WHO KILLED ROBERT KENNEDY?

BY MEL AYTON

(www.melayton.co.uk)

 

For most Americans over 45 the images are still vivid - Robert Kennedy shaking hands with kitchen staff of the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel;  Kennedy lying in a pool of his own blood, rosary beads pushed into his hands by a hotel worker;  Kennedy’s unofficial bodyguards and friends grabbing the young Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, as he rapidly fired off his pistol shots before he could be subdued; the prostrate bodies of the other victims, wounded by Sirhan’s indiscriminate shooting spree; the nation once again mourning the loss of another American hero dead before his time.

What Robert Kennedy might have done as president is one of history’s great unanswered questions.His death also prompted many to ask - why was he murdered?

Although the grief over Robert Kennedy’s death has subsided over the years the suspicious circumstances about the assassination have grown. Opinion polls over the past 35 years have shown that a majority of Americans believe his murder was part of a larger conspiracy. The list of culprits has grown as the years have passed, including organised crime, who wanted Kennedy dead because of his crack-down on the mob, the military-industrial complex, who feared Robert Kennedy would put an end to the war in Vietnam, rogue elements of the CIA bent on revenge for the Kennedy brothers’ abandonment of the Bay of Pigs exiles during their 1961 invasion of Cuba, Western ranchers upset with Robert Kennedy’s support for migrant farm workers, the KKK and the American Nazi party, upset with Kennedy’s support for Civil Rights and  a Greek shipping magnet who wanted to rid himself of  his ‘nemesis’.

The issue of conspiracy began on the night when Robert Kennedy was shot and witnesses recalled seeing a girl in a ‘polka-dot dress’who cried out ‘We shot him’. Conspiracy advocates were also critical of the trial lawyers who failed to move the jury, the psychiatrists for their conflicting conclusions and the Los Angeles Police for not pursuing possible links between Sirhan and organised crime,  Sirhan and the right-wing,  Sirhan and the left-wing and Sirhan and the terrorist organisation, Al Fatah.

Robert Blair Kaiser, the author of the first book to proclaim conspiracy, advanced two possibilities. The first, initially proposed by novelist Truman Capote, posited Sirhan had been an unwitting co-conspirator, hypnotised by others, like Richard Condon’s “Manchurian Candidate”. There was no hard evidence to support this theory. The second was that Sirhan, with his study of the occult, managed to hypnotise himself into killing Kennedy.

Several legislative and judicial panels from the early 70’s to the mid-80’s found serious problems with the original investigation, which had been carried out by the SUS (Special Unit Senator), a Los Angeles Police team of detectives and aided by FBI investigators. However, not all leads were followed, not all avenues pursued..Critics presented witnesses who had allegedly observed a second gunman, and they pointed to anomalies in the ballistics evidence. The critics sufficiently established doubt about Sirhan’s guilt and a growing legion of supporters, including RFK aides, joined in the chorus of disapproval at the way the case had been investigated. The LAPD and District Attorney’s Office attempted to frustrate these challenges to the official version of the shooting by secrecy restrictions, bureaucratic manouevers, silence and counterattack. The way the LAPD acted did nothing except fuel a sense of injustice which in turn eroded public trust.

There were definite disconcerting inconsistencies in testimony and evidence.A 1975 judicially appointed panel found bullet markings that were different from the markings on Sirhan’s gun. Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles coroner who autopsied Robert Kennedy’s body, concluded with certainty that Kennedy’s mortal wound in the head was made by a shot which came from behind the Senator at a point only a few inches away, point blank range. Yet witnesses said that Sirhan had been in front of Kennedy and was not closer than a few feet. These glaring inconsistencies led many to believe there had been a second gunman positioned behind Kennedy.

The principal discrepancy in the investigation turned on the number of shots fired. Sirhan’s .22 caliber revolver held eight bullets and all of these were discharged in a few moments of pandemonium. Three hit Kennedy, one fatally. The remainder struck other members of the entourage, and a couple of shots hit the ceiling, one lost in the ceiling interspace. But the photographs of the crime scene, and the recollections of some of the police officers involved in the investigation purportedly identified two more bullets lodged in the wooden frame of the pantry’s swinging doors. And if there were two more bullets than Sirhan’s pistol could possibly have fired, then another gun must have been involved - and another killer. Critics questioned why the doorframes and other physical evidence had been destroyed by the LAPD.

