Friday, June 06, 2008
Killing hope
The 40th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination may be a fitting time to recall how young Americans in an earlier generation ended up alienated from their parents, much as this year’s battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has created its own generational divide.
By Robert Parry
Before June 5, 1968, it seemed possible that RFK’s anti-war candidacy might overcome the Democratic establishment’s choice of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, thus opening a path for ending the Vietnam War and rekindling the embers of American idealism.
Instead, after Kennedy’s murder, a divided Democratic Party settled on Humphrey, who lost to Richard Nixon. The Vietnam War dragged on bitterly dividing the country, a legacy that continues to afflict the nation four decades later.
Today, the mainstream media's conventional wisdom focuses most of the criticism for the turbulent Sixties on the unruly and often crude behavior of America’s anti-war youth. By contrast, there is virtually no criticism of the World War II generation, which arguably came up very small and let down its own children by not demanding more truth and accountability from the government.
Though the so-called Greatest Generation deserves credit for surviving the Great Depression of the 1930s and winning World War II in the 1940s, many of its members then became absorbed during the growth years of the 1950s into a corporate world of conformity and careerism. Many became Company Men.
So, when the U.S. government used lies and propaganda to take the nation into an open-ended war in Vietnam, many in the Greatest Generation tended more to their status in the Rotary Club or the VFW than to the safety and survival of their own children.
The Greatest Generation’s off-spring, the so-called Baby Boomers, then were forced into painful choices: Should they fight a war that many considered immoral? Or should they oppose their own government – and often their own parents – in resisting the war?
Few people who lived through that complicated time can say honestly that they don’t have regrets about what they did or didn’t do, what they said or how they said it. Not surprisingly, young Americans often did behave immaturely.
Some in the Greatest Generation joined in branding their own children as spoiled and undeserving, a stigma that stays with the Baby Boomers to this day, even if they are now gray-haired grandparents.
But the poorly conceived war in Vietnam was not the fault of the young. More reasonably, the bulk of the blame for a war that killed some 58,000 Americans and millions of Indochinese should be borne by those who were in positions of influence and who possessed more life experience.
The Obama-Clinton Split
The relevance of RFK’s assassination and the Vietnam divide today is that the Democratic Party is poised at another moment when a new generation of young Americans has shaken off years of apathy – this time to resist the war in Iraq and rally behind Barack Obama – only to be met by hostility from some of their parent’s generation, particularly mothers, who favored Hillary Clinton.
Toward the end of the long battle for the Democratic nomination, a growing number of white women from the over-50 demographic told pollsters that they would not support Obama if Clinton was denied the Democratic nomination, thus delaying their dream of a woman President.
Some Democratic strategists hope most of these women will return to the Democratic fold, rather than give John McCain a chance to expand the wars in the Middle East and appoint more right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justices.
But there is growing evidence that many Hillary Clinton supporters would rather have the pleasure of saying “I told you so” – when Barack Obama loses – than help bring the Iraq War to an end and protect reproductive rights for the next generation of women.
If they follow the Cassandra course, some of these Clinton women will be positioning themselves in direct opposition to their own children’s desire to see the United States elect the first African-American President and to chart a course toward a new era, past the nasty divisions that have roiled the nation’s politics since the Vietnam War.
As I wrote back in February – when the Obama-Clinton generational chasm began to open: “What makes this dilemma particularly poignant is that many of these Hillary Clinton supporters themselves experienced the stomping on their dreams four decades ago in the pivotal election of 1968.”
My February story continued with a narrative of that troubled year:
Hoping to redirect the country through the electoral process, many anti-war students joined the campaign of Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who was making a long-shot bid to challenge President Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination.
The anti-war cause was further galvanized by the stunning Tet offensive, which began on Jan. 31, 1968, as Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops launched ambitious – and even reckless – attacks across the length of South Vietnam, puncturing the Johnson administration's optimistic war rhetoric.
