7

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, an Involuntary Pawn

ON AUGUST 28, 2002, one of the world’s preeminent authorities on the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, Judge Robert J. Joling of Green Valley, Arizona (formerly of Kenosha, Wisconsin), spoke at the University of New Haven. He had traveled to Connecticut to donate his extensive collection of RFK documents to the university’s Dr. Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science. A gathering of one hundred, including students, faculty, law enforcement officers, and reporters, came to listen to Judge Joling’s findings. The facts of the thirty-four-year-old murder case would surprise many in the room. The forensic evidence showed that the convicted assassin, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a twenty-four-year-old Palestinian immigrant who was apprehended with gun in hand, was not in fact, the killer.⁹³⁷

As we shall see ahead, other respected historians have concurred with Judge Joling’s assessment. In addition, nationally recognized investigators have also concluded—based on eyewitness accounts—that there were two other gunmen, both wearing suits, as well as a uniformed security guard, all with guns drawn.

Sen. Robert Kennedy, forty-two, was ambushed in the kitchen pantry of Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968. He had just delivered a rousing victory speech, having won the California Democratic presidential primary earlier that night. Amidst thunderous applause in the hotel ballroom, he and his wife Ethel and entourage exited the dais and took a shortcut through the pantry on their way to a press conference in another room on that floor. A hotel employee guided Kennedy through the swinging doors of the pantry. Bobby greeted hotel workers as he walked through. Some seventy people—supporters, staff, friends, reporters, photographers, and others—crowded into the kitchen. Witnesses reported that the gunfire sounded like someone had set off a string of firecrackers. Five bystanders were wounded. They survived. Kennedy was hit at point-blank range in the back of the head and the back. He collapsed to the floor with arms outstretched, mortally wounded. The next day, June 6, 1968, at Good Samaritan Hospital, Bobby died.

Sen. Robert Kennedy would have most likely been the next president of the United States. He had won the final primary, defeating Minnesota senator Gene McCarthy, another popular antiwar candidate. Kennedy was expected to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination at the Chicago national convention in August 1968. From there, most pundits felt that Kennedy would have gone on to beat Republican Richard Nixon for the White House in November. As it turned out, following Bobby’s death, the Democrats at the Chicago convention chose Vice President Hubert Humphrey as their party’s nominee. He lost in the general election to Richard Nixon. During Nixon’s tenure, the United States endured five more years of war in Vietnam.

Bobby’s assassination shocked the world. At the crime scene in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen, the apparent assailant, Sirhan Sirhan, had been pummeled and then quickly taken into custody. Sirhan later stated in his jail cell that he had no memory of murder and even when questioned later under hypnosis he had no recall of the shooting. As for the forensic evidence, the bullets test-fired from Sirhan’s .22 caliber handgun could not be conclusively matched to any of the victims’ bullets.⁹³⁸ The state also produced a forty-eight-page diary to show evidence of premeditation; Sirhan has no memory of writing it. A prison psychiatrist, Dr. Eduard Simson-Kallas, a PhD from Heidelberg and Stanford, spent a number of sessions analyzing Sirhan at San Quentin Prison shortly after his sentencing.⁹³⁹ His work indicated that Sirhan was mentally normal, but that he had been hypno-programmed by someone. Since then, no further work has been done to try to unlock Sirhan’s mind.⁹⁴⁰

Sirhan is serving a life sentence. At this writing, he is sixty-nine years old and resides at Coalinga, California’s Pleasant Valley State Prison. He has been imprisoned for forty-five years.⁹⁴¹

Following President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the media reported that Robert Kennedy publicly backed the Warren Commission’s views. However, the media did not know that Bobby was also quietly seeking answers to the questions surrounding his brother’s murder. Unbeknownst to the general public, he soon became one of the strongest believers in a conspiracy involving his brother’s death.⁹⁴²

At the time of this writing, Bobby’s son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a New York attorney and environmentalist, has come out in support of his father’s views. According to an Associated Press story written by Jamie Stengle, published on January 12, 2013, RFK Jr. has stated that he, too, is convinced that there was more than one gunman involved in President Kennedy’s assassination. He made the comments during an appearance with his sister Rory in an interview with journalist Charlie Rose in Dallas.

Early on in the aftermath of the assassination, Bobby Kennedy confided in Walter Sheridan, a close Kennedy family friend, formerly with the Justice Department, asking him to see what he could find out. Both men came to realize that JFK’s assassination was the result of a “powerful conspiracy.”⁹⁴³ It is not known if they knew for certain who was behind it, but Sheridan’s widow Nancy has revealed that they intended to crack the case when Bobby was elected president. Until then, both men kept their investigation secret in order to protect their families from any danger.⁹⁴⁴ Ironically, during the 1967 investigation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, both Kennedy and Sheridan opposed Garrison’s probe. Bobby felt that the CIA plots to kill Castro would be disclosed and blamed on the Kennedys.⁹⁴⁵ Recall that when the Kennedy administration had found out about the attempts on Castro’s life, such schemes were ordered halted. Neither Bobby nor Walt Sheridan trusted the CIA.⁹⁴⁶ They knew their best course of action was to wait for Bobby to be elected president, and then reopen the John F. Kennedy assassination case when they would have the power to get to the bottom of it. Both men also knew that the CIA was monitoring Robert Kennedy’s movements very closely. For example, in South Africa in June 1966, Bobby had received an overwhelming reception from the impoverished masses there when he toured the countryside speaking out vigorously against apartheid. Throughout his travels, Richard Helms’s CIA was continuously spying on Kennedy and his advisors.⁹⁴⁷ Indeed, Helms, James Angleton, and others in the CIA and in the Johnson administration viewed Bobby Kennedy as a threat, particularly because of his views on the war in Vietnam.⁹⁴⁸

Three and a half years after the assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam War was raging. Bobby’s outward ambivalence toward running for the presidency masked an inner drive that would not be deterred. Richard Helms, no doubt, foresaw Bobby and his allies working in tandem with the growing antiwar movement and sensed a formidable campaign team emerging. The young senator appeared unstoppable.

Meanwhile, under Helms’s watch, Agency drug and hypnosis experiments continued unabated,⁹⁴⁹ with the ultimate goal of producing a sophisticated, fail-safe, executive action plan (i.e., assassination program). D-day would come on June 5, 1968, the night on which the nightmare of November 22, 1963 would repeat itself.

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born on March 19, 1944 in Jerusalem⁹⁵⁰ and although he was a Palestinian, he was not a Muslim. The Sirhans were Orthodox Christians.⁹⁵¹ Indeed, after their arrival in the United States, Sirhan’s mother, Mary, worked at a local Presbyterian Church nursery.⁹⁵²

Life was not easy for the Sirhan family in the Holy City. According to author Robert Kaiser, Mary Sirhan told him about several horrific occurrences that beset the family while living in Jerusalem. At the age of four, Sirhan saw one of his older brothers run over by a truck and killed during a skirmish between Zionists and Palestinian Arabs.⁹⁵³ When part of their home was dynamited, the Sirhans fled to another section of the city.⁹⁵⁴ There, the seven-member family set up home in a fifteen-by-thirty-foot room with only a camping stove for cooking meals.⁹⁵⁵ On another occasion, Sirhan fetched a bucket full of water and brought it into the apartment without noticing what was in the water. He screamed at the sight of a hand floating on the surface.⁹⁵⁶

Sirhan’s father, Bishara, brought the family from Jerusalem to California in January 1957 when Sirhan was twelve.⁹⁵⁷ The family had obtained immigration visas through the assistance of the Church World Service and sponsorship from the Rev. Haldor Lillenas of the Church of the Nazarene.⁹⁵⁸ But soon after their arrival, Bishara Sirhan became unhappy with life in the United States. Bishara left and returned to Jerusalem six months later, abandoning his family.⁹⁵⁹

The Sirhans eventually settled at 696 East Howard Street in Pasadena, California.⁹⁶⁰ The family consisted of Sirhan, who was called “Sol” by his friends, his mother, and two brothers, Adel, who was five years older than he, and Munir, who was three years younger.⁹⁶¹ Tragically, a sister, Aida, died of leukemia at age twenty-nine when Sirhan was twenty-one.⁹⁶² Finally, there were two brothers, Sharif and Saidallah, who lived away from home.

Sirhan’s first educational experience in the United States was the sixth grade at Longfellow Grammar School in Pasadena, where school records show thirteen-year-old Sirhan was “cooperative, well-mannered, and well-liked.” He also made “many new friends.” He graduated elementary school with a C-plus average, an accomplishment considering his having had to master English as well.⁹⁶³

Sirhan earned above average grades at John Muir High School and went on to Pasadena City College. However, he did not do as well there and left at age twenty-one in 1965.⁹⁶⁴

Sirhan’s school years were not unlike those of most teenagers. He apparently had no serious romantic involvements, but did have infatuations. For example, he was interested in a young woman named Gwen Gumm, whom he had met at Pasadena City College.⁹⁶⁵ He had asked her out for a date several times, but they had never actually gone. They had also seen each other at Santa Anita Racetrack (more regarding Ms. Gumm ahead).⁹⁶⁶

Although a number of historians have tried to portray Sirhan as a loner, he was far from that. At school, and at his several workplaces, he had a variety of friends. One pal was a classmate, a “short pudgy fellow” by the name of Walter Crowe.⁹⁶⁷

Walter Crowe and Sirhan first met in the sixth grade when they had adjoining paper routes.⁹⁶⁸ They attended John Muir High School together and both went on to Pasadena City College for two years. At that point, in 1965, Sirhan went to work with horses as an exercise boy, and Walter transferred to UCLA to major in History.⁹⁶⁹

Walter Crowe’s political beliefs at the time were Marxist, as were those of many college students in the late 1960s. At Pasadena City College, Crowe attempted to organize a chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a left-wing organization. He also tried to recruit his buddy Sol, but Sirhan was not interested, and in fact, the chapter never materialized. According to Crowe, Sirhan was apolitical.⁹⁷⁰

It was at this time that Walter Crowe was under surveillance by intelligence units for his extracurricular activities, according to the late author Philip Melanson, who had been a professor at the University of Massachusetts in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts.⁹⁷¹ As noted earlier, the intelligence community was working closely with key municipal police departments during this era to quell civil unrest, race riots, and antiwar demonstrations. So, the long arm of the intelligence community found itself in the heart of Sirhan’s world. Since Sirhan was a companion of Walter Crowe, Sirhan was certainly observed by covert operatives when the two young men were together at school, even though Sirhan’s interests were purely social, not political. At the same time, a number of operatives were very busy seeking individuals for agency hypnosis and drug experiments. As noted earlier, thousands of persons were selected unwittingly for MKULTRA research programs.

The evidence that US intelligence was interested in Sirhan comes from a Military Intelligence report on Sirhan from San Francisco that surfaced in the LAPD’s files at the time of Sen. Robert Kennedy’s death.⁹⁷² Intelligence officer, Timothy Richdale, who was at the LAPD command center immediately following the assassination, reported the existence of an intelligence background check or surveillance report on Sirhan that was written prior to the assassination. The report, which had been filed by Army intelligence officer Terry Fall in San Francisco, listed the schools Sirhan had attended: Pasadena City College, John Muir High School, George Washington Junior High, and Longfellow Grammar School.⁹⁷³

Of course, in order for an individual to have been unwittingly selected as a potential subject for any kind of MK program, an intelligence file would have been a prerequisite. The fact that this file was shared with local law enforcement personnel is indicative of the strong ties at that time between the intelligence community and large city police departments. According to author Philip Melanson, former CIA officer Victor Marchetti discovered during 1967 that Los Angeles police were indeed being trained at CIA headquarters. Marchetti has reported he was informed that the training, which lasted for several days, was for “sensitive” activities approved by Richard Helms and conducted by the CIA’s Clandestine Services Division.⁹⁷⁴

After leaving Pasadena City College, Sirhan sought work to support himself and to help out his mother, as did his brothers. Adel made his living as a musician playing an oud (a guitar-like instrument) at a bar called the Fez on North Vermont Street in Los Angeles.⁹⁷⁵ The youngest brother, Munir, worked as a retail clerk at a Nash Department Store.⁹⁷⁶ As for Sirhan, his goal in life was to be accorded the title of jockey. The aspirations of five-foot-four-inch, 120-pound Sirhan motivated him to concentrate on the most humble aspects of the vocation. He was soon hired at Santa Anita Racetrack as an exercise boy and groom. He also briefly worked in the same capacity at Del Mar Racetrack. Both were frequented by mobsters, and Sirhan became friendly with a few of the low-level mob types.⁹⁷⁷

It is important to note that subjects unwittingly ensnared in Richard Helms and James Angleton’s MKULTRA experiments were many times found at locations where agency and Mafia paths crossed. These included racetracks where high-level intelligence and mob figures were known to meet. Even J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director, along with his friend and assistant Clyde Tolson, patronized mob meeting places at the Santa Anita and Del Mar racetracks. Under Hoover, the Mafia had enjoyed a comfortable existence. According to Arthur Schlesinger, in 1959, just prior to John Kennedy’s election, at the FBI’s New York office, there were some four hundred agents investigating the “Communist threat.” At the same office, there were four agents working on organized crime. It is even reported that a couple of years later, when Robert Kennedy was attorney general, he called the New York office for an update on the mob. He was told by the agent in charge that he wouldn’t be able to provide the latest information because there was a newspaper strike in progress!⁹⁷⁸ By all appearances, Hoover’s forces had a high-level, nonaggression pact in place with the mob, one that would—from a public relations viewpoint—benefit both parties, at least in Hoover’s mind.⁹⁷⁹

As in the CIA, FBI and mob heads took careful note as Robert Kennedy’s star began to rise again in 1966. All of these organizations recalled how Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department had rode herd over mob families in America’s largest cities in 1962 and 1963. In those years, a total of 404 wiseguys had been convicted. And the Patriarca family of Rhode Island and the DeCavalcante family of New Jersey had been effectively shut down.⁹⁸⁰ Mafia heads in other key cities were outraged. Prior to Bobby’s murder, Hoover knew of threats to Kennedy’s life, but he chose to leave his nemesis unprotected and even told his staff that this was the way it would be.⁹⁸¹

Given Hoover’s relationship with the mob and his loathing of Robert Kennedy, it is easy to deduce what his mission would be after the assassination: to keep the investigation within the limits of the lone gunman scenario. This strategy would protect both the FBI and the mob from being framed by the CIA. At the same time, the CIA-mob association would essentially provide Richard Helms and James Angleton’s lieutenants at the Agency the perfect cover.

At age twenty-one, after leaving college, Sirhan worked from October 1965 to the spring of 1966 as a groom at Santa Anita Racetrack. According to author John Davis, racetrack gambling was controlled at that time by racketeer Mickey Cohen.⁹⁸² Cohen would appear virtually every day at either Santa Anita or at Del Mar racetrack. The mob, which had supported Richard Nixon since 1946, had a vested interest in helping whoever was plotting against Robert Kennedy. (At this time, Cohen was stealing millions from the San Diego track. His activities would finally land him in prison by 1971.⁹⁸³)

Besides the racetrack, other mob meeting places included strip joints, some of which also have a reputation for mob involvement. Sirhan was known to patronize several topless bars including the Cat Patch, located about eight miles from the Santa Anita track.⁹⁸⁴ He probably also visited the Briar Patch as well, another topless bar that was less than a mile from the track. Clubs were typical of the venues utilized by Helms’s Agency MKULTRA operations. Such places were ideal for picking up unwitting individuals for drug and hypnosis experimentation.

At Santa Anita Racktrack, one individual with whom Sirhan became acquainted was a horse trainer by the name of Henry Ramistella of New Jersey, who was also known as Frank Donneroummas.⁹⁸⁵ Donneroummas had an arrest record in Miami and New York for a variety of crimes including theft, narcotics possession, and perjury. He had also been banned from the tracks on the East Coast.⁹⁸⁶ Donneroummas befriended Sirhan, and when Sirhan decided to leave Santa Anita to seek a more prestigious position in the racing business, it was Donneroummas who helped him land a new job. With Frank’s introduction, Sirhan was hired in the spring of 1966 at a breeding farm called the Granja Vista del Rio Ranch located in Norco, near Corona. It was managed by Bert C. Altfillisch and owned by a group that included staunch anti-Castro Cuban Desi Arnaz, actress Lucille Ball’s husband. Along with Arnaz, other horse owners who got to know Sirhan well were actor Buddy Ebsen and TV personality Dale Robertson.⁹⁸⁷

Sirhan was enthusiastic about his good fortune. He next sought a place to stay, hoping to avoid a long daily commute from Pasadena. Taking out his 1956 pink and white DeSoto Fireflight,⁹⁸⁸ he drove the back roads in the Granja Vista area until he found a quiet motel along the way. After briefly speaking with the motel manager, Edward Van Antwerp, who lived there with his wife, Sirhan was able to secure a bed for himself. He ended up living there for five months.⁹⁸⁹

In Sirhan’s work as a groom and exercise boy at Granja Vista, he developed successful relationships with the staff and the clients. Again, this differs sharply with popular belief that he was a loner. One particular horse owner who enjoyed Sirhan was Robert Prestwood. His wife also liked Sirhan. According to author Robert Kaiser, the couple wanted Sirhan to eventually become the jockey for their colt, Jet Spec.⁹⁹⁰

As an exercise boy at the ranch, Sirhan tried to help his fellow employees to gain better working conditions, and they applauded his efforts, even though he was unsuccessful. For example, Sirhan is known to have taken the lead in representing his coworkers in issues with the ranch manager, Bert Altfillisch. According to several employees, Altfillisch and Sirhan had differences of opinion regarding workplace policies, yet they still respected each other. While Altfillisch maintained firm control over the staff, he allowed Sirhan to air his views, and there was reportedly never any animosity between them.⁹⁹¹

One of Sirhan’s coworkers, Terry Welch, described Sirhan as someone who “indicated a strong liking for the United States and never exhibited any particular loyalty or feeling toward the country of his birth (Jordan).” He added that Sirhan’s political beliefs were strongly opposed to Communism.⁹⁹² And having been brought up as a Christian, Sirhan also had little interest in Muslim fundamentalism. In fact, he once told author Robert Kaiser while awaiting trial, “I don’t identify with the Arabs politically or any other way except for the fact that their blood flows in my veins. Their food I don’t go for. Their clothing I don’t dig. Their robes and all that bullshit. Their politics I can’t understand and don’t want to understand . . . Hell, I’m an American.”⁹⁹³ While not even remotely an Arab freedom fighter, he would eventually come to be seen as one.

