better. Considering the state of knowledge in the case, and the state of computer technology, it should have been compelling in form and convincing in content. Unfortunately, it is neither.