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Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

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Robert Kennedy

The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, a United States Senator and brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy took place shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968 following celebrations of a successful campaign in the Californian primary elections whilst seeking the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. The perpetrator was a 24-year old Jordanian immigrant called Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Kennedy as a result of Kennedy's stance towards Israel. Sirhan remains incarcerated to this day for this offence. As with the assassination of his brother, Robert Kennedy's assassination and the circumstances surrounding it have spawned a variety of conspiracy theories, particularly in relation to the existence of a supposed second gunman. Such accusations have prompted official responses and inquiries that attempted to answer the questions raised by these alternative theories.

Background

The 1968 election was held against a backdrop of social unrest in the United States. The incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson had won the election of 1964 with a landslide of the popular vote , but faced problems during this term of office involving rioting within the ghettos of major cities despite his attempts at introducing anti-poverty and anti-discrimination legislation and opposition to military action in Vietnam. Further social unrest was caused by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968, which led to rioting in 100 cities

Robert Kennedy had been appointed to the position of United States Attorney General in January 1961 and remained in this post until he resigned on September 3 1964 in order to run for election as a United States Senator. He took office on January 3, 1965.

Kennedy entered the race for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 1968 after Senator Eugene McCarthy received 42% of the vote in New Hampshire primary against the incumbent Lyndon Johnson's 49%. Following a series of electoral battles for convention delegates, Kennedy was still in second place in the race for the candidacy with 393 delegates compared to the leader Hubert Humphrey who had 561. These results are the ones following the June 4 California primary.

Assassination

Event

Four hours after the polling stations closed in California, Robert F. Kennedy claimed victory in that state's Democratic presidential primary. At approximately 12:15am PDT, Kennedy addressed his campaign supporters in the Embassy Room ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel, located in the Mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles.As he exited, accompanied by others through the kitchen exit, a 24-year-old man named Sirhan Sirhan stepped in front of the Senator and fired several times with a revolver later identified as a .22 caliber Iver-Johnson Cadet.

Hotel assistant maître d's Karl Uecker and Edward Minasian, writer George Plimpton, Olympic gold medal decathlete Rafer Johnson and professional football player Rosey Grier were among several people who helped to subdue, disarm and detain Sirhan. As Kennedy lay wounded, busboy Juan Romero cradled the Senator's head and placed a rosary in his hand. This became the iconic image of the assassination.

Kennedy had been shot once behind his right ear at a range of approximately 1 inch and bullet fragments were dispersed throughout his brain. Two other bullets entered at the rear of his right armpit, one of which exited from his chest whilst the other lodged in the back of his neck. Despite extensive neurosurgery at the Good Samaritan Hospital to remove the bullet and bone fragments from his brain, Kennedy died nearly 26 hours later at 1:44am PDT.

It was confirmed that five people other than Kennedy were wounded: William Weisel of ABC News, Paul Schrade of the United Auto Workers union, Democratic Party activist Elizabeth Evans, Ira Goldstein of the Continental News Service and Kennedy campaign volunteer Irwin Stroll.At least two other people were accidentally injured by being struck in the face by camera equipment. Although not physically wounded, singer Rosemary Clooney, a strong supporter of Kennedy, was present in the ballroom during the shooting in the pantry and suffered a nervous breakdown shortly afterward

Perpetrator

Main article: Sirhan Sirhan

Sirhan Sirhan was a Jordanian immigrant aged 24 at the time of the assassination, who was known to be strongly opposed to Zionism. A diary police found at Sirhan's home stated, "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. .... Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 1968." It has been suggested that the date of the assassination is significant, because it was the first anniversary of the first day of the Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors that began on June 5, 1967.

During his subsequent trial, Sirhan's lawyers attempted to use a defence of diminished responsibility, whilst their client attempted to confess to the crime and change his plea to guilty on several occasions. During the trial, Sirhan testified that he had killed Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought", although he has maintained since being convicted that he has no memory of the crime. The judge did not accept this confession and it was later withdrawn.

Sirhan was convicted on April 17, 1969 and was sentenced to death in a gas chamber six days later. The sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972 after the California Supreme Court, in its decision in California v. Anderson 64 Cal.2d 633, 414 P.2d 366, (Cal. 1972), invalidated all pending death sentences imposed in California prior to 1972. In 2006, he was denied parole for the 13th time and is currently confined at the California State Prison.