As for Sirhan’s emotional life, it appears that he was interested in a young female coworker at the ranch named Peggy Osterkamp. An attractive young woman, she was the daughter of a Corona dairyman. However, according to Peggy, they never dated.⁹⁹⁴

Sirhan worked at Granja Vista throughout 1966, and during that time, he had several bad falls from a horse. The worst was on September 25, 1966, when Sirhan was racing two fellow trainers on an exercise track. Fog rolled in and Sirhan, riding a chestnut mare at full gallop, crashed into the outer rail. He was in a semicoma when the ambulance arrived to take him to Corona Community Hospital. Several stitches later, his prognosis was good, but he would still spend many weeks pursuing medical specialists in order to find relief for the pain in his left eye.⁹⁹⁵

The horse fall also exacted an emotional toll on the aspiring jockey and gave rise to an element of fear within his psyche. As ranch manager, Bert Altfillisch, commented, “The kid had a lot of ambition, but he never could have become a jockey. He sort of lost his nerve.”⁹⁹⁶ Sirhan began to see his dream slip away.

Heartbroken, Sirhan soon found a new source of inspiration in the literature of the occult, now known as New Age books. This avocation was introduced to him by a coworker at the breeding farm, forty-year-old Walter Thomas Rathke. Rathke’s appearance in Sirhan’s life at this time, and his role as Sirhan’s mentor and close companion, had numerous, and curious, overtones, as we shall see ahead. Rathke, a bearded man who was known as “Tom,” was seventeen years older than Sirhan. He had been married, yet apparently lived alone. He was college educated and had worked for the phone company. However, at this point in his life, he was working in the stables with Sirhan at Granja Vista.⁹⁹⁷ He exhibited a deep knowledge of the occult, while at the same time he was known to have maintained beliefs that were far to the right. Indeed, in many ways, his action profile closely resembled that of Lee Harvey Oswald’s friend George de Mohrenschildt. In intelligence circles, such a person is labeled a control agent or a handler.

When he was not at the racetrack with Rathke, Sirhan followed Rathke’s lead pursuing his quest for knowledge and power in local bookstores, primarily in the New Age section. One store he particularly favored was Broughton’s Bookstore on Lake Street in Pasadena.⁹⁹⁸ He would many times just read in the stacks—the books were expensive—and then, based on recall, he would try the mental experiments at home. Some of the topics he and Rathke discussed included astral projection, auras, clairvoyance, and reincarnation. Rathke introduced Sirhan to such books as The Laws of Mental Domination; Thought Power: Its Control and Culture; and Meditation on the Occult Life: The Hidden Power.⁹⁹⁹

Sirhan was not known to have indulged in recreational drugs; he smoked L&M cigarettes and drank Tom Collins.¹⁰⁰⁰ His “highs” appear to have come from winning at the track and from his psychic experimentation. Physically, Sirhan’s recovery from his September 1966 horse fall was slow, and as a result, he pursued a workmen’s compensation claim to recover lost wages and at least some return for what he had gone through.

On December 6, 1966, Sirhan drove to the Granja Vista ranch and collected his last paycheck. He had had his fill of the breeding farm, and although he knew he would miss some of his friends there, he saw little future in the ranch for himself. Sirhan was twenty-two at this point. He hoped to have a more prosperous new year in 1967, and until a better position came along, planned to continue betting on the horses, and along with his friend Tom Rathke, delving into the world of mysticism.¹⁰⁰¹

At the same time, a fascination with all things Eastern had become fashionable in the summer of 1967. Clothing, philosophy, and the music of India captured the imagination of America’s youth. In Monterey, California, the musical hit at the famous pop festival that year was Ravi Shankar.

Indeed, Sirhan enjoyed his New Age studies and would continually search for practical uses, such as relief for his eye pain, which doctors had been unable to completely resolve. Sirhan soon found a master hypnotist not far from his home and visited his library several times. The man, Manly Palmer Hall, was an author and the founder of the Philosophical Research Society, which was housed in a temple near Griffith Park off Los Feliz Boulevard in Los Angeles.¹⁰⁰² Hall practiced his craft with his German-born wife, and Sirhan reportedly met with both of them and read in their library. It is interesting to note that one of Hall’s longtime clients was LA Mayor Sam Yorty, the same official who, following Sirhan’s arrest, exclaimed that Sirhan was involved with a “Communist organization” because of his membership in a New Age society.¹⁰⁰³ When police searched Sirhan’s car after his being taken into custody, they found a copy of Manly Palmer Hall’s book Healing: The Divine Art. Oddly, the book was not listed in the grand jury exhibits.¹⁰⁰⁴

At home in Pasadena, Sirhan and his brothers Adel and Munir lived a harmonious existence and would share ideas on the news of the day. Although Sirhan was apolitical, he was curious about many subjects, including news from his homeland. Ominous reports from the Middle East that spring made the headlines with Israel’s discovery that Arabs were mobilizing their troops in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. War erupted when Israel swiftly attacked its enemies on June 5, 1967. Known as the Six Day War, it was a stunning victory for the Jewish nation. Israel had wiped out the Egyptian air force on the ground, taken over the Gaza Strip, and brought its tanks to the Suez Canal. When it was over, Israel had quadrupled its size, occupying Gaza, Golan, Sinai, the West Bank, and the Old City of Jerusalem. The Israelis had suffered one-tenth the number of Arab casualties and succeeded in creating an added safety zone around their country. US politicians, including Robert Kennedy, supported these efforts. American politicians saw a strong Israel as a counterforce to the Soviets, who had begun to make inroads in the region, enlarging their presence in Egypt and Syria. Indeed, the United States was unwavering in its backing of Israel, both economically and politically. As we shall see ahead, Sirhan was erroneously perceived by many as having had a motive for the RFK assassination that stemmed from the Six Day War. This viewpoint holds that the killing of Robert Kennedy was an act of vengeance due to his support for Israel. The fact of the matter is that none of the candidates for president favored Palestinian or Arab military dominance in the Middle East, which makes this motive moot.

The embarrassing Arab defeat prompted national columnists to applaud Israel’s armed forces. In one article, Time magazine called upon Jordan’s King Hussein to “find sources of pride and confirmation of manhood in causes other than holy war.”¹⁰⁰⁵ Indeed, military historians have concluded the army of Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser clearly was not prepared for this ordeal. Meanwhile, Sirhan Sirhan, at this point, was known to have had only a passing interest in Middle East politics. But soon, this noncommittal stance would abruptly warp into an intermittent, uncharacteristic hostility.

By 1967, Robert Kennedy had begun his third year as senator from New York. He had made great strides in overcoming his grief and deep depression caused by the murder of his brother a little over three years earlier. Happily married with ten children, he and his wife Ethel spent as much time together as his job would allow. He found great satisfaction in directing his energies toward the plight of the poor of New York and drawing public attention to the issues of those living in the worst slums of America. His speeches reflected this compassion and sense of purpose:

“Today in America, we are two worlds. . . . But if we try to look through the eyes of the young slum-dweller—the Negro, and the Puerto Rican, and the Mexican-American—the world is a dark and hopeless place.”¹⁰⁰⁶

Kennedy wanted to change that. And he knew the power lay in the presidency. But at this point, he was still uncertain about a run for the Oval Office in 1968. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had been elected in 1964, had an iron grip on the Democratic party, and most observers felt he would run again in 1968. He had promised to win both the war in Southeast Asia and the war at home. Most voters did not know that President John F. Kennedy, just days before he was assassinated, had drawn up departure plans for Vietnam. After he was assassinated, the Pentagon canceled the plans and in late 1963 began to increase military aid to South Vietnam.¹⁰⁰⁷ At this point, it became “Johnson’s War.” The year 1967 saw American troop strength in Vietnam climb to nearly a half million. While Johnson continued to bomb North Vietnam, the number of US troops killed in the war was escalating daily. In 1966 and 1967, more than fifteen thousand Americans died in Southeast Asia.¹⁰⁰⁸ Despite the rising numbers of US troops being sent to Vietnam, the Communists refused to talk unless the bombing was halted. This brought out Johnson’s greatest fear: if he acquiesced, he would be considered a coward and an appeaser, just as the British had appeased the Nazis at Munich prior to World War II. President Johnson summed up his philosophy in a crude way: “If you let a bully come into your front yard one day, the next day he’ll be up on your porch, and the day after that he’ll rape your wife in your own bed.”¹⁰⁰⁹ As B-52 bombers dropped napalm and cluster bombs on North Vietnamese Army camps along the coast near the South Vietnamese border, President Johnson continued to reiterate that the best course of action was to escalate the bombing of North Vietnam’s key cities.

Robert Kennedy’s response was that this would only bring about the destruction of Vietnam and its people, not peace. Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and George McGovern of South Dakota supported Kennedy’s view. Richard Nixon’s answer was that Kennedy was in effect prolonging the war by encouraging the enemy.

Back in Virginia, Bobby Kennedy enjoyed the late summer weather, tossing a football and playing with his many children. His wife Ethel, his biggest cheerleader, was always up for a good time, whether it was taking the family sailing, horseback riding, or skiing. She could often be found hosting parties at their Hickory Hill home in McLean, Virginia. The large house and grounds had been the headquarters of General George B. McClellan during the Civil War. In 1957, Robert Kennedy bought the manor from his brother Jack.¹⁰¹⁰ Ten years later, it had become a headquarters of sorts where family and a broad spectrum of friends would meet for both diversion and serious discussion on the topics of the day. All the while, in the back of Bobby’s mind, he was continually weighing his options for the future, and specifically whether or not to run for the presidency. It would be the most important decision of his life.

Sirhan at this time had discovered that betting at the track was not bringing in the income he had hoped it would. Fortunately for him, his mother took the initiative and found him a job. She called on a friend from their church, John Weidner, a Dutch immigrant who owned a health food store at 1380 North Lake Avenue.¹⁰¹¹ Weidner was happy to be able to help Mary Sirhan. Her son’s new job entailed working in the stockroom and making deliveries by car, driving to Monterey Park, Downey, and other area locations.¹⁰¹²

With the arrival of fall, tempers in the cities nationally cooled somewhat following the summer’s brutal race riots. October 1967 also marked a turning point in America’s struggle at home against the war in Vietnam. From this point on, it seemed that there was light at the end of the tunnel—for the doves, not the hawks. There was a wave of hope among the protesters that they were making their point heard and that the power of the people, or at least of the youth, would bring the soldiers home and leave Vietnam at peace.

The war protesters believed that after twenty-five years of warfare in Vietnam, first with the Japanese, then the French, and now with the United States, peace could finally come to Indochina. This, without dishonor to the United States, if only America would admit its mistake and pull out. Such was the feeling that pervaded the antiwar groups who were preparing at that point to join the first counterculture march on Washington, DC.

A majority of the country was suddenly seeking a change at the top. Public opinion polls, which had shown President Johnson leading over Robert Kennedy in July 1967 by 45 percent to 39 percent, had flipped. The autumn polls gave Kennedy 51 percent compared to Johnson’s 39 percent.¹⁰¹³

From San Francisco, the “flower power” movement had spread rapidly to the East Coast. By the fall of 1967, the nation’s capital had been chosen as the host city for a nationwide antiwar and antidraft protest. The mass demonstration, sponsored by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War, was set for October 21, 1967. Protesters planned to march to the Pentagon and confront the authorities there. On the day of the event, more than one hundred thousand people showed up, including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, who headed up the Youth International Party (Yippies). The marchers, mostly long-haired students in blue jeans, thronged the roadways as they walked. Some waved flags, handed out flowers, or smoked pot along the way. They represented a broad range of backgrounds and experiences, and although most were young students, there were those who had served in Vietnam, enrolled in college, and had turned against the war. Some were outraged by the endless fighting and wanted it to end, but were secure in the knowledge that they had high draft numbers and hence could not be reached by the long arm of the federal government. And there were those who knew they were about to be drafted and were debating whether or not to take refuge in Canada. There were parents, grandparents, and young children, arriving by the busload from the cities and from the countryside, from every part of the United States. Signs read, LBJ, PULLOUTNOW, LIKEYOURFATHERSHOULDHAVEDONE. ENDTHEDRAFT, PEACE NOW; HELL NO, WE WON’T GO. Among the speakers at the event were nationally known figures, including authors Norman Mailer and Dr. Benjamin Spock.

Many of the demonstrators were well-versed in civil disobedience and knew what their actions could result in. But that was their goal: to create a huge event, bring worldwide attention to it, make their message known, and then pay the price, if needed, by going to jail. In their minds, the government was fighting an illegal war—and those in charge of it were the individuals who should have been arrested, not the war protesters.

As the marchers approached the Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense, they were met by twenty-five hundred armed soldiers. Then, suddenly, the police arrived and chaos ensued. Those who refused to disperse were arrested for disorderly conduct and hauled into paddy wagons. According to the Washington Post, there were 681 arrests, including those of Mailer and Hoffman.¹⁰¹⁴ The yippies’ goal of getting their message out to millions nationwide had been accomplished.

For Sirhan, the war and its ensuing political and social unrest at home was merely a TV spectacle, as it still was for many Americans. But even though Sirhan had never attended a protest rally or joined a peace group, there is evidence that US intelligence, then monitoring antiwar leaders, was interested in him. As noted earlier, a military intelligence report from San Francisco regarding Sirhan surfaced in the LAPD’s files following the Robert Kennedy assassination.¹⁰¹⁵

Meanwhile, in the eyes of the public, the wheels of American democracy ground forward, as Democratic senator Gene McCarthy of Minnesota, age fifty-one, with his wife Abigail by his side, began to capture the hearts and minds of legions of college students in state after state. Older Democrats viewed McCarthy’s campaign as a threat to their party’s incumbency. At a time when party unity was needed, McCarthy was creating a major division that many feared would doom the Democrats’ chances of reelection. Those who supported him felt that his candidacy was desperately needed because he was entering the primaries primarily to oppose the Vietnam War policies of Lyndon Johnson. Senator McCarthy was quoted before announcing he would run, “The only way to get Johnson to change course is for someone to run against him.”¹⁰¹⁶

Gene McCarthy had the support of many prominent intellectuals and liberals, and he saw himself as destined for the White House eventually. He was an eccentric of sorts and before entering politics in 1949 had taught at a Benedictine college and was known to read an “enormous missal” while on airplane flights.¹⁰¹⁷ He had served with distinction in the House prior to winning his Senate seat. In 1960, the year John Kennedy won the presidency, McCarthy was quoted as saying during the campaign, “I should be the candidate for president. I’m twice as liberal as Humphrey, twice as smart as Symington, and twice as Catholic as Kennedy.”¹⁰¹⁸ He had ended up supporting Adlai Stevenson that year. In the next presidential election in 1964, McCarthy was considered by President Johnson for vice president, but Johnson instead chose the senior senator from Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey. Now, three years later, McCarthy saw it as his turn, despite reportedly slim financing for a national campaign.

According to Kennedy speechwriter and advisor Arthur Schlesinger, Bobby Kennedy was surprised when Gene McCarthy announced his run for the Democratic presidential nomination. At the same time, he apparently looked at it in a positive light. His brother, Ted, however, was quoted at the time as urging Bobby not to run himself. Ted’s feeling was that Bobby should wait another four years. He was sure President Johnson would win reelection in 1968, and he thought that running that year would hurt Bobby’s chances for 1972.¹⁰¹⁹

Indeed, Bobby’s resurgence and his campaign for the Democratic presidential primary nomination were the nascent hopes of many, but still a major question mark. By 1967, with the horrendous casualty figures coming out of Vietnam, Robert Kennedy’s feelings against the war began to solidify. Arthur Schlesinger has written that American troop strength in Vietnam had grown from twenty-three thousand in 1964 to 525,000 at the end of 1967.¹⁰²⁰ In that year, 7,482 American troops were killed. Kennedy saw this tragic loss of life as unwarranted, and he viewed the war as a senseless power struggle with no end in sight. He began to openly sympathize with antiwar protesters and viewed their transgressions not as acts bordering on treason, but as voices crying out in the wilderness. Speaking in the defense of the peace demonstrations, in one speech Senator Kennedy stated, “When we talk about the violence and the people walking out (protesting) and the lawlessness, there is no other way for people to express their point of view, and I think that is most unfortunate.”¹⁰²¹

Kennedy was fully aware of the key role the war would play in the upcoming presidential race. Yet, it seemed as if he were debating within himself exactly which road to take. By opposing President Johnson, he was dividing the Democratic Party, and this, he knew, could lead to its defeat. On a more visceral level, he also no doubt felt that what had happened to his brother Jack could easily happen to him. Behind the scenes, Kennedy watched and listened and prayed. And as a father of ten, he was torn between his loyalty to his family and to his country.

Timing was another crucial factor for Kennedy to take into consideration. The New Hampshire primary, which was set for March 1968, was fast approaching, and the deadline loomed for him to make a decision. (As it turned out, he would miss this traditional kick-off of the presidential campaign season.)

The former professor, Sen. Eugene McCarthy, officially announced on November 30, 1967 that he was running against President Johnson.¹⁰²² Students from across the country promptly answered his call to end the war. Dubbing McCarthy “Clean Gene,” they joined his grassroots campaign in droves. President Johnson reportedly saw McCarthy’s challenge as an onerous sign that Robert Kennedy also would step into the fray.

Kennedy, who did not find Senator McCarthy terribly exciting or visionary, kept to the sidelines, intently watching the race unfold. Just four days prior to McCarthy’s announcement, Kennedy appeared as a guest on CBS’s Face the Nation. The question came up as to whether or not he planned to run against Johnson for the presidency. Without disclosing his intentions, Kennedy proclaimed his opposition to the war with the passion of a moral crusader. He stated: “We’re killing innocent people because we don’t want a war fought on American soil, or because [the Viet Cong are] twelve thousand miles away and they might get eleven thousand miles away. . . . Do we have the right . . . [to] make millions of people refugees, killing women and children, as we have?”¹⁰²³

Tortured inside over the continuing war, Robert Kennedy nevertheless remained undecided on a presidential run, even as several of his colleagues joined the McCarthy campaign. Three of his best friends, Richard Goodwin, Allard Lowenstein, and John Kenneth Galbraith soon left to help McCarthy prepare for the New Hampshire primary, the important, first battle of the 1968 Presidential race.¹⁰²⁴

Robert Kennedy knew that if he did run as a peace candidate, he would face the same issue that his brother had. President Kennedy had been murdered shortly after he had begun to phase out troops from Vietnam. Would he, too, face the same fate?