Then, on March 12, 1968, McCarthy shocked the incumbent President by closing to within seven percentage points in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary. Four days later, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy jumped into the race, earning criticism from some McCarthy activists as “a Bobby come lately.”
Kennedy’s entrance, however, was the political death knell for Johnson. On March 31, faced with a growing insurrection within his own party and a growing casualty list from Vietnam, Johnson withdrew from the campaign to dedicate his remaining time in office to bringing the war to an end.
Everything Possible
In those heady days of early spring 1968, everything seemed possible. Young Americans thought their enthusiasm and idealism could change the world.
However, those hopes were short-lived. On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a rifle shot to his throat. Robert Kennedy learned of King’s death just before he was to address a campaign rally in Indianapolis.
“I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee,” Kennedy told the shocked crowd.
“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black – considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible – you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
“We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization – black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.
“For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.
“But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.”
Kennedy continued: “My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: ‘Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’
“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.
“So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, … but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love – a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. …
“The vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”
Despite Kennedy’s elegant appeal, race riots broke out in cities across America. Divisions, distrust and hatreds deepened.
RFK Killed
Then, on June 5, 1968, as Kennedy appeared to be headed for the Democratic nomination having just won the California primary, he, too, was killed by an assassin’s bullet.
The political vacuum that followed Kennedy’s death turned the Democratic convention in Chicago in late August into a violent free-for-all, with hard-line Mayor Richard Daley unleashing his security and police forces inside and outside the convention hall, beating up young demonstrators outside and roughing up delegates and journalists inside.
Behind Daley’s iron fist, the Democratic establishment controlled the convention, which handed the presidential nomination to Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Suddenly, the anti-war youth were looking at a November match-up between two representatives of the old guard, Humphrey and Republican Richard Nixon, with the likelihood that the Vietnam War would continue no matter who won.
However, 1968 had one more cynical episode to add to its dark history, albeit one that would be accomplished out of sight and not pierce the public’s consciousness for decades to come.
As the days to the November election counted down, President Johnson mounted a last-ditch effort to achieve a Vietnam peace deal with North Vietnam and the Vietcong through negotiations in Paris. Besides starting to bring U.S. troops home, the deal also might have given Humphrey the boost he needed to edge out Nixon.
According to what is now an extensive body of evidence, the Nixon campaign countered by dispatching Anna Chennault, an anti-communist Chinese leader, to carry messages to the South Vietnamese government of Nguyen van Thieu.
Chennault’s messages advised Thieu that a Nixon presidency would give him a more favorable result than he would get from Johnson.
Journalist Seymour Hersh described the initiative sketchily in his biography of Henry Kissinger, The Price of Power. Hersh reported that U.S. intelligence “agencies had caught on that Chennault was the go-between between Nixon and his people and President Thieu in Saigon. … The idea was to bring things to a stop in Paris and prevent any show of progress.”
In her own autobiography, The Education of Anna, Chennault acknowledged that she was the courier. She quoted Nixon aide John Mitchell as calling her a few days before the 1968 election and telling her: “I’m speaking on behalf of Mr. Nixon. It’s very important that our Vietnamese friends understand our Republican position and I hope you made that clear to them.”
Reporter Daniel Schorr added fresh details in The Washington Post’s Outlook section on May 28, 1995. Schorr cited decoded cables that U.S. intelligence had intercepted from the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington.
On Oct. 23, 1968, Ambassador Bui Dhien cabled Saigon with the message that “many Republican friends have contacted me and encouraged me to stand firm.” On Oct. 27, he wrote, “The longer the present situation continues, the more favorable for us. … I am regularly in touch with the Nixon entourage.”
On Nov. 2, Thieu withdrew from his tentative agreement to sit down with the Vietcong at the Paris peace talks, destroying Johnson’s last hope for a settlement. Though Johnson and his top advisers knew of Nixon’s gambit, they kept it secret.