Media coverage

As the shooting took place, ABC News was signing off from its electoral broadcast, whilst CBS had already moved on to broadcasting late night movies and it was 21 minutes after the shots that coverage of the shooting would begin. The reporters, who had been present to report in Kennedy's win in the primary election ,ended up crowding into the kitchen where he had been shot and the only means of recording the event was by audio recording or by recording using cameras with no live transmission capability. Thus, video footage of the aftermath of the incident could not be broadcast until two hours after the incident when ABC and NBC had had time to develop their recorded films.

Reporter Andrew West of KRKD, a Mutual Broadcasting System radio affiliate in Los Angeles, captured on audio tape the sounds of the immediate aftermath of the shooting but not the actual shooting itself. Using a reel-to-reel tape recorder and attached microphone, West also provided an on-the-spot account of the struggle with Sirhan in the hotel kitchen pantry, shouting at Rafer Johnson to "Get the gun, Rafer, get the gun!" and telling others to "get ahold of thumb and break it, if you have to! Get his thumb!"

Throughout the following week, NBC devoted 55 hours to the shooting and aftermath, ABC 43 and CBS 42 with all three networks pre-empting their regular coverage and advertisements to cover the story.

Alternative theories

As with the assassination of Kennedy's brother, President John F. Kennedy in 1963, the Senator's death has been the subject of widespread analysis developed various alternative scenarios for the crime, or who argue there are serious problems with the official case.

CIA involvement theory

On November 20, 2006, the BBC's Newsnight presented research by Shane O'Sullivan alleging that several CIA officers were present on the night of the assassination. The research asserted that three of the men identified in pictures from the night of the assassination were former senior officers who had worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's main anti-Castro station based in Miami. They were JMWAVE Chief of Operations David Morales, Chief of Maritime Operations Gordon Campbell and Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations George Joannides.

The programme also asserted that Morales' former attorney Robert Walton quoted him as having said, "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." O'Sullivan reported that the CIA declined to comment on the officers in question. Morales was also allegedly known for his deep anger with the Kennedys for what he saw as their betrayal during the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

The documentary casts some doubt upon its own evidence, however, as it ultimately reveals that the two men who were previously identified in the documentary as Campbell and Joannides were in fact two now-deceased Bulova Watch Company employees, who were at the Ambassador for a company convention. Moreover, the impressively positive identifications by CIA operatives and acquaintances over time of Morales as being a man in the ballroom footage were also called into question by O'Sullivan's revelation of new, recently-discovered photographs to add to the 1959 photo used throughout most of the documentary for viewer comparison to the man in the film footage that indicate less of a resemblance between Morales and the man identified in the photograph. This led O'Sullivan to doubt that the "Morales" in the film footage at the Ambassador Hotel and the man positively identified as Morales in later photographs are the same man.

Security guard theory

Thane Eugene Cesar has often been identified by proponents of alternative theories as the most likely candidate for a second gunman in the assassination. Cesar had been employed by Ace Guard Service to protect Robert Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel, however during the day he worked as a maintenance plumber at the Lockheed Aircraft plant in Burbank, a job that required a security clearance from the Department of the Defense.

When interviewed, Cesar admitted that he pulled a gun at the scene of the shooting and eventually admitted that it was identical to the one held by Sirhan, and showed it to LAPD sergeant P. E. O'Steen on June 24, 1968. Cesar submitted years later to a polygraph examination performed by Edward Gelb, former president and executive director of the American Polygraph Association, which asserted that Cesar denied any involvement in Kennedy's assassination and the polygraph test indicated that he was telling the truth.

This theory contradicts eyewitness statements that indicate that Cesar only drew his gun after Sirhan had fired the last of his shots.

General "second gunman" theories

The autopsy indicated that the fatal shot to Kennedy had come from behind him, but eyewitness accounts suggested that Sirhan had only ever fired from in front of Kennedy. This led to the suggestion that there was a second gunman in the vicinity who actually fired the fatal shot, a possibility supported by the coroner Thomas Noguchi. During a reexamination of the case in 1975, however, the Supreme Court ordered expert examination of the possibility of a second gun having been used, and the conclusion of the experts was that there was little or no evidence to support the existence of a second gun.