However, in 1995 investigative reporter Dan Moldea, a former conspiracy advocate, published the results of his investigation into the murder of Robert Kennedy in “The Killing Of Robert Kennedy - An Investigation into Motive, Means and Opportunity” (1995).  Moldea pored over the mountain of evidence in the case. He studied the forensic and ballistic reports and interviewed scores of witnesses, including many of the police officers involved who had never been interviewed previously. What he found suggested a botched investigation involving the mishandling of physical evidence in the case, the failure to correctly interview some witnesses, the premature (but non-sinister) destruction of key pieces of physical evidence and the lack of proper procedures in securing and investigating the crime scene. Moldea successfully addressed the issues of alleged bullet holes in door frames (too small to be made by bullets) and the number of shots fired (8, not 10 as conspiracy advocates allege).

Earlier efforts to clear up the RFK mysteries pointed to Thane Eugene Cesar as a second gunman. He was a part-time security guard who carried the only other pistol in the pantry that night. But he was never a serious suspect. Moldea tracked him down and eventually persuaded him to take an exhonerating polygraph. Moldea’s research was truly a tour de force clearing up the many inconsistencies in the evidence and providing sufficient answers to establish what will likely be the best understanding of what actually happened in the Ambassador kitchen pantry on the night of June 5^th, 1968.

“The Killing Of Robert Kennedy” soon became the definitive book on the subject as the national media proclaimed Moldea had finally provided answers to the many questions and mysteries which had plagued government investigations and private researchers for the past three decades. However, Moldea’s book did not satisfy the critics and internet  sights flowered as writers and researchers criticised his work, pointing out supposed flaws in his research. RFK researcher and author Philip Melanson rightly criticised Moldea for not competently inquiring into the allegations that Sirhan had been hypnotically manipulated.  Moldea’s conclusions were also met with ridicule by  Sirhan Sirhan’s attorney, Larry Teeter, a committed JFK conspiracy advocate, and Sirhan family friend Lynn Mangan, who have been attempting to secure a new trial for the convicted assassin. In addition, Sirhan retracted his many statements admitting guilt, said he did not kill Robert Kennedy and that he had been “hypno-programmed” by conspirators. According to Teeter the RFK assassination was a ‘sequel’ to the JFK murder .

But it was the publication of  four books  that decisively placed the assassination back on the agenda of unsolved crimes -  Philip Melanson and William Klaber’s “Shadow Play - The Untold Story of the Robert F Kennedy Assassination” (1997), James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease’s “The Assassinations - Probe magazine on JFK,MLK, RFK and Malcolm X” (2003), ex-FBI agent William Turner’s “Rearview Mirror- Looking Back At The FBI, The CIA and Other Tails” (2001) and  Peter Evans’ “Nemesis” (2004).

However, the conspiracy advocates’ claims to overturn Dan Moldea’s conclusions about the guilt of Sirhan remain speculative at best. Moldea’s research  about the ballistics evidence and his conclusions that no second gunman participated in the assassination    have never been successfully challenged.

Amongst conspiracy advocates, only Peter Evans supported the argument that Sirhan actually fired the gun that killed Kennedy. Yet his allegations that Aristotle Onassis ordered  the assassination is flawed. Evans alleged that Sirhan had been ordered to kill RFK by PLO official Mahmoud Hamshari. He claims to have unearthed evidence that Aristotle Onassis had given Hamshari money to direct his PLO terrorists away from his Olympic Airways airlines at a time when planes were being hijacked and that some of the money was used to hire Sirhan to kill RFK. Evans claimed that Onassis was aware of the plot and, indeed, wanted RFK eliminated so the New York Senator would not stand in the way of his marrying JFK’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy. Evans’ supports the ‘hypnotised assassin theory’. However, he provides no evidence whatsoever that Hamshari, who was assassinated by Israeli Intelligence agents in 1973, gave the murder contract to Sirhan.