Anthony Summers’s 2000 book, The Arrogance of Power, provides the fullest account of the Chennault initiative, including the debate within Democratic circles about what to do with the evidence.
Both Johnson and Humphrey believed the information – if released to the public – could assure Nixon’s defeat.
“In the end, though, Johnson’s advisers decided it was too late and too potentially damaging to U.S. interests to uncover what had been going on,” Summers wrote. “If Nixon should emerge as the victor, what would the Chennault outrage do to his viability as an incoming president? And what effect would it have on American opinion about the war?”
Summers quoted Johnson’s assistant Harry McPherson, who said, “You couldn’t surface it. The country would be in terrible trouble.”
Late Surge
As it turned out – even without disclosure of Nixon’s apparent treachery – a late surge brought Humphrey to the edge of victory. Nixon hung on to win by only about 500,000 votes, or less than one percent of ballots cast. Johnson and Humphrey went into retirement keeping their silence.
The direct U.S. role in the Vietnam War would continue for more than four years during which American casualty lists swelled by an additional 20,763 dead and 111,230 wounded. Meanwhile, the bitterness over the war deeply divided the country, in many cases turning children against their parents. …
Through both violent tragedy and political intrigue, Election 1968 had been transformed from a hopeful opportunity to change the country into an ugly case study of how easy it is to snuff out idealism and decency.
In many ways, Election 1968 charted the course that the United States would follow for most of the next four decades. On one side, there would be aggressive, win-at-all-costs Republicans; on the other side, timid, don’t-get-too-rowdy Democrats.
Not surprisingly, the youthful idealism of the 1960s devolved into world-weary cynicism that would be passed down like some bitter legacy from the Baby Boomers to their children …
By and large, political apathy among the youth held sway – at least until Campaign 2008 when a new generation was caught up in the inspirational message of Barack Obama.
I first encountered the Obama phenomenon when I visited my youngest son, Jeff, at Savannah College of Art and Design in spring 2007. At an arts festival where a park was set aside for students to do chalk drawings on the sidewalks, the only drawings of an American politician were of Obama.
The youth movement for Obama – this new children’s crusade – has influenced some prominent mothers to endorse the 46-year-old African-American senator from Illinois. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, said it was her three children who convinced her to come out publicly for Obama.
“I am happy that two of my own children are here with me,” she said at American University in Washington on Jan. 28, “because they were the first people who made me realize that Barack Obama is the President we need. He is already inspiring all Americans, young and old, to believe in ourselves, tying that belief to our highest ideals – ideals of hope, justice, opportunity and peace – and urging us to imagine that together we can do great things.”
Now, with Obama cinching the Democratic nomination on June 3, Hillary Clinton and many of her loyal supporters will be faced with a decision not dissimilar to what their parents confronted during the Vietnam War:
Will they do what they feel is in their personal interest – or will they trust and protect their children?
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
Original article posted here.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Hillary lies and says that killing Obama is "unthinkable". Then why are other people talking about it?
| Fox News Guest Openly Calls For Obama Assassination Neo-Con obsession with killing Democratic candidate takes sick new turn as Hillary Clinton makes veiled threat |
Paul Joseph Watson
The Neo-Cons' sick obsession with assassinating Barack Obama took another bizarre turn yesterday when Fox News guest Liz Trotta openly expressed a desire to see someone "knock off" the Democratic candidate.
Trotta, former New York bureau chief of the Washington Times, referred to the Democratic frontrunner as "Osama" before quipping that it would be nice to see both Bin Laden and Barack Obama killed.
TROTTA: And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama — Obama. Well, both, if we could.
HOST: Talk about how you really feel.
Watch the clip
This latest example follows the trend of a bizarre and disturbing corporate media obsession with Obama being killed before he is able to take office.
Neo-Cons, who will whine and bitch all day long about how protesters should be scrutinized and often brutalized for using their right to free speech "in a time of war," apparently consider themselves above the law when it comes to making death threats against public figures.
