Remembering RFK

[Bob]

41 years ago tonight, Robert Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California primary. RFK would die from his wounds on June 6th. I have posted this before, but I wanted to post this again...today.Some of you have seen or read about Shane O'Sullivan's special from a couple of years ago about the RFK assassination on the BBC or here earlier. Here is the story on it... Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy? In 1968, Robert Kennedy seemed likely to follow his brother, John, into the White House. Then, on June 6, he was assassinated - apparently by a lone gunman. But Shane O'Sullivan says he has evidence implicating three CIA agents in the murder Monday November 20, 2006 The Guardian At first, it seems an open-and-shut case. On June 5 1968, Robert Kennedy wins the California Democratic primary and is set to challenge Richard Nixon for the White House. After midnight, he finishes his victory speech at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles and is shaking hands with kitchen staff in a crowded pantry when 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan steps down from a tray-stacker with a "sick, villainous smile" on his face and starts firing at Kennedy with an eight-shot revolver. As Kennedy lies dying on the pantry floor, Sirhan is arrested as the lone assassin. He carries the motive in his shirt-pocket (a clipping about Kennedy's plans to sell bombers to Israel) and notebooks at his house seem to incriminate him. But the autopsy report suggests Sirhan could not have fired the shots that killed Kennedy. Witnesses place Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy, but the fatal bullet is fired from one inch behind. And more bullet-holes are found in the pantry than Sirhan's gun can hold, suggesting a second gunman is involved. Sirhan's notebooks show a bizarre series of "automatic writing" - "RFK must die RFK must be killed - Robert F Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 68" - and even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember shooting Kennedy. He recalls "being led into a dark place by a girl who wanted coffee", then being choked by an angry mob. Defence psychiatrists conclude he was in a trance at the time of the shooting and leading psychiatrists suggest he may have be a hypnotically programmed assassin. Three years ago, I started writing a screenplay about the assassination of Robert Kennedy, caught up in a strange tale of second guns and "Manchurian candidates" (as the movie termed brainwashed assassins). As I researched the case, I uncovered new video and photographic evidence suggesting that three senior CIA operatives were behind the killing. I did not buy the official ending that Sirhan acted alone, and started dipping into the nether-world of "assassination research", crossing paths with David Sanchez Morales, a fearsome Yaqui Indian. Morales was a legendary figure in CIA covert operations. According to close associate Tom Clines, if you saw Morales walking down the street in a Latin American capital, you knew a coup was about to happen. When the subject of the Kennedys came up in a late-night session with friends in 1973, Morales launched into a tirade that finished: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." From this line grew my odyssey into the spook world of the 60s and the secrets behind the death of Bobby Kennedy. Working from a Cuban photograph of Morales from 1959, I viewed news coverage of the assassination to see if I could spot the man the Cubans called El Gordo - The Fat One. Fifteen minutes in, there he was, standing at the back of the ballroom, in the moments between the end of Kennedy's speech and the shooting. Thirty minutes later, there he was again, casually floating around the darkened ballroom while an associate with a pencil moustache took notes. The source of early research on Morales was Bradley Ayers, a retired US army captain who had been seconded to JM-Wave, the CIA's Miami base in 1963, to work closely with chief of operations Morales on training Cuban exiles to run sabotage raids on Castro. I tracked Ayers down to a small town in Wisconsin and emailed him stills of Morales and another guy I found suspicious - a man who is pictured entering the ballroom from the direction of the pantry moments after the shooting, clutching a small container to his body, and being waved towards an exit by a Latin associate. Ayers' response was instant. He was 95% sure that the first figure was Morales and equally sure that the other man was Gordon Campbell, who worked alongside Morales at JM-Wave in 1963 and was Ayers' case officer shortly before the JFK assassination. I put my script aside and flew to the US to interview key witnesses for a documentary on the unfolding story. In person, Ayers positively identified Morales and Campbell and introduced me to David Rabern, a freelance operative who was part of the Bay of Pigs invasion force in 1961 and was at the Ambassador hotel that night. He did not know Morales and Campbell by name but saw them talking to each other out in the lobby before the shooting and assumed they were Kennedy's security people. He also saw Campbell around police stations three or four times in the year before Robert Kennedy was shot. This was odd. The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and Morales was stationed in Laos in 1968. With no secret service protection for presidential candidates in those days, Kennedy was guarded by unarmed Olympic decathlete champion Rafer Johnson and football tackler Rosey Grier - no match for an expert assassination team. Trawling through microfilm of the police investigation, I found further photographs of Campbell with a third figure, standing centre-stage in the Ambassador hotel hours before the shooting. He looked Greek, and I suspected he might be George Joannides, chief of psychological warfare operations at JM-Wave. Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigating the death of John F Kennedy. Ed Lopez, now a respected lawyer at Cornell University, came into close contact with Joann-des when he was a young law student working for the committee. We visit him and show him the photograph and he is 99% sure it is Joannides. When I tell him where it was taken, he is not surprised: "If these guys decided you were bad, they acted on it. We move to Washington to meet Wayne Smith, a state department official for 25 years who knew Morales well at the US embassy in Havana in 1959-60. When we show him the video in the ballroom, his response is instant: "That's him, that's Morales." He remembers Morales at a cocktail party in Buenos Aires in 1975, saying Kennedy got what was coming to him. Is there a benign explanation for his presence? For Kennedy's security, maybe? Smith laughs. Morales is the last person you would want to protect Bobby Kennedy, he says. He hated the Kennedys, blaming their lack of air support for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. We meet Clines in a hotel room near CIA headquarters. He does not want to go on camera and brings a friend, which is a little unnerving. Clines remembers "Dave" fondly. The guy in the video looks like Morales but it is not him, he says: "This guy is fatter and Morales walked with more of a slouch and his tie down." To me, the guy in the video does walk with a slouch and his tie is down. Clines says he knew Joannides and Campbell and it is not them either, but he fondly remembers Ayers bringing snakes into JM-Wave to scare the secretaries and seems disturbed at Smith's identification of Morales. He does not discourage our investigation and suggests others who might be able to help. A seasoned journalist cautions that he would expect Clines "to blow smoke", and yet it seems his honest opinion. As we leave Los Angeles, I tell the immigration officer that I am doing a story on Bobby Kennedy. She has seen the advertisements for the new Emilio Estevez movie about the assassination, Bobby. "Who do you think did it? I think it was the Mob," she says before I can answer. "I definitely think it was more than one man," I say, discreetly. Morales died of a heart attack in 1978, weeks before he was to be called before the HSCA. Joannides died in 1990. Campbell may still be out there somewhere, in his early 80s. Given the positive identifications we have gathered on these three, the CIA and the Los Angeles Police Department need to explain what they were doing there. Lopez believes the CIA should call in and interview everybody who knew them, disclose whether they were on a CIA operation and, if not, why they were there that night. Today would have been Robert Kennedy's 81st birthday. The world is crying out for a compassionate leader like him. If dark forces were behind his elimination, it needs to be investigated. Now, here is my theory. I think Shane has uncovered some excellent pieces to the puzzle, especially connecting David Morales to the RFK assassination. In case you didn't know, Morales was in JM/Wave and reported to Ted Shackley. Shackley was David Atlee Phillips' (Maurice Bishop) boss at the CIA. Phillips was also Lee Harvey Oswald's controller. Morales was seen by witnesses on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository before the assassination. He also supposedly was the driver of the Rambler station wagon that left the TSBD shortly after the assassination and picked up Oswald according to Roger Craig. Anyway, I definitely believe the CIA was involved in both Kennedy assassinations. Here is part of my theory from a previous post... The "Second Gun" by Ted Charach is an incredible movie that points the blame to the real RFK assassin...Eugene Thane Cesar. Cesar was the security guard that was directly behind RFK at the time of the shooting. A witness saw Cesar draw his gun and fire. The witness was a reporter who immediately reported this to the television station he worked for. Cesar also worked at Lockheed and had right wing leanings and voted for George Wallace in 1968. He was on record about hating the Kennedys. Yet this man was assigned as a security guard to "protect" RFK. Thomas Naguchi, the L.A. coroner said that all 3 wounds to RFK, including the fatal head shot came from behind and to the right of the Senator. That was precisely where Cesar was. The fatal head wound was fired from a distance of 1-3 inches away from Kennedy's head. Sirhan never got closer than 3-6 feet away from RFK and was also always in front of Kennedy. Cesar started firing as soon as the crowd was distracted by Sirhan firing his weapon. Even with all this, the L.A. police never tested Cesar's weapon for being fired that night. Speculation is that Cesar fired a .22 caliber handgun at RFK . Cesar had a .38 caliber handgun in his holster, but also owned a .22 caliber weapon that he pulled from his pocket when Sirhan started shooting. Cesar suspiciously sold this weapon just months AFTER the assassination after lying to police and the FBI that he sold the weapon BEFORE the murder. You can be the judge, but neither Sirhan Sirhan OR Lee Harvey Oswald were the REAL killers of the Kennedy brothers.

