Chapter 10

Robert Kennedy, the second chance

November 29th 1963, Bill Walton, a close friend of the Kennedy family, went to Moscow and handed to Georgi Bolshakov (the agent who had already carried communications between Khrushchev and Kennedy) a message for Khrushchev from Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy; according to the note, found in the Soviet archives in the 90s by Alexandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali (One Hell of a Gamble, 1998), they wanted to inform the Soviet Premier that they believed John Kennedy had been “the victim of a right-wing conspiracy”. Furthermore, “Walton, and presumably Kennedy, wanted Khrushchev to know that only RFK could implement John Kennedy’s vision and that the cooling that might occur in U.S.-Soviet relations because of Johnson would not last forever”.

Ostensibly ignored overnight by Hoover and Johnson, despite still serving as Attorney General, Robert Kennedy would be without resource against the forces that killed his brother, not to mention being monitored closely. Opting for political survival, he refused to testify before the Warren Commission and stated that he did not intend to read the report, but instead accepted to sign a letter stating: “I would like to state definitely that I know of no credible evidence to support the allegations that the assassination of President Kennedy was caused by a domestic or foreign conspiracy”. To those close friends who criticized him, Robert replied (in this case to Dick Goodwin in July 1966): “there’s nothing I can do about it. Not now”; and further stating: “If the American people knew the truth about Dallas, there would be blood in the streets”.3 Robert Kennedy had planned to run for the American Presidency in 1972, but two things rushed his decision to run in 1968: first, Johnson’s renunciation of a second term due to his unpopularity, and secondly, the opening of Jim Garrison's investigation in 1967. When talks of the investigation began, Kennedy had one of his closest advisors, Frank Mankievitch to monitor the developments: “I want you to look into this, read everything you can, so if it gets to a point where I can do something about this, you can tell me what I need to know”. He confided to his friend William Attwood, then editor of Look magazine, that he, like Garrison, suspected a conspiracy, “but I can’t do anything until we get control of the White House”. He refrained from openly supporting Garrison, believing that since the outcome of the investigation was uncertain, it could jeopardize his plans to reopen the case later, and furthermore weaken his chances of election, since his outright support could construe his motivation for the Presidency as nothing other than a family-oriented retributive agenda. Instead, he focused his campaign around the struggle against poverty and criticism of the Vietnam War: “Which of these brave young men dying in the rice paddies of Vietnam might have written a symphony? Which of them might have written a beautiful poem or might have cured cancer? Which of them might have played in the World Series or given us the gift of laughter from a stage, or helped build a bridge or a university? Which of them might have taught a small child to read? It is our responsibility to let those men live”.

April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King was killed in circumstances not unlike those of the late JFK, in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The name, portrait and profile of the alleged killer were broadcast almost instantly. James Earl Ray, the mentally deficient offender, was handled by some unidentified ‘Raoul’, who had arranged for his housing in a room overlooking King’s balcony, and for a gun to be found under his window with his fingerprints on it. The court-appointed lawyer to defend Ray had no trouble in convincing him to plead guilty in hopes of receiving mercy from the jury. Nobody paid any attention when he recanted three days later; he maintained his innocence until his death in 1998. Reverend King had embarrassed Johnson’s government through his stance against the Vietnam War, and further through his project to gather “a multiracial army of the poor” in his Poor People's Campaign that would march on Washington and set camp before the Capitol until Congress signed a Declaration of the Human Rights of the Poor.

Robert Kennedy was assassinated two months later in Los Angeles on June 6th, 1968, just after the announcement of the results of the California primaries that made him the favorite for the Democratic nomination. Inscribed on his tomb in Arlington Cemetery is an excerpt from his speech at the University of Cape Town in June 1966, where he challenged the moral legitimacy of the apartheid: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance”.

Once Robert Kennedy was eliminated from the Presidential race, the victory came to the Republican Richard Nixon, against Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The torch of political antimilitarism was taken up by George McGovern, who in May 1963, pleaded for the open recognition of the Cuban revolution, in hopes of giving priority to the fight against poverty in Latin America. McGovern ran for office in 1972 on a program advocating withdrawal from Vietnam; he found himself preliminarily ahead in the primaries over Henry Scoop Jackson, who took the lead of the right wing of the Democratic party, in favor of a more aggressive involvement in Vietnam. McGovern is severely beaten by Nixon, and the political movement he represented, never recovered in American Presidential politics.

