Latest news with #Sirhan
New York Post
09-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
What RFK Jr. actually believes about his father's assassination — and how it's torn the Kennedy family apart
Robert Kennedy Jr. has long maintained that Sirhan Sirhan, who has spent nearly 60 years in prison for killing his father, is innocent of the crime — and that a second gunman was involved in the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy in 1968. That belief has fueled division between him and the majority of his siblings as well as their mother, Ethel, when she was alive. And it's sure to heat up again as Sirhan, 81, could be eligible for parole again next year. 'I believe Cesar killed my father,' Kennedy Jr. wrote in a 2021 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed of security guard Thane Eugene Cesar, who died in 2019 and was never charged. 'Sirhan,' Kennedy Jr. wrote, 'is not my father's killer.' Advertisement It was revealed Wednesday that Kennedy Jr., the current US Health and Human Services Secretary, sent a letter to then US Attorney General Eric Holder in 2012 requesting a new investigation into his father's death and the two-gunman theory. The letter to Holder, who served under Barack Obama, came to light in documents on the assassination declassified by the Trump administration. 10 Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. has long believed that Sirhan Sirhan did not fire the shot that killed his father in 1968. Getty Images When Kennedy Jr., 71, recommended to the California Board of Parole Hearings that Sirhan be given parole in 2021 — the 16th time he faced the board — six of his siblings, led by their mother, Ethel, slammed the move. Advertisement 10 Robert F. Kennedy's nine surviving children are split in their beliefs about his father's convicted killer, Sirhan Sirhan — with two arguing for their parole. RFK Jr. has said he believes a second gunman shot his father. Michael Guillen/NY Post 'Our family and our country suffered an unspeakable loss due to the inhumanity of one man,' said Ethel in a Sept. 7, 2021, post on her daughter Kerry Kennedy's X account — adding: 'He should not have the opportunity to terrorize again.' Ethel passed away Oct. 10, 2024, at age 96. Her children Joe, Courtney, Kerry, Chris, Max and Rory have opposed Sirhan's parole. Son Douglas, like Kennedy Jr., is in favor. Advertisement 10 Robert Kennedy confidant Paul Schrade spent much of his life trying to convince authorities to reopen the investigation into the assassination of the Democratic presidential candidate. The Washington Post via Getty Images Daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend told the Washington Post in 2018 that Kennedy Jr. 'makes a compelling case' about Sirhan not acting alone, but has not commented on the matter since. Kennedy Jr.'s 2012 letter to Holder included a three-page 'Summary of Evidence for the New Investigation' compiled by Paul Schrade. A former labor leader and confidant of RFK, Schrade was among five people wounded in the fusillade of bullets that resulted in Kennedy's death at Los Angeles's Ambassador Hotel following his Democratic presidential primary victory in California. Schrade, who was shot in the head by Sirhan during the melee, spent years trying to prove his theory that there were two gunmen involved in the assassination. Advertisement 10 Paul Schrade was among one of the victims of the shooting at the Ambassador Hotel that killed Robert Kennedy in 1968. He was shot in the head by Sirhan Sirhan. AP 'Paul and his team of nationally prominent attorneys including former US Attorney Rob Bonner strongly believe this new evidence is conclusive and requires a new investigation,' Kennedy Jr. wrote in his letter to Holder. 'I agree and support his request for a new investigation.' The request was based on 'new forensic tests on a journalist's audiotape recorded during this crime and found in the FBI's files,' said Schrade in his own letter to Holder dated July 29, 2012. 10 Robert Kennedy was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after his victory speech in the California Democratic presidential primary. Bettmann Archive 10 An acoustics expert has maintained that 13 shots were fired in the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Sirhan fired all eight shots from his .22 caliber Ivar Johnson revolver and did not reload, said Schrade in his letter to Holder. Bettmann Archive An acoustics expert who examined the recording maintained that 13 shots were fired. Sirhan fired all eight shots from his .22 caliber Ivar Johnson revolver and did not reload, said Schrade in his letter to Holder. Schrade, who died in 2022 at age 97, also pointed to the autopsy report that showed that RFK was shot from behind. Eyewitnesses said that Sirhan had stood in front of the candidate. 