The forces opposed to Robert Kennedy saw candidate Gene McCarthy as a wild card. But with the elimination of Bobby, they assumed that at the convention cooler heads would prevail and the more conservative Vice President Hubert Humphrey would win the Democrats’ nod, which he did. Republican Richard Nixon was also considered a safe choice, given his record as an unrepentant cold warrior during and after his years as vice president under two-term president Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Clearly, those responsible for President Kennedy’s assassination had determined that this time around—if Bobby ran for president and his nomination were assured—they would end his campaign before the general election in November 1968. Secret Service protection had not yet been extended to candidates in the primaries;¹⁰²⁵ it would be instituted following the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

Meanwhile, in Pasadena, Sirhan was busy testing his New Age knowledge with his friend Tom Rathke at Hollywood Park. There, he attempted to impact the performance of horses by concentrating his “powers” of mental telepathy on them. An example of his zeal was later recounted by John and Patricia Strathman, who were friends of Sirhan. John had been in Sirhan’s high school class, and he and his wife had stayed in touch, getting together with Sirhan several times in 1966 and 1967 to eat and chat. Patricia shared Sirhan’s interest and encouraged his stories. One night, while visiting the Strathmans, Sirhan regaled Patricia with his newly acquired knowledge. He spoke of how he hoped to develop the ability to see mystical bodies and his guardian angel.¹⁰²⁶ John Strathman, a heavyset bearded man and confirmed skeptic, remarked a year or so later that he felt Sirhan was being led down an ill-starred path by Tom Rathke.

Strathman stated that it seemed to him that Rathke held Sirhan “transfixed” on the occult.¹⁰²⁷ Indeed, Rathke’s dominant presence in Sirhan’s life had raised some suspicions in their minds.¹⁰²⁸ The mysterious Tom Rathke may have captivated Sirhan, but he did not leave a warm impression with the Strathmans. According to author Robert Kaiser, John Strathman stated that he “got a sinister picture” of Rathke’s relationship with Sirhan.¹⁰²⁹

In December 1967, Sirhan invited Rathke over to the family bungalow for dinner. This was Rathke’s last visit to Sirhan’s home before moving to Northern California.¹⁰³⁰ Shortly thereafter, Rathke reportedly moved to Livermore, in the vicinity of the Lawrence Radiation Lab, east of Oakland, where he took a job as a groom at the Pleasanton Race Stables.¹⁰³¹ Rathke did not return again until March, three months later, according to a friend of Mary Sirhan’s, Lynne Massey Mangan. These visits coincide with the beginning and the ending of the gap in Sirhan’s timeline, the period in which information on Sirhan’s whereabouts for three months is missing from the LAPD’s records. A source from the LAPD, who wished to remain anonymous, confided this fact to authors William Turner, a former FBI agent, and Jonn Christian, a former broadcast journalist.¹⁰³² In addition, a review of the records in LAPD’s possession shows that there are details on people with whom Sirhan came in contact while working at the Health Food Store, except for the time period from December 1967 through March 1968; there are no details during the weeks that he was unaccounted for.¹⁰³³

The whereabouts of Sirhan during his weeks away from home are uncertain. Again, his amnesia has blocked any attempt to recall this missing time span. We do know, as would be expected, Mary Sirhan was very worried. According to a neighbor’s statement to the FBI, Mary was extremely upset because her son was gone for “quite some time.”¹⁰³⁴ This was unlike Sirhan.

Sirhan’s brothers presumed he had gone north to visit Tom Rathke, which was logical given the bond between the two. It is interesting to note, regarding their relationship, while Rathke was extremely conservative politically, Sirhan was apolitical for the most part. However, despite his neutral stance, Sirhan is known to have stated that he admired the Kennedys. Asked during his trial about his feelings about President Kennedy, Sirhan said, “I loved him.” He then went on to describe Kennedy’s efforts to find a solution to the Palestinian refuge problem. He said he recalled that Kennedy had consulted with Arab leaders and promised to work with Israel to help repatriate the refugees.¹⁰³⁵ Sirhan later on told a court appointed psychiatrist, Dr. George Y. Abe, that, in fact, he would have voted for Bobby Kennedy “because Kennedy was for the underdog.”¹⁰³⁶

Leading up to Sirhan’s disappearance, the three-month-time-gap, it is known that he had sought a remedy for the pain in his left eye from the injury he had sustained in the bad fall he had taken while working at the racetrack. His search had brought him to at least seven medical specialists. According to Professor Philip Melanson, it is important to note that at this time, one of the most common covers for CIA hypnosis testing was the pretense of giving medical treatment.¹⁰³⁷ It is possible that through these various contacts in the medical community, Sirhan eventually encountered Dr. William J. Bryan Jr.¹⁰³⁸ Dr. Bryan, fifty-four, was the nation’s leading expert in the field of hypnosis and had worked for the CIA as a hypnosis expert. While Sirhan has stated that he has no memory of Dr. Bryan, Bryan is known to have confided to several colleagues that he had hypnotized Sirhan.¹⁰³⁹

Dr. Bryan’s office was located on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, where he conducted sex and hypnosis workshops at his American Institute of Hypnosis. He billed himself as an expert in “the successful treatment of sexual disorders.”¹⁰⁴⁰ A large man—he weighed in at 386 pounds—Bryan also had a large appetite for women. In 1969, the California Board of Medical Examiners cited Bryan for unprofessional conduct. He had been sexually molesting four female patients while they were under hypnosis. The board placed Bryan on probation for five years, with the condition that he have a woman present when treating female patients.¹⁰⁴¹

According to Professor Philip Melanson, who interviewed several CIA consultants and professional colleagues of Dr. Bryan’s, they all stated that Bryan was with the CIA. One, whom Melanson gives the pseudonym Gilbert Marston, told Melanson that Bryan had mentioned to him that he not only worked as a CIA consultant, but that he had been asked to hypnotize Sirhan Sirhan.¹⁰⁴² Marston did not say if the hypnotizing was conducted before or after the assassination (during the trial). But the evidence indicates that it was both (that is, preassassination programming and later postassissination conditioning to influence his statements on the witness stand).

Dr. William Bryan was skilled in tricking subjects under hypnosis to do things they ordinarily would not do. He also had mastered the art of concealing his work by establishing amnesia—or a mental block—in subjects to prevent them from remembering him or what had happened, or what they had done while they were hypnotized.

Bryan denied in a 1974 interview with writer Betsy Langman that he had hypnotized Sirhan Sirhan.¹⁰⁴³ Yet regular female companions¹⁰⁴⁴ and close colleagues of Bryan’s have confided that he told them he did hypnosis work for the CIA and had performed hypnosis work on Sirhan.¹⁰⁴⁵ Two intrepid investigators who reported this link between Bryan and Sirhan were authors William Turner and Jonn Christian. They obtained the information from two women who disclosed this news without really knowing its importance. The two young ladies were Beverly Hills call girls who were intimately involved with Bryan.¹⁰⁴⁶ Working as a duo, they had been regularly taking care of their corpulent customer despite his enormous girth.

During Bryan’s chats with his two mistresses, according to the women, the name Sirhan Sirhan came up several times. Over the four-year period they were involved with Bryan, they said he had frequently repeated his stories. Both were certain that he had said Sirhan had been one of his subjects, and they also said he bragged about working for the LAPD and for the CIA on “top secret projects.”¹⁰⁴⁷ This breaking of the code of silence would not have been an issue for a man like William J. Bryan. He was an egomaniac. At the time he was with these women in the early 1970s, he was also known to have become addicted to drugs.¹⁰⁴⁸ As a result, his ramblings may have been more frequent and repetitious.

As for Dr. Bryan’s early years, he claimed that during the Korean War in the 1950s he was—in his words—“chief of all medical survival training for the US Air Force, which meant the brainwashing section.”¹⁰⁴⁹ Bryan’s work ostensibly involved preparing soldiers for the mental challenges they could face in the event they were captured by the enemy.¹⁰⁵⁰

Dr. William Bryan’s consulting work also included Hollywood. He served as technical advisor for the 1962 Frank Sinatra movie The Manchurian Candidate, mentioned earlier.¹⁰⁵¹

While sex was a favorite preoccupation of Bryan’s, in addition to his CIA work, he also was involved in consulting on legal cases. Attorney F. Lee Bailey once referred to Dr. Bryan as “the most knowledgeable man I knew on the subject of hypnosis.”¹⁰⁵² Bailey utilized Bryan’s services for several famous murder trials, one involving the Boston Strangler case of Albert DiSalvo.¹⁰⁵³ According to Bailey, in 1965, Bryan flew to Boston and drove with him to a Bridgewater, Massachusetts, mental hospital. After consulting with officials there, Bryan put DiSalvo into a trance and then regressed him to the murder of the last strangling victim. Questioning him under hypnosis, he concluded that DiSalvo’s psychopathic behavior stemmed from his disabled daughter’s taking away his wife’s affection for him. The session climaxed with DiSalvo lunging at Bryan’s throat. Bryan responded by grabbing his subject’s shoulders and ordering him to sleep. The command was successful. DiSalvo fell to the floor without a clue as to what had happened.¹⁰⁵⁴

Dr. William Bryan, like master hypnotist Manly Palmer Hall, had also authored several books on the occult and had great interest in mystical orders and hypnosis. He had carried out extensive research into the practices of the ancient Egyptians, which also play a key role in Rosicrucian (AMORC—Ancient Mystical Order of Rosicrucian) beliefs. AMORC’s San Jose headquarters features an Egyptian museum and the organization claims its roots go back to the Egyptian schools of 1500 BC.¹⁰⁵⁵ Ahead, we shall see that Sirhan joined and attended one meeting of this group.

Both Hall and Dr. William Bryan were top hypnotists, but whether they were affiliated is not known. Both knew Sirhan and as a result, some investigators have suggested that Hall could have been the one who introduced Sirhan to Bryan. Although Sirhan has no recollection of Bryan at all, Bryan could have met him while he (Sirhan) was in a hypnotized state. Given Hall’s and Bryan’s skills at hypnosis, combined with the Agency’s knowledge of drugs, erasing memories could easily have been accomplished.

Bryan was a CIA consultant at a time when hypnosis and drugs, including LSD, were central elements of programs such as MKULTRA. A profoundly secret arena of the CIA, the work encompassed the mind control and behavior modification research of that era. Much of the records of this work have been destroyed, but again, it is estimated that perhaps thousands of unwitting subjects were used in the Agency’s various drug and hypnosis experiments.¹⁰⁵⁶

Indeed, intelligence operatives with mob connections at the track also could have very easily linked an unwitting exercise boy, Sirhan, to Dr. William J. Bryan as a brainwashing candidate. Neither the mob nor an Agency “recruiter” would have needed to know the ultimate objective of the conditioning operation—creating a fall guy for an assassination.

According to CIA-contract hypno-programmers, after a research subject was temporarily “appropriated” (sometimes through an early version of today’s date-rape drugs slipped into a drink at a club), the individual would be taken to a secure place for the conditioning to be conducted. Experiments were carried out in such places as prisons, safe houses, and hospitals or other clinic-type settings. Besides studying individual responses, the research also involved testing various drugs, hypnosis, and the administering of electroshock treatments.¹⁰⁵⁷ One of the objectives of the research was to determine the best equation for achieving temporary control over a subject without his or her knowing it, and at the same time obliterating any memory of the experience.

After the programmer induced hypnosis, the subject would be “bombarded” with audio messages and given electric shocks for reinforcement. Audiotape players “looped” (i.e., repeated) the messages, which were fed through speakers placed under the subject’s pillow in a “sleep room.” This process would last from fifteen to thirty days.¹⁰⁵⁸ The content of the audio messages would depend on the desired response and the type of operation planned for the subject. According to hypnosis expert Milton Kline, successful hypno-programming can take up to three months.¹⁰⁵⁹

New York psychiatrist Dr. Herbert Spiegel, a professor at Columbia University, has stated that Sirhan had a natural capacity to be easily hypnotized. Based on Dr. Spiegel’s evaluation of the psychiatric reports, Sirhan placed in the top 5 to 10 percentile in this regard.¹⁰⁶⁰ This unusual susceptibility to hypnosis no doubt played a key role in the selection of Sirhan as a fall guy.

During Sirhan’s three-month time gap, it is apparent that he underwent some sort of conditioning and that notebook writing was an integral part of this hypno-programming process. Two green spiral notebooks—which Sirhan has no memory of using—turned up at the Sirhan home at 696 E. Howard Street in Pasadena the day of the assassination. As Police Sgt. Will Brandt searched Sirhan’s home, he found the notebooks in Sirhan’s bedroom. One was on a table and the other on the floor near his bed.¹⁰⁶¹ Again, Sirhan has no recollection of writing the notebooks, and as a matter of fact, he asked the psychiatrists studying him prior to his trial if they would hypnotize him to try to bring forth the memory. He stated, “whatever I say (about the notebooks) I will face when I’m done.” He still drew a blank. Prosecution psychiatrist Dr. Seymour Pollack responded, “That bothers me.”¹⁰⁶²

The notebooks—so-called diaries—consist of a total of forty-eight pages of writing. Many of the words are broken, and phrases and sentences are written in a disjointed, repetitive fashion. Two of the pages relate to assassinating Robert Kennedy. Taken at face value, the lines in these two pages are certainly indicative of premeditation. But in light of the facts surrounding Sirhan’s situation and context of the writings taken as a whole, it is clear that the notebooks were a key part of the frame-up; they were designed to incriminate an unwitting person.

The content of the majority of the pages relates to the names of friends, the names of horses, anticapitalist rhetoric, New-Age jargon, and an unsent message to his mother. A handwriting analyst has verified that the notebooks were written by Sirhan.¹⁰⁶³ And thorough investigations of these strange writings have indicated that they are the work of an individual immersed in a drug-induced state. Given that the notebook pages are Sirhan’s and that they were written while he was in some sort of stupor, based on what is known of Sirhan’s home life, it is apparent that he did not write them at home. If he were ever in a stupor at home, it would have been observed and later revealed.

Richard Helms, CIA director, right, and Senator Frank Church, 1975, Washington, D.C. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

James Angleton, CIA chief of counterintelligence, 1975, Washington, D.C. (© Harvey Georges/AP/AP/CORBIS)

David Phillips, CIA western hemisphere division chief, right, 1976, Washington, D.C. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

Lee Harvey Oswald, 1963, New Orleans. (© Mary Ferrell Foundation)

George de Mohrenschildt, 1964. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

Jack Ruby, 1963, Dallas. (© Mary Ferrell Foundation)

Dealey Plaza—the grassy knoll, left, the Texas School Book Depository, center, and the Dal-Tex Building, right, Dallas.

President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. (© Abbie Rowe, White House Photographer, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Robert Kennedy, 1964, New York.

Sirhan Sirhan, 1968, Los Angeles. (© California State Archives)

Dr. William J. Bryan Jr., 1972, Los Angeles. (© David F. Smith/AP/AP/CORBIS)

President John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, standing behind, to the right of the president, 1961, Washington, D.C. (© JFK Library)

Kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel, 1968, Los Angeles. (© California State Archives)

Sirhan Sirhan, 2011, California. (© Ben Margot/AP/AP/CORBIS)

Senator Robert F. Kennedy and his wife Ethel, left, minutes before the shooting, June 5, 1968, Los Angeles. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

Dr. Henry C. Lee, forensic scientist, Connecticut.

Researchers involved in the study of brainwashing use the term “automatic writing” to describe the notebook phenomenon. During automatic writing, the subject, while in a drug-induced state, answers questions posed by his handlers or simply transcribes either live voices or audiotapes. As noted above, CIA experiments in brainwashing techniques typically entailed the use of tape recordings, especially for mind control and behavior modification.¹⁰⁶⁴

While most of the pages consist of jumbled stream-of-consciousness messages and responses to questions, mixed in with doodling, some passages read like dictation, that is, cleanly written diatribes taken down by Sirhan, but coming from the mind of a skilled behavior-modification and mind-control programmer. Indeed, one of the fragmented lines in the Sirhan notebooks refers to one of Dr. William J. Bryan’s favorite stories, Albert DiSalvo and the Boston Strangler. The notebook line reads: “God help me, please help me. Salvo Di De Salve Die S Salvo.”¹⁰⁶⁵ When the name DiSalvo appeared in Sirhan’s notebook, many investigators agreed that it was not unlikely that Dr. Bryan had left behind his calling card. As noted earlier, Dr. Bryan was a talkative man, especially when he was boasting of his exploits.

The name of Sirhan’s friend, horse trainer Henry Ramistella, a.k.a Frank Donneroummas, appears in one of the notebooks, written by an exceedingly drugged subject: “happiness hppiness Dona Donaruma Donaruma Frank Donaruma pl please ple please pay to 5 please pay to the order of Sirhan Sirhan the amount of 5 . . .”¹⁰⁶⁶

Several other strange sentences seem to relate to Sirhan’s best friend Tom Rathke. It is not known if Sirhan had contact with Rathke during his three-month absence. However, in the notebooks, Sirhan apparently was made to appear to be trying to contact him: “Hello Tom How will I contact you after I arrive at the airport—I am—coming up sometime Tuesday afternoon. Sirhan Sirhan Sirhan afternoon—Did you really.”¹⁰⁶⁷ Another page reads: “perhaps you could use the enclosed $ Sol Sol perhaps you could use the enclosed $ Sol Sol $ $ $ $ Sol $ perhaps you could use the Hello Tom - perhaps you could use the enclosed $ $ $.”¹⁰⁶⁸

The strange writing in the notebooks is typically repetitive, but one page is inordinately so. On this page, the word “feed” is written fifteen times.¹⁰⁶⁹ It is not known how Sirhan lived in terms of food and lodging during the three-month time gap. He was not independently wealthy, and in fact, he did not even have a bank account.¹⁰⁷⁰ His insurance settlement money for his horse injury would not arrive until April 1968, at which point he had already returned home. Certainly, expenses for three months would have put a dent in Mary Sirhan’s savings. According to author John Marks, Richard Helms’s Agency behavior-modification experiments many times included such components as sensory or food deprivation. While repetitively writing the word “feed” fifteen times, Sirhan may well have been crying out for a meal.

In addition to these fragments and the numerous nonsensical phrases in the Sirhan notebooks, the words “drugs” and “electric shock” appear four times.¹⁰⁷¹ On another page, written upside down, is “Electronic equipment this seems to be the right amount of preponderance.”¹⁰⁷² Again, Sirhan has no memory of this or the reason these words were written.

For the perpetrators, the crucial test for programming a patsy would be knowing for certain that the amnesia would hold up during subsequent police interrogations. The subject’s memory of the posthypnotic suggestion, the programmed act itself, and the identity of the hypnotist all had to be irretrievable.