 

In fact there are a number of inconsistencies in Evans’ theory. Although the author accepts the statements made by Onassis’ friends and relatives that the shipping tycoon admitted he had been responsible for RFK’s murder, he contradicts himself by quoting close Onassis aides as having had trouble sorting out their bosses’ “exaggerations, half-truths and lies”. Evans is also unable to establish whether or not Robert Kennedy had had an affair with his brother’s widow. Throughout the book he accepts this as a given but he told news reporters that it was only ‘entirely possible’. In fact, there is no credible evidence to support the allegation.

 

Central to Evans’ thesis are entries in Sirhan’s notebooks which purportedly connected Aristotle Onassis to the assassin. Evans alleges Sirhan’s notebooks make reference to his son Alexander’s girlfriend Fiona who Onassis detested and Stavros Niarchos, his shipping rival. Evans wrote: “On the first page, Sirhan had written at the center of a roundel, amid Arabic writing, the single name, FIONA.And on another page: 2 NIARCHOS! On a third page, between the lines ‘One hundred thousand dollars and Dollars – One Hundreds’, Sirhan had written in Arabic: ‘They should be killed’.And next to that, the number: THREE.….Fiona, Niarchos and Kennedy: The names were startling by virtue of their very juxtaposition. But, as a lawyer, Georgakis (Onassis aide) was always sceptical: he did not trust facts that were startling, and circumstantial evidence made him uncomfortable. But three names and a sum of money written in a killer’s notebook – he had seen far flimsier evidence than that get a conviction in a court of law.”

 

However, Evans’ juxtaposition of names is misleading. Sirhan had placed the name FIONA in a list of racehorse names – Fiona, Jet-Spec, Kings Abbey and Prince Khaled. The Arabic script consists of one sentence “He should be killed” (not “They should be killed”) and does not refer to either ‘Niarkos’ or ‘Fiona’. The diary entry ‘Niarkos’ remains unexplained, as do many other entries in Sirhan’s notebooks, but there is no indication it refers to anyone on a ‘Sirhan Death List’. The words in Sirhan’s notebooks were the result of simple ‘stream-of-consciousness’ ramblings he learned from Rosicrucian literature as ways to improve his life. The notebooks are filled with names of people Sirhan knew – Bert Altfillisch, Peggy Osterkamp and Gwen Gum for example, and people he didn’t know like Garner Ted Armstrong. The entries  which refer to ‘One Hundred Thousand Dollars’ were simply Sirhan’s obsessions about wealth and appear a number of times in the notebooks.

 

The original police and FBI investigators could find no connection between Sirhan and any PLO ‘contact’. And Evans’ allegations that the PLO had been hijacking airplanes prior to Kennedy’s assassination are spurious. The PLO did not begin to use the terrorist tactic of  hijacking  airplanes until July of 1968, one month after RFK’s murder. There is also no evidence that Sirhan had been paid to carry out the murder and no money transaction has surfaced that  would indicate that Sirhan or his brothers received large sums of money.

 

Central to Evans’ thesis was the implication that Sirhan had spent a three month period before the assassination being trained by terrorists or undergoing hypnotic indoctrination. Evans was wrong in stating Sirhan’s movements were unaccounted for, or ‘a blanket of white fog’ as he put it. Evans quotes SUS police officer, Sergeant Jordan, who told him that SUS could not account for Sirhan’s movements in the ‘three month’ period before the assassination. However, Sirhan’s movements in the months prior to the assassination leave no unaccountable period when the assassin could have left the country to travel to the Middle East for ‘terrorist training’. On March 7^th Sirhan left his job at a Pasadena health food store. Following Martin Luther King’s assassination he discussed the murder with Alvin Clark, a Pasadena garbage collector. This would have to be after 4^th April 1968 – which leaves only 8 weeks unaccounted for before he killed Kennedy. However, Walter Crowe, a friend, met Sirhan in Pasadena on the night of May 2nd 1968 when they discussed politics. The last time he saw Sirhan was on the Pasadena college campus on May 23^rd 1968.He was in Denny’s restaurant when Sirhan entered with a group of friends. This leaves only a two week period not accounted for. But Sirhan refers to local newspaper and local radio reports throughout the month of   May which  he could not have accessed if he had been out of the country. Besides, Sirhan was living at 696 E. Howard Street, Pasadena. Family and friends have never suggested he was missing during this period.

