Brainwashing, mind-altering drugs, and rogue espionage:
it sounds like something out of a James Bond flick, but according to conspiracy theorists,
it was all behind the killing of a major American politician.
Let's start with some of the basic details. Like many members of his family,
Robert F. Kennedy charted an impressive course through the governmental ranks. After serving
as Attorney General during his brother John's presidency and then as a United States Senator,
he announced in 1968 that he would be running for the Democratic presidential nomination.
On June 4, 1968, Kennedy had just won the California primary and was giving a speech
at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. With the excited cheering of his supporters behind him,
he began to leave the hotel through the kitchen. But just after the clock struck midnight,
24-year-old Sirhan Sirhan appeared from the crowd wielding an eight-shot revolver. He fired
a number of times, wounding a few people before being wrestled to the ground. At some point,
Kennedy was hit just by his ear. Sirhan was arrested and ultimately given the death sentence,
which has since been commuted to life in prison. Kennedy was taken to the hospital
for surgery to remove the bullet, but he died at 1:44 AM on June 6.
"And he was shot in the head?"
"Yes, he was."
On the surface, the story of Robert Kennedy's assassination seems pretty straightforward. But
the devil is always in the details. For one thing, Sirhan Sirhan was standing in front
of Kennedy when he began to fire. But Kennedy took shots from behind, and investigations by
the coroner uncovered powder burns on his jacket and hair, indications that those shots were fired
point blank. And as far as anyone can tell, Sirhan didn't seem to be standing there at all.
Furthermore, Sirhan's revolver held only eight bullets, but many speculate that there were more
than eight shots fired, which could indicate that there was a second shooter. Photos from the crime
scene seem to show pieces of metal – potentially bullets – lodged in the doorframe. And just to
make things stranger, internal police documents referenced the idea that the bullets were fired
from different guns, and that the bullet that hit Kennedy didn't come from Sirhan's gun.
The more you read into Robert Kennedy's assassination, the more it starts to smell
a little like a cover-up. At his trial, Sirhan Sirhan confessed to the crime but also admitted
later that he only did so at his attorney's recommendation. And that same attorney decided
to make the argument that Sirhan had "diminished capacity": essentially a guilty verdict,
but one that might avoid the death penalty. But that was done without ever bringing up the
fact that Kennedy was shot from behind, a detail that would have presumably helped Sirhan's case.
"I really don't remember things clearly about it."
On top of that, Paul Schrade, a friend of Kennedy's who was also shot and wounded
during the crime, has said that he believes the police rushed the job,
wanting to close the case quickly. They refused to follow leads and only reluctantly
reopened parts of the investigation years later. And investigators also insisted that
those supposed bullets in the doorframe weren't bullets, and then the evidence was destroyed.
To be entirely clear, Sirhan Sirhan was caught at the scene of the crime, and he confessed to
everything at his trial. He even confessed to having reasons to dislike Robert Kennedy.
Furthermore, he brought a gun to the scene of the assassination, which he'd staked out for
about 30 minutes prior. And investigations of his personal belongings didn't help him, either. He
had a newspaper clipping that was critical of Kennedy in his pocket, and investigators
later found notebooks at his home with the words "RFK must die" scribbled in them over and over.
But Sirhan has since admitted that he doesn't actually remember writing any of those notes.
As reported by The Guardian, the writing itself is oddly robotic. And Sirhan has further admitted
that he actually doesn't remember the shooting at all. As for what he does remember, he recalls,
quote, "being led into a dark place by a girl who wanted coffee." And he also remembers
being choked by an angry mob. This has led to the theory that was in a brainwashed trance,
forced into carrying out the deed by someone much more powerful.
"I was worried about saving my own butt from, from execution."
The idea of a brainwashed assassin sounds something like out of The Manchurian Candidate,
but it may be closer to reality than you'd initially suspect. In short,
the CIA spent a significant portion of the 1950s and 60s researching mind control.
American POWs reportedly returned from stints in Korea having been brainwashed
into believing Communist ideals. The CIA suddenly felt they were at
a distinct disadvantage when it came to these complex mind games and naturally
then spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to weaponize hypnosis and drugs.
A project known as MKUltra is one of the big names when it comes to this
particular area of research. It revolved around the use of drugs, especially LSD,
as a means of brainwashing subjects. Consent for many of these experiments was dubious
at best, and the whole venture was both very secret and very illegal.
When you look at publicly available records,
the whole endeavor doesn't seem all that successful. But that may not be the whole
story. CIA agents have claimed that they couldn't remember the details while on trial,
and all physical records were destroyed. Combined with the fact that long-term advanced hypnosis
techniques have largely untested results, maybe brainwashing isn't totally out of the question.
To be fair, picking apart strange inconsistencies isn't enough to actually implicate the entire CIA
in the assassination of Robert Kennedy. True, the agency was involved in some pretty shady work,
but speculation is hardly concrete evidence. But that doesn't change
the fact that there were members of the CIA who just didn't like Kennedy.