Imagine if CNN pundits had joked about Bush being assassinated during the 2004 presidential campaign - they would have been booted off the air and interrogated by the secret service.
Keith Olbermann took Hillary Clinton to task on Friday for implying that she would stay in the Democratic race, despite the fact that she has virtually no chance of succeeding, because extraneous circumstances, such as an assassination, could change the picture.
Clinton made specific reference to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Only the most naive and deluded observer could take this as anything other than a veiled threat.
Olbermann's fury is justified but, as Kurt Nimmo points out, this goes deeper than a mere faux pas on behalf of Hillary. In reality, political crime families kill the opposition and the Clintons are notorious for having their adversaries "taken care of".
Several high profile public figures have warned that Obama may be the target of an assassination attempt before he is able to occupy the White House.
Appearing on The Alex Jones Show last month, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura warned that Obama could be in the crosshairs.
"I believe very strongly that if an independent candidate like myself - a rogue - were to get into the President's race legitimately, if the polls looked like he had a chance to win, I believe that candidate would either be physically assassinated or would be assassinated credibility-wise or in some manner by our government because I do not believe they would ever allow a true independent or a citizen to become President of the United States," said Ventura.
"I say this in all seriousness - watch out Barack Obama," he added.
British Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing said Obama would be taken out if he became President in February.
"He would probably not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would kill him," Lessing told a Swedish newspaper.
Princeton University political science professor-Melissa Harris-Lacewell echoed the same sentiment a month before, saying: "For many black supporters, there is a lot of anxiety that he will be killed. It is on people's minds."
"You can't make a prediction like this - like he has a 50 per cent chance of getting shot."
"But the greater his visibility and the greater his access to people, there is a danger."
Some speculated that Obama had been set up for an assassination attempt during a February 20 rally in Dallas, after it emerged that Secret Service gave the order to stop screening for weapons a full hour before the event began.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Hellery's D-Day (the day she destroyed herself poltically)
Katharine Q. Seelye
Friday might have been one of the worst days of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political career. Her campaign, as everyone knows, was already struggling. But on Friday, she made a reference to Bobby Kennedy’s assassination — a terrible choice of phrase in a presidential campaign that features an African-American candidate.
Opponents seized on it, and even if they misconstrued it, she may have reduced further her seemingly slim chances of capturing the nomination.
We had a front-row seat to this very strange day, and we want to describe the whole thing for you because it says a lot about the state of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, about the media and about politics in the Internet age.
In the morning the campaign, with its traveling press corps of about two-dozen reporters, photographers and camera operators, flew from Washington to Sioux Falls, S.D., to campaign in advance of the June 3 primary.
Mrs. Clinton had three events. First was a meeting with the editorial board of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, which was live-streaming the interview, something a few newspapers just started doing in this election cycle.
The press corps, meanwhile, was on a bus from the airport to Brandon, a few miles away, to set up for her second event at a supermarket. (The media are sometimes in a different place from the candidate, usually when the event is private or small.)
Her interview began while we were on the bus, but Internet access was so poor, we could only pick up bits of her comments intermittently. We did hear her bat back reports that her campaign had made overtures to Senator Barack Obama’s campaign about some kind of deal for her to exit the race.
At the supermarket, we were ensconced in a café off the deli counter, where many reporters were writing about her denying the overtures while also trying to follow the live stream. Here, too, Internet access was spotty and the stream came over in choppy bursts.
Mrs. Clinton arrived from the newspaper in the midst of this, and began addressing a couple of hundred people who were seated adjacent to us, in the fresh produce section. Then our cell phones and Blackberries went off.
On the other end were editors who had seen a Drudge Report link to a New York Post item online. The Post was not with the traveling press — and apparently had a decent Internet connection.
