WaPo: Sirhan Sirhan, denied parole despite a Kennedy confidant’s call for his release

[villager]

<snip>

The 91-year-old Schrade, a Kennedy family friend, was working as the labor chairman of the senator’s presidential campaign in 1968. He was walking behind Kennedy when the Democratic candidate was shot four times.

In part because Kennedy was struck from behind, Schrade has long advanced the argument that Sirhan fired shots that night — but not the ones that killed Kennedy.

The fatal bullets, Schrade argued, were fired from a different shooter’s gun.

<snip>

For those skeptical of Sirhan’s guilt, the crux of the argument rests on the number of shots fired that night.

According to O’Sullivan, Kennedy’s autopsy revealed that the senator was hit four times and that five others at the scene were wounded. If nine shots were fired, conspiracy theorists maintain, one must have been fired by someone other than Sirhan, who was carrying an eight-shot revolver.

Sirhan’s lawyers have also argued that their client was not in the right physical position to fire the shot that killed Kennedy, according to Reuters.

Schrade told the Saratogian that while no live television footage captured the shooting, he believes that a second gunman could have used the chaos to conceal a weapon and fire from close range.

The newspaper noted that skeptics’ arguments were seemingly bolstered by a 2007 analysis of an audio recording of the shooting. The analysis, the newspaper noted, “indicates a total of 13 shots fired, further strengthening the argument of those who believe a second gunman was involved, Kennedy’s true assassin.”

“No witness saw Sirhan’s gun close to Robert Kennedy or behind him,” Schrade told the Saratogian. “He was three feet in front of Kennedy. We need to take the evidence we have in the files and try to find out who the second gunman was and if there was a connection with Sirhan. If all else fails, I’m going to have to go public and accuse the justice establishment of not bringing justice to RFK. He deserves it and the family deserves it.”

<snip>

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/02/10/this-kennedy-confidant-has-spent-decades-calling-for-the-release-of-rfks-killer/

[Peace Patriot]

1. Wow! Do read this article about a man who was shot with RFK and lived,

and who believes that Sirhan Sirhan did NOT shoot Kennedy. Schrade says Sirhan was three feet in front of Bobby when the shots were fired and Bobby was shot from behind. Also, recent (2007) analysis of an audio recording reveals that 13 shots were fired. Sirhan's gun was an 8-shot revolver.

Schrade, now 91, wants Sirhan released from prison, and apparently argued passionately at Sirhan's recent parole hearing for his release. He apologized to Sirhan for not coming forward before to challenge his conviction. I hope Sirhan does get released and comes under the care of a very smart psychiatrist who can help unscramble his brain.

It was all just too convenient for the "military-industrial complex" to be rid of both JFK and RFK who had fought with them about nuking Russia and refused to do it (Cuban Missile Crisis) and who had fired the CIA Director for insubordination (Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba). JFK had just started de-escalating in Vietnam when he was murdered, and RFK was running for president on an anti-Vietnam war platform in 1968, when he was murdered. JFK and RFK had done a number of other things to merit death in the CIA's and MIC's eyes, including creating backchannels to Krushchev and Castro to get around the CIA, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (first effort to control nuclear weapons), the Russian Wheat Deal (saving Russians from starvation after a failure of their wheat harvest), and JFK's intention to run for a second term in 1964 on a platform for world peace.

I have never trusted either investigation.

James Douglass has recently established, beyond question, that JFK was assassinated by the CIA. See his amazing book: "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters." (2007)

Douglass is working on two more books, analyses of the RFK and MLK assassinations. He is more than likely in touch with Schrade.

Why It Matters. Why it matters NOW. What's wrong with our democracy now, began then.

[villager]

4. Don't forget David Talbot's "The Devil's Chessboard," too....

His extensively researched tome on the Dulles Bros. How coincidental that Allen was on the Commission to investigate the very crime he helped perpetrate...

[JFKDem62]

15. The Douglass book should be required reading for all Americans

One of the most important books I ever read.