 

Evans’ scenario is fundamentally implausible. How could plotters, for example, be sure that Sirhan would not suddenly ‘remember’ his contacts, following his arrest, turned ‘state’s evidence’ and kept in a ‘safe house’ by the District Attorney? And if the plotters believed Sirhan would be killed by Kennedy’s security it had to have been the least thought-out plot conceivable.

 

Furthermore, had Sirhan suddenly ‘remembered’ he would not have thrown away the chance to save his own life by telling investigators of his ‘involvement’ with Hamshari. His lawyers could also have built a strong case around the ‘paid assassin’ theory arguing against the imposition of the death penalty which was eventually handed down.

 

Intriguing as Evans’ thesis is, there is no credible evidence that Sirhan had been directed to kill Kennedy by the PLO - apart from hearsay and second-hand accounts by a number of individuals who were close to Onassis. The record indicates that Sirhan was indeed motivated by political considerations but he was an  ‘unaffiliated terrorist’ rather than someone who had plotted with a terrorist group.

 

Although Moldea had successfully addressed the issue of  Sirhan’s guilt in shooting Kennedy  the issue of motive and the suspicions that Sirhan had been hypnotised remained problematic. Moldea believed Sirhan had been acting out his crime for personal reasons, that the assassin’s claims to have acted in response to America’s policy on the Middle East was merely an excuse. Conspiracy writers maintained that Sirhan had no motive at all as they believed he did not kill Kennedy or if he fired shots he had acted as a ‘patsy’.

Conspiracy advocates point to Sirhan’s staring at a teletype machine as evidence that he had been ‘hypnotised’. Yet Sirhan  frequently became entranced by things around him. This was part of his make-up. Sirhan told his police interrogators, “…everything…life itself is a challenge…when you watch a barber, sir, I just stand and watch that barber for hours. I…from the time I’m watching him I want to be nothing but a barber. You know, if I’m watching a dentist, boy, he fascinates me, and I want to be him. I was talking to (LAPD officer) Frank here a while ago.The way he talked, you know…I was very fascinated and, you know, I was sort of superimposing myself in his position for…temporarily.” In fact, this would not be the first time Sirhan had experienced ‘trance-like states’. He experienced them as a boy growing up in Jerusalem, according to his mother.

 

A majority of hypnosis and mind-control experts within the scientific community dismiss the notion that subjects can be hypnotised to commit murder.They maintain that such a possibility of programming an unwitting and unwilling subject is not possible. Hypnosis expert Dr Eyzel Cardena of the Society For Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis told this writer, “Most experts in hypnosis opine that the scenario you describe (i.e. a hypnotically-programmed Sirhan) is implausible.”  UK hypnosis expert Dr Wagstaff   believes that, “….Controlled  empirical research seems fairly overwhelming to support the view that hypnosis does not have some special coercive power over and above a comaparable situation in which people feel motivated or pressured to perform anti-social actions…..”. Furthermore, there would be no guarantee of success for a ‘robotic assassin’; it is an erratic tool.A hypnotist can plant a suggestion in the subject’s mind and ask him to forget that suggestion but there is no foolproof way of preventing another hypnotist coming along and recovering that memory.

There is also evidence that Sirhan had known of  how ‘diminished capacity’ can be used to excuse acts of murder. Following his arrest Sirhan had asked Officer Frank about the Boston Strangler case and of how Albert DeSalvo had committed the crimes because he had  suffered  a  deprived childhood. Sirhan responded, “…but,  correct me if I’m mistaken, is it when…the man is self-admitting? He admits that he’s, wasn’t trying, but they won’t believe him? Is this related to it?” Robert Blair Kaiser, who came to know Sirhan better than any of the defense lawyers, believed Sirhan knew that the Boston Strangler committed his crimes in a “disassociated state”.

