He has never been able to remember pulling the trigger on Robert Kennedy – unless under the influence of hypnotic trance.Sirhan Bishara Sirhan is up for parole again after 43 years of doubt and speculation surrounding the shooting of the New York Senator who had unseated President Lyndon B. Johnson prior to the primary season of 1968.
Polls showing Senator Kennedy's overwhelming popularity in key electoral states led the President to declare that if he was nominated, he would not run for President, and if elected, he would not serve.
Moments after claiming victory in the California Presidential Primary, Mr. Kennedy walked through a pantry at the Ambassador Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on his way to the Democratic National Convention at Chicago and confronted the Palestinian refugee whose writings told of hating him for his support of Israel in the 1967 Six Day War against Egypt.
Shots rang out – an acoustics expert claims there is evidence there were 13 of them – and the Senator fell dying from multiple gunshot wounds. The fatal wounds were in the back of his head.
Though numerous witnesses testified they saw Mr. Sirhan shooting the .22 caliber revolver, they were all sure that he was standing face to face with Mr. Kennedy.
Jurors convicted Mr. Sirhan of murder and sentenced him to die in the gas chamber, but when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty under California law cruel and unusual punishment, his sentence was commuted to life with the possibility of parole.
Mr. Sirhan's attorney, William F. Pepper, is expected to continue an ongoing strategy of insisting there was a second gunman who fired on Mr. Kennedy.
Under California law, during parole hearings, the board will not consider and does not allow evidence or testimony to be presented that would lead to establishment of guilt, innocence, procedural judicial error or a reasonable doubt of guilt that might lead to a new trial.
The only questions allowed in the hearings is if the convicted felon is likely to continue to be a threat to society or a danger to himself or others.
In numerous previous hearings, many of which Mr. Sirhan did not bother to attend, the parole board's holding has been that he is not ready to accept the responsibility for the crime with which convicted jurors him and there is no evidence that he would not possibly do the same thing again. He simply has not expressed any culpability or remorse for what happened on the day of June 5, 1968.
Psychologists have hypnotized him and he has been able to remember parts of what happened, but has not really been able to offer conclusive evidence leading to a reason to believe that he is innocent, or that he acted in concert with others who “framed” him as the “patsy” in a conspiracy to murder Senator Kennedy.
He has told the hypnotist that he sincerely wished to prevent Senator Kennedy from playing a role in sending fighter-bomber jet aircraft to the Israeli Defense Forces.
Then there are the statements he made on the day of the killing. He said, “I did it for my country,” meaning Palestine, “premeditatedly with 20 years of malice aforethought.”
This does not jibe with what he has said under the influence of hypnotic trance.
Persons of varying degrees of credibility have claimed that Mr. Sirhan is a “Manchurian candidate” who was brainwashed, drugged and hypnotized to program him to commit the killing, then further programmed to not be able to remember his actions or the actions of others surrounding the happening.
Conspiracy theories abound, some holding that a CIA assassination team made up of Cuban refugees who were taken prisoner at the Bay Of Pigs invasion and other operatives of the nation's intelligence service were present and participated in the killing of the Senator. Other ideas include attributing the killing to a mob hit team traveling out of New Orleans, an area in which Mr. Kennedy as Attorney General supervised numerous federal criminal prosecutions of organized crime figures during his brother's presidential administration and during the Johnson presidency.
Photographic evidence has surfaced showing at least 5 known covert CIA operatives were present during the moments leading up to the shooting.
He also supervised the prosecution for racketeering of Teamsters Union officials, including International President James R. Hoffa. They were accused of illegally loaning union pension funds collected in the midwest to organized crime figures who used the money to build hotels and gambling casinos in Las Vegas.
Though none of the peripheral facts surrounding the Sirhan case are relevant to his possible release on parole, the facts are eerily significant.
Mr. Sirhan was an apprentice jockey who had been crippled in a pile-up while training a thoroughbred at a Los Angeles-area racetrack. The shooting took place in the kitchen of a hotel organized by a Teamsters affiliate, a culinary workers union.
Film footage made at the time of the assassination clearly shows CIA operatives present, including a Cuban refugee who was on record with having made threats against the Kennedy brothers because of their role in the Bay of Pigs invasion, the ill fate of which he blamed on their actions at the time.
Numerous persons who opposed the re-election of President Johnson were murdered in the year 1968 and in years both before and after, including Dr. Martin Luther King.
More persons who testified at the Warren Commission hearings into the assassination of President Kennedy were found either murdered under mysterious circumstances, or the victims of questionable accidents such as single car collisions or drug overdoses, hit and run auto-pedestrian collisions, or cuttings, shootings and suicides. In the moments leading up to the shooting and just after, certain persons never identified were clearly in place to create confusion and spread both disinformation and misinformation before they disappeared. There was a couple consisting of a young woman in a polka dot dress and her male companion whom Mr. Sirhan has told hypnotists invited him to get a cup of coffee. He said he followed them into the pantry area at the time. Later, witnesses recalled, the young woman loudly proclaimed, "We got him," meaning Senator Kennedy, as she and her male companion fled down a fire escape and disappeared into downtown Los Angeles.
If released on parole, Mr. Sirhan plans to either live at his brother's house in Pasadena or with relatives in Jordan.
He also supervised the prosecution for racketeering of Teamsters Union officials, including International President James R. Hoffa. They were accused of illegally loaning union pension funds collected in the midwest to organized crime figures who used the money to build hotels and gambling casinos in Las Vegas.
Though none of the peripheral facts surrounding the Sirhan case are relevant to his possible release on parole, the facts are eerily significant.
Mr. Sirhan was an apprentice jockey who had been crippled in a pile-up while training a thoroughbred at a Los Angeles-area racetrack. The shooting took place in the kitchen of a hotel organized by a Teamsters affiliate, a culinary workers union.
Film footage made at the time of the assassination clearly shows CIA operatives present, including a Cuban refugee who was on record with having made threats against the Kennedy brothers because of their role in the Bay of Pigs invasion, the ill fate of which he blamed on their actions at the time.
Numerous persons who opposed the re-election of President Johnson were murdered in the year 1968 and in years both before and after, including Dr. Martin Luther King.
More persons who testified at the Warren Commission hearings into the assassination of President Kennedy were found either murdered under mysterious circumstances, or the victims of questionable accidents such as single car collisions or drug overdoses, hit and run auto-pedestrian collisions, or cuttings, shootings and suicides. In the moments leading up to the shooting and just after, certain persons never identified were clearly in place to create confusion and spread both disinformation and misinformation before they disappeared. There was a couple consisting of a young woman in a polka dot dress and her male companion whom Mr. Sirhan has told hypnotists invited him to get a cup of coffee. He said he followed them into the pantry area at the time. Later, witnesses recalled, the young woman loudly proclaimed, "We got him," meaning Senator Kennedy, as she and her male companion fled down a fire escape and disappeared into downtown Los Angeles.
If released on parole, Mr. Sirhan plans to either live at his brother's house in Pasadena or with relatives in Jordan.
No comments:
Post a Comment