Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, right, talks with members of the Ingham County, Michigan, Bar Association & U.S. Rep. Charles E. Chamberlain, front row third from left. MyBayCity's Columnist Dave Rogers is obscured behind young man at center. Was Robert Kennedy's Assassination a CIA Hit or First Shot in Arab Jihad?
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The 40th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy has riled up conspiracy theorists, affected the recent Democratic Presidential primary race and stirred my memory, too.
In 1961 I was a press aide to a Republican Member of Congress, Rep. Charles F. Chamberlain, who represented Lansing and Flint.
Rep. Chamberlain invited the Ingham County Bar Association to Washington to meet with RFK, who had just taken office as attorney general.
Yep, I was in Washington at the time of the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy but was too busy unpacking to go to any of the historic events. A regrettable circumstance by a not fully aware 24-year-old. Perhaps I didn't go because I had already met JFK when I covered the story as he campaigned at the Bancroft Hotel in Saginaw in 1960.
At Kennedy's office, probably in early spring or summer after he had already begun to take on Jimmy Hoffa and to get involved in the Cuban affair, the bar association members, with Chamberlain as host, filed into RFK's office. A Congressional photographer was on hand to take an official picture and I was there. Unfortunately for me only my hand and part of my shoulder are visible behind another subject.
I was impressed by Kennedy's energy as he bounded up and down, greeting the lawyers and grabbing artifacts from Africa from shelves behind his desk to show off to people.
RFK was small, wiry and dynamic, as I recall. Although most of the bar association members were Republicans, they were very impressed and made complimentary comments to the Attorney General both during the interview and afterward in private. Chamberlain himself seemed highly favorable toward Bobby.
Of course, there was a substantial celebrity aura around the man even then, although I talked to some of his classmates from the University of Virginia Law School who had lurid stories of partying by he and his brother, Teddy, while they were in school.
But let us not speak ill of the dead. It's enough to know that the attorney general, while young, enjoyed himself, much as his brother continued to do throughout his life. Even his political enemies credit Teddy with being a hard-working senator of good will toward the members on the other side of the aisle.
Conspiracy theories aside, the evidence shows that Sirhan Sirhan, a strongly anti-Zionist 26-year-old Arab, left a diary stating: "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 June 5, 1968."
Of course June 5, 1968 was the first anniversary of the beginning of the Six Day War between Israel and nearby Arab states.
Police found a newspaper article in Sirhan's pocket when they took him into custody. Sirhan testified at his trial that he began to hate Kennedy after he learned of RFK's support for Israel.
It seems clear that Sirhan acted alone, with Jihad on his mind, despite theories that there were several former CIA operatives in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen when the slaying took place. As the theory goes, the CIA was furious with the Kennedys for alleged betrayal during the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
Most of the allegations that there was a second gunman and that Sirhan must have had an accomplice because there were 13 shots fired while his gun held only eight shots have been discredited.
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was a Palestinian Christian born in Jerusalem in 1944 (he is now 64) and moved to the U.S. with his parents at age 12. He had been a stable boy at the Santa Anita racetrack in Los Angeles. He had been a Baptist and Seventh Day Adventist and had dabbled in the occult. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he has been turned down for parole 13 times. He remains in the California State Prison at Corcoran, CA.
Sen. Hillary Clinton mentioned the death of RFK in early June as one reason she was staying in the primary. Sen. Obama has given her a pass as far as any allusion to him, and she has backtracked skillfully. But this incident brought to mind Kennedy's candidacy in a way it otherwise would not have been remembered.
Would RFK have won the Democratic Presidential nomination? Probably not, in the opinion of Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss. Only 13 states held primaries that year, 1968, and when he was killed Kennedy was far behind Hubert Humphrey in the delegate count. However, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., has theorized that RFK's broad appeal and momentum following his win in the California primary might have swept him to victory at the Democratic convention.
We'll never know whether Kennedy, had he lived and been the nominee, would have changed the course of history by keeping Richard Nixon out of the White House and ending the Vietnam War immediately.
Such are the imponderables of politics and life that create such a metaphysical world we inhabit. Like the young man who should have gone to the inauguration and should have been in the picture.###
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