Additionally, there is evidence, not presented at the trial, which proves that Sirhan had been feigning amnesia. Sirhan has always proclaimed that he could not remember writing in his notebooks, “RFK must die” nor could he remember shooting Kennedy. To disprove this the prosecutors at Sirhan’s trial brought in a handwriting expert who disputed the notion that Sirhan’s notebook entries were written in a ‘trance’. The FBI concluded that Sirhan had written the entries ‘haphazardly, jumping around the pages in the notebook’ and were not written under the influence of a ‘hypnotic trance’. It was also clear to lawyer ACLU lawyer AL Wirin that Sirhan had remembered his notebooks contained incriminating evidence. Sirhan had asked Wirin to tell his mother to clean up his room.Wirin believed it was requested in the hope that his mother would see the notebook entries and  then destroy them.

There is also compelling evidence that from the start Sirhan had realised what he had done. He confessed to ACLU lawyer Abraham Lincoln Wirin that he “…did it, I shot him”. And he also told defence investigator Michael McCowan that he remembered shooting Kennedy.

Michael McCowan was a private detective who assisted Sirhan lawyers. In the pre-trial period McCowan had been talking to Sirhan about the shooting. Sirhan had responded to a question asked by McCowan. McCowan had been startled to hear how Sirhan’s eyes had met Kennedy’s in the moment just before he shot him and before Kennedy had fully turned to his left at the time he was shaking hands with the kitchen staff. McCowan asked Sirhan, “Then why, Sirhan, didn’t you shoot him between the eyes?”  Without hesitating, Sirhan replied, “Because that son-of-a-bitch turned his head at the last second”.

McCowan’s story is also supported by another telling incident which was reported in Robert Kaiser’s book, “RFK Must Die” published in 1970. During Sirhan’s trial, hotel workers Jesus Perez and Martin Patrusky both said Sirhan had approached them to ask if Robert Kennedy was coming through the pantry following his speech. Sirhan had contended he did not remember anything after he had collected his gun from his car. Yet, following the testimonies of the hotel workers, Sirhan had told Michael McCowan, who was seated next to him, that he had not approached either witness. When McCowan reminded Sirhan that he supposedly remembered nothing of this period before the crime, Sirhan “…nodded and gulped”.

There is also supportive evidence  which shows that Sirhan had lied about his memory loss. In a conversation with defense investigator and author Robert Blair Kaiser, Sirhan had been telling him how he thought Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray had acted as cowards in shooting their victims from behind. Kaiser asked Sirhan if his act was less cowardly. Sirhan responded, “Hey, when you shoot a man in the back? There you go! At least Kennedy saw me.” Sirhan quickly and disingenuously added, “I think, I don’t know.”  At the trial Sirhan’s lawyer, Grant Cooper asked the accused assassin , “It appears in your notebook what might appear to be goals (RFK Must Die), did you have them in mind when you wrote them down?”. Sirhan replied, “Yes, sir, I did in reference to the assassination of Robert Kennedy….(only) for the time it was written….”.

If  Sirhan had  been lying then how was the  ‘hypnotic defense’ and Sirhan’s ‘amnesia defense’ constructed in the first place?

Sirhan claimed his lawyers had first put forward the idea that he had been in a ‘hypnotic trance-like’ state when he shot Kennedy. But there is evidence that Sirhan had foreknowledge of ‘amnesiac states’ before he committed the murder. Sirhan had read Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood”, a book about the multiple murders of a Kansas farmer, his wife and two teenage children. The murders were committed by Perry Smith and Richard Hickock in 1959 and Capote’s book of the murder, manhunt , trial and executions of the murderers was published in 1965. Sirhan identified with the short and stocky Perry Smith.  He felt great empathy for Smith. Smith, a small statured man who had suffered a deprived childhood, had bouts of shivering and trance-like states and he believed in mysticism and fate. According to Capote, Perry Smith, “….had  many methods of passing (time)….among them, MIRROR GAZING…EVERY TIME (HE SAW) A MIRROR (HE WOULD) GO INTO A TRANCE”  (emphasis added) At the conclusion of the book Capote quoted the opinions of leading psychiatrists Drs Joseph Satten, Karl Menninger, Irwin Rosen and Martin Mayman, about why people like Smith and Hickock committed such crimes and what their mental states were like during the commission of the murders.The psychiatrists attempted to assess the criminal responsibility of  a number of murderers -  “….murderers who seem rational, coherent and controlled and yet whose homicidal acts have a bizarre, apparently senseless qualities….”.