The initial N.Y. Post item read this way: “She is still in the presidential race, she said today, because historically, it makes no sense to quit, and added that, ‘Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June,’ making an odd comparison between the dead candidate and Barack Obama.”
Mrs. Clinton did not make that comparison. Here’s the video and here’s the transcript from the paper’s Web site, though it is not complete.
The wonderful Lisa Pease on Hillary and her RFK reference
Hillary's Shark-Jumping Moment
Okay. I am SO DONE with the Clintons.
I was no fan of theirs during their administration. And Hillary Clinton has run one of the most negative campaigns in modern history against Barack Obama, who, by contrast, has managed to stay, rather miraculously, above the fray. …
It's been disgusting to me personally to have her carrying any banner for the Democratic party, of which I've been a proud member all my life, because I feel she undermines our values.
She complains she's gotten unfair treatment because she's a woman. But Obama never complained he got unfair treatment because he was black. McCain doesn't complain about getting unfair treatment because he's old.
Everyone gets unfair treatment at times. To label it misogyny is bizarre, untrue and demeaning to all the women who have spent lifetimes fighting for equal rights.
You can't ask to be President of the United States and then whine about how unfairly you're treated. All people running for President are going to be treated unfairly.
As she says herself, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
When she and her husband tried to paint Obama as unelectable because he was black (and don't even try to argue in their defense - that's EXACTLY what they've been doing) they are basically speaking heresy against core Democratic values.
The Clinton Years
I'm one of the few Democrats I know who does not look back fondly on the Clinton years. I have to go back to Jimmy Carter to find a President I was at least satisfied with.
I watched in shock as the Clintons sold out our economy, our jobs and our manufacturing base with their unqualified support for NAFTA. I cheered Dick Gephardt's valiant effort to defeat his own party's President on this.
I watched as Hillary Clinton was handed the health care issue, with the full power of the presidency behind her. She couldn't get it done.
She didn't forge the necessary coalitions, and when she did compromise, it was in all the wrong places, so that by the time she brought forward a bill, there was little left worth supporting.
The best part about this campaign is that now many Democrats are finally seeing the Bill and Hillary Clinton that the right wing has hated for so long. And perhaps that common ground will help us forge some new bridges in the fall.
The problems we face in this country - reclaiming our vote, opening up government, turning the Titanic around re global warming, and finding a new energy future are too big to leave to partisan concerns.
I'm looking forward to hearing new voices rise in the Republican party, as the neocon philosophy slowly recedes from the national conversation, having utterly failed us for the past eight years.
Final Straw
Friday was the final straw for me. For her to bring up the assassination of Robert Kennedy as a reason for staying in the race was the lowest blow yet …
She was trying to make the point about June being the end of the campaign, but the subtext of course was, someone might kill Obama, and that's why she's waiting around.
Go away, Hillary. Please. Go far, far away.
Your and your husband's lies have aided in destroying people's faith in government. Go duck sniper fire in some other country.
You don't belong in our party. You couldn't even run your own campaign well. I don't want you anywhere near government. You don't deserve it.
When this campaign first started, I had no reason to get involved. I thought any of our [Democratic] leaders - John Edwards, Clinton or Obama – would do a better job than the Republicans so I planned to just sit the primaries out.
Choosing Obama
But when I saw what some Clinton supporters were saying about Obama (having 'no' record, being unqualified for any of a number of bogus reasons) that pressed my button. I have great sympathy for the underdog.
The more I read, the more I realized we'd be crazy NOT to elect Obama. He has it all.
He's smart. He's experienced. He's principled. He had a genuine, documented record of forging important legislation and getting bipartisan support.
He made a break with politics as usual to run a campaign that was truly of, by and for the people when he rejected all PAC money. He spoke out against the war when it was politically risky to do so. He chose community organizing over Wall Street.
He grew up in two countries, so he has a better understanding in his blood than most of how lucky we are here in America, and how much the rest of the world suffers, often as a result of our foreign policy abroad.