'I have been a strong advocate for the release of Mr. Sirhan B. Sirhan since I learned of evidence that was not presented to the court during his trial,' said Kennedy Jr. in an August 27, 2021, letter to the Board of Parole Hearings. 'After years of careful investigation, I arrived at the conviction that the story of my father's murder was not as cut and dried as portrayed at trial. Advertisement 10 Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of the assassination of Robert Kennedy. He claims to have no memory of the event, 10 Sirhan Sirhan, now 81, has been denied parole multiple times. He could be up for parole again in 2026. AP 'While Sirhan clearly fired shots at my father, overwhelming evidence suggests that these were not the shots that took his life.' Cesar, hired as a security guard for the night 'was in the exact position to fire the shots as described in the autopsy. Three witnesses saw him draw his gun — which he later admitted — and one said she saw him fire it,' Kennedy Jr. wrote in 2021. '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.' Advertisement Sirhan has consistently maintained that he does not recall the events that took place on the day of the assassination. 10 Douglas Kennedy, a younger brother of Robert Kennedy Jr., also wants a new investigation into the assassination of his father, and supports parole for Sirhan Sirhan Douglas Healey Other recently released files on the assassination released by director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revealed numerous menacing handwritten notes in Sirhan's bedroom in the Pasadena, Calif., home he shared with his mother and three siblings. 'My determination to remove RFK is becoming more the more of an unshakeable obsession,' read one of the scribbled notes included in the file. Advertisement When Sirhan was up for parole in 2021, the Kennedy family fight over his impending release led to one side 'double-crossing' the other, insider sources told The Post at the time. 10 'While Sirhan clearly fired shots at my father, overwhelming evidence suggests that these were not the shots that took his life,' RFK Jr. wrote in 2021. Here, Robert F. Kennedy and wife Ethel tour northwest Washington, which was devastated by fires in the wake of Martin Luther King's 1968 assassination. Bettmann Archive The family members against Sirhan's release had promised that they would not make a statement to the parole board, sources told The Post. 'The night before the hearing I got a letter from the parole board via the LAPD,' Sirhan's lawyer Angela Berry told The Post in 2021. 'It read, 'On behalf of the Kennedy family, we oppose the release of Sirhan.' [Kennedy Jr.] had been staying out of it specifically on the assumption that his family was going to stay out of it … I got ahold of him right away letting him know what happened.' Advertisement In response, Kennedy Jr. stayed up late writing a letter in favor of Sirhan's release that barely made it into the hearing, sources said. 'The parole hearing started at 8:30 a.m. and Robert's letter streamed in at 10:30 a.m.,' Berry said. 'It read in part, 'I have to assure you that the letter you got is not on behalf of the whole Kennedy family.' That was the very last thing the hearing officer read into the record.'
The National
23-04-2025
- Politics
- The National
Newly released documents show RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan 'acted alone'
Thousands of newly released documents about assassin Sirhan Bishara Sirhan – the Palestinian who emigrated from Jordan to the US and killed Robert F Kennedy in 1968 – prove he acted alone, according to an expert who has studied the case for several decades. 'I predicted there wasn't going to be a smoking gun,' Mel Ayton, who is widely considered to be one of the foremost experts on Sirhan and the RFK assassination, told The National, in reference to the documents and conspiracy theorists who believe another suspect was involved. 'There have been no surprises, as I predicted, and I haven't heard from any other historian who has said there's a smoking gun either.' Mr Ayton, author of The Forgotten Terrorist: Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F Kennedy and The Making of an Assassin, said many of the documents, released by the US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, appear to have been previously withheld because they contained the names and contact information of investigators and bureaucrats who have now died. 