In their examinations the psychiatrists found a number of similarities, including the fact that the men who they studied, “…were puzzled as to why they killed their victims, who were relatively unknown to them, and in each instance the murderer appears to have lapsed into a DREAMLIKE DISSASSOCIATIVE TRANCE (Emphasis added) from which he awakened to suddenly discover himself assaulting the victim…..Two of the men reported severe dissassociative trancelike states during which violent and bizarre behaviour was seen, while the other two reported less severe and perhaps less well-organised, AMNESIAC EPISODES (emphasis added)….”. It is therefore likely Sirhan had used his knowledge of how murderers behave to construct a possible ‘diminished capacity’ defense.

Sirhan may have been mentally unstable and angry at a society that had relegated him to the bottom of the heap, as Dan Moldea concludes. But there is sufficient evidence, originating years before the shooting, that Sirhan clearly saw himself, like today’s suicide bombers, as an Arab hero. The PLO and most Palestinians certainly judged him this way. And Sirhan’s lack of remorse is entirely in keeping with the terrorist way of rationalising political murder.

Sirhan and his brothers could not, or would not, assimilate into American society. They abhorred US culture, disliked the mores of the American people and, most importantly, hated the support Americans gave to the state of Israel. The family felt they were part of a minority group ‘alienated’ and ‘misunderstood’ within the larger community.

Sirhan  told Robert Kaiser of how Arabs were treat like second-class citizens in the United States, “Just because we’re Arabs in this country,” he said, “we have no power, no prestige, no influence, no money – nothing really.We can be treated like dogs, like ants. Had it not been for me…Munir would be out there in one of those (Palestinian refugee) camps. He would have been deported (for having a criminal conviction)….The whole world knows ‘Sirhan’ now. If they had deported his younger brother from America that would show an injustice on the part of America…But even without me, what’s all the difference? Munir was just a good-for-nothing Aye-rab.”

Would Sirhan have killed Robert Kennedy had there been peace between Arabs and Jews? It is possible. Sirhan fit the profile of an American assassin bent on striking out at a country he felt had betrayed him. He was a disillusioned man who wanted to attain ‘fame’ in the classical tradition of American assassins. However, it was Sirhan’s political motives that gave him pride, self-esteem but also a deep-rooted anger. It was these sentiments that spurred him to act.

As most Americans were unaware of the Palestinian issue very few journalists examined Sirhan’s background as a Palestinian Arab in an attempt to explain the tragedy. Instead, commentators wrote Sirhan off as yet another ‘misfit’ with a gun who stalks and then murders a leading public official with no apparent motive except his own demons.

In time, Sirhan  defenders  found it difficult to accept that this was a murder which had at its roots a political motive. In fact it was necessary to disprove a political motive if their thesis of a ‘controlled’ assassin was to have any credibility.

Sirhan’s self-confessed motive was entirely consistent throughout the weeks, months and years following his act. Immediately following the shooting he cried out that he did it for his ‘country’. When asked by a police sergeant if he was ashamed of what he did he replied, “Hell, No!”.  In fact he was so proud of his act that the morning following the shooting he asked jail guards for a newspaper so he could see what had been written about him. When no news stories of the assassination appeared due to press deadlines, he became upset. His insistence that his crime was political was followed up with repeated protestations that no other motive existed except a love for his people. “June 5^th stood out for me…more than my own birth date!”, he said, “I felt Robert Kennedy was coinciding his own appeal for votes with the anniversary of the (Six Day) war.”  From numerous statements he made to his lawyers and family it is clear he believed he had been adventurous, daring and brave – the qualities Arabs most admire.

However, in the hours and days following the shooting he must have realised the shame he had brought upon his mother. How then could he accept guilt as a political assassin and at the same time escape culpability? The answer was to feign amnesia, whilst at the same time maintaining that he ‘must have shot Kennedy’. It held out some hope that his conviction might someday be overturned but it also guaranteed him praise from his fellow Arabs and Palestinians.

Sirhan was an immigrant in America who did not have full citizenship. He had been constantly seeking ‘identity’ – a means to give some meaning to a life that was increasingly losing hope. Because Sirhan identified with the Palestinian cause anything that humiliated Arabs was a personal insult to him and damaged his self-esteem. His sense of self began to rest on his identity as a Palestinian Arab. And he supported the Arab cause believing he was tied to it by his bloodline.