And then there's Hillary. She's a liar. She's a backstabber (telling Obama to his face how "honored" she was to share the debate with him, and then a couple of days later saying, when he wasn't there to respond, "Shame on you.")
She valued loyalty to herself over competency, which is why her campaign had so many issues.
She ran as if it were a "coronation" - rich drapery at events, spending campaign donor money as if it was water. Staying at the Bellagio in Vegas. And perhaps worst of all, claiming her husband's presidential experience as her own. (See my response to that here.)
The Feminist Question
I knew she was a climber, that the only reason she stayed with her husband after he embarrassed her in front of the world was so she could make him pay in a different way - by campaigning for her, and leveraging his connections on her behalf.
There's a wondrous kind of karma in this, in that he ended up being one of her biggest liabilities, rather than a help.
As a feminist, I was upset that our first female President would only have gotten there on her husband's coattails. She is not qualified to be President.
Why not wait for Barbara Boxer, who would make a fine President? Or Kathleen Sibelius? Or Janet Napolitano? Or Christine Gregoire? There are plenty of women who would make good presidents.
I'm not someone who would vote for someone just because she was a woman. I will vote for the best person, no matter their color, their sex or sexual orientation, or their race.
For all her nastiness, for all the lies, I have defended her staying in the race. Until today.
Look. The nomination race is over. It's been over since Obama won Wisconsin, just a week after sweeping the Potomac primaries. It's been over, mathematically, for a long time.
But I wanted to allow her and her supporters their fantasy. I saw the contest as building our Democratic party base, given us reasons to go into every state and register new voters. And that's been good for us, to a point. Until now.
She knows Obama has received death threats. She knows that people who have stood up from positions of power and said no to war have been assassinated. And she saw the press go after Gov. Huckabee for his beyond dumb and horribly unfunny allusion to the same.
The second to last straw, for me, was her comment about how the "hard-working" "white people" were voting for her, implying that other people were not so hard-working.
I wanted her excommunicated from the Democratic party for that statement alone.
But this comment was truly the last straw. Her statement on Friday was simply unconscionable.
She needs to go away. Forever. I never want to see her face on TV or hear that voice again.
Lisa Pease is a historian who has studied the Kennedy assassinations and other enduring political mysteries.
Original article posted here.Monday, April 21, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
More RFK Reality Rising
A new BBC documentary supports the conclusion that the CIA planned and executed the assassination of Robert Kennedy. The new video and photographic evidence -- the result of a three year long investigation --"puts three senior CIA operatives" at the scene of the murder.
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.Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the Congressional investigation into the JFK assassination. Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is assassinated. --CIA role in Kennedy killingAs with the 1963 murder of JFK in Dallas, lingering questions dog the official theories. Powder burns indicated that three shots had been fired from very close range from 0 to 1-1/2 inches though no witness could place Sirhan closer than three feet. Sirhan's gun held only eight bullets but a total of ten were recovered. Three were found in Kennedy. Two were lodged in a pantry door frame. One was found in an airspace. Presumably four more were found elsewhere. Significantly, four bullets 'touched' Kennedy to include the three that were recovered --lodged --in his back. At no time was Sirhan ever behind RFK.
Inexcusably, the door frames were burned, the Los Angeles Police Dept. claimed no bullets were found lodged in the "bullet holes", and two expended bullets (inexplicably dug out of wood) were soon found in the front seat of Sirhan's car. The LAPD then destroyed their records of the tests that had been done on the "bullet holes" in the doorframe.--Facts about the Robert F. Kennedy AssassinationFound on the Ron Paul forum:
When the hypnotized patsy, Sirhan Sirhan, opened fire on Robert Kennedy from the front, a CIA agent fired the kill shot at close range into the back of Kennedy's head.The BBC report by Shane O'Sullivane reveals that CIA operatives and four unidentified associates were at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles the night of June 5, 1968, moments before and after the murder. It was broadcast on BBC Newsnight.