And saddest.

[Midnight Writer]

2. The crux; Sirhan was in front of RFK. autopsy showed RFK shot four times in the back

Every single witness (and there were dozens) claimed that Sirhan approached RFK from the front, said "Kennedy, you son of a bitch", and fired from about three feet away.

The autopsy showed that RFK was shot four times from the back. One shot went through his suit coat, not hitting him. Two bullets struck him in the back and one shot (the fatal one) hit him in the back of the head. There were powder burns and puckering around the wounds, indicating that the shots that hit him were fired from inches away.

When the Congressional Assassinations Review Board formed in 1976, they decided to "review" the JFK and MLK assassinations, but not this one.

They wanted nothing to do with this case.

[Wilms]

3. The Second Gun -- Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

[MrMickeysMom]

5. For verification of the need for his release, a resource...

http://blackopradio.com

[villager]

6. Thanks!

Not hopeful truth will ever "fully emerge" in our country -- before its inevitable bust-up into constituent pieces -- but at least we can keep it from being "fully buried," too...

[struggle4progress]

7. We know from Sirhan's diary that he hated RFK: in fact, he wrote in his diary

that RFK had to die by 5 June, the anniversary of the beginning of the Six Day War, which obsessed Sirhan

We know that Sirhan bought hollow point 22 ammunition on 1 June

We know that Sirhan fired a number of shots from an eight-shot 22 revolver near RFK, after which the candidate lay dying on the ground

We know that RFK's fatal head wound was inflicted by a hollow point bullet

Having previously decided that RFK must die by that day, and having (less than a week before the event) bought the kind of bullets that killed RFK, Sirhan was there, shooting a gun that could fire those very bullets

To summarize: he set a date to kill RFK; he took steps to kill RFK; he fired shots at RFK from a very short distance on the date set; and immediately afterwards his intended victim lay on the ground, shot in the head

Nearly fifty years later, the trail of any conspiracy here (if there was any) will be hopelessly cold, and without genuine new evidence seems unlikely to emerge. If there were actually a conspiracy, Sirhan is best regarded as a part of it, since the odds that he accidentally showed up at the scene of a different conspiracy-on-progress, and used the sort of ammunition that killed RFK without himself being the actual killer, seem slim beyond all credibility

[villager]

8. Guardian: "more bullet-holes... than Sirhan's gun can hold... bizarre automatic writing..."

You are such an interesting poster, S4P, and bring some really interesting articles to light here.

And yet you are hair-trigger quick to accept official explanations for everything -- from the same agencies who have every stake in not telling us the truth about anything.

I can't figure it out.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/20/usa.features11

In any case, be well....

[struggle4progress]

9. I have ideas about what constitutes a useful analysis and what constitutes

an analysis that is not useful. And I attempt to cultivate "healthy paranoia" -- by which I mean a disciplined suspicious instinct that leads one to ask potentially important questions and to obtain verifiably factual answers or partial answers to those questions

I frankly see no reason to believe that any specific and well-defined group of people set out to produce the "official" version of the RFK assassination to further their own political or ideological agenda

Is it possible Sirhan was part of a broader conspiracy? Of course -- but it was nearly fifty years ago now, and the conspirators' trail (if there were other conspirators) must be very cold indeed by now.

Is it possible Sirhan acted alone? Of course -- though some people find this very hard to believe. The vast majority of such assassinations in US history seem to involve deranged individuals, and Sirhan fit rather neatly into that category, having strange ideas that (due to his superior mental skills) he could plunge his hand into boiling water without being burned and the like

If you can provide a useful analysis of the RFK assassination -- by which I mean one that is does not require too much speculation but is factually based and helps me think productively about how to live in the world -- then I am interested. But citing notoriously unreliable eyewitness testimony about exactly how far from Kennedy Sirhan could have been, or which way Kennedy's torso was twisted at the instant Sirhan started shooting, must remain unconvincing. And one needs a careful detailed credible analysis of actual evidence, rather than a retrospective speculation that the private security guard or the never-seen-again girl-in-a-polka-dot-dress might have been involved with the whole thing covered up by a convenient loss-of-evidence benefiting who-knows-who

[villager]

10. What's notoriously unreliable is the need to disregard all the eyewitness reports in order to

...explain away the powder burns on RFK, though no one -- no one -- had Sirhan close enough to do that.

