{"id":249030,"date":"2022-02-01T08:37:43","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T08:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=249030"},"modified":"2022-02-02T12:09:07","modified_gmt":"2022-02-02T12:09:07","slug":"robert-f-kennedy-jr-sirhan-sirhan-didnt-kill-my-father-gov-newsom-should-set-him-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=249030","title":{"rendered":"Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Sirhan Sirhan didn\u2019t kill my father. Gov. Newsom should set him free"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert F. Kennedy Jnr. \u2013 San Francisco Chronicle Dec 8, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom will soon decide the fate of Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of killing my father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968. Gov. Newsom has stated he reveres my father and will consider the wishes of my family members.<\/a> My family, however, is divided; I and two of my nine surviving siblings feel strongly that Sirhan\u2019s release best reflects my father\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Robert Kennedy Junior. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

After more than 50 years in prison, the state\u2019s own psychiatrists and the parole board deem that Sirhan poses no threat to society.<\/a> During a three-hour meeting with him in 2018, I was impressed with the genuineness of Sirhan\u2019s remorse for his role in my father\u2019s shooting, even though he has always claimed to have no memory of those moments. Sirhan wept, clenched my hands and asked for forgiveness from me, from my siblings and from my mother for his part in the tragedy. At 77, he seems gentle, humble, kindhearted, frail and harmless.<\/p>\n

My father had a pious Catholic\u2019s belief in redemption, forgiveness and justice. His favorite quote, from Aeschylus, urged that we should \u201ctame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of the world.\u201d By upholding the parole board\u2019s decision to release Sirhan, Newsom has the opportunity to demonstrate the humanity, compassion and idealism of our justice system to which my father devoted his life.<\/p>\n

I also hope that the governor will consider the overwhelming evidence that Sirhan is not my father\u2019s killer.<\/a><\/p>\n

For many years, I accepted the orthodoxy that Sirhan was responsible. After all, dozens of eyewitnesses in the Ambassador Hotel pantry saw him fire his gun from just a few feet in front of my father. But in 2016, my father\u2019s close friend, Paul Schrade, persuaded me to read Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi\u2019s autopsy report<\/a> and to listen to audio recordings and review other evidence indicating that Sirhan could not have been the murderer.<\/p>\n

Sirhan fired only two shots directly at my dad.<\/a> One of them struck Schrade in the head. The other likely lodged in a door jamb behind my father. Five men then tackled and pinned Sirhan to a steam table and diverted his gun away from my father. From beneath that dogpile, Sirhan squeezed off six more shots, emptying his chamber as five of the six shots hit bystanders. This accounts for seven of the eight rounds in Sirhan\u2019s gun. The only audio recording of the shooting, however, suggests that at least 13 shots may have been fired.<\/a> The Los Angeles Police Department had the audiotape at the time of Sirhan\u2019s trial, but illegally concealed it from his lawyers and the public for 20 years.<\/a> Meanwhile, according to Tim Tate and Brad Johnson\u2019s 2018 book \u201cThe Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy,\u201d FBI agents found several additional bullet holes in the pantry,<\/a> further indicating more than eight shots were fired.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

According to the autopsy, all four shots that struck my father (one shot passed harmlessly through his suit) were fired from behind at a steep upward angle<\/a> toward the ceiling. All shots were from within a few inches,<\/a> with two leaving gun powder residue in the wounds<\/a>, suggesting that the assassin was standing close behind my father, shielding his weapon with his body while all attention focused on Sirhan.<\/p>\n

Mortally wounded, my father turned and tore off the clip-on tie of a recently hired security guard named Thane Eugene Cesar,<\/a> who had clutched my father\u2019s elbow from behind and steered him toward the steam table where Sirhan was waiting.<\/p>\n

Records of the case demonstrate that Los Angeles police investigators bullied and badgered eyewitnesses<\/a> to change their statements regarding the number of shots and to silence those who say they saw Cesar draw and shoot his gun and those who reported conspirators dashing from the scene. Police also inexplicably and illegally destroyed thousands of pieces of evidence,<\/a> including 2,410 photographs of the crime scene before and after the shooting as well as the door frames and ceiling tiles in the pantry with vital bullet evidence, while Sirhan\u2019s case was still on appeal.<\/p>\n

Sirhan\u2019s anemic defense team never challenged prosecutorial inconsistencies; his attorney was facing criminal charges for illegal conduct on behalf of mob boss Johnny Roselli,<\/a> who played a key role in the CIA\u2019s Castro assassination program.<\/a> Sirhan\u2019s trial was thus akin to a sentencing hearing. This attorney bullied Sirhan into conceding guilt at the outset and actively blocked the inclusion of ballistics and other evidence that might have proven him innocent.<\/p>\n

For these reasons, I have called for a new investigation into the case.<\/p>\n

I believe Cesar killed my father. He was in the exact position to fire the shots as described in the autopsy. Three witnesses saw him draw his gun \u2014 which he later admitted \u2014 and one said she saw him fire it<\/a>. The Los Angeles police never bothered to examine the gun. Cesar, who was moonlighting that night from his high-security clearance job at the Lockheed plant, acknowledged a loathing for the Kennedys and their race-mixing sympathizers. In her 2018 book, \u201cA Lie Too Big to Fail<\/a>,\u201d researcher Lisa Pease claims that Cesar described himself as a \u201cCIA contract agent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bedeviled by questions about his involvement in my father\u2019s murder, Cesar fled to the Philippines. I was in negotiations with him in 2018, before reports of his death in September 2019. After first agreeing to meet with me, he gradually escalated his price to $25,000 for the privilege of interviewing him.<\/p>\n

The pain that we all feel from my father\u2019s death should not prevent us from pursuit of the truth. I firmly believe the idea that Sirhan murdered my dad is a fiction that is impeding justice. If Newsom overrules Sirhan\u2019s parole, he will become just one more California official who claims to love my father but persists in denying him justice.<\/p>\n

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the third son of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. He is an environmental and public health attorney.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I firmly believe the idea that Sirhan murdered my dad is a fiction, writes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. If Newsom overrules Sirhan\u2019s parole, he will become just one more California official who claims to love my father but persists in denying him justice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Hidden_and_Revisionist_History"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=249030"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249036,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249030\/revisions\/249036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=249030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=249030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=249030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}