The same agent who coordinated the operation and was at the scene, was later brought out of retirement to "handle" the congressional investigation into the assassination.
All 3 members of the assassination team are now dead, but many of those connected to them still hold high offices in government.
The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los Angeles.Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary on an anti-War ticket and was set to challenge Nixon for the White House when he was shot in a kitchen pantry.A 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested as the lone assassin and notebooks at his house seemed to incriminate him.However, even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember the shooting and defence psychiatrists concluded he was in a trance at the time.Witnesses placed Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy but the autopsy showed the fatal shot came from one inch behind. --CIA role in Kennedy killingIt is not surprising that the CIA would be implicated in the murder of RFK. It is tragic that the same scrutiny was not forthcoming sooner --when it might have done some good. It is tragic that the murder of JFK was not likewise scrutinized. It is tragic that the investigation of this murder was left in the hands of an incompetent Los Angeles Police Department about which there is no adjective to describe the utter incompetence given this case. Earlier there was no adjective to describe the criminal neglect given the murder of JFK in Dallas!The world's number one terrorist organization, the CIA has committed heinous acts of terrorism abroad, murdering critics of US foreign and domestic policies and has done it on behalf of an increasingly tiny, privileged American elite. This tiny elite of some one percent owns more than the combined wealth of 95% of the entire population. [See: the L-Curve] On behalf of this tiny, privileged base, the CIA has placed itself above law and supervision. The CIA's war on the world has claimed an estimated 12 million to 20 million victims, far more than the best estimates attributed to Adolph Hitler's 'Holocaust' of World War II.
Evidence That the CIA Murdered Bobby Kennedy
The RFK assassination was, like the assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other prominent figures, a political murder committed by operatives and agents of the US government (including, but not limited to, the CIA and FBI), in conjunction with local police (operating as CIA cutouts), and intelligence-connected organized crime figures and mercenaries.Given the rash of recent outrages by taser happy thug cops and given the incompetent handling of 911 where there is probable cause to arrest the arch criminals Bush and Cheney, one is hard pressed to find an institution of government that is legitimate or competent! I have proposed abolishing the CIA, indeed, smashing it into "a thousand pieces"! Abolish the CIA before the CIA abolish what little remains of America. Alas, America, you will fall of your own corruption and rot. No nation that condones the slaughter of its brightest and best will long survive! The enemy is not in Iraq, nor anywhere in the world but those of our own creation. The enemy is within. The enemy is among the traitors that make up the CIA.There is overwhelming evidence that the RFK murder was a CIA operation involving the Los Angeles Police Department.
More proof continues to emerge, including this fresh piece of evidence uncovered by BBC investigator Shane O’Sullivan. Conducting research for his own film on the RFK assassination, O’Sullivan has identified and corroborated the presence and identities of three former CIA operatives at the crime scene:
Michael Ruppert, former Los Angeles Police detective, author, journalist and editor of From The Wilderness, conducted his own investigation of the RFK assassination, tapping into inside contacts deep within the LAPD. His investigation definitively proves that the assassination was a CIA operation, and names some of the perpetrators:
--Commentary, Online Journal
Original article posted here.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Yet again, another "conspiracy theory" proving true. The pre-emptive coup against Robert F. Kennedy
David Edwards and Nick Juliano
Forty years after Democratic rising star Robert F. Kennedy was killed at a Los Angeles hotel during his presidential run, new evidence suggests the man serving a life sentence for his murder did not fire the shots that killed the charismatic senator. Forensic scientists met at a conference in Connecticut this week to discuss their independent findings that cast serious doubt on the Kennedy assassination. Sirhan Sirhan is serving a life sentence in Kennedy's death, but the conference presenters argue he could not have fired the fatal shot that killed Kennedy.
