Your take on the RFK Assasination? Conspiracy or lone nut?

There was more questionable evidence in Bobby's murder than in JFK's.
http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~dlewis/compl.htm

<snip>
"The autopsy carried out by Coroner Thomas Noguchi showed that Senator Kennedy had been shot three times. One shot entered the head behind the right ear, a second shot near the right armpit and a third roughly one and a half inches below the second. All shots entered the body at a sharply upward angle, moving slightly right to left. These shots are incompatible with eyewitness reports of the shooting. Sirhan had no access to the Senator's rear, and Kennedy never turned more than sideways to Sirhan. In addition, Sirhan fired with his arm parallel to the floor, i.e. straight ahead. Maitre d' Karl Uecker, who had been leading Kennedy forward by the right hand at the time the shooting started, grappled Sirhan after his second shot and pushed the gun away. All these points, as well as the fact that the gun was one and a half to six feet from Kennedy, prove that Sirhan could not have inflicted the fatal wounds to the Senator."

And the fact that Sirhan had no recollection of the killing...A true "Manchurian Candidate"?

Lets hears some opinions on this.

mental profile, and were probably "programmed," MK-Ultra style, for their roles in the larger (and to me, obvious) conspiracies...

... Sirhan did shoot - or at least had a gun - completely 'Manchurianed', if you will ~ but the fatal shots to RFK came from what was supposed to be his own protection. It was an inside job.

"Sirhan's .22 revolver contained eight bullets and he had no chance to reload. This caused a problem for the official version of the assassination as all bullets had been accounted for, except for one which was lost in the ceiling space. Reports indicated that a wooden door jamb contained two bullets. This frame and as many as five or six ceiling tiles were removed from the crime scene for tests. Photographs of the crime scene show at least this many tiles missing and more besides. Los Angeles Police Department criminologist DeWayne Wolfer was quoted as saying "it's unbelievable how many holes there are in the kitchen ceiling." This suggests that LAPD found more bullets (or traces of bullets) than could be accounted for by Sirhan's eight shot revolver, at least seven and probably more."

http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~dlewis/coverup.htm

And if I'm not mistaken, the door jamb that LAPD held in evidence, was lost or destroyed.

<snip>
"# Ceiling tiles and the door frame from the pantry destroyed, because, according to then Assistant Chief Daryl Gates, they wouldn't fit into card files."

most people think it was an open and shut case against Sirhan but there are so many inconsistencies in this case that I can't help but think there was another conspiracy. The botched investigation by the LAPD, the alleged extra bullet holes and even the reports of the "lady in the polka-dot dress" running out of the Ambassador right after the assassination. Unfortunately we will never know the full truth. It's just a damn shame that we lost him so soon, I can only imagine what good things would have come out of a RFK presidency.

I think there is a movie coming out either this summer or fall about the day he was shot. I can't think of the name off the top of my head but it looks like it should be good

sirhan sirhan had zero reasonable motivation to eliminate RFK, IMHO.
and Oswald had zero reasonable motivation to eliminate JFK, IMHO.

follow the money, or in this case, follow who benefitted from both their deaths. It would not be lone wolf gunmen who stood nothing to gain. Its not like today where criminals might do it to impress Jodie Foster or get 15 minutes of fame.
Back then, people did not live in the popular culture fishbowl we do now, so you have to rule out notoreity as a motivating factor.

keep coming back to the motivation. The odds that two powerful brothers, a threat to the military industrial complex, organized crime and white racists, would both be eliminate by unrelated lone wolves stretches credullity.

when dealing with people who are not entirely mentally sound.

What reasonable motivation did Charles Guiteau have to shoot James Garfield? Or Leon Cszolgosz to kill William McKinley? Or even John Wilkes Booth to assassinate Lincoln?

killing two brothers stretches credullity, IMHO.

The odds of two such mentally unsound assassins killing first a President of the United States and then some four and a half years later a candidate for the office of President of the United States doesn't stretch credulity at all. It isn't as though we're talking about the murders of a couple of apolitical nonentities.

the Miltary Industrial Complex. They were in the way and after they were gone look who grabbed power and made money.

And a supporter of Tailgunner Joe McCarthy in the early '50's, don't forget. Who won the Presidency because of his father's mob connections and vote-rigging in Illinois. And authorised CIA complicity or at least tacit approval of the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba and Ngo Dihn Diem. He wasn't some sort of liberal saint, whatever legend has been built up around him since his death.

to not make plans to pull out of Vietnam, nor to not negotiate with Castro and to oppose the CIA/mafia anti-Castro 'movement'.

We lost a lot more in November of 1963 than many people realize.

I'm just sayin. It IS my opinion, and that is that.

If it stretches my credulity, then by definition it stretches my credulity.

you can have your opinion, of course, but there ya go.

You simply said 'the idea that two brothers...killed...strectches credulity', which implies that it's something that any resonable person would find hard to believe coincidence (when it in fact is no such thing).

what is it about "in my humble opinion" you don't understand?

Taking out the head of state of a country is by all means a reasonable motivation to affect political change. Guiteau was per haps mentally unsound but the others were an anarchist and a southern sympathizer. Plus Lincoln's assassination was a conspiracy. Are you saying that those assassinations weren't politically motivated? Because you would be wrong.

I thought this post was directed to me...my bad, sorry.

A group of conspirators from the Confederacy were convicted and hanged for having worked with him. The motive is obvious enough, if reprehensible.

means, motive, opportunity.