[Pennyworth]

laid to eternal rest 6.6.68...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmc2EzkRDkI

[kenmurray]

"RFK Must Die DVD is very good: http://www.rfkmustdie.com/

[Bob]

Thanks Ken. I always remember June 6th for two reasons. The death of RFK and of course the anniversary of D-Day, when the allies invaded Normandy and Europe to start the process of defeating Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany. My dad was in the Navy in WWII and served in the Pacific, but so many of his generation served then, no matter if it was vs. the Japanese or the Germans. The same goes for the brave souls in Great Britain and other parts of Europe that were also engaged in the battle to remove Hitler. I am sad that so many heroes lost their lives that day in the invasion and also during the war. I am also very sad that the practices of Nazi Germany have some back to the United States. As many of you know, Prescott Bu$h made a LOT of his fortune by investing in and profiting from the Hitler war machine. He was even charged with trading with the enemy in 1942. Hitler gained total power by staging the Reichstag Fire in 1933. Hitler invaded sovereign nations without cause. Hitler used torture. Hitler spied on his own people. Millions died because of his actions. Sounds like Prescott Bu$h's grandson...George W. Bu$h. A coward that was AWOL from his cushy job in the Texas Air National Guard set up by his dad Poppy so Dumbya could avoid service in Vietnam. A coward that was helped out by another coward...Dick Cheney...a guy who took FIVE deferments to also avoid serving in Nam. But these two cowards brought to us the events of 9/11, a day that smelled like the Reichstag Fire, and was very similar to Operation Northwoods. They brought the U.S. into two needless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for two reasons...war profiteering and oil. The U.S has lost over 4,300 lives in Iraq. The Iraqis have lost over 1,000,000 lives by some estimates. Plus, the U.S. has spied on it's own people. The U.S. has tortured. Somehow, I don't believe the brave souls that invaded the beaches of Normandy on this day thought the the U.S. would ever turn into the same type of country that they were trying to defeat. President Obama was at Omaha Beach today in Normandy to honor the heroes of that invasion. I hope he thinks LONG and HARD about the sacrifice of the men then and throughout WWII and other wars. I hope he realizes that the protection that he has thus far given Bu$h and Cheney regarding their treasonous actions is deplorable. RFK and many other heroes died today. They died hoping for a better America. Let's hope their dreams are realized.

[kenmurray]

I couldn't agree there more Bob. As far as RFK murder goes, I have often wondered about that girl in the polka dot dress.I wonder if she's still alive. I know they said back then that it was this girl Bob: http://members.fortunecity.com/wernerhoff/rfk4.html

[ThomZajac]

Hi Ken, I saw your post, and I'm running out the door so I can't look it up at the moment, but I think we know who it was, and it wasn't the blond in the photo (unless I'm so hurried I missing something).The woman was from the south (Louiianna?), school teacher I believe, and she and her male companion were far right wingers with ties to radical (right) groups. He was killed in an FBI raid of some kind shortly thereafter, and she may have been too.I'll look it up later-

[Pasquale DiFabrizio]

ThomZajac wrote:Hi Ken, I saw your post, and I'm running out the door so I can't look it up at the moment, but I think we know who it was, and it wasn't the blond in the photo (unless I'm so hurried I missing something).The woman was from the south (Louiianna?), school teacher I believe, and she and her male companion were far right wingers with ties to radical (right) groups. He was killed in an FBI raid of some kind shortly thereafter, and she may have been too.I'll look it up later-They were far right wingers with ties to radical right groups? Hmmm..just like Eugene Thane Cesar, eh?

[ThomZajac]

Was in a hurry, sorry- thought a case was being made for the blond being the polka dot dress woman. Did my googling and was taken to a different page of that same site. members.fortunecity.com/wernerhoff/rfk6.html Seems the polka dot dress woman was more likely Kathy Ainsworth.Below is a little blurp from Metapedia...Kathy Ainsworth (July 31, 1941 - June 30, 1968, born Kathryn Madlyn Capomacchia) was a Mississippi school teacher who was ambushed and killed by the FBI and local police in order to send the Ku Klux Klan a message. Ainsworth and her companion Thomas Tarrants were planning to bomb the home of Meyer Davidson, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) leader in Meridian, Mississippi. The Klan plot was initiated by two informants Alton Roberts and Raymond Roberts who were being paid by the ADL. The ADL and the FBI planed the bombing in order to ambush and kill Ainsworth and Tarrnats thereby sending the Klan a message that terror will be met with terror.On June 30, 1968, Kathy Ainsworth and Thomas Tarrants drove to the home of Meyer Davidson planning to place the bomb on his front porch. The FBI was hiding in the bushes and attacked the unsuspecting couple in a hail of gunfire similar to the scene in the 1967 movie, Bonnie and Clyde. Ainsworth was killed instantly; Tarrants was hit 19 times but survived. [1]As far as Eugene Thane Caesar (who was still alive and living in the Philippines when I last checked), he was very likely the shooter who shot RFK point blank behind the right ear (point blank was coroner Thomas Nguchi's conclusion). He lied about whether or not he had drawn his gun, and then was unable to produce the gun saying it had been stolen. I understand he had never been a security card before that night, nor after.

[kenmurray]

Here is what Bob mentioned earlier about the second gunman: http://www.secondgun.com/news.html

[Bob]

Nice link Ken. Ted Charach is the Mark Lane/Jim Garrison of the RFK assassination.