One investigator, Dr. Robert Joling, has studied the Kennedy assassination for nearly four decades. He determined the fatal shot came from behind Kennedy, while Sirhan was four to six feet in front of the senator and never got close enough to shoot him from behind, an NBC affiliate reports.
Analysis by another forensics engineer, Philip Van Praag, of a Canadian journalists tape recording, known as the Pruszynski recording, determined that 13 shots were fired while Kennedy was killed, although Sirhan's gun only held eight bullets, according to the NBC reporter. This suggests that a second shooter was involved in the assassination.
Van Praag's analysis led him to conclude that a second gun that was fired matched a type owned by one of the security guards in Kennedy's entourage.
"When that security guard was asked about owning that gun at first he admitted, 'Yes I owned that kind of gun but I got rid of it two months before the assassination.'" correspondent Amy Parmenter said on MSNBC Wednesday. "It turns out upon further investigation, in fact, he did not get rid of that gun until five months after the shooting. Of course, you can see where we're going with this. ... That security guard, was in fact behind Senator Kennedy when the fatal shot was fired."
This video is from MSNBC News Live, broadcast March 26, 2008.
Original article posted here.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Yet again further evidence uncovering the sham cover story for an assassination hit job on a would-be president
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.
"There is no doubt in our minds that no fewer than 14 shots were fired in the pantry on that evening and that Sirhan did not in fact kill Senator Kennedy," said Robert Joling, a forensic scientist who has been involved with the Kennedy case for nearly 40 years. He and Van Praag have published a book on the killing this week entitled "An Open and Shut Case".
The inconsistencies in the case have bred numerous conspiracy theories, including the involvement of the CIA and the idea that Sirhan - who claims not to remember the shooting and pleaded insanity at his trial - was a "Manchurian Candidate" assassin who was hypnotically programmed to kill the senator.
Now Van Praag has added new weight to the 'two shooters' theory. He reanalysed the only audio recording of the shooting, which was made by an independent journalist, Stanislaw Pruszynski. "At the time Pruszynski was not even aware that his recorder was still on," said Van Praag.
The recording quality is poor, but it is possible to make out 13 shots over the course of just over 5 seconds, before what Van Praag describes as "blood-curdling screams" obscure the sound. That is more than the eight rounds that Sirhan's cheap Iver Johnson Cadet 55 revolver carried.
Also, there are two pairs of double shots that occurred so close together it is inconceivable that Sirhan could have fired them all. The third and fourth shots and the seventh and eighth were separated by 122 and 149 milliseconds respectively. In tests, a trained firearms expert firing under ideal conditions could only manage 366 milliseconds between shots using the same weapon. And he was not being pinned to a table at the time.
Lastly, five of the shots - 3, 5, 8, 10 and 12 in the sequence - were found to have odd acoustic characteristics when specific frequencies were analysed separately. Van Praag thinks this is because they came from a different gun pointing away from Pruszynski's microphone.
To recreate this he recorded the sounds made by firing the Iver Johnson and another revolver, a Harrison and Richardson 922. At least one member of Kennedy's entourage was carrying this weapon when the killing happened. In the acoustic tests it produced the same frequency anomalies Van Praag had seen in the original recording but only when fired away from the microphone.
He presented his results on Thursday at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meeting in Washington DC.
Paul Schrade, a close associate of Kennedy's who was director of the United Auto Workers union, was at the senator's side in the pantry and was shot in the head. He told the meeting that America lost an outstanding leBlogger: Weazl's Revenge - Create Postader and potentially great president that day.
"I think we were in a position of really changing this country," he said. "What we lost was a real hope and possibility of having a better country and having better relations around the world."
He wants to see the case reopened and properly investigated. "We're going to go ahead and do our best to find out who the second gunman was and that's going to take a lot of work," he said.
Van Praag also wants the case reexamined. "We would hope that the evidence that we have uncovered ... would make a strong enough case to get serious consideration once again by the authorities," he said.Original article posted here.