Plus there are still the "extra" bullet holes in the pantry walls not accounted for (though of course the LAPD was quite helpful in quickly dismantling everything).

The real stretch, as ever, is imagining that what the police what you believe is the whole truth, and nothing but.

[struggle4progress]

11. Sirhan is a small man (5'3"), who had worked as a jockey

All bullets striking RFK (5'9&quot had an upward trajectory, consistent with Sirhan's stature

The whole thing took place in less than six seconds, in a chaotic context

RFK - (1) one head injury without bullet exit; (2) one right-armpit-to-chest injury without bullet exit; (3) one right-armpit-to-chest with bullet exit; (4) one non-injury by bullet through jacket and shoulder pad
Paul Schrade - shot in forehead, perhaps by (4) bullet passing through RFKs shoulder pad
Ira Goldstein - (5) shot in thigh
Irwin Stroll - (6) shot below the knee
Elizabeth Evans - (7) superficially wounded in head, believed to have been hit by ricochet from ceiling
William Weisel - (8) shot in abdomen

The LAPD did remove some doorjambs at the time: they later said they didn't recover any bullets from them. Could they have corrupt and lying? Of course that's possible, but speculation simply isn't evidence

[villager]

12. Notice you have to do that "magic bullet" thing again, just for starters?

...with one shot doing double duty?

And then, of course, you have to take the LAPD at their word.

I don't.

We were lied to about all three assassinations. There were three --those three --because they were part of a deliberate pattern that got us right to where we are today.

[struggle4progress]

13. Penetrating gunshot woulds to the head are medically serious, and a small calibre bullet

that fully penetrates the skull is likely to bounce around, causing serious brain injury

Schrade took a hit in the forehead from a bullet: if it hadn't been slowed down by passing through something, he'd have been a mess. Of the survivors, he's the worst injured, but even he remembers the event -- and medically that means he had quite limited brain injury

Similarly Evans took a hit in the head from a bullet: again, if it hadn't lost energy somehow, she'd have been a mess, too. But, no, her wound was entirely superficial -- she's back out and about again in a few days

A few feet of air isn't going to slow the bullet that much, so some explanation is needed for the fact that Schrade and Evans suffered only limited injury

[villager]

14. You are speculating without citation.

Whereas, we know there were powder burns on RFK's skin.

[struggle4progress]

17. Ya gotta work with whatcha got, not with whatcha ain't got

(1) Ya got RFK with three bullet wounds, two penetrating, one perforating
(2) Ya got five others injured by single bullets or fragments
(3) Ya got Sirhan detained instantly with an 8-shot revolver, all rounds expended
(4) Ya got powder burns indicating the RFK wounds were from a gun within inches of him
(5) Ya gotta buncha eyewitnesses -- who didn't none of em actually see nobody shoot RFK no how

Then ya gotta wrap ya brain around whatcha got and see if ya can find any kinda easy-to-read story there or if ya gotta get back to work lookin for more

Long ago a lotta folk decided there's a real easy-to-read story there

[villager]

18. Citations? I have plenty for the credible theory there were *more* shots

And I am going to trust Paul Schrade's instincts and research -- as a victim of the shooting -- over yours, I'm afraid. S4P.

I know you love official stories when you come to my threads, despite your otherwise interesting OPs.

Be well.....

[Peace Patriot]

16. Funy bullets that take a U-turn.

Gravitational waves, do you think? Funny 8 shot revolver that shoots13 bullets. Quantum mechanics?

[villager]

19. Not when you buy your guns n' ammo at the "Official-Story-slow-moving-postwar-coup" store!