'It wasn't about covering anything up, it was about protecting sources, police sources and potential informants – that's what it all comes down to,' he said. Mr Ayton added that the documents do reveal several instances in which Sirhan was overt and confessed to his crimes shortly after RFK died on June 6, 1968. 'Sirhan's conversations with deputies and his words contradict this narrative that he was hypnotised,' he explained, knocking back a popular theory that has grown in the decades since RFK's murder and Sirhan's incarceration. Some of the many previously classified documents also show a scramble by US investigators, lawyers, reporters and others to learn anything and everything about Sirhan's Palestinian background before his move to the US in 1956 at the age of 12. Investigations by the Los Angeles Police Department and FBI indicated speeches given by Mr Kennedy on the campaign trail in support of Israel fuelled Sirhan's motivation that night in June, after RFK won the 1968 California Democratic primary in his pursuit of the White House. 'RFK must die,' Sirhan wrote repeatedly in a diary found by investigators. Friends and acquaintances of Sirhan also said at the time that he had become obsessed with RFK due to his stance on Israel, with the assassin frequently expressing anger. 'Many Arabs like Sirhan have been misled to believe that Israel is the enemy and the cause of their enslavement and poverty,' reads a letter to investigators from a lawyer based in Detroit, Michigan, included in the trove of recently released documents. Another recently unclassified document details comments by a reporter, Salah Abd As-Samad, who allegedly met Sirhan's father in Amman, Jordan, shortly after his son was accused of shooting RFK. 'I believe that the imbalance in Senator Kennedy's speeches while electioneering for the presidency was the primary cause of what happened,' the reporter recounted Sirhan's father as saying during an interview. 'This is what pushed my son to act as he did. Had the late senator been reserved and merely called for peace in the Middle East, nothing would have happened.' The previously classified documents also show the lengths to which investigators, out of due diligence, tried to pursue even the most fanciful of leads. One of those leads include a statement from Alice Dexter Peel, who claimed to have returned from holiday in Israel and told investigators she had heard a rumour of RFK's assassination in Tel Aviv, weeks before the assassination took place. 'Miss Peel advised she can only assume that possibly there may have been some error in reporting a news item concerning Kennedy,' read the document. Mr Ayton said his research showed that after Sirhan was convicted, various Arab political groups sought to use his incarceration to advance the Palestinian cause. 'In 1973 Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat ordered the kidnapping of three American diplomats and offered them in exchange for Sirhan,' he wrote in his first book on Sirhan, adding that President Richard Nixon quickly refused the offer. 'Terrorists, especially in the late 1970s, kept demanding his release, but it never succeeded.' Sirhan's many attempts to be paroled have been unsuccessful. He was briefly granted parole by the California parole board in 2021, only to have the decision vetoed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who said the assassination was one of the most notorious crimes in US history. For the 17th time since being incarcerated in 1969, Sirhan was again denied a parole request in 2023. He will be eligible again in 2027. The 81-year-old prisoner has periodically made contradictory comments about his role in RFK's assassination. During some interviews, he claims not to remember the events, while during others he seems to express remorse for what he did. Sirhan's lawyer, Angela Berry, doubled down on his cloudy memory, adding that he never truly confessed. 'It's disingenuous and feeds into this false narrative that's built up over the last 50 years,' she told The National. One of RFK's sons, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who now serves as President Donald Trump's Health Secretary, has said he doesn't believe that Sirhan acted alone in the murder of his father. Mr Ayton, however, said that Mr Kennedy, like other conspiracy theorists, continues to misinterpret the ample evidence pointing to Sirhan's guilt. 'There's this image they keep pushing of Sirhan as a non-political patsy, that's what all the conspiracy-minded people try to say and it's completely asinine,' he said.