The Palestinian/Arab cause is the sine que non  of the assassination and this thesis was supported by the late Edward Said. As a poor working class immigrant Sirhan identified with his downtrodden people living as refugees in Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. The period 1967-68, the year following the Six Day War, became a crucial time in Sirhan’s life because it was the time when Israel became dominant in the region having successfully defended itself against Arab aggression. Having failed to eject the Jews from Israel/Palestine, Arabs throughout the world felt powerless and weak and Arab pride had been severely damaged. Their condition exaggerated Sirhan’s feelings of inadequacy even though he lived thousands of miles away from the conflict. Many ‘exiled’ Palestinians sought retribution and began to formulate plans to kill innocent civilians and hi-jack planes. Sirhan’s answer to these problems took the form of killing a major American politician who advocated support for Israel. Sirhan said, “…this momentum just took hold of me and by June 5^th 1968 (The first anniversary of the Six day War) I couldn’t control it (anger) anymore.”

In fact Sirhan could have targetted any of the leading presidential candidates that year to publicise, through a violent act, the cause of the Palesinians. Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller supported military aid to Israel and believed in the continuing American/Israeli alliance.So why did Sirhan choose RFK?

Initially, Sirhan would likely have been satisfied with any opportunity to kill a leading American politician. At one point he even had UN Ambassador Goldberg in his sights. Sirhan said he first considered killing Vice President Hubert Humphrey,  “It might not even have been just Kennedy”, Sirhan told Robert Kaiser, “ ….. Somebody who was big, tough, somebody who was – it wasn’t necessarily Kennedy – it could have been somebody else but someone who would still represent American policy that was pro-Israel. In fact, it – for example - might have been Humphrey. Because Humphrey was a person you didn’t particularly like either.”

However, in the years between 1963 and 1968 American political culture had been dominated by the idea of a ‘Kennedy Dynasty’ and myths surrounding JFK’s assassination. Year after year books, movies, television documentaries and political news stories gave a cult-like status to JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Sirhan, too, desired fame. Killing any of the other candidates would certainly have given him status throughout the Arab world. But his true target had an even greater symbolism attached to it. Sirhan would become the ‘Second Kennedy Assassin’. He knew that killing RFK would give him greater world exposure the other candidates could not provide. It was no accident that Sirhan set his sights on the candidate who was the brother of the martyred president.It was no accident that Sirhan chose the candidate who was most likely to become the next president.

One of Sirhan’s doctors said the assassin was, “…not a raving maniac.He’s got a keen sense of justice, but it is from his private world.”  However, this ‘sense of justice’ was not from Sirhan’s ‘private world’. Schorr, along with the majority of the American people had not yet understood the logic of terrorist acts. Not only was Sirhan’s act ‘logical’ but it was embraced, condoned and applauded throughout the Arab world. As Sirhan said, “(My act) was a warning to the US. You’d better listen be more cautious. Be more fair. Remember Kennedy. Remember Kennedy.”

To the Western mind terrorists are ‘deranged’ and ‘evil’. However, their acts are not the product of ‘insanity’ but possess a logic all their own. Terrorists have ‘rational’, if sometimes bizarre, motives. It is also true that many terrorists (like Al Qaeda’s Ramzi Youssef) display symptoms of a psychopathic nature – they are cold blooded and carry out their acts of terror unremorseful. But their acts are not the products of ‘delusional’ or  ‘irrational’ minds. Nor was Sirhan’s. He did indeed crave attention and success. He was depressed that society had relegated him to the bottom of the heap.He felt an allegiance and empathy with assassins of the past. And he dreamed of infamy. But without his sense of  ‘Arabness’ and without the bitterness and hatred towards Jews that had their roots in his childhood indoctrination, it is unlikely Sirhan would have assassinated Robert Kennedy. All the hatred that spewed forth from Sirhan’s gun can ultimately be traced back to three sources – Anti-Americanism, Palestinian nationalism and anti-semitism. And this may have been the first act in an international political drama that culminated in 9/11.