More recently, analysis of audio recordings of the shootings taken by freelance reporter Stanislaw Pruszynski appear, according to forensic expert Philip van Pragg, to indicate thirteen shots being fired, whilst Sirhan's gun only held eight. Whilst this would be highly supportive of a second gunman, further independent analysis by a series of other experts indicates that there are only eight shots present on the tape

Aftermath and legacy

The 1968 election

At the time of his death, Kennedy was significantly behind Vice President Hubert Humphrey in convention delegate support, but this has not deterred many from the belief that Kennedy would have ultimately secured the nomination following his victory in the California primary.

Following the assassination, Humphrey secured the Democratic nomination at the convention in Chicago. Humphrey went on to lose a very close 1968 presidential election to Republican Richard Nixon.

See also

References

  1. "1964: Election triumph for Lyndon B Johnson". On this Day. BBC. 2005. Retrieved 2008-04-24. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  2. "Biography of Lyndon B. Johnson". Retrieved 2008-04-24.
  3. "1968: Martin Luther King shot dead". On this Day. BBC. 2006. Retrieved 2006-09-17. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  4. "KENNEDY, Robert Francis - Biographical information". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
  5. "A timeline of Sen. Eugene McCarthy's life and political career". Minnesota Public Radio.
  6. . Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  7. Thom White (2005). "RFK Assassination Far From Resolved". CITIZINEmag. Retrieved February 16. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); External link in |work= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ "A Life On The Way To Death". TIME. 1968-06-14. Retrieved 2008-04-27.
  9. Steve Lopez (1998). "Guarding the Dream". TIME. Retrieved August 16. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); External link in |work= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  10. "title" (PICTURE). american history. 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-19. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
  11. "The Man Who Loved Kennedy". TIME. Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)
  12. Moldea, Dan E., The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy (Norton 1995), p. 85.
  13. "Everything Was Not Enough". TIME. 1968-06-14. Retrieved 2008-04-27.
  14. "Rosemary Clooney: 1928-2002" (HTML). cincy post. 2002. Retrieved 2008-04-01. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
  15. ^ "Behind Steel Doors". TIME. 1969-01-17. Retrieved 2008-04-27.
  16. "Selectivity In Los Angeles". TIME. 1969-01-31. Retrieved 2008-04-27.
  17. ' The Copycat Effect New York: Paraview Pocket-Simon and Schuster, 2004, ISBN 0-7434-8223-9
  18. http://crimemagazine.com/05/sirhansirhan,0906-5.htm
  19. ^ "A Deadly Iteration". TIME. 1969-03-07. Retrieved 2008-04-27.
  20. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20030306-2018-ca-sirhanparole.html
  21. Warren Kozak (2006-03-17). "One Common Link". NY Sun.
  22. ^ "What Was Going On?". TIME. 1968-06-14. Retrieved 2008-04-28.
  23. Andrew West of KRKD (June 5, 1968). "Hear it Now! RFK ASSASSINATED" (AUDIO). Hear it Now!. Retrieved 2007-08-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
  24. ^ "CIA role claim in Kennedy killing". BBC. 2006-11-21. Retrieved 2008-04-27.
  25. O'Sullivan, Shane (2006-11-20). "Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2006-11-21. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  26. ^ John Elson (1993-06-07). "And Now, Who Shot R.F.K.?". TIME. Retrieved 2008-04-28.
  27. Moldea, Dan E., The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy (Norton 1995), pp. 200-01.
  28. Moldea, Dan. E., The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy (Norton 1995), pp. 151-52.
  29. Moldea, Dan E., The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy (Norton 1995), pp. 280-290.
  30. ^ James Randerson (2008-02-22). "New evidence challenges official picture of Kennedy shooting". Retrieved 2008-04-28.
  31. Thomas Noguchi (December 3, 1985). Coroner. Pocket. ISBN 0671624938. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  32. "Robert F. Kennedy Assassination(Summary) - Part 1(b)" (PDF). Retrieved 2008-04-28.
  33. Harrison, P. (2007) ‘Analysis of “The Pruszynski Tape”’ (report on recording of gunshots). In Ayton, M., The Forgotten Terrorist: Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Washington: Potomac Books.
  34. Kerridge, Steven (2007-01-27). "Would Robert Kennedy have been president?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-11-26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  35. Thomas, Evan. Robert Kennedy: His Life. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 24

External links

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