Following the assassination and after days of being questioned in his jail cell by author Robert Kaiser, Sirhan spoke to this issue. Asked what he felt about his amnesia, Sirhan suggested to Kaiser that perhaps someone had been “playing with” his mind. Relying on his knowledge of the occult, he added, “I always try to guard against that.”¹⁰⁷³ Sirhan then asked Kaiser to help him find out more about this. Two years later, Kaiser told the Chicago Tribune that it was his personal opinion that Sirhan had been programmed by someone.¹⁰⁷⁴

To test Sirhan’s credibility, according to authors William Turner and Jonn Christian, a former army intelligence officer named Charles McQuiston analyzed audio interview tapes of Sirhan. McQuiston concluded that Sirhan had told the truth. Using a PSE (Psychological Stress Evaluation) instrument, which is similar to a lie detector test, McQuiston evaluated stress that can be caused by attempted deception. He concluded that Sirhan’s stress level was low, and that therefore Sirhan’s answers were truthful and genuinely sincere. The test also appeared to indicate, based on the phrases that Sirhan used, that he had been hypno-programmed. These results were corroborated by Dr. John W. Heisse Jr., president of the International Society of Stress Analysis, who also reviewed the results.¹⁰⁷⁵

One facet of Sirhan’s conditioning involved creating within his personality beliefs that previously did not exist. For example, Sirhan believed that he had been taught hypnosis and self-programming by the AMORC.¹⁰⁷⁶ Yet, the Rosicrucians do not delve into these subjects. No doubt Sirhan was told this while under hypnosis during his programming. Those who told him this knew that his believing that AMORC had been “playing” with his mind would serve as a perfect cover for their own tinkering.

Sirhan’s notebooks also show that his conditioning included references to some of the major figures in the world of New Age literature. This was precisely the kind of knowledge with which Dr. William Bryan was intimately familiar, having written volumes on the subject.

For example, in Sirhan’s notebooks, the name of the Tibetan mystic Master Koot Hoomi appeared. However, Sirhan spelled the great master’s name as if he had heard it, not read it. Master Koot Hoomi was misspelled “Master Kuthumi.”¹⁰⁷⁷ Clearly, Sirhan was writing it phonetically, in response to a verbal delivery. This is another sign of automatic writing.

Koot Hoomi was believed to have guided the writings of the founder of the Theosophical Society, Madame Helena Blavatsky. Madame Blavatsky was born in Russia and moved to New York City in 1875. She later lived in India and England, where she died in 1891. During her life, she wrote extensively. Her most famous work, The Secret Doctrine, was a six-volume set that examined mysteries of the unexplained and studied man’s hidden powers.¹⁰⁷⁸ While in England, Madame Blavatsky named her group of theosophists “the Illuminati.”¹⁰⁷⁹ Interestingly, the same name would be used one hundred years later in the United States to label the “one-world conspiracy” movement. In the 1970s, the right wing blamed the so-called “Illuminati” for the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy.¹⁰⁸⁰ This canard would hide the truth and helped to steer the public away from legitimate conspiracy theories. After Bobby’s assassination, when Sirhan was asked in jail concerning the term “Illuminati” appearing in his notebooks, he replied that he knew nothing about it, unless it was connected in some way to Manly Palmer Hall’s organization.¹⁰⁸¹

In reading a random page of Sirhan’s writings, the tone is suspiciously akin to a brainwashing scene from a Hollywood movie. Sirhan was simply a young, aspiring jockey. He had no strong ideological convictions nor any interest in the Communist party. So, for him to suddenly write passionate political statements in a notebook is dubious at best.¹⁰⁸² “I advocate the overthrow of the current president of the fucken United States of America. I have no absolute plans yet, but soon will compose some . . . . I firmly support the Communist cause and its people—whether Russian, Chinese, Albanian, Hungarian, whoever—Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains and a world to win.”¹⁰⁸³ This last sentence is repeated three times.

Clearly, the perpetrators knew that when the authorities were looking for evidence of premeditation, such pages would help build their case. Anyone who read these passages after the assassination could draw but one conclusion: this person could be dangerous. These lines were written at the height of the Cold War; in the spring of 1968, Communist Russia had invaded upstart Czechoslovakia. To many American observers, it certainly appeared that “workers of the world” were advancing on all fronts. And since a motive for the assassination was severely lacking, the authorities would snatch up pages such as this to establish one. Again, Sirhan was far from being a Socialist. He was a typical, young immigrant who dreamed of wealth and the pleasures it could bring.

As noted earlier, Sirhan was an Orthodox Christian brought up in the Christian sector of Jerusalem; he was not a Muslim.¹⁰⁸⁴ Given Sirhan’s background, the perpetrators were hard-pressed to create a personality that would pass as the profile of an assassin. Consequently, they attempted to use Sirhan’s unwitting automatic writing sessions to produce notebook pages that would portray him as an Arab militant. Out of the forty-eight pages of writings, there are three pages referring to charismatic, Socialist, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1956-1970).¹⁰⁸⁵ Two of these pages naming Nasser are in English, and one is written in Arabic. The former consists of jumbled words and letters on the pages, and the latter is mostly nonsense phrases.¹⁰⁸⁶ The English reads: “Lo Long live Nasser long live live Long live long Nasser Long live Nasser Long live Nasser Long live Communism Long live Communism Long live Communism Long live Nasser Nasser Nasser Nasser Nasser Nasser.” And the second English page reads, “Long live Nasser Nasser Lo Long Live Nasser N N N Nasser is the greatest man that ever lived in this world, Nasser is the greatest man that ever lived in this world Nasser is the greatest man that ever lived lived lived N N N N Nasser is the greatest man that ev eve ev ever lived.”¹⁰⁸⁷ Of course, Sirhan was known, at this point, to have had only a passing interest in Middle East politics.

Indeed, Sirhan’s brothers and his friends saw him as a peaceful and spiritual person. As Sirhan told author Robert Kaiser before his trial, “Hatred was very foreign to me; I can’t understand it.”¹⁰⁸⁸

Sirhan’s acquaintances Peggy Osterkamp and Gwen Gumm, noted earlier, are also named in the notebooks. Peggy’s name is repeated many times, as is her home address, which is written: “Miss Peggy Osterkamp, 13290 Archibald Ave, Corona, Calif 80113.” The house number and zip code vary each time the address is repeated.¹⁰⁸⁹ One page contains the words, “I love you,” and “Sol and Peggy.”¹⁰⁹⁰ Gwen is also frequently named in the notebooks, along with her address.¹⁰⁹¹

While both of these young women are known to have had no serious involvement with Sirhan, their names appear prominently. Again, during automatic writing, since the subject is in a trancelike state, what is written is typically whatever has been commanded. If Sirhan were asked about past infatuations, perhaps these names came to mind. If this were the case, then it appears that the programmer was playing with Sirhan’s “heartstrings” to achieve his objective.

There also exists the possibility that someone who knew both women and Sirhan—perhaps someone from the track—was present during the automatic writing session and brought up the girls’ names. One person who apparently knew all three persons was Tom Rathke.

Another reason the girls’ names may have appeared in the notebooks is equally sinister. It is known that while under hypnosis, a person can be told that a stranger who is present is actually someone the subject knows and loves. The subject will then not only accept this as true, but will act accordingly, as if he sees his lover instead of the individual present.¹⁰⁹² For example, if a woman unknown to Sirhan was with Sirhan during the hypno-programming process, and Sirhan was told under hypnosis that she was one of his recent infatuations, he would have believed this was the case. Such an occurrence would have been highly motivating for Sirhan, since it would have brought into play his deepest emotions. This, in turn, would have enhanced an already potent dose of hypnotic suggestions, routinely laced with mind-altering drugs. The net result was that by adding Sirhan’s emotional cravings to the equation, the programmer may have made him more willing, or ready, under hypnosis, to carry out whatever commands he was given.

As it turns out, there does appear to have been a young woman in Sirhan’s life at this time, although Sirhan only recalls a brief moment with her. Numerous witnesses at the Ambassador Hotel the night of the assassination saw Sirhan with a mysterious woman in the Embassy Room and in the kitchen pantry area. Her presence, and his lack of memory regarding much of that night, have led some investigators to believe that she was his controller or handler—and his cue. Sirhan does not remember accompanying anyone in particular that evening, except for his being with a woman at one point late in the evening when he became very tired and sought a cup of coffee. Sirhan told NBC reporter Jack Perkins in an interview a year later that he remembers following a girl into the pantry. They found a large coffee urn.¹⁰⁹³ He poured a cup for the girl and one for himself. He does not remember her name. After that point, all he can recall is being beaten by the crowd. Immediately after the shooting, the girl was seen by many witnesses fleeing the pantry while everyone else was trying to get in.¹⁰⁹⁴ As we shall see ahead, the young woman who was with him during the assassination may have played an integral part in his programming. If she was Sirhan’s control, then no doubt during the conditioning process she would have had to have learned as much about his unwitting part in the plot as about her own. This is especially true if her cues were to be the “on” button for Sirhan’s prehypnotically, programmed actions. She may have also played the role of Sirhan’s fantasy lover, keeping him occupied during his conditioning. There would have been the numerous routine tasks involved in keeping Sirhan in the programming mode, properly medicated, and adequately fed for the three months he was away from home.

While a Tom Collins laced with a knockout drug probably precipitated Sirhan’s entry into a three-month state of amnesia, a cup of coffee in the Ambassador Hotel pantry may have been his final cue. The girl with Sirhan that night, whom witnesses all reported as being attractive and having a “good figure,” may have been his “control” from the time of his initial induction at the end of 1967. This individual would keep Sirhan mesmerized through various cues and drug-enriched drinks while carrying out the instructions of superiors as to where Sirhan should be and when. And perhaps she even kept him alive.

During Sirhan’s time away from home, the three-month time gap, his mother received no communication from her son. As if to account for, or remove suspicion over this obviously uncharacteristic behavior of Sirhan’s, an unsent letter to Mrs. Sirhan was written in one of the notebooks. It is one of the few pages written mainly in the Arabic language, Sirhan’s native tongue. Author Robert Kaiser’s book contains a translation: “My reverend mother, God keep her and bless her. . . . Everything with me is at its best and I am in the best of health. I wish and hope that the same will be with you. Enclosed find ten dollars for the purpose of buying stamps to be placed on all letters you may send to me from Pasadena and especially envelopes and publications from Rosicrushay (sic) from Shener and other mail. I am also waiting for a check from the American Treasury Department which you are also to send P P Peggy. This envelope contains also papers with my address written on them which you are to use only for sending the letters to me here. I especially beg of you in a special way to discuss the matter of my location with no one at all at all. Many thanks in advance Sirhan Sirhan Sirhan Sirhan Sirhan Sirhan your son your son your son Sirhan Sirhan Sirhan Sirhan. . . .”¹⁰⁹⁵

Again, Sirhan has no memory of writing this. Asked after the assassination by his attorneys about this page, Sirhan noted that the girl mentioned in the letter could have been Peggy Osterkamp, someone he had not even thought about since 1966, two years earlier.¹⁰⁹⁶ Obviously, the perpetrators intended for the eventual readers of these notebooks to be led to believe Sirhan was operating of his own free will and attempting to calm his mother’s fears—to make it appear that he was trying to assuage his guilt over leaving home without telling his family where he was going or when he would return. He appears to be telling them where he can be reached, but this is another ploy—the line reads, “This envelope contains also papers with my address written on them . . .” But, of course, there is no envelope or papers with his address. It is not a letter that was sent; it is another automatic writing episode, designed by Sirhan’s handlers to cover up his conditioning by making it later appear to investigators that he knew where he was, when, in fact, he did not.

In Sirhan’s forty-eight pages of notebook writings, there were only two pages that referred to Robert Kennedy. One page read, “My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more and more of an unshakable obsession. RFK must die. RFK must be killed. Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated . . .” This sentence was repeated twelve times. At the end of the page, it read, “Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated before June 5 1968.”¹⁰⁹⁷ Again, Sirhan has no memory of writing these lines. Moreover, he is unaware of having had an “unshakable obsession” regarding Robert Kennedy, nor anyone else, for that matter.

The second page that contained a Kennedy reference stated, “Kennedy must fall.” It was repeated eight times.¹⁰⁹⁸

Conventional wisdom holds that “under hypnosis you won’t do anything you normally wouldn’t do.” However, experts have discovered that there is also another principle at work in hypnosis: that of the moral imperative (also described in an earlier chapter). Under this rule, a subject will do what he thinks is right by his own set of standards. If someone is convinced through hypnosis that a threat exists to his loved ones, he will react on their behalf to defend them, even striking out at the perceived enemy. According to the principle of moral imperative, for subjects under hypnosis, a need to take action in a way that is morally right (in their own minds) takes over, or becomes imperative. Thusly, forensic scientists familiar with the history of hypnosis have concluded that a person’s reluctance to commit a crime can be overridden if the person is conditioned to believe the act they are committing has a high moral purpose.¹⁰⁹⁹

For example, if the average hypnotized subject believes that innocent, defenseless people are in some way threatened by imminent danger, he or she will want to take some action to try to protect them. Under this principle, a subject can be given information and commands, but will respond in accordance with the subject’s own morals, even taking actions that override inhibitions to achieve that which the subject believes is right for him. By the same token, a hypnotist can trick a subject into doing something against his or her will by triggering the moral imperative. In such a case, the hypnotized subject is given erroneous information and commanded to carry out an action. The subject then obeys the command, believing that his or her action is morally right, and therefore, imperative.¹¹⁰⁰ In Sirhan’s case, during the pre-trial phase, court psychiatrists using hypnosis discovered something very interesting about their subject. While questioning him about the assassination, Sirhan, under hypnosis, uttered the word “bombers.” The doctors then attempted to detect the meaning and context of this response by testing Sirhan’s reactions under hypnosis. The psychiatrists told him that Israeli bombs were killing and maiming innocent children in the villages of Gaza. A hypnotized Sirhan began to weep uncontrollably.¹¹⁰¹ It is known that the effectiveness of hypnotism as a programming tool depends in large measure upon the individual being hypnotized. The subject must have passions that can be exploited. Indeed, hypno-programming is most successful when based on strong emotions.

In Sirhan’s case, probably the most significant emotional factor motivating him, given his childhood experiences during the first Arab-Israeli War, was self-preservation. He was driven to protect himself and his family. Clearly, Sirhan’s hypno-programming instilled in him exaggerated anti-Israeli feelings. Feelings that the Jews were directly responsible for the deaths of his family members and the destruction of his homeland had begun to overwhelm him. Added suggestions that Robert Kennedy was advocating military support of Israel focused Sirhan’s deepest fears on Bobby. With such posthypnotic suggestions embedded in Sirhan’s subconscious mind, a skilled mind control practitioner simply needed to supply the appropriate stimulus to effect the desired behavioral response. This, in turn, triggered Sirhan’s self-preservation mechanism, which, while he was under hypnosis and drugs, moved him to strike out at this perceived threat to his family in the person of Bobby Kennedy. In a drug-induced, hypno-programmed state, the so-called moral imperative superseded Sirhan’s docile nature.

Returning to the notebooks and viewing them as a product of Sirhan’s three-months of conditioning, we can see that they actually build a case for hypno-programming, not premeditation. For example, some of the pages in the notebooks are dated, as if written to look like a diary with journal entries. But the dates make little sense and are out of order. In addition, given that they were created before Sirhan returned home in March of 1968, some dates were obviously postdated. For instance, the statement about Sirhan’s “unshakable obsession” has “May 18 9.45 AM - 68” written at the top of the page.¹¹⁰² This was no doubt designed to appear as if Sirhan made this entry two and a half weeks before the California primary on June 4. By using a date closer to the assassination, the case for premeditation became more immediate and more incriminating.

The commonly held concept regarding hypnosis, that one cannot be hypnotized without consent, also has been found to be flawed. Resistance to hypnosis can be easily bypassed through the use of drugs and brainwashing techniques, such as sensory deprivation.¹¹⁰³ Indeed, Sirhan’s overpowering emotional response marked a stark contrast to his normal self. When in a nonhypnotized state, Sirhan’s actual personality was quite the opposite. For example, during the trial when Sirhan spoke of his feelings toward Robert Kennedy, he stated, “I was hoping he would continue what his brother (had) started . . . I was for him, very much so.”¹¹⁰⁴

As for the efficacy of conditioning or programming a subject, psychiatrist Dr. Herbert Spiegel has stated that it is “definitely attainable.”¹¹⁰⁵ Additionally, a subject can be programmed to not recall who the programmer was. The hypnotist can do this by giving himself another identity in the subconscious mind of the subject.

Dr. Bryan was a master at infusing posthypnotic suggestions into subjects. He was also seen as one of the cleverest practitioners in the art of being able to use the tricks of the trade for the greatest possible impact. This is evident in the case of Sirhan Sirhan. For example, as we shall see ahead, based on evaluations of Sirhan completed in his jail cell, he appears to have been programmed to believe that he could hypnotize himself using a mirror (which is impossible). By having him believe that he could put himself in a trance, he would, after the assassination, believe that he was a person who could shoot another person and not remember it later. Thus, the conditioning would disguise in Sirhan’s mind the fact that he had actually been hypno-programmed. And this would provide a firewall between the assassination and the actual operatives and hypno-programmers.

Sirhan’s whereabouts during his three-month time gap remain a mystery. CIA conditioning experiments typically took place, as previously described, at certain medical facilities in Canada and in the United States and in agency safe houses. In Sirhan’s case, he may have been programmed in a location within Dr. Bryan’s geographical area.

We do know that it was not unusual for skilled Agency operatives to disguise covert operations by using doubles. Such ruses would enable the Agency to manufacture evidence by creating the illusion that someone was involved in an activity when in fact they were not even there. We saw the use of a double at the embassy in Mexico, two months prior to the JFK assassination, where security photos revealed that the alleged visit by Lee Harvey Oswald was actually staged by an imposter. The use of a Sirhan double during his three-month disappearance is also a strong possibility. A Sirhan look-alike would have created the cover that Sirhan was away from home visiting friends for three months, while he was actually being held in an Agency conditioning facility. As we shall see, such a ploy would later lead investigators into that place James Angleton liked to call “a wilderness of mirrors.”

There are witnesses who have stated that during Sirhan’s three-month time gap—in early 1968—they frequently saw a young person they later identified as looking like Sirhan riding horses along the Santa Ana riverbed in Santa Ana, about thirty miles southeast of Pasadena.¹¹⁰⁶ The witnesses were area rancher Bill Powers, who owned Wild Bill’s Stables, and his employee John Beckley.¹¹⁰⁷ They reportedly witnessed Sirhan riding with a neighbor, Oliver Brindley Owen, fifty-five. There is no indication that Sirhan spoke with Powers and Beckley.¹¹⁰⁸ Given that Sirhan has no recall of this period, if the person were he, he was probably in a trancelike state during these rides. Or, as noted above, the “Sirhan” witnessed by Powers and Beckley was actually a double.