The National
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The National
Newly released documents show RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan acted alone, expert says
Thousands of newly released documents about assassin Sirhan Bishara Sirhan – the Palestinian who emigrated from Jordan to the US and killed Robert F Kennedy in 1968 – prove he acted alone, according to an expert who has studied the case for several decades. 'I predicted there wasn't going to be a smoking gun,' Mel Ayton, who is widely considered to be one of the foremost experts on Sirhan and the RFK assassination, told The National, in reference to the documents and conspiracy theorists who believe another suspect was involved. 'There have been no surprises, as I predicted, and I haven't heard from any other historian who has said there's a smoking gun either.' Mr Ayton, author of The Forgotten Terrorist: Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F Kennedy and The Making of an Assassin, said many of the documents, released by the US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, appear to have previously been withheld because they contained the names and contact information of investigators and bureaucrats who have now died. 'It wasn't about covering anything up, it was about protecting sources, police sources and potential informants – that's what it all comes down to,' he said. Mr Ayton added that the documents do reveal several instances in which Sirhan was overt and confessed to his crimes shortly after RFK died on November 22, 1968. 'Sirhan's conversations with deputies and his words contradict this narrative that he was hypnotised,' he explained, knocking back a popular theory that has grown in the decades since RFK's murder and Sirhan's incarceration. Some of the many previously classified documents also show a scramble by US investigators, lawyers, reporters and others to learn anything and everything about Sirhan's Palestinian background before his move to the US in 1956 at the age of 12. Investigations by the Los Angeles Police Department and FBI indicated speeches given by Mr Kennedy on the campaign trail in support of Israel fuelled Sirhan's motivation that night in June, after RFK won the 1968 California Democratic primary in his pursuit of the White House. 'RFK must die,' Sirhan wrote over and over in a diary found by investigators. Friends and acquaintances of Sirhan also said at the time that he had became obsessed with RFK due to his stance on Israel, with the assassin frequently expressing anger. 'Many Arabs like Sirhan have been misled to believe that Israel is the enemy and the cause of their enslavement and poverty,' reads a letter to investigators from a lawyer based in Detroit, Michigan, included in the trove of recently released documents. Another recently unclassified document details comments by a reporter, Salah Abd As-Samad, who allegedly met Sirhan's father in Amman, Jordan, shortly after his son was accused of shooting RFK. 'I believe that the imbalance in Senator Kennedy's speeches while electioneering for the presidency was the primary cause of what happened,' the reporter recounted Sirhan's father as saying during an interview. 'This is what pushed my son to act as he did. Had the late senator been reserved and merely called for peace in the Middle East, nothing would have happened.' The previously classified documents also show the lengths to which investigators, out of due diligence, tried to pursue even the most fanciful of leads. One of those leads include a statement from Alice Dexter Peel, who claimed to have returned from holiday in Israel and told investigators she had heard a rumour of RFK's assassination in Tel Aviv, weeks before the assassination took place. 'Miss Peel advised she can only assume that possibly there may have been some error in reporting a news item concerning Kennedy,' read the document. Mr Ayton said his research showed that after Sirhan was convicted, various Arab political groups sought to use his incarceration to advance the Palestinian cause. 'In 1973 Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat ordered the kidnapping of three American diplomats and offered them in exchange for Sirhan,' he wrote in his first book on Sirhan, adding that President Richard Nixon quickly refused the offer. 'Terrorists, especially in the late 1970s, kept demanding his release, but it never succeeded.' Sirhan's many attempts to be paroled have been unsuccessful. He was briefly granted parole by the California parole board in 2021, only to have the decision vetoed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who said the assassination was one of the most notorious crimes in US history. For the 17th time since being incarcerated in 1969, Sirhan was again denied a parole request in 2023. He will be eligible again in 2027. The 81-year-old prisoner has periodically made contradictory comments about his role in RFK's assassination. During some interviews, he claims not to remember the events, while during others he seems to express remorse for what he did. Sirhan's lawyer, Angela Berry, doubled down on his cloudy memory, adding that he never truly confessed. 'It's disingenuous and feeds into this false narrative that's built up over the last 50 years,' she told The National. One of RFK's sons, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who now serves as President Donald Trump's Health Secretary, has said he doesn't believe that Sirhan acted alone in the murder of his father. Mr Ayton, however, said that Mr Kennedy, like other conspiracy theorists, continues to misinterpret the ample evidence pointing to Sirhan's guilt. 'There's this image they keep pushing of Sirhan as a non-political patsy, that's what all the conspiracy-minded people try to say and it's completely asinine,' he said.
