New evidence challenges official picture of Kennedy shooting

[DJ13]

Friday February 22 2008

The official record states that senator Robert F Kennedy, like his brother before him, was killed by a crazed lone gunman. But the assassination of a man who seemed to embody so much hope for a bitterly divided country embroiled in an unpopular war still troubles this nation.

Little about the official explanation of the events at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5 1968 makes sense. Now a new forensic analysis of the only audio recording of the fatal shots has given new weight to a controversial theory that there were in fact two shooters, and that the man convicted of Kennedy's killing — Sirhan Sirhan - did not fire the fatal shots.

Following his victory speech to supporters after clinching a tight democratic primary victory in California, Kennedy left the podium in the Embassy ballroom to address a press conference.

But the shortcut he and his entourage took through the hotel's pantry quickly descended into bloody mayhem. As Kennedy turned from shaking hands with two of the kitchen staff, a gunman stepped forward and began firing. Kennedy was hit by four shots including one which lodged in the vertebrae in his neck and another which entered his brain from below his right ear. He died in hospital the following day. Five other people were injured but survived.

Sirhan - a Palestinian refugee who said he wanted to "sacrifice" Kennedy "for the cause of the poor exploited people" - was quickly apprehended. He was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.

"Sirhan was apprehended at the scene with literally a smoking gun," said acoustic forensic expert Philip Van Praag of PVP Designs, who has carried out the new analysis. "At the beginning many people looked upon this as an open-and-shut case. It was one man, Sirhan Sirhan, who was observed by a number of people, who aimed and fired a gun in the direction of Kennedy's entourage."

But the lone gunman explanation has always looked shaky. The autopsy of Kennedy's body suggested that all four shots that hit him came from behind, and powder marks on his skin showed they must have been from close range.

But Sirhan was in front of Kennedy when he fired, and after shooting two shots was overcome by hotel staff, who pinned him to a table. Also, Sirhan fired eight shots in total, yet 14 were found lodged around the room and in the victims.


Rest of the article is here-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/22/kennedy.assassination

[Warpy]

1. The GOP is not going to send a "lone guman"

in for a hit without a lot of insurance, unless it's a Mafioso who's been a very good shot in the past.

This new information doesn't surprise me a bit.

[flvegan]

2. Last time I checked, an autopsy doesn't "suggest" but dictates.

An autopsy renders forensic evidence, right?

Maybe I watch too much tv.

[RainDog]

3. BBC 2006

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/6169006.stm

talks about the 4 identified CIA agents at the hotel, including David Morales.

Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base for its Secret War on Castro.

David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends:

"I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard."

Gordon Campbell was Chief of Maritime Operations and George Joannides was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations.

On Morales-
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmorales.htm
(Eyewitnesses claimed they saw an african american man in the window of the book depository. Look at the pictures of Morales... This same sort of description concerned the "man in the rambler."

Joannides' CIA file was released in 1998 and it was revealed that he was in Miami CIA operations at that time, head of psychological warfare. In 2003, several people filed a lawsuit to see...

records on the unexplained role of a Miami-based undercover CIA agent named George Joannides in the months prior to Kennedy's murder on Nov. 22, 1963. The authors supporting the suit include anti-conspiracist Gerald Posner, author of the 1993 book "Case Closed," and Norman Mailer and Don DeLillo, two leading novelists who have explored the mysteries surrounding accused JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Also backing the lawsuit are legal experts G. Robert Blakey, the former chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which in the late 1970s investigated Kennedy's death, and John Tunheim, a federal judge who chaired the Assassination Records Review Board of the mid-1990s.

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/12/17/joannides/

In 1963 Joannides served as chief of the CIA's anti-Castro "psychological warfare" operations in Miami. According to declassified CIA records corroborated by interviews, Joannides secretly financed exiled Cuban agents who collected intelligence on Lee Harvey Oswald three months before Kennedy was killed. Fifteen years later, Joannides was called out of retirement by the CIA to serve as the agency's liaison to the House committee looking into Kennedy's assassination. While working with the committee, the spy withheld information about his own actions in 1963 from the congressional investigators he was supposed to be assisting. It wasn't until 2001, 38 years after Kennedy's death, that Joannides' support for the Cuban exiles, who clashed with Oswald and monitored him, came to light.

...After Kennedy was killed, Joannides' patron, (Richard) Helms, shielded the Joannides mission to Miami from review. He did not disclose to the Warren Commission that Joannides' exiled Cuban agents had had pre-assassination contact with Oswald.

wiki info on Helms-

--After falling out with the Kennedys, he was sent off to Vietnam where he oversaw the coup to overthrow President Ngo Dinh Diem. Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Helms was made Deputy Director of the CIA under Admiral William Raborn. A year later, in 1966, he was appointed Director.

Helms's ultimate undoing was the CIA's role, at Nixon's behest, in the subversion of Chile's socialist government (Project FUBELT), and the overthrow of that country's democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, on September 11, 1973. According to Helms, Nixon had ordered the CIA to support a military coup to prevent Allende from becoming president in 1970.

In 1972, Helms ordered the destruction of most records from the huge MKULTRA project, over 150 CIA-funded research projects designed to explore any possibilities of mind control.--

more on Helms-

George H.W. Bush, who later became director of the CIA, tried to keep Congress from charging his protege with lying to Congress (a criminal offense, not that anyone gives a shit these days...) Helms was on the board of Bush Sr's Carlyle Group, and was also on the board of BCCI.

so, the man, Helms, who was running Joannides during the time of the Robt. Kennedy assassination and was also in with the George H.W. dirty tricks league.

I do think that enough truth has come out about both of these assassinations to challenge anyone who sneers at conspiracies related to their deaths. Their deaths changed the course of American history and we are the poorer for this fact, while the fat cats and dirty tricksters made out like the bandits they are.

[zeemike]

4. In my opinion

What actually happened was that Sirhan was a diversion and a patsy. When Sirhan started shooting the real killer was standing behind RFK and put his 22 caliber gun to his head and did the deed. That is why the power burns on him which would have only happened if a small caliber weapon was close, like less than a foot away. Small caliber guns are preferred for close range hits because they don't splatter a lot of blood around like a 38 would do.

[file83]

5. Fucking CIA.

I mean, seriously. I thought they existed to protect our democracy, not derail it. I probably thought that because I was educated in a public school.