As reported by The Guardian, David Sanchez Morales was a senior CIA agent often known for his work
with covert operations who was pretty open about his dislike for the Kennedy family. For one thing,
he blamed them at large for the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation in 1961. Almost
a decade and a half later, he reportedly told friends that Robert Kennedy deserved
to be assassinated. According to the book A Lie Too Big to Fail, Robert A. Maheu,
an ex-FBI agent who handled some of the CIA's more unsavory missions, was also spotted effectively
celebrating Kennedy's death, as it cleared the way for Richard Nixon to win the upcoming election.
On top of all that, Kennedy also directly opposed the CIA's power, and he could've
eventually pressed the organization for more answers about the death of his brother,
whose own assassination has also been the target of prominent conspiracy theories.
"This was a military-style ambush from start to finish. This was a coup d'etat."
It's one thing to take inconsistencies and weave them into a fantastical tale of conspiracy,
but it's another to start factoring in actual sightings of certain people around the scene
of a crime. One theory, put forward by writer and filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan,
points out that three high-level CIA operatives were all near the Ambassador
Hotel around the time of Kennedy's assassination for unclear reasons.
David Sanchez Morales, who was supposedly stationed in Laos at the time, was caught
on camera in the Ambassador Hotel just after the end of Kennedy's speech,
only to reappear again 30 minutes later. Morales' associate Gordon Campbell was also spotted in
that same room around the exact same time, and both men had actually been seen hanging around
the local area in the year leading up to the assassination. Then there was also Campbell's
meeting with George Joannides, one of the CIA's chiefs of psychological warfare operations,
just prior to the shooting. It could be just a coincidence, but the presence of multiple CIA
operatives does raise some eyebrows. It's hard not to imagine that they were planning something.
When you consider all of the weird facts around the assassination of Robert Kennedy,
you might start thinking that you'd need a really specific person to actually head
this entire operation. And that's where Robert Maheu comes into the picture.
As recounted by A Lie Too Big to Fail, Maheu formerly worked for the FBI, but then the CIA
began tapping him for certain covert operations. Eventually, some people began to actually see
him as an assassin, or even as a fixer for Howard Hughes, who was also known for financing
covert CIA operations. He's even said to be the inspiration for the Mission: Impossible TV show.
Over the years, a number of people, including Maheu's associates and even FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover, have outright claimed that he was the one behind Robert Kennedy's death,
and it's easy to see why. Between his access to the LAPD, Sirhan Sirhan's defense team,
trained CIA agents, and the results of those top-secret brainwashing experiments,
Maheu really does seem like the perfect guy for the job.
When it comes to the potential plan put together by Robert Maheu, there's another name that's worth
considering: Thane Cesar. As covered by A Lie Too Big to Fail, he was known as the CIA's "contract
agent," which sounds suspicious, especially when you consider that his actual employment
records are pretty hazy. He was holding Robert Kennedy's arm at the moment of the shooting,
and he admitted to drawing, although not firing, his gun at that same moment.
"Thane Eugene Cesar was on the door. He was on different doors."
"He followed Kennedy in, which he was not supposed to do."
A Lie Too Big to Fail also suggests that Cesar was actually on the scene to fill
his role in a rather complicated version of the multiple shooters scenario. Essentially,
he was there to hold Kennedy down, thereby incapacitating him and potentially firing off a
couple of shots himself. But he didn't deliver the killing blow. Rather, another accomplice
appeared with an easily concealable gun, firing a couple of shots into the back of Kennedy's head.
And that's not all. At the same moment, another shooter appeared in front of Kennedy,
somewhere near Sirhan Sirhan to fire off a few shots, just to make sure it looked like Sirhan
had committed the crime himself. According to this theory, Sirhan was only ever shooting blanks.
"Sirhan was not in position to shoot Robert Kennedy after his first two shots."
A Lie Too Big to Fail emphasizes that this was no small-scale operation. Instead,
it required a whole team to make it work. So while there was a group of
people tasked with actually killing Robert Kennedy and framing Sirhan Sirhan, there
were others who needed to keep the entire operation running smoothly.
This theory mentions an accomplice stationed at one of the fire exits, a man who stood out
for communicating on a suspicious radio. He was likely there both to allow Sirhan entry to the
building and to ensure that the door wouldn't be blocked when the assassins needed to make
their escape. What's more, there's a reference to two girls in polka dot dresses, one of whom
accompanied Sirhan upstairs to the kitchen, and another who escorted a different man downstairs.
Why would there be a need for what appeared to be two separate teams of assassins? Just
in case Kennedy didn't end up exiting through the kitchen, the whole operation had a backup plan.
No matter what path he took after his speech, the assassination could still go off without a hitch.
In the aftermath of Robert Kennedy's assassination, there have been some
suspicious things uttered by a number of people potentially involved in the supposed
plot. A Lie Too Big to Fail focuses squarely on some of the diary entries of John Meier,
specifically regarding the behavior of Robert Maheu in the days following the crime. Meier
began making connections and asking questions upon hearing that Thane Cesar had been at the
Ambassador that day, but doing so brought swift retribution from Maheu. It was a
clear threat to stop looking into things, and the fury laced in the words surprised Meier.
And this apparently wasn't the only time that Maheu acted shifty and
irritable about information surrounding the assassination. And if that's not enough,
David Sanchez Morales reportedly told a group of friends in 1973,
"I was in Dallas when we got the son of a b----- and I was
in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard."
In light of everything, it's hard not to interpret that as a confession.