Shafaq News
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Shafaq News
US releases thousands of classified RFK assassination documents
Shafaq News/ The US government on Friday released nearly 10,000 previously classified pages related to the 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, shedding new light on the mindset of his killer. The files include chilling handwritten notes from convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan, in which he repeatedly wrote variations of 'RFK must die' and 'RFK must be disposed of like his brother was' — a reference to President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination. One note scrawled across an envelope, described the act as an 'unshakable obsession.' The trove, posted online by the National Archives and Records Administration, is part of a broader transparency effort ordered by President Donald Trump shortly after beginning his second term. The release follows the disclosure of unredacted documents last month related to JFK's assassination, which, while offering deeper insight into Cold War-era intelligence operations, did not substantiate long-standing conspiracy theories. Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant, shot Kennedy on June 5, 1968, moments after the senator delivered a victory speech following his win in the California Democratic primary. Sirhan was convicted of first-degree murder and remains incarcerated in California. The newly released documents include FBI memos, crime scene photos, correspondence from the public, and interviews with Sirhan's classmates, neighbors, and coworkers. While some described him as 'friendly and generous,' others portrayed a politically driven and impressionable young man who briefly embraced mysticism and supported communist regimes. In one account, Sirhan told a Black garbage collector, who had expressed support for Kennedy, 'Well, I don't agree. I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch,' shortly after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in April 1968. Other files reference rumors that Kennedy would be assassinated, including accounts from American tourists who claimed to have heard such predictions while visiting Israel weeks before the shooting. Sirhan's legal team has long argued that he poses no threat to society. In 2021, a parole board deemed him eligible for release, but California Governor Gavin Newsom rejected the decision in 2022. A different panel denied parole again in 2023, citing Sirhan's continued lack of insight into his crime. The late senator's son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now serving as Health and Human Services Secretary, welcomed the release, praising President Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard for their 'courage' and 'dogged efforts.'
Asharq Al-Awsat
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Washington Releases 10,000 Pages of Records about Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 Assassination
About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were released Friday, including handwritten notes by the gunman, who said the Democratic presidential candidate 'must be disposed of' and acknowledged an obsession with killing him. Many of the files had been made public previously, while others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities. Their release continued the disclosure of historical investigation documents ordered by President Donald Trump. Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California's presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison. The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan, The Associated Press said. 'RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,' read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope, referring to Kennedy's older brother, President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. The return address was from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles. The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website. The release comes a month after unredacted files related to the assassination of President Kennedy were disclosed. Those documents gave curious readers more details about Cold War-era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Robert Kennedy, commended the release. 'Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,' the health secretary said in a statement. Documents include interviews with assassin's acquaintances The files surrounding Robert Kennedy's assassination also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as 'a friendly, kind and generous person' others depicted a brooding and 'impressionable' young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism. According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The sanitation worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people. 'Well, I don't agree. I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch,' Sirhan replied, the man told investigators. Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of 'The Kennedy Half-Century," said there have always been conspiracies surrounding Robert Kennedy's assassination. He believes the rollout of documents Friday would be similar to the JFK documents released earlier this year. He cautioned that a review needs to be done carefully and slowly, 'just in case there is a hint in there or there is an anecdote" that could shed more light on the assassination. 'I hope there's more information,' Sabato said. 'I'm doubtful that there is, just as I said when the JFK documents were released.' Some redactions remained in the documents posted online Friday, including names and dates of birth. Last month, the Trump administration came under criticism over unredacted personal information, including Social Security numbers, during the release of records surrounding President John F. Kennedy's assassination. Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he has also been deeply suspicious for years of the government's intelligence agencies. His administration's release of once-hidden files opens the door for more public scrutiny of the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI. Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King, who were killed within two months of each other. Lawyers for Kennedy's killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society, and in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023 , a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy. RFK still stands as a hero to American liberals Kennedy remains an icon for liberals, who see him as a champion for human rights who also was committed to fighting poverty and racial and economic injustice. They often regard his assassination as the last in a series of major tragedies that put the US and its politics on a darker, more conservative path. He was a sometimes divisive figure during his lifetime. Some critics thought he came late to opposing the Vietnam War, and he launched his campaign for president in 1968 only after the Democratic primary in New Hampshire exposed President Johnson's political weakness. Kennedy's older brother appointed him US attorney general, and he remained a close aide to him until JFK's assassination in Dallas. In 1964, he won a US Senate seat from New York and was seen as the heir to the family's political legacy.