Rancher Bill Powers had known Owen for four years, and his business was located near Owen’s in Santa Ana.¹¹⁰⁹ Owen, who went by the name Jerry Owen, was a horse trader and an old-time preacher.¹¹¹⁰ He billed himself as the “Walking Bible” because of his phenomenal recall of chapter and verse. Indeed, several years after the assassination, he became the host of his own television program of the same name.¹¹¹¹ Besides preaching the Bible part-time and trading horses, Owen was a former prizefighter. He stood over six feet tall and weighed nearly 250 lb. He was known also for his extreme mood swings.¹¹¹² According to writers Turner and Christian, from the time Owen was twenty-six years old until age fifty, he had problems with regard to arson.¹¹¹³ His record shows he had been involved in insurance claims resulting from six church fires and collected settlements from some of them. The blazes occurred in locations stretching across the continent from Castro Valley, California, to Oregon, Texas, Kentucky, Maryland, and ending in Tuscon, Arizona.¹¹¹⁴ Jerry Owen could easily have been characterized as a con man.

In Sirhan’s so-called diary, the same name appears, written as “J Jee Jeerry” in the notebook pages.¹¹¹⁵ Following Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, Sirhan’s fingerprints were found on a pickup truck that Owen used. The truck had been found abandoned in Barstow and was turned over to the FBI.¹¹¹⁶

Despite these links between Sirhan and Owen, the LAPD’s final report on the assassination makes no mention of eyewitnesses who saw Owen and Sirhan together.¹¹¹⁷ Numerous investigators, and even Sirhan’s mother Mary, have asked Sirhan about Jerry Owen. Yet he cannot recall him. His amnesia block prevails.¹¹¹⁸

Jerry Owen was very familiar with many of those involved in area horse-racing circles. He frequented Santa Anita and Hollywood Park in 1965 and 1966, just as Sirhan did.¹¹¹⁹ In early 1968, Owen had been boarding two horses at Powers’ Wild Bill’s Stables in Santa Ana.¹¹²⁰ According to Powers, Owen had early on mentioned to him that he knew of an exercise boy at the track who could handle his horses better than Powers’s employee, Johnny Beckley, could. Owen, who was very serious about the care given his horses, told Powers that a young man named Sirhan would make a good replacement if Beckley didn’t work out.¹¹²¹

But Powers was also wary of Owen’s eccentric behavior. He later told investigators that Owen seemed like the type who could “have you bumped off. He wouldn’t just think about it—he’d do it. And then he’d say a little prayer.”¹¹²²

After the assassination, when Bill Powers was interviewed by two police officers, Powers says that they warned him not to tell anyone that he had seen Owen with Sirhan.¹¹²³ According to LAPD’s Sgt. Dudley Varney, Johnny Beckley, Powers’s assistant who was at Powers’s stables breaking in horses owned by Owen, ended up denying he saw Sirhan. But later on, after Beckley heard he would be called in for further questioning, he vanished.¹¹²⁴ He reportedly fled to Missouri. According to authors Turner and Christian, he said he “feared for his life.”¹¹²⁵

Before Beckley left, he told a young, fellow stable hand, John Chris Weatherly, that if any of them disclosed that Owen knew Sirhan, they’d be in deep trouble because, as he put it, “the preacher had enough money to get us all knocked off.”¹¹²⁶ Although Owen was known by some as the voice of scripture, he was deeply feared by others. When Weatherly told the police that his co-workers had seen Owen with Sirhan, Sergeants Varney and Manuel Gutierrez told him that he “shouldn’t speak to anyone,” that it “would be against the law.” ¹¹²⁷ Weatherly was shot at one night in August 1971 while sitting in his truck in front of his house. The bullet narrowly missed him as it tore through his vehicle.¹¹²⁸ Indeed, Weatherly, Powers, and Beckley all paid a price for releasing this information.

As we shall see ahead, Owen was chosen to unwittingly play the role of a decoy. His presence not only served as a distraction, it also may have been designed ironically to quell some suspicions about Sirhan’s critical three-month gap. Having Sirhan ride horses with a “man of God” for three months would be viewed as a perfectly harmless activity. It was also the perfect cover for what was actually happening to Sirhan behind closed doors. Neither Owen nor anyone else without a need to know would have been privy to Sirhan’s programming and his handlers’ ultimate objective. In covert operations, it is routine to compartmentalize information or knowledge of the plan. Each participant only knows a segment. But none of the segmented bits contains enough information to give away or compromise the operation. This was most likely the case with Jerry Owen.

As for the exact location at which Sirhan’s conditioning was conducted, it may have been in Owen’s locale where witnesses saw the young man who looked like Sirhan. Or Sirhan was taken there for horse rides at times during the three-month conditioning period. Indeed, Sirhan may even have undergone conditioning at an institution, perhaps covertly flown to Montreal where evidence of Agency-funded mind-control experiments is well documented.¹¹²⁹ In such a place, he would have been hypno-programmed without detection and without interference of any kind.

Meanwhile, at home in Pasadena, Mary Sirhan prayed, read her Bible, and sought consolation from her son Adel who was living at home with her. Their anguish and sense of loss during Sirhan’s absence mirrored in many ways the torment American families across the nation endured during the war in Southeast Asia.

On January 30, 1968, most US soldiers stationed in Vietnam anticipated a quiet night. It was the Vietnamese lunar New Year holiday, known as Tet, a time of joy and celebration. At American outposts in the Vietnamese countryside, troops tried to get some sleep, while those on night watch stared out over sandbags that surrounded their bunkers. Suddenly, without warning, in scores of locations throughout Vietnam, enemy troops emerged from the jungles and attacked. At most bases, perimeter trip wires went off, detonating land mines across no-man’s land, decimating the invaders. Waves of Communist replacements continued to rush forward, overrunning the outposts in many areas. US air bases were pounded by mortar shells, blowing apart planes and damaging barracks, hangars, and runways. At the US embassy in Saigon, a rocket attack was followed by a direct assault on the main gate of the compound. Several embassy personnel were killed before the Marines were able to stop the insurgents and secure the area. The attackers in the northern part of the country consisted of North Vietnamese regulars who poured across the Demilitarized Zone, while in the south, raids were led by the Vietcong. The enemy’s Tet Offensive took the nation and Washington by surprise.

Combined forces of North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops totaling some seventy thousand soldiers had launched an assault against US forces all across Vietnam. More than one hundred towns and cities were hit in the incredibly coordinated surprise attack.¹¹³⁰ In the following month, more than two thousand American troops died before the offensive was stopped. Pentagon sources reported a high number of US troops were killed in Hue and other provincial capitals. Hue was actually captured by the Vietcong, and it would take the United States a month to free the city.

The Communist attack on the US embassy was part of a strategy to foment an uprising against the Saigon regime and against the Americans, according to military historian Stanley Karnow.¹¹³¹ He has written that the Tet offensive, as planned by Ho Chi Minh’s officers, was heavily promoted in North Vietnam. Their government media declared the massive offensive as their people’s best chance to free South Vietnam from the American “aggressors” and to put an end to the corrupt Saigon regime.¹¹³² The Communist attempt failed. However, it did succeed in gaining the attention of Americans at home. President Johnson had been hurt politically, with his credibility rating in the polls falling from 40 percent to 26 percent. Clearly, trust in Johnson was nearly gone. His response to the Tet Offensive was to call it “a complete failure” on the part of the Communists.¹¹³³

A week after Tet, on February 8, 1968, Sen. Robert Kennedy appeared before a large audience in Chicago.¹¹³⁴ The reaction of many listeners would be one of surprise as Kennedy laid all his cards on table. He asserted that his brother’s administration had been wrong in its decision to go to war in Vietnam, and he insisted that the present course was not the path to peace. “For twenty years, first the French and then the United States have been predicting victory in Vietnam. In 1961 and 1962, as well as 1966 and 1967, we have been told that the tide is turning, that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that we can soon bring our troops home, that victory is near, the enemy is tiring. Once, in 1962, I participated in such predictions myself. But for twenty years, we have been wrong,” Kennedy said.

As Kennedy spoke, there were a half million American troops in Vietnam. Allied Vietnamese forces totaled seven hundred thousand. The enemy forces consisting of North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops were estimated at six hundred thousand.¹¹³⁵

Kennedy’s Chicago speech was his strongest antiwar message and anti-Johnson diatribe to date: “The history of conflict among nations does not record such a lengthy and consistent chronicle of error as we have shown in Vietnam. It is time to discard so proven a fallacy and face the reality that a military victory is not in sight, and that it will probably never come. Unable to defeat our enemy, or to break his will, at least without a huge, long, and even more costly effort, we must actively seek a peaceful settlement.”¹¹³⁶

The settlement to which Kennedy referred was a proposal that would have given the Vietcong an opportunity to participate in South Vietnamese politics.¹¹³⁷ This, of course, was traitorous to those prosecuting the war from the highest echelon of the military and the CIA. Many in Kennedy’s audience that day in Chicago also remained unconvinced.

The first announcement of Bobby’s regarding his running for the presidency was over dinner with relatives on January 19, 1968. He told his sisters Jean Smith and Pat Lawford and his brother-in-law Steve Smith that “he thought he would run” and joked that he’d be looking to them for funding.¹¹³⁸ However, despite private family talks, Kennedy continued to deny his intentions in the press. He said he had no plans at that point to take on President Johnson. Slowly, he worked on his message as he waited in the background for the right moment to declare. He knew there would be no turning back once he made his break from the party establishment and had become, in effect, a renegade. He also knew preparation was essential.

By February 1968, hopes had vanished for a swift end to the war in Vietnam. The conflict raged on as US troops vigorously fought to recover from the Tet Offensive. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara four months earlier had tried to level off the amount of bombing over North Vietnam and had planned a halt in two months if the enemy would come to the negotiating table. He also had refused to increase troop levels, putting the war into a “holding action,” despite deep opposition from the Pentagon. His reasoning was that the Communists would not negotiate until after the November elections.¹¹³⁹ US military and CIA officials, incensed at these restrictions, had quietly approached right-wing politicians in Congress. Sen. John Stennis of Mississippi, a veteran of the armed services committee, and other senators interceded on their behalf with President Johnson.¹¹⁴⁰ They were convinced that slowing the air war would be disaster.¹¹⁴¹

McNamara responded by arguing that North Vietnam could not be forced into negotiations by more bombing. He also insisted the South Vietnamese government take on more responsibility for their own security. The right wing strongly criticized this change in course and protested that it would show our enemies that we had lost our will.¹¹⁴² In early February 1968, President Johnson finally removed McNamara from office and gave him the presidency of the World Bank. Johnson’s friend and vociferous McNamara critic Clark Clifford was appointed to the post of Secretary of Defense.¹¹⁴³

According to author Stanley Karnow, McNamara’s friendship with Robert Kennedy was a major reason for his ouster. President Johnson reportedly stated, “Every day Bobby would call up McNamara, telling him that the war was terrible and immoral, and that he had to leave (Vietnam).”¹¹⁴⁴

Apparently Johnson’s neuroses regarding the Kennedys compelled him to take action. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin recalled Johnson saying that he felt Secretary of Defense McNamara was having a mental breakdown, and that given the pressure of the job, it would be “unfair” to keep him on.¹¹⁴⁵ At his farewell party, McNamara reportedly did break down emotionally, overtaken with grief and regret over the futility of the air campaign.¹¹⁴⁶

With Clark Clifford in place, the admirals and generals were in charge; the air war and ground war would both accelerate. Their orders: Communist expansion would be stopped and even driven back where feasible. The war would be won, one way or another. This was the game plan of the military and the intelligence establishment.

At the same time, rogues in the CIA were considering even more extreme measures at home.

At the end of Sirhan’s three-month absence, before he was brought home or returned to his old DeSoto (perhaps in the parking lot of a bar from which he had been unwittingly escorted following a surreptitious roofie-laced drink), his memory of his whereabouts had been wiped clean. As noted previously, John Marks’s book, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” describes how CIA contract hypnotists merely had to create a mental block in the mind of the hypnotized subject. Despite numerous examples of CIA hypno-programming experiments, the Agency was able to keep these activities secret for decades. To ensure that the amnesia would last, programmers could also embed a threat in the minds of subjects that harm would befall them if they disclosed information regarding the programming. For example, the subject could be told while under hypnosis that if he crossed a “memory boundary” delineated by the hypnotist as off limits, he would then die. If Sirhan believed he was at death’s door every time he was probed regarding his trances or his automatic writing, this could certainly have made him very uncomfortable.

The conditioning of Sirhan instilled in him particular responses to various cues, but more importantly, it was no doubt also designed to deeply impact his emotions. This is because emotions are among the fundamental keys to controlling behavior; involvement of the emotions is critical to motivating a subject. It appears that Sirhan was led to believe on a visceral level that his people faced grave danger from a potential Kennedy presidency. The feelings of fear, horror, and dread, buried in his psyche from living through the first Arab-Israeli War of 1948, made Sirhan a perfect “candidate” for an assassination conspiracy. These emotions—when tied to distorted visions of an RFK presidency—provided potent motivation for the tasks required. For the plan to work, i.e. making Sirhan a patsy, the hypno-programming had to build in Sirhan a sense that Robert Kennedy was not only pro-Israel, but also anti-Arab. Fear was kindled in Sirhan—through hypnosis—that Israel was going to destroy the Palestinians. These new fears and thoughts were expressed by Sirhan upon his return home. His conditioning had instilled in him a feeling of anger toward Israel that family and friends indicated was not there previously.

Sirhan’s return after three months was a great relief to his mother. His brothers Munir and Adel seemed to take it in stride, although they, too, had no information as to where their brother had been. Sirhan must have been embarrassed that he was not aware of any missing time, and he probably quickly changed the subject whenever it popped up. At the same time, he was no doubt very annoyed at not knowing what was happening to him—not recalling recent events that had happened in his life and the lives of others, having strange feelings and desires, and exhibiting new behaviors.

He had returned home irritable, withdrawn, and suffering from amnesia with regard to his disappearance. It is hardly a coincidence that these symptoms are similar to those of individuals known to have participated in CIA behavior-modification programs of that time. Investigators and witnesses, who may be unaware of such programs, have tried to attribute Sirhan’s personality change to his spill from a horse. But the facts do not support this conclusion: the accident had occurred a year and half earlier, in September 1966, and, according to doctors, it was not a serious head injury.¹¹⁴⁷ From the perspective of his having been conditioned, his irritability is perfectly understandable; the subject was grappling with new feelings, mysterious urges, and thought patterns and had no idea what was happening to him.

It was Sirhan’s family that first recalled a change in his behavior, with several members noting that he had become withdrawn and “touchy.” One of Sirhan’s older brothers, Sharif, who lived in his own apartment, has stated that in the months prior to the RFK assassination, Sirhan had gone from being a polite and kind kid brother to being irritable all the time.¹¹⁴⁸ His family and his friends recalled that where he had once been “gentlemanly,” he had become, according to his brother Sharif, “abnormal.”¹¹⁴⁹

Robert Kaiser has described how one morning Sirhan punched his younger brother Munir over a cup of tea.¹¹⁵⁰ Some have described this change in Sirhan as a sign that he was experiencing a mental breakdown, but there is no evidence of this. Dr. Eduard Simson-Kallas, noted earlier, examined Sirhan in prison and determined that he was sane. Sirhan exhibited no symptoms of being paranoid schizophrenic or psychotic.¹¹⁵¹ This diagnosis was corroborated by San Quentin’s chief psychiatrist, Dr. D. G. Schmidt.¹¹⁵² The doctors found him to be a normally functioning person. However, in retrospect, it is clear that the fact that he was uncharacteristically depressed and irritable was a telling sign of a malady directly related to his uniquely enigmatic situation.

Upon his return home, Sirhan resumed his job as a delivery man at the Pasadena organic health food store, but only for a short time. Interestingly, in LAPD Chief of Detectives Robert Houghton’s book, Special Unit Senator, Houghton writes that Sirhan worked at the health food store from September 1967 to March 7, 1968.¹¹⁵³ He has neglected to report Sirhan’s documented three-month disappearance.¹¹⁵⁴

According to store owner John Weidner, when Sirhan had originally started, he was “very happy” working there. However, Weidner also noted that later on Sirhan became “touchy” and that they had had several arguments.¹¹⁵⁵

Weidner stated that Sirhan made comments about the state of Israel, such as, “They have stolen my country.” Regarding the United States, Sirhan complained, “there is no freedom in America.”¹¹⁵⁶ Weidner said Sirhan became nervous and arrogant during this time.¹¹⁵⁷ Sirhan’s disagreements with his boss—over such things as the sequence in which he made his deliveries—became major disputes. Suddenly, Sirhan quit.¹¹⁵⁸ It was early March 1968, shortly after the three-month time gap. Sirhan’s uncharacteristic behavior clearly coincides with a type of conditioning designed to make him angry—angry enough to fire unwittingly and on cue.

About this same time, Sirhan’s companion, Tom Rathke, reappeared, at the Sirhan home for dinner, according to family friend Lynne Massey Mangan.¹¹⁵⁹ Author Robert Kaiser probed the nature of Sirhan’s relationship with Rathke during a conversation with Sirhan in his jail cell prior to the trial. At one point, Sirhan reported that he had received “mental protection” from Rathke, although he never explained what this meant.¹¹⁶⁰ It is assumed that, at least in Sirhan’s mind, protection involved some kind of thought waves.

It is uncertain whether Rathke played a part in Sirhan’s predicament, for example, as a liaison between an unwitting Sirhan and the hypno-programmer. Following the assassination, when Rathke was interviewed by investigators, he gave one of the most detailed descriptions of the personality change in Sirhan. While Rathke was very close to Sirhan, he ironically painted a picture of a very unlikable companion. For example, Rathke stated that Sirhan had gone from being a “boy . . . (with whom) you’d talk and laugh and have fun . . .” to someone who was “rigid” and “like a paranoid.”¹¹⁶¹ If Rathke were aware of the actual circumstances of Sirhan’s missing three months, then he may have been attempting to disguise Sirhan’s true condition.