Your argument starts with the assumption that Sirhan was the only one involved and that his 'motivation' was that he was not mentally sane. To then conclude that "reasonable motivation" is irrelevant, is circular reasoning.

Noguchi also performed the autopsy on Marilyn Monroe...

Here's my answer:

:tinfoilhat:

why, when the Congress investigated and determined that a conspiracy had been involved, was the case on Martin Luther King never re-opened? How did a two bit thief manage to get a passport and flee to England back in 1968?

that leads me to believe there was a conspiracy.

In a graduate class I took this semester, I did research on how in ancient Rome the optimates in the Senate (those who represented the wealthy elites in Rome) regularly assassinated populares (popular reformers who spoke for the working classes and poor). The Gracchi brothers (who remind many of the Kennedys) were among a long line of populares Senators who challenged elite power and were killed over a period of years before the Republic collapsed into dictatorship.

Coincidence perhaps, but somethings never change, imo.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312153988/qid=1149537157/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/102-5264756-4328929?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

And one of the authors is at the U of Massachusetts, not G'town.

From Kirkus Reviews
Investigative journalist Klaber and political scientist Melanson, curator of the Kennedy Assassination Archives at the University of Massachusetts, reopen the RFK assassination in an exhaustive and intriguing study. Klaber and Melanson tell the story of the police investigation (Sirhan Sirhan, eventually convicted of the murder, was taken into custody immediately), the trial, and the 20-year battle with the LAPD over crucial files that seem to have disappeared, as have the only photographs of the shooting by a supposedly lone gunman, which took place at L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel on June 4, 1968, at a celebration of Kennedy's victory that day in the California primary. The authors show that the police investigation and the trial glossed over key pieces of evidence, such as the reported hurried departure of a mysterious couple from the hotel moments after the shooting (reported by a respected police investigator), the testimony of several witnesses that Sirhan was accompanied by an attractive woman in a polka-dot dress, and substantial ballistic evidence that some of the shots fired did not come from Sirhan's gun. The authors point out that both the prosecution and the defense in the trial raised significant questions about whether the ballistic exhibits were properly preserved. Ending with a narrative of a 1993 interview with Sirhan in prison--in which he reiterates his admission of guilt, his denial that he worked with anyone, his motive, and his courtroom contention that he had only hazy memories of the events leading to the assassination and no actual memory of the shooting itself. The authors draw no conclusions from their account, other than that neither the investigation nor the trial have adequately explained the assassination. An eye-opening review of the evidentiary discrepancies that are possible in a celebrated criminal case, even one with over 70 witnesses and an admission of guilt by the accused. (8 pages illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Based on the forensic evidence, 13 bullets were fired, Sirahan's gun only held 8. There was gun powder residue behind Kennedy's ear, Sirhan was in front of Kennedy at all times. And there is the woman in the polka dot dress who was seen fleeing the scene screaming "We shot him!";"we killed him!" corroborated by several witnesses.

I'm not going to go into explainations for how this happened because, you know what, it would take more time than I care to spend on this because I keep explaining this stuff and people just don't seem to listen. Anyways, long story short, Sirhand DID shoot RFK, when the trajectories are analyzed they do match up with RFK's body position. The who idea about the trajectories of the bullets not matching up is the fact that most people don't take into account the fact that RFK was NOT stationary in the same position during the shooting(GEE WHAT A CONCEPT people ACTUALLY MOVE when someone starts shooting at them or *GASP* they get hit by a bullet). Number 2, the two "bullet holes" in the molding of the door, yes, they were marked as bullets by an officer and it was later determined that they were just from wear and tear when the forensics people went through it. This is further borne out by the fact that it was not kept in evidence. Also, a quote from Sirhan to a interviewer who USED to believe in a conspiracy, "As long as you keep finding evidence of a conspiracy I will never admit to anything."

Anyways, the history channel's examination of it is fairly good and detailed so I would recommend checking it out.

So are all those Discovery channel programs. It's disinformation. Why does the History Channel have shows that propagate the UFO phenomena yet on every Kennedy assassination show they "debunk" alternative historical evidence? All things being equal. Which is more likely? Oswald didn't act alone or a UFO crashed at Roswell?

By the time you wade through all the speculation, dramatic reenactments, opinions presented as fact and commercials, you could have read a good book with solid documnetation (foot notes, anyone?) and really learned something on the subject.

Or--was it A&E?

Most the stuff that's been run on the History and Discovery Channels is the same crap that was orginally shown on mainstream American media. They've tried so hard to back up the Warren Commission (all the time ignoring the House Committee on Assassinations) that I'm inclined to think they protest too much. If there wasn't something to cover up, they'd completely ignore those of us who don't believe the official versions.

No such things as conspiracies?
Gimme a break!

http://impiousdigest.com/lbj/coup.htm

There is a reasonable third possibilty: That Sirhan was a loner, but that Kennedy's security detail freaked out and caught the Senator in the crossfire.

My memory is that there was an insanity defense that claimed Sirhan heard voices from his mirror telling him to do it. In other words, he admitted doing it but denied legal responsibility.

I always thought it was odd that Oswald denied shooting Jack Kennedy. I can't think of another assassin who denied involvement. Usually they boast of their achievement.

I believe there was a conspiracy in JFK's assassination (organized crime), but I believe that Sirhan is the lone assassin in the RFK case.

And the destroyed evidence. And forensics?

Same syndicate that did Iran-Contra, Bay of Pigs, and a whole lot more.

n/t

that there's no indication 9-11 was directed against a charismatic grassroots leader.