Robert Kennedy was shot by a young Palestinian man described by some witnesses as being in a trance. Although he was also convinced to plead guilty by his court-appointed lawyer, Sirhan Sirhan has continued to claim for 45 years that he has never had recollection of his act: “I have never been able to remember what happened in that place at that time. And I have not been able to remember many things and incidents which took place in the weeks leading up to the shooting”. Psychiatric experts and lie detector results confirm his amnesia. Sirhan believes he was drugged and/or hypnotized. In addition, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the coroner who conducted the autopsy of Robert Kennedy, concluded (and confirmed in his memoirs in 1983) that the fatal bullet was fired a few inches behind the right ear of Kennedy, following an upward angle. However, all the witnesses confirmed that Robert had never turned his back on Sirhan and that Sirhan was several meters from his target when he fired. Finally, ballistics reports found evidence of twelve bullets, while Sirhan’s gun contained only eight. Strong suspicion falls upon Thane Eugene Cesar, a bodyguard hired for the evening, who was set behind Kennedy at the time of shooting, whom witnesses saw with his pistol drawn. Cesar did not conceal his hatred for the Kennedys, who according to him, had “sold the country down the road … to the commies”.
The mystery of Sirhan was partially clarified with the findings of the Church Committee and the declassification of over 18,000 pages of CIA documents since the 70s; detailing extensive mind control programs such as Bluebird or Artichoke in 1950-51, that were later rolled over into the larger MKULTRA (for Mind Kontrolle ultra-secret) project in 1953 – a project maintained as highly secretive even within the CIA. According to the documents, experiments of mental manipulation were conducted on hundreds of unknowing subjects using drugs — including heroin, opium, mescaline and the recently developed LSD — hypnosis, electroshock and permanent electrodes in the brain. During the Korean War, the justification for Project MKULTRA was the need to unravel the mystery of “brainwashing” allegedly practiced by the Communists, and thereby obtain a “a thorough knowledge of the enemy’s theoretical potential, thus enabling us to defend ourselves against a foe who might not be as restrained in the use of these techniques as we are”. In other words, beat the (imaginary) devil at his own game, allowing the end to justify the means. On prisoners in Germany, Japan, Korea, and later in Vietnam, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and his associates experimented with forceful interrogation techniques combining drugs, hypnosis, electroshock, together with traditional torture methods such as sleep deprivation. At home, the CIA hired secret collaborators in 3 prisons, 12 hospitals, and 44 universities, where inmates, patients, and students served as guinea pigs. Sidney Gottlieb encouraged doctor Ewen Cameron, a renowned psychiatrist (president of the American Psychiatric Association) working at his Montreal clinic, to apply on unknowing patients brutal treatments designed to thoroughly erase and reprogram their personality.

A document dated May 4th, 1951 directed at Bluebird teams, puts forth the challenge: “Can a man be made to commit acts useful to us under post-hypnotic suggestion?” Another May 1951 memorandum chillingly advances the question: “Can a person under hypnosis be forced to commit murder?” A document from May 5th, 1955 outlines the goal of the Chemical Division of the Technical Services Staff of the CIA: “[to discover] materials and methods” allowing to “alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced”; and, to “produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use”. A document dated September 25th, 1951 described a successful experiment, in which a female subject was programmed to enter into a hypnotic state when hearing a code word, and, in that state, set a bomb, placing it according to instructions. Another declassified CIA document dated the 7th of January 1953 describes the experimental creation of multiple personalities in two 19-year old girls: “These subjects have clearly demonstrated that they can pass from a fully awake state to a deep hypnotic state by telephone, by receiving written matter, or by the use of code, signal, or words, and that control of those hypnotized can be passed from one individual to another without great difficulty.” Another document dated February 10th 1954, describes an experiment regarding the creation of unsuspecting assassins: a young lady, who had previously expressed a fear of firearms was programmed under hypnosis to “pick up a pistol and fire it at Miss [deleted]. She was instructed that her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to ‘kill' [deleted]. Miss [deleted] carried out these suggestions including firing the (unloaded) gun at [deleted], and then proceeded to fall into a deep sleep. After proper suggestions were made, both were awakened. Miss [deleted] expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened."

"Is everyone alright?" were Bobby's last words. 

Robert Kennedy supported the Poor People’s Campaign of Martin Luther King Jr., and took the same stance against the Vietnam War. On the 4th of April 1968, he was on his way to poor neighborhood of Indianapolis when he heard of King’s death, and announced it to a mostly Black crowd.

Sirhan Sirhan's testimony in 2011

Jack and Bobby in 1957, during a session of the Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management (Rackets Committee). With 253 investigations between 1957 and 1960, and 138 convictions, this Senate committee, created on the initiative of Robert, revealed the scale of mafia networks that Hoover persisted in denying.

Robert Kennedy behaved with total inconsequence while campaigning. “Kennedys don’t need bodyguards”, he used to answer to his friend’s reproach. “Living every day is like Russian roulette”.