With Tom Rathke’s encouragement, as soon as Sirhan returned from his three-month absence, he joined two New Age organizations. First, he mailed in his dues to the San Jose-based Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosae Crucis (Rosicrucians). He only attended one meeting, which was held at the group’s Pasadena Lodge on May 28, 1968, and left early.¹¹⁶² As for the other organization, Sirhan attended a meeting of the Pasadena chapter of the Theosophical Society, according to investigators Turner and Christian.¹¹⁶³ Clearly, those conditioning Sirhan wanted to establish Sirhan as a fringe-type individual, a person who was seeking some kind of out-of-the-ordinary power. By linking him to these occult organizations, however briefly, they were able to later portray him as one who could have immersed himself deeply into some kind of trancelike state. It would even make him appear, to some, as an individual who was mentally unstable enough to kill a presidential candidate in a crowded room. While reasonable minds know that these characterizations of the behavior of occult enthusiasts are unfair, they are the perceptions that influenced many who were unfamiliar with New Age literature and philosophy. The occultist image would later paint the murder suspect in such a way that the discovery of his hypnotic, drug-induced, trancelike state would be conveniently disguised as Sirhan’s own handiwork, in the mind of the general public.

While speaking with author Robert Kaiser before the trial, Sirhan discussed the possibility of his having been conditioned, perhaps by someone close to him, such as Tom Rathke. Sirhan stated that he could not accept the theory that his friend would have done this.¹¹⁶⁴ Indeed, there is no indication that Rathke possessed the professional experience needed to have carried out such a sensitive programming operation himself. Some of the challenging variables—the notebooks, the amnesia, the girl, the cues—all required precise coordination, along with expert brainwashing techniques, in order to succeed without a hitch. The process of conditioning an individual is essentially the programming of their psyche with a series of posthypnotic suggestions. Amnesia also was a key part of the equation, in part drug-induced, in conjunction with cues leading to rapid immersion into a trancelike state.

As we shall see ahead, in the days after Sirhan returned home and leading up to Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, Sirhan was witnessed in a trancelike state at various locations. Such states are not self-induced. They had to have been produced by his handlers who would have had to have been closely monitoring him during this period. In addition to close surveillance, it would have been necessary for Sirhan’s handlers to test his conditioning. These occurrences in which Sirhan was “zoned out” were no doubt induced by his handlers to allow them to check out the posthypnotic suggestions and cues that they had given to Sirhan. These occasions also allowed them to reinforce Sirhan’s conditioning, to embed new suggestions, and to further establish premeditation.

Prior to his conditioning, Sirhan was not a “gun person.” He did not own a gun. His only brief experience with one had been in the Muir High School ROTC.¹¹⁶⁵ Yet, soon after he returned home, he suddenly and uncharacteristically had the urge to purchase a weapon. Again, a hypnotic suggestion to this effect—to buy a gun—could have been made in such a way that the subject would have felt that he had to comply, whatever the cost.

According to Sirhan’s brother Munir, shortly after Sirhan’s return, he asked Munir if he could find him a used handgun. This took Munir by surprise. He feared that his brother was contemplating suicide. When Sirhan dismissed this notion, Munir pressed the issue and replied, “‘You swear on sis?’”¹¹⁶⁶ Munir was referring to their sister, Aida, who died of leukemia at age twenty-nine in 1965.¹¹⁶⁷ Sirhan agreed and swore.

Munir said it was a mystery to him why Sirhan “would want anything to do with guns.”¹¹⁶⁸ He and his brother both knew that as aliens, it was unlawful for them to own firearms. According to Munir, Sirhan explained that the gun would be used just to practice at the firing range. He also promised to keep it in the car, out of their mother’s sight.¹¹⁶⁹

Munir may have thought that his brother wanted a gun for protection, especially given the fact that Sirhan had just come home from a mysterious three-month absence. Munir himself had recently spent nine months in jail for possession of marijuana. So he, no doubt, understood the vagaries of life.¹¹⁷⁰

Munir spoke with a coworker at F. C. Nash Department Store in Pasadena who had a .22 caliber revolver for sale.¹¹⁷¹ The colleague, George Erhard, was a gun collector, and had purchased the 8-shot Iver-Johnson revolver from a neighbor. He agreed to sell it for twenty-five dollars. According to Munir, Erhard drove to the Sirhan house, where he listened to some records for a while and then closed the sale.¹¹⁷²

If a successful posthypnotic suggestion prompted Sirhan to obtain a handgun, an equally effective suggestion caused amnesia to shroud any memory of his carrying and using it. Following the assassination, when Sirhan’s defense psychiatrists queried him under hypnosis regarding the gun, he had no memory of it.¹¹⁷³ Of course, if Sirhan had not come into ownership of a handgun at home, his handlers would have had an alternative plan to acquire one, since a gun was an essential component of the operation.

At this point in time, Robert Kennedy was still publicly undecided regarding his candidacy for president. On March 11, 1968, Bobby accepted an invitation from California farmworker organizer Cesar Chavez, forty-one, who was on a hunger strike. Chavez, the founder of the National FarmWorkers Association (predecessor of the United FarmWorkers of America), had been fasting for three weeks with the goal of drawing attention to the exploitation of farmworkers and to protest violence in the vineyards between the workers, the Teamsters, and the growers. He had asked Bobby to be with him when he ended his fast and to break bread at a celebration of the Mass.¹¹⁷⁴ Following in the footsteps of India’s Mahatma Gandhi, Chavez had previously walked some three hundred miles to Sacramento for his fellow workers.¹¹⁷⁵ At this point, Chavez had lost thirty pounds and was down to 120.¹¹⁷⁶ As author Richard D. Mahoney has colorfully described the story, Bobby flew to Delano, California, where more than six thousand farmworkers greeted him with shouts of “Viva Kennedy.”¹¹⁷⁷ After the Mass, and the sharing of a piece of Mexican bread, Kennedy congratulated Chavez and the other laborers in their struggle for justice for all farmworkers and for Hispanics in general.¹¹⁷⁸ Kennedy also urged them to uphold Chavez’s principle of nonviolent protest. The crowd responded in Spanish with shouts of “Run! Run!” Those few hours with a desperate Cesar Chavez and his fellow farmworkers had convinced Bobby more than ever that he was needed. The public could see Bobby’s power, he could see it, and his enemies also could see it. After boarding the plane for his return trip home, Bobby called his wife Ethel and told her it was time for him to announce his candidacy.¹¹⁷⁹

Meanwhile, on the East Coast, the state that traditionally kicked off the nation’s presidential primary season had become a mecca for college students who turned out from across the land to campaign for Gene McCarthy. In New Hampshire’s towns and villages, young people stood outside in the cold and snow, smiling and handing out campaign buttons, pamphlets, and bumper stickers. The newly politicized students urged residents to vote on March 12, 1968. Their mantra exhorted residents to dump Johnson, support Clean Gene, and get America out of Vietnam.

McCarthy was the only Democrat to challenge the incumbent, President Lyndon Johnson, at this point. What McCarthy’s campaign lacked in funding, it made up for in enthusiasm and in numbers of young supporters. This grassroots campaign was responsible, in part, for the New Hampshire presidential primary’s robust turn out. Some fifty thousand Democratic voters went to the polls. Of course, many of these voters did not necessarily support the peace plank; they were simply dissatisfied with the current administration and wanted change.¹¹⁸⁰

When the ballots of the first primary of the presidential race were tallied, the results stunned the nation. Senator McCarthy, the peace candidate, had lost to President Johnson by only three hundred votes.¹¹⁸¹ This incredible near-victory over a sitting president was totally unexpected. The immense turnout for McCarthy in conservative New Hampshire sent a signal of strong discontent with the war in Vietnam. Indeed, President Johnson’s career was at stake. Many pundits gave credit to the more than five thousand students who had flocked to the Granite State to campaign for the Minnesota senator.

Four days after the New Hampshire primary, on March 16, 1968, Robert Kennedy publicly announced his intention to run for presidency of the United States. He delivered his statement in the same room in which his brother had announced his candidacy in 1960, the Caucus Room of the Old Senate Office Building in Washington, DC. At Bobby’s side were his wife and nine of their ten children.¹¹⁸²

Kennedy’s speech was broadcast live to millions of homes across America: “I am announcing today my candidacy for the presidency of the United States. I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. . . . My decision reflects no personal animosity or disrespect toward President Johnson. The issue is not personal, it is our profound differences over where we are heading and what we want to accomplish. . . . I seek new policies—policies to end the bloodshed in Vietnam and in our cities, policies to close the gap that now exists between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old in this country and around the rest of the world.” ¹¹⁸³

Although some historians feel that Robert Kennedy had waited in the wings to see how President Johnson would fare in New Hampshire before jumping into the race, one of Bobby’s closest friends, author Arthur Schlesinger Jr., has written that this was not the case. Kennedy had already decided a week earlier to run for president. According to Schlesinger, “only a change in Vietnam policy would have canceled it.”¹¹⁸⁴

The Democratic party, meanwhile, was still President Johnson’s. The party bosses, union leaders, and many in the press favored the president. At the same time, Gene McCarthy had his huge following from the college campuses. Hence, Bobby’s desperate need to go to the people directly. But this approach was also very much in keeping with his progressively radical bent. He chose to reach out to the poor, the downtrodden, the minorities, the voiceless, and the disenfranchised. They were his reason for wanting to lead America: to work to help improve the lives of those most in need. He felt that this would thereby improve the quality of life for everyone, while setting an example for the rest of the world. The starting point for Kennedy was to try to find a way to end the carnage in Vietnam and bring America’s troops home. In this regard, Kennedy’s campaign was scandalous to Cold War warriors throughout the Johnson administration, the military, and the intelligence community. These factions suddenly began to sense that their grip on power was in jeopardy once again, much as it had been just prior to November 22, 1963.

Robert Kennedy embarked on the campaign trail with gusto, quickly making up for lost time. While decrying the nation’s war in Southeast Asia, the campaign was also seen as a celebration of America. Young supporters who joined the crusade associated the Kennedy theme with Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” Throngs turned out to greet the young candidate at every key stop on the campaign trail. In West Virginia, where eight years earlier John Kennedy had won a very close primary fight, Bobby retraced his brother’s footsteps. He rode standing up in an open convertible, as well-wishers pressed against his car and reached out to shake his hand. During a campaign stop at Courthouse Square in Beckley, West Virginia, one young housewife emerged from the crowd and handed Kennedy a mug of beer. He sipped it and smiled to the applause of the crowd.¹¹⁸⁵

In Welch, West Virginia, on the courthouse steps, Bobby leaned into a microphone and spoke to the townsfolk about an editorial that had appeared in their local newspaper. “A local editor wrote this about me in an article in today’s paper,” said Kennedy. “He said I am un-invited, unwanted, undesirable, unethical, un-American, unfit, unprepared, unshorn, unpopular, unloved, and overrated. But I wanted him to make sure he knew I had my hair cut, though.” Laughter and applause filled the air and a man in the crowd responded, “We love you, Senator Kennedy.”¹¹⁸⁶

Indeed, an incredible presidential campaign was unfolding before voters’ eyes. Captivated TV audiences across the country watched with growing excitement as the Kennedy troops took to the campaign trail covering fifteen states in two weeks’ time. Journalists called Bobby’s marathon a blitzkrieg, while historians have defined it as a unique experience in American politics, given the amount of territory visited and its impact on people. According to author Richard Mahoney, in Arizona and Alabama Kennedy’s reception was “merely positive,” but in every other state the crowds were ecstatic.¹¹⁸⁷

On March 17, 1968, fifteen thousand students turned out to hear Bobby Kennedy deliver the Alfred M. Landon Lecture at Kansas State University. The audience in the packed field house was considered to be primarily conservative, coat-and-tie-wearing students. Kennedy anticipated a generally cool response due to his antiwar mantra. Nevertheless, he pressed ahead with his message, his voice filled with emotion: “Can we ordain to ourselves the awful majesty of God—to decide what cities and villages are to be destroyed, who will live and who will die, and who will join the refugees wandering in a desert of our own creation? In these next eight months, we are going to decide what this country will stand for—and what kind of men we are.”¹¹⁸⁸ When he had finished, as one writer would report, the applause sounded like the roar of Niagra Falls.¹¹⁸⁹

When Bobby Kennedy’s campaign blitz arrived in Nashville, Tennessee, the candidate continued to raise the ante. He spoke in support of the antiwar movement as he assailed the policies of the Johnson administration: “When we are told to forego all dissent and division, we must ask: who is truly dividing the country? It is not those who call for change, it is those who make present policy.” Instead of the “public commitment of a few years ago . . . (the young have chosen) lives of disengagement and despair, turning on with drugs and turning off America.”¹¹⁹⁰

Kennedy found his most enthusiastic reception in California, where shrieking thousands complemented the intensity of his remarks: “‘Our brave young men are dying in the swamps of Southeast Asia. Which of them might have written a poem? Which of them might have cured cancer? Which of them might have played in a World Series or given us the gift of laughter from the stage or helped build a bridge or a university? Which of them would have taught a child to read? It is our responsibility to let these men live. . . . It is indecent if they die because of the empty vanity of their country.’”¹¹⁹¹

Bobby wrapped up this initial two-week, whirlwind campaign drive on March 29 in Arizona. At the Navaho town of Window Rock, he appealed to the plight of the Native Americans. He criticized the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and called their policies a form of colonialism. Then he stressed the importance of the Indian cause and stated, “You have your culture. You have your history. You have your language.”¹¹⁹² According to author Richard Mahoney, whose father, William P. Mahoney, headed up the Arizona Kennedy campaign, Kennedy connected with the local populace as no one had done so before. After listening to Bobby speak, one Navaho reportedly told Mahoney, “I have waited all my life for a white man to say that.”¹¹⁹³

Two days later, on the evening of March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson sat at his desk in the Oval Office and stared intently into a TV camera. He spoke slowly in his soft southern drawl, as he addressed the nation. “Good evening, my fellow Americans. Tonight I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia . . .” His speech appeared to be a routine update on the administration’s latest war plans, or possibly some movement towards starting up peace talks with North Vietnam. But when he came to the end, he took the nation by surprise with the announcement that he was dropping out of the 1968 presidential race: “I have concluded that I should not permit the presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”¹¹⁹⁴

The frustrations of the war had broken Johnson’s spirit. He was unable to find a way to win both abroad and at home, and he also understood the political realities of that election season. His policies were under continual attack from Richard Nixon, Gene McCarthy, and Robert Kennedy. His ability to carry out the duties of the office had become seriously impaired as a result, and the prognosis for his administration was not good. As Arthur Schlesinger has pointed out, pollsters in Wisconsin had predicted an embarrassing two-to-one loss for LBJ in that state’s upcoming primary.¹¹⁹⁵

The day President Johnson announced his withdrawal from the primary race, Bobby Kennedy had just arrived at LaGuardia Airport in New York, concluding his two-week campaign blitz.¹¹⁹⁶ Kennedy took a short break before continuing his crusade back to the heartland of Indiana.

Meanwhile, those in the Pentagon and the CIA who were prosecuting the war knew that without President Johnson, a like-minded president was needed to fill the vacuum if victory in Vietnam was to be achieved. Their success depended on ensuring the election of a commander in chief who would continue to support US forces in Southeast Asia. They found such a candidate in Richard Nixon. In his quest to be the Republican Party’s standard-bearer, he was opposed primarily by New York’s Nelson Rockefeller. Although Nixon had been out of politics since his loss to John Kennedy in 1960, he still had strong backing from key Republican Party loyalists. He had gained their support during his two terms as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower from 1952 to 1960. It was during these years that he had established a reputation as a close ally of the generals, the admirals, and the intelligence community. In 1954, he was one of the few advisors who had suggested sending US troops to Vietnam in the event France was defeated in its colonial war with the independence-minded Indo-Chinese colonies. Nixon even went so far as to advocate using atomic weapons in Southeast Asia.¹¹⁹⁷ French forces were overrun in 1954 at Biendienphu. However, President Eisenhower decided it was not the time to rush into a land war in Asia.

By March 31, 1968, there were 550,000 American troops involved in the war effort in Vietnam.¹¹⁹⁸ Again, the military and the CIA were confident that victory could be achieved, but not if Bobby Kennedy were elected president.

Besides Robert Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was probably the most serious threat to the war effort. America’s foremost civil rights champion and Nobel Peace Prize winner, King had joined the antiwar movement in the spring of 1967.

In early 1968, King’s immediate priority was to fulfill a promise he had made to intercede in a strike by sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. The city’s garbagemen had walked off the job on February 12, 1968, after the city refused their demands for improved wages and working conditions.¹¹⁹⁹ Most of Memphis’s thirteen hundred black sanitation workers had joined the walk-out. Carrying signs that read I AM A MAN, they demanded the right to form a union. An earlier demonstration had been broken up by police wielding nightsticks and spraying mace. With the strike entering its sixth week, Dr. King arrived in Memphis. He was confident their march would be nonviolent.

That night, April 3, 1968, despite heavy rains, more than two thousansd people turned out at Mason Temple to meet him. Many listeners later said that they felt King’s words were prescient: “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land.” As the large audience erupted in applause and cries of “Yes, sir,” and “Go ahead, doctor,” King continued. “But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. So, I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. I have had a dream this afternoon that the brotherhood of man will become a reality. With this faith, I will go out and carve a tunnel of hope from a mountain of despair. . . . With this faith, we will be able to achieve this new day, when all of God’s children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing with the Negroes in the spiritual of old, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last.’” ¹²⁰⁰ It was Martin Luther King Jr.’s last sermon.

The next day, April 4, 1968, Robert Kennedy had begun campaigning in Indiana. He spoke in Muncie that afternoon, and that evening he planned to stop in Indianapolis, where he was scheduled to speak in the ghetto.¹²⁰¹

Meanwhile, in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr. and his closest friend, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, were staying in room 306 at the modest two-story Lorraine Motel.¹²⁰² It was cool that evening. At approximately 6 p.m., King opened the door of his room and stepped out onto the balcony. Accompanied by the Rev. Samuel Kyles, they prepared to go to Kyles’s house for dinner. King’s chauffeur, Solomon Jones, waited by the limousine in a parking lot below the balcony. Others in the entourage included James Bevel, Ben Branch, Jesse Jackson, Bernard Lee, James Orange, Hosea Williams, and Andy Young.¹²⁰³

Jones called out to King, reminding him to bring a topcoat. King then asked Abernathy to bring it out with him. Turning to his friends in the parking lot, King commented to musician Ben Branch, “Ben, make sure to play ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand’ at the meeting tonight. Sing it real pretty.” Branch replied, “Okay, Doc, I will.” King kidded with Jesse Jackson, twenty-six, as Kyles started to walk down the stairs to the limousine, leaving King alone on the balcony.¹²⁰⁴

On the other side of the parking lot, an embankment covered with trees and brush rose up to the back yard of a row of old brick buildings. King was leaning against the iron railing on the motel balcony when suddenly the crack of a high-powered rifle shot exploded across the parking lot. King was thrown to the floor of the balcony, the right side of his jaw and neck torn away.¹²⁰⁵

Abernathy rushed from the room to his friend’s side and held his head as a pool of blood spread across the floor. The others in the group raced up the stairs to help their fallen leader. King was rushed by ambulance to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m.¹²⁰⁶

It is now known that the civil rights leader was under constant surveillance by Richard Helms’s CIA, as well as the FBI and the military.¹²⁰⁷ These groups worked closely with the local Memphis Police Department. And, in fact, Memphis’s public safety director, Frank Holloman, had served in the FBI for twenty-five years and had managed the Memphis FBI office.¹²⁰⁸

Andrew Young, an aide of Martin Luther King Jr.’s, said he believed that King’s assassination was directly related to “the fear that officialdom had of his bringing large numbers of poor people to the nation’s capital (the planned Poor People’s March).”¹²⁰⁹ According to King’s closest supporters, Bobby Kennedy’s staff had been hard at work assisting King in organizing the march on Washington. Shortly before his death on April 4, 1968, “Brother Martin” was planning to endorse Robert Kennedy for president. King was quoted as saying, “We’ve got to get behind Bobby.”¹²¹⁰

Robert Kennedy had received word that Martin Luther King Jr. was dead while he was en route by plane to his next campaign stop in Indianapolis. Bobby wanted to speak in a ghetto there, although the mayor and the police had advised him not to.¹²¹¹ He went anyway. It was a cold night, yet a large crowd had assembled in a parking lot to hear him speak. Kennedy knew that the audience had not yet received word that Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed.¹²¹² Arriving at the site, Kennedy stepped from his car, walked over to a flat bed truck, and climbed up to the microphone. Softly he spoke, “I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed tonight.” The crowd gasped.¹²¹³

Historians agree Kennedy’s speech not only defined his campaign, but defined the man. It was simple and from the heart. “Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort. . . . For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. . . . My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’ What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black. . . . We’ve had difficult times in the past. We will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago; to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”¹²¹⁴

That night there were riots in 110 US cities, thirty-nine people were killed and twenty-five hundred injured. Over seventy-five thousand National Guard troops were called out. But after Kennedy’s speech, Indianapolis remained calm. It was one of the few cities that did.¹²¹⁵

After an international manhunt, James Earl Ray, an escaped convict with little experience shooting a rifle,¹²¹⁶ was arrested in England two months later. Ray believed that he was framed. Nevertheless, he ended up pleading guilty because he was told by his attorney that if he did not, he would receive the death penalty. Ray was sentenced to a ninety-nine-year prison term after a two-hour-and-seven-minute “trial.” The truth was never adjudicated.¹²¹⁷ Within days, Ray retracted his plea, and despite his many attempts to prove his innocence, he never received a full trial. He died in prison in 1998 at age seventy. (A number of historians believe that Ray, too, was an innocent patsy, and that he was conditioned through an MKULTRA program to be an unwitting fall guy.)

Meanwhile, in Pasadena, on April 5, 1968, Sirhan received a check in the mail from the Argonaut Insurance Company. It was the workman’s compensation for his horse accident, money for which he had waited many months. The amount totaled $1,705, the balance of his $2,000 claim after medical and legal fees were taken out.¹²¹⁸ In the days when cigarettes cost forty cents a pack and a gallon of gas was about the same price, possessing $1,705 bestowed upon Sirhan a feeling of affluence. He immediately cashed the check. He asked his mother to be his “banker,” depositing with her $1,000 which he would draw on as needed. Sirhan also gave some of the money to his brother Adel, according to Mary Sirhan.¹²¹⁹ As for saving or investing his money, Sirhan’s plan for financial growth consisted of betting at Hollywood Park. But instead of increasing his earnings, he lost hundreds.¹²²⁰

At the same time, Sirhan’s unusual personality change, particularly his depression, became evident to his mother. In mid-April 1968, she decided to do something about it. She mentioned to a colleague of hers, the mother of Sirhan’s former classmate, Walter Crowe, that it had been a long time since Walter had been over to see Sirhan. Mrs. Crowe agreed and asked Walter to give Sirhan a call. It had been three years since the two friends had been out together. They arranged to meet on May 2, 1968 at Bob’s Big Boy Restaurant located across the street from Pasadena City College.¹²²¹ The night of their reunion at Bob’s Big Boy, Walter was celebrating his having started a new job that day at the Los Angeles County Department of Welfare.¹²²² Their conversation revolved around Walter’s work and Mideast politics, something they always enjoyed discussing. For example, on the topic of the Six-Day War, fought less than one year earlier, Sirhan lamented the fact that the Arab people had lost so much land. He said he was confident they would wait and fight again another day. Walter viewed the situation as a proxy war and discussed Russia’s role as an arms supplier in support of the Arab cause.¹²²³ The topic of Robert Kennedy reportedly did not come up. As for Sirhan’s attitude, or any noticeable personality change, Walter later noted that Sirhan had seemed very quiet. He also said that he seemed to have lost some of his earlier idealism.¹²²⁴

For their night on the town, Sirhan had called another old friend from the college to join them, Ivan Garcia, a native of Guatemala. Garcia arrived at Bob’s Big Boy Restaurant with one of his friends, Joseph Marcovecchio, a Colombian student.¹²²⁵ In an interview with authorities after the assassination, Garcia described his friend Sirhan as a law-abiding citizen. “I never knew Sirhan to violate any laws of any kind,” Garcia stated.¹²²⁶

While Sirhan may have appeared as straight as usual, he seemed to have lost some of his spontaneity. The four friends exited Bob’s Big Boy and proceeded to two topless bars and a Mexican restaurant. They first drank pitchers of beer at the Hi-Life at 1958 East Colorado, and again at the Cat Patch at 2211 East Foothill Road, Pasadena.¹²²⁷ Sirhan continued to exhibit his subdued disposition, as even his penchant for erotic dancers began to diminish. According to Crowe, at one point in the evening, Sirhan apparently asked the others why the strippers were “demeaning themselves.”¹²²⁸ His friends told him to lighten up. Although Sirhan was still buying beer for everyone, this remark was yet another out-of-character sign, clearly stemming from the unusual circumstances related to his state of mind. The four young men ended up the night at Ernie’s Taco House on Colorado and Fair Oaks. The next day, Walter reported to his mother that Sirhan had seemed “withdrawn.”¹²²⁹

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Robert Kennedy had hit a rough stretch in Indiana where anti-Kennedy signs had begun to appear. Demonstrators standing on the fringes of the crowds waved placards that read: GO BACK TO MASS. MOPHEAD and HOW MANY DID YOU BETRAY AT THE BAY OF PIGS? Some even complained of the way in which Kennedy pronounced the name of the state, “Indian-er” versus “Indianuh.”¹²³⁰

Indeed, the young Democrat’s reception in Indiana initially ranged from cool to hostile. Many voters in the rural areas of Southern Indiana did not identify with Kennedy’s stand against the war and his call for social justice.

While speaking to medical students at Indiana University Medical Center, Bobby was booed. According to author Richard Mahoney, when Kennedy was asked by one medical student where he planned to find the money to finance new social legislation, Bobby responded, “From you.” He continued, “I look around this room and I don’t see many black faces who will become doctors. Part of civilized society is to let people go to medical school who come from ghettos. I don’t see many people coming here from slums, or off of Indian reservations. You are the privileged ones here. It’s easy for you to sit back and say it’s the fault of the Federal Government. But it’s our responsibility, too. It’s our society, too. . . . It’s the poor who carry the major burden of the struggle in Vietnam. You sit here as white medical students, while black people carry the burden of the fighting in Vietnam.”¹²³¹

Kennedy’s honesty inspired the several dozen reporters following him, which in turn resulted in more positive press. Gradually, voters began to see Kennedy’s genuine concern. As Marshall McLuhan stated, Bobby began to come across on TV as a “reluctant hero,” giving him a persuasive edge.¹²³²

Turning to the northern part of the state of Indiana, the political environment took a major turn for the better. Urban minorities and factory workers in South Bend, Gary, and smaller communities, flocked to every stop to see Kennedy, and to try to touch him. On Indiana’s primary day, May 7, 1968, Kennedy won decisively over McCarthy, 42 percent to 27 percent.¹²³³ The campaign trail next headed west for key primaries in Nebraska on May 14, Oregon on May 28, and the crucial California contest on June 4, 1968.

“I like rural people . . . they listen to me,” said Robert Kennedy in Nebraska.¹²³⁴ The farmers there were apparently more open to Bobby’s message, which by this point he had hardened and refined. He petitioned the common man to take up his cause. Speaking from a flat bed truck to a large group of farmers in a cornfield, he stated, “I come to Nebraska in my campaign because I need your help. We’re taking on the Establishment. And we are taking on the political figures of this country.” This was a turning point in the campaign and in Bobby Kennedy’s life. He had signaled the Establishment by name that he intended to defeat them and their candidates and go on to change American society. He had given his opponents fair notice.

The small cabal who did not want any part of a new Kennedy administration had already determined how they would stop this “one man revolution.” If they could not win at the polls, there was no other alternative but “executive action.” This brutal course stemmed from the mentality of this era: the United States was at war overseas and at home. And both sides in the fight were certain they were right.

Nebraskans turned out in droves for the primary. At the end of the day, Kennedy had crushed McCarthy 51 percent to 31 percent.¹²³⁵ Hubert Humphrey had not announced his candidacy until April 27, 1968, and was therefore too late to enter the primaries in Indiana and Nebraska. Immediately following Johnson’s announcement of his withdrawal from the race, Humphrey had signed on two hawks on Vietnam to head up his campaign, Sen. Walter Mondale and Fred Harris.¹²³⁶ Both were friends of Robert Kennedy’s, but disagreed with him over the war. Humphrey’s support of the war effort readily gave him Johnson’s votes. Since he also maintained a strong base of support from big labor and southern politicians, Humphrey’s position in the spectrum made him an increasingly decisive factor in the contest for the Democratic party nomination. If Kennedy could defeat McCarthy prior to the convention in Chicago and then pick up Johnson’s supporters who were still “on the fence” with respect to Humphrey, he could win the nomination.

Robert Kennedy had taken the Midwest by storm. The question on everyone’s mind was whether this momentum would last. There remained only three weeks until the most important primary—California on June 4. But before that, there stood one more challenge that was expected to be an extremely tight race—Oregon.

At this time in Sirhan’s life, from May 20, 1968 forward, Sirhan was seen by various witnesses at a number of locations, places that were not part of his usual routine. In most of these sightings, witnesses said they observed him with a young woman. Her description stayed essentially the same from witness to witness: a Caucasian in her mid-twenties, approximately five feet six inches, medium-blond, shoulder-length hair, and having a good-looking figure.¹²³⁷

The sightings painted a picture of Sirhan and a female companion pursuing Robert Kennedy. Yet, it was known that Sirhan was not closely watching the Kennedy campaign. He had little knowledge—if any—of the campaign schedule, times, locations, driving directions, audience size, sponsors, and so forth. Indeed, if he had been hunting Kennedy, he would have had to have been accompanying someone who possessed this logistical information. Sirhan has no memory of these so-called “stalkings.” Nor does he recall the woman, except for the few moments when he poured coffee for her in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel minutes before the assassination.

Witnesses who recalled seeing Sirhan during these few weeks prior to the assassination reported behaviors that were uncharacteristic of him. Their descriptions indicate that something was influencing Sirhan’s mental state. He was alternating between frenzied responses and being immersed in a trance-like state, both symptoms of hypno-programming.

The young woman seen with Sirhan at most of the nine or so sightings was usually accompanied by a man who also remains unidentified. The man’s role seemed to be to oversee the woman while she evidently served as Sirhan’s cueing mechanism. The man would also have been needed to drive Sirhan’s DeSoto while the woman drove their vehicle and watched over a “zoned-out,” hypno-programmed Sirhan.

Some investigators have suggested that the sighting of Sirhan and the woman at a Kennedy function on May 20, 1968 was a “dry run,” planned and carried out under the direction of those who conditioned Sirhan as a test to prepare an unwitting Sirhan and the woman for their roles in the actual shooting, in the event that Kennedy won the California primary on June 4. In fact, most of Sirhan’s two-week “sightings” phase was a practice exercise to test their cues. By having Sirhan suspiciously appear in nine locations over a fifteen-day period, the plotters also made it appear that Sirhan was stalking the candidate, thus establishing a pattern of premeditation. Creating the impression of a premeditated act meant that the murder could be viewed as a capital offense. This could result in the death penalty and hence the planned elimination of the patsy.

The first sighting occurred on May 20, 1968 at Robbie’s Restaurant in Pomona, where Bobby Kennedy was scheduled to speak at a campaign luncheon for approximately four hundred guests.¹²³⁸ A full house awaited Kennedy for the reception. Witnesses later reported they saw Sirhan accompanied by the woman who carried a purse with her. Sirhan carried a jacket over his right arm, despite the fact that it was a hot day.¹²³⁹ Together, they walked through a side dining room and approached the kitchen door, the woman leading the way. Police Officer William Schneid stopped them at that point and informed them that that entrance was closed. The woman then asked which way Senator Kennedy would enter the luncheon, and Schneid responded that most likely he would go upstairs to the next floor, whereupon she and Sirhan abruptly turned and headed for the front staircase.¹²⁴⁰

Officer Schneid later reported that he saw the woman at the luncheon upstairs. He gave this account to the FBI, yet he was never interviewed by LAPD.¹²⁴¹ As it turned out, LAPD’s practice of ignoring witnesses whose testimony pointed to the existence of a conspiracy became commonplace throughout the investigation of the assassination. Indeed, investigator Philip Melanson has uncovered numerous incidences in which LAPD tried to discredit witnesses who saw the woman “whose presence coincides with (Sirhan’s) loss of memory.”¹²⁴²

Dozens of Kennedy supporters, tickets in hand, filled the lobby of Robbie’s Restaurant eagerly working their way to the staircase, hoping for a good seat for Bobby’s speech. When Sirhan and the woman finally reached the stairs to the main reception area on the upper level, they were blocked by the night manager, Albert LeBeau, thirty-five, who had been called in to work that day to collect tickets. When LeBeau spotted the couple climbing over a side railing to get onto the stairs behind him, he grabbed the woman’s arm and asked for their tickets. The woman said they were with the senator’s party, but LeBeau insisted that they needed tickets for admission. The couple then left him.¹²⁴³ However, they eventually made it to the upper-level dining room, where once again LeBeau bumped into Sirhan. This time Sirhan and the woman were listening to Kennedy’s speech while standing in the midst of the overflowing crowd lining the back wall of the reception hall.¹²⁴⁴ According to author Robert Kaiser, LeBeau asked the couple how they got in, and Sirhan, apparently startled, replied, “What the hell is it to you?”¹²⁴⁵ LeBeau kept walking.

Once again, the rage intrinsic to Sirhan’s conditioning surfaced in an emotional outburst. His conditioning triggered his self-preservation mechanism, and this moved him to lash out at this perceived threat. The so-called moral imperative superseded Sirhan’s docile nature.

As for LeBeau, he later recognized Sirhan’s photo from a group of twenty-five pictures provided by the police. Yet, in their final summary, LAPD reported that he “admitted he lied” regarding recognizing Sirhan. This false account of LeBeau’s testimony showed the lengths to which the police would go in order to nip in the bud any possible conspiracy leads.¹²⁴⁶

A week later in Pasadena, early in the evening on May 28, 1968, Sirhan appeared at his first and only meeting of the Ancient Mystical Order of Rosicrucians (AMORC). A sign on the door of the lodge at 2030 East Villa Street displayed the organization’s logo: a triangle, a rose, an all-seeing eye, and the letters AMORC.¹²⁴⁷ Sirhan signed the register and entered the hall. The organization is nonpolitical and nonsectarian. This is the same group Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty had exclaimed was a Communist organization when he later referred to Sirhan’s membership. Bemused reporters corrected him.¹²⁴⁸

Sirhan sat quietly and read AMORC literature while surrounded by a dowdy assortment of middle-aged lodge members. An example of the benign nature of the Rosicrucians’ beliefs is seen in the presentation that Sirhan participated in during his brief meeting with them. The lodge master, Ted Stevens,¹²⁴⁹ spoke about the mentalist technique of perceiving objects by sensation only, without seeing them. This is apparently a prerequisite to learning how to develop one’s “inner powers,” such as extrasensory perception. Sirhan participated in the lesson by identifying various objects while blindfolded.¹²⁵⁰ He reportedly then left the meeting early. This brief “sighting” of Sirhan attending a Rosicrucian meeting and then leaving early seems trivial in hindsight, if it were not for the unusual, singular importance Sirhan later gave it, as we shall see ahead.

At the same time Sirhan was attending the AMORC meeting, the polls were closing for the presidential primary in the state of Oregon. A win there was crucial to both Kennedy and McCarthy, since the victor would gain added momentum going into the all-important California primary one week later. A win by McCarthy would derail Kennedy’s campaign, perhaps irreparably. At the same time, a Kennedy victory would send a signal to undecided Democrats at the convention that a sizable number of party people wanted a regime change at the top of the party. Such an eventuality would have given Kennedy a lock on the nomination over Humphrey, according to many observers.

Still, Humphrey had picked up enough Johnson votes during May to come within reach of the nomination himself. One media survey had shown by this point that there were some 1,280 delegates favoring Humphrey. The number needed to win was 1,312.¹²⁵¹

The Oregon battle saw Gene McCarthy step up his offensive. Although his stand on the war was the same as Kennedy’s, he found many issues on which to attack Bobby. They ranged from sarcastic comments related to Kennedy’s youth, to Bobby and his brother being responsible for American involvement in Vietnam. On another touchy issue, McCarthy argued against Kennedy’s stand in favor of gun control legislation.¹²⁵²

Bobby, on the other hand, found that he had little in common with Oregon voters. For the most part, their gun rights were not to be infringed upon; Robert Kennedy had supported some type of gun control since the assassination of President Kennedy.

Another problem for his campaign was the fact that the state’s population of minorities was only two percent.¹²⁵³ Yet Kennedy’s strongest supporters had always been the poor and the minorities. In addition, factory workers, who had backed the Kennedys in the northeast, seemed to have little interest in Bobby’s speeches. Their view of the world was far different from his. A perfect example of this discordance was demonstrated in author Richard Mahoney’s description of Bobby’s style on the campaign trail. While on the plane to Portland to kick off the Oregon primary race, Kennedy and his entourage never tired of singing one of the peace movement’s hallmark folk songs, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”¹²⁵⁴

Sen. Kennedy lost the Oregon primary. The vote, 44.7 percent for McCarthy to 38.8 percent for Kennedy, was Kennedy’s first defeat, and it came at a critical time.¹²⁵⁵ Now, everything depended on the California primary one week later on June 4, 1968.

Ironically, the defeat in Oregon added to Kennedy’s appeal for California voters. His public image became “less ruthless, almost an underdog,” according to Arthur Schlesinger.¹²⁵⁶ Jackie Kennedy’s mother, Janet Auchincloss, wrote to Bobby, “The first defeat makes you a more sympathetic figure.”¹²⁵⁷ It also showed that he was human. As Bobby himself concluded, “Let’s face it, I appeal best to people who have problems.”¹²⁵⁸

Two days later, on May 30, 1968, five days before the assassination, the next sighting of Sirhan occurred.¹²⁵⁹ According to witness descriptions, Sirhan and the young woman, accompanied by another man, made a brief visit to the Kennedy campaign office in Azusa, California. With the primary election imminent, enthusiastic Kennedy volunteers were filled with anticipation. Two of the campaign workers, Laverne Botting, forty-one, and Ethel Creehan, forty-five, noticed Sirhan and the two others as they entered the office. According to witnesses, Sirhan was the only one who spoke. He reportedly told Ms. Botting that he was from the Pasadena campaign office, and he then asked if Robert Kennedy would be coming to Azusa. She replied that he would not. Ms. Creehan overheard the brief conversation and corroborated it. Apparently, Sirhan then turned, joined the young woman and the other man who stood some distance away, and departed with them.¹²⁶⁰

As soon as the photo of Sirhan was published in the newspapers following the assassination, Ms. Botting and Ms. Creehan called the FBI and told them what they knew. Later, they both picked out Sirhan’s picture from a line-up of police photos. Yet, neither of them was allowed to see Sirhan in person. They also gave descriptions of the woman that were consistent with other witnesses’ sightings: a female in her early twenties, five feet seven inches, excellent figure, with brownish-blond hair. Ethel Creehan added that the girl had a “prominent” nose, a distinctive feature that also was noticed by a number of other witnesses at various sightings. Neither woman gave a description of the other man who was with Sirhan and the woman.¹²⁶¹

The police dismissed both of these witnesses’ accounts and discredited Ms. Botting because she had said Sirhan had a “broad nose and shoulders.” Yet, everything else in her description was accurate. (And Sirhan does have a broad nose.) The police concluded, “She must be mistaken.”¹²⁶² As for Ms. Creehan, her account matched Sirhan except for his height; she said he was five feet eight inches instead of five feet four inches. The police reported, “It is doubtful if the person she observed was Sirhan.”¹²⁶³ Apparently, if a sighting involved the woman, then LAPD did all that it could to deny it.

Officer C. B. Thompson, who wrote the interview summaries for these two witnesses, also reported another mysterious incident in connection with Ms. Botting. She had received a threatening phone call after she gave her eyewitness account. According to Ms. Botting, the caller had said, “‘I hear you think you saw Sirhan. You had better be sure of what you are saying.’”¹²⁶⁴ This menacing, anonymous call fits a pattern of intimidation. As we shall see, the investigation eventually came to resemble more of a grand cover-up than a search for the truth. Again, the Azusa visit is one of the events leading up to the assassination that Sirhan does not recall. The woman and the man who were with Sirhan would never be identified. But the fact that they existed is evident, based on the number of witnesses and their matching testimony. These volunteers are people who had no reason to lie, or to make up stories. They were actually putting themselves at some risk in trying to help the police, given that they knew that conspirators were still on the loose. Again, it seems clear that the perpetrators arranged the sightings to test their control systems, i.e., to determine whether Sirhan was responding appropriately to the cues given to trigger posthypnotic suggestions. At the same time, they intended for the accomplices to remain in the background in order to create a lone-gun scenario. Those conditioning Sirhan would not have wanted witnesses later testifying to having seen the girl and the other man.

The next sighting of Sirhan occurred on June 1, 1968, this time at a gun shop called the Lock, Stock, and Barrel in San Gabriel, California.¹²⁶⁵ According to the store clerk, Larry Arnot, a retired Pasadena fireman, Sirhan entered the shop that Saturday afternoon accompanied by two men. They bought four boxes of bullets consisting of two hundred rounds—two boxes of .22 caliber and two boxes of Super-X Westerns. After the assassination, the receipt for $3.99 from the Lock, Stock, and Barrel was found in Sirhan’s car.

Police interviewed Arnot, and later on he testified at the trial. But in court, Arnot’s testimony took a bizarre turn. The prosecution noted that Arnot, who had undergone a polygraph test conducted by LAPD detective Hank Hernandez, had stated that he remembered the sales transaction but did not recall Sirhan after all. However, the gun shop’s coowner Donna Herrick corroborated her employee’s original claim and said that she, too, had seen Sirhan at their store.¹²⁶⁶

Obviously, purchasing ammunition is not a crime. But it is interesting that the story of a sighting with apparent accomplices made it to the trial. At the same time, not unexpectedly, both the prosecution and the defense refused to broach the matter of who was accompanying Sirhan. Rather than allow possible implications of a conspiracy to arise, they quickly concluded their inquiries with “‘no further questions.’”¹²⁶⁷ All the while, both sides were aware that for an alleged “lone gunman,” Sirhan was accompanied by others quite often.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco that evening, June 1, 1968, Sen. Robert Kennedy and Sen. Eugene McCarthy faced off for their eagerly awaited, nationally televised debate. The candidates were seated in a TV studio with moderator Frank Reynolds of ABC News stationed between them. An estimated twelve million viewers tuned in that night.¹²⁶⁸ For many, the Kennedy-McCarthy debate was comparable to the John Kennedy-Richard Nixon debates eight years earlier. Robert Kennedy framed his positions clearly and simply, without the rhetoric of his opponent, who was a former college professor. Kennedy stated, “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. But what I don’t think is that we can be policemen of the world, and go all over the rest of the globe and settle every internal dispute with American soldiers or American arms.”¹²⁶⁹

At this point, a Los Angeles Times telephone poll showed that the move toward McCarthy was reversing. Kennedy was picking up on-the-fence voters and even a number of McCarthy supporters. All the while, McCarthy maintained a positive and upbeat tone, but his message seemed to lack a sense of reality. “I think that I sense what the young people of this country needed,” said McCarthy. “As young students were dropping out and were saying the establishment was no good, we’ve had a genuine reconciliation of old and young in this country, and the significance of that is I think that throughout the whole country now there’s a new confidence in the future of America.”¹²⁷⁰

Following the debate, pollsters named Kennedy the winner by 2.5 to 1.¹²⁷¹ Bobby’s success rippled across the electorate, and crowds turning out to see him grew larger and more enthusiastic across the widely diverse and pivotal state of California.

By this point, many observers felt that if Kennedy were to win the California primary June 4, there would be little chance of his being defeated at the Chicago convention. Winning the Golden State would garner him the immense momentum of a nationally televised convention. Consequently, many prognosticators believed that in Chicago, Kennedy would handily win the party’s nomination. At the same time, Kennedy was opposed by powerful people in the intelligence community and the military, some southern leaders, and organized crime bosses. Even Democratic President Johnson was known to have wanted a Republican candidate to win, rather than a Democrat who would oppose his war policies.¹²⁷²

If Robert Kennedy lost the California primary, then the issue of his becoming the new moral leader of the burgeoning peace movement would be moot. Of course, if he had lived, he may well have attempted a run again in 1972. But at this moment, Bobby Kennedy was at his most influential and his most vulnerable point. Kennedy’s antiwar stand was considered by some as anti-American. The rogue element that flourished in the upper echelon of the CIA saw Communism as an evil force in the world, and to some, Kennedy’s antiwar stand was seen as siding with evil. In the minds of a few, taking extreme measures to destroy Kennedy was justifiable. They carefully planned their covert operation to eliminate him, all the while knowing full well the tactical problems they would face.

For example, once Sirhan was put into a trance, would he shoot on cue? What would the police do if witnesses reported they saw the guns of the actual gunmen? What if Sirhan shot the other gunmen? What if the police counted more than eight .22 caliber bullets at the murder scene; how would they contend with a second gun? From numerous witness accounts, many of which were not available until more than twenty years after the assassination, the extent of the planning has become apparent.

The reliability of Sirhan’s being able to shoot on cue—given his trancelike state—had to be tested and confirmed beforehand. A sighting of Sirhan, in which Sirhan—accompanied by a young woman and a man—was seen rapid-firing his gun in a practice session, occurred on June 1 in the Santa Ana Mountains.¹²⁷³ This was the same day that Sirhan allegedly purchased ammunition from Larry Arnot at the Lock, Stock, and Barrel. The sighting occurred in a remote area south of Corona, California, according to Dean Pack, an insurance man, who had been hiking in the area with his son.¹²⁷⁴ Pack called police following the assassination and told them he had recognized Sirhan from news accounts. He said he had seen Sirhan, along with a girl in her early twenties with brunette hair, and another man, in the mountains practicing shooting with a pistol, firing at tin cans. The man was described as being six feet tall with light brown hair. Apparently, he did all the talking. Pack reported that they were “unfriendly” and that Sirhan had “glared” at him.¹²⁷⁵ He added that he and his teenage son then quickly left the area.

Once again, LAPD dismissed the sighting by saying that Pack did not make a positive ID. Yet, Pack has claimed the police did not even show him a photo—the interview having been done via phone. Pack had expected to show the site of the encounter to the FBI and was surprised when they, too, were not interested.¹²⁷⁶

The description given by Pack of Sirhan’s face—the angry glaring—occurred at many of the sightings. Again, Sirhan has no recollection of these activities. Given Sirhan’s trancelike state the night of the assassination, it is probable he was also in a trance or similar condition while pistol-shooting in the Santa Ana Mountains. It was a practice session set up to guarantee that Sirhan, while in a trance, would fire on cue, based on a posthypnotic suggestion.

Two days before the California presidential primary election, Sunday, June 2, 1968, Sirhan rose early to drive his mother to church; he also picked her up afterwards. That afternoon, at about 2 p.m. Sirhan was sighted at the RFK campaign office on Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles, according to two volunteers, Ellenor Severson, a housewife, and Larry Strick, eighteen, a high school student.¹²⁷⁷ Larry Strick asked Sirhan if he needed help with anything, and Sirhan reportedly replied, “I’m with him,” as he pointed to another volunteer in the room named Khaiber Khan.¹²⁷⁸ Ellenor Severson later corroborated Strick’s account.¹²⁷⁹

The campaign worker to whom Sirhan had motioned, forty-four-year-old Khaiber Khan, was a wealthy Iranian exile who had been a former spymaster for the Shah of Iran. Khan and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had since had a complete falling out,¹²⁸⁰ although Khan reportedly still had ties within the Shah’s intelligence organization, SAVAK.¹²⁸¹ SAVAK was a secret police agency closely allied with the CIA.

Khan’s background in Iranian intelligence dated back to his work with British intelligence during World War II. When he was twenty-nine, in 1953, he assisted the CIA in the overthrow of the leftist government of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, the regime change that installed the Shah.¹²⁸² In the 1950s, when Khan and the Shah of Iran were building SAVAK, two of their most ardent supporters were James Angleton, head of the CIA’s Israeli desk, and Richard Helms. CIA chief Helms had maintained a cordial relationship with the Shah for many years (recall that although six years apart in age, he and the Shah were both alums of the same prep school in Switzerland). As noted earlier, when Helms left the CIA in 1973, he was appointed ambassador to Iran by Richard Nixon.¹²⁸³

In the early 1960s, Khan broke off his relationship with the Shah and charged the Shah’s administration with the theft of US foreign aid.¹²⁸⁴ Khan fled with his wealth to London, while at the same time keeping in touch with his intelligence network. He also claimed to have American contacts, one of whom was Walter Sheridan, a former FBI agent whom Robert Kennedy had hired in 1958 as an investigator for the Senate Labor Rackets Committee.¹²⁸⁵ Walter Sheridan, you’ll recall, was helping Bobby to find out who killed his brother, President John F. Kennedy.

In 1965, Khaiber Khan was reportedly nearly nabbed by the Shah’s operatives in Switzerland before he sought safe haven in the United States.¹²⁸⁶ He lived in New York, and in 1968 moved to Los Angeles where he was also known as Goodarzian, or “Goody.”

On June 1, 1968, Khan joined the Robert Kennedy campaign as a volunteer at the LA headquarters office on Wilshire Boulevard. He only worked there for four days, from June 1 to 4, 1968, during which time he was involved in recruiting Arab volunteers. He apparently signed up twenty or so.¹²⁸⁷ According to author Professor Philip Melanson, Khan’s covolunteers did not easily warm up to him. They described him as “a playboy,” “strange,” “a phony,” and “overbearing.”¹²⁸⁸

Campaign workers Ellenor Severson and Larry Strick came forward immediately after the assassination and gave statements to the FBI relating the fact that they had seen Sirhan with Khaiber Khan at the Wilshire campaign office two days before the election. Khan claimed in a FBI interview that he was not at the headquarters office until later that day.¹²⁸⁹ He added, however, that he, too, had witnessed Sirhan with a young woman dressed in a polka dot dress at the campaign office two days later, on primary day, June 4, at about 5 p.m. He also reported to the FBI that he had seen the woman with another man sitting in a car outside the headquarters the day before, Monday, June 3, 1968.¹²⁹⁰ A similarly described woman in the company of Sirhan would be observed by many witnesses at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the assassination.

If Helms’s ally, the SAVAK, had been chosen to participate in the assassination, then knowledge of this covert operation—killing Kennedy—which was planned for June 4 following Sen. Robert Kennedy’s victory speech, may have been secretly reverberating within the spy community. Clearly, Khaiber Khan wanted to see Kennedy win. Khan knew that Kennedy could help Iran initiate a change in its repressive government. He also knew that a win would be politically advantageous for him. He could perhaps regain some of the power he once wielded in his glory days. But, most importantly, Khan may well have chosen to volunteer at the Wilshire Boulevard campaign headquarters because he suspected that someone was plotting an attempt on Kennedy’s life, and he intended to find out who.

The questions surrounding Ellenor Severson and Larry Strick’s statements regarding Khan, and Sirhan’s alleged comment, “I’m with him,” remain unanswered. But, given Sirhan’s conditioning and its influence on him during these “sightings,” it is not difficult to picture Sirhan following a command that implicated him with Khaiber Khan. Such a scenario would have constituted a plot within a plot. While the handlers of Sirhan had targeted Robert Kennedy, they may also have seen Khan as an equally significant adversary due to his anti-Shah activities. Linking Khan to the assassination plot could terminate his intelligence career, and at the same time provide additional cover for the actual perpetrators. In addition, by sowing a posthypnotic suggestion whereby Sirhan felt that he was one of Khan’s recruits, Sirhan’s programmers would advance their efforts to further mislead investigators.

Khan has claimed he did not attend Kennedy’s victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel following the primary election.¹²⁹¹ Neither the FBI nor LAPD questioned him as to where he was the night of the assassination.¹²⁹²

While the FBI accepted the statements of witnesses Severson, Strick, and Khan, the LAPD, on the other hand, would accept none of them. LAPD rejected Khan’s claims of sighting Sirhan based on the fact that he seemed “unsure.”¹²⁹³ According to the LAPD, witness Larry Strick retracted his statements after being unable to identify a photo of Sirhan. This was strange, since Strick had identified the FBI’s photos of Sirhan, and he had called his colleague Ellenor Severson after identifying Sirhan in a TV news report.¹²⁹⁴ As for Severson’s testimony, LAPD ignored it as if she did not even exist.¹²⁹⁵ The authorities also elected not to pursue further detail on the background of Khaiber Khan.¹²⁹⁶

The same day that Sirhan was seen at the RFK headquarters, Sunday, June 2, 1968, Robert Kennedy was spending some much-earned time off with his family at a strawberry festival in Garden Grove. Afterwards, the family decided to drop in at Disneyland, not far from there, where the children wanted to ride through “The Pirates of the Caribbean.”¹²⁹⁷

Returning to downtown Los Angeles that evening, Kennedy was late for a scheduled speech at a brief rally at the Coconut Grove, a night club in the Ambassador Hotel. As it turned out, several witnesses had seen Sirhan awaiting his arrival, according to LAPD Chief of Detectives Robert Houghton. Susan Redding and her husband reported that they saw Sirhan, standing “sullen and silent,” along with a young woman. Another witness, Bert Blume, a Kennedy For Youth member who knew Sirhan from the health food store, recognized Sirhan in the lobby.¹²⁹⁸ Sirhan and the woman apparently left before Kennedy’s arrival.

California voters at this point—just two days away from the decisive presidential primary election—were inundated with news coverage of the race. On many substantive issues, the leading candidates found common ground. However, the way they approached the voters and their campaign styles differed greatly, as their public appearances would attest. Gene McCarthy carried out his campaign primarily through radio and TV interviews. This format was most efficacious for displaying his professorial qualities. Sitting at a large microphone in a quiet studio he expounded on his political philosophy in a serious and thoughtful manner. Bobby Kennedy, on the other hand, campaigned outside where he greeted crowds of supporters face-to-face.

Kennedy crisscrossed California by plane, carrying out a relentless schedule of rallies, speeches, and handshaking. Whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, the young, and the old turned out by the thousand to touch him—in San Francisco, Long Beach, Watts, San Diego, and Los Angeles.¹²⁹⁹ At nearly every key stop, Mexican-Americans, with hope in their faces, waved signs that read VIVA KENNEDY. A bond existed between Kennedy and minorities and the poor, and from it sprang an amazing outpouring of affection.¹³⁰⁰

At a rally across San Francisco Bay in West Oakland, Kennedy’s car was stopped in traffic while leaving the event. According to the Rev. Hector Lopez and other witnesses, a fascinating thing happened after the rally. Many of those who had been “raising all the hell,” including Black Panthers, suddenly acted as guards clearing people from the car, so Kennedy could get through, parting the masses and allowing the candidate to move on.¹³⁰¹

On Monday, June 3, 1968, the last day of the California campaign, Bobby collapsed while speaking at a convention center in San Diego.¹³⁰² Exhaustion had set in. He was quickly revived and brought back to LA to rest while awaiting the outcome of the following day’s vote.

Campaign strategists for both Kennedy and McCarthy knew heading into California that the race would be too close to call. The strategists planning Bobby Kennedy’s assassination knew this, as well.