The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
Crime, Conspiracy and Cover Up: A New Investigation
Tim Tate & Brad Johnson
First published by Thistle Books in 2018
Copyright Tim Tate & Brad Johnson 2018
This edition published in 2020 by Lume Books
30 Great Guildford Street,
Borough, SE1 0HS
The rights of Tim Tate and Brad Johnson to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
Table of Contents
What has violence ever accomplished?
What has it ever created?
No martyrs cause has ever been stilled by an assassins bullet.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy, April 5, 1968
Speech to Cleveland City Club,
one day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.
Introduction to the Second Edition
In the two years since the first edition of this book was published, two of the protagonists in the long, troublesome saga of the Robert Kennedy assassination have died. Both, in very different ways, played important roles in the story.
In May 2020 my co-author, Brad Johnson, passed away unexpectedly at his home in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to the terrible shock and sadness for his family and friends, Brads death leaves a sizeable hole in efforts to investigate the Kennedy case. As Chapter 11 shows, his ground-breaking examination of the Pruszynski tape the only recording to have captured the sounds of the murder was one of the most important forensic advances in understanding exactly how many shots were fired and from where - in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, on the night of June 4/5, 1968.
Brad was a remarkable and dedicated researcher. His encyclopedic knowledge and relentless attention to detail were crucial, even if they did not always make him easy to work with. I could not have wished for a better colleague with whom to write this book and I mourn the loss of a friend, and salute his tireless efforts in pursuit of the truth.
In September 2019, ten months before Brads untimely death, Thane Eugene Cesar, the security guard standing directly behind Kennedy when the fatal shots were fired, passed away. He was 77 years old and had been living quietly in the Philippines for several years. In death, as in life, Cesar became the focal point of the bitter arguments which have disfigured attempts to uncover who really murdered Robert Kennedy.
As this book details, all the forensic, ballistic and eyewitness evidence in the case proves that the man convicted of the assassination, Sirhan Sirhan, could not have fired and did not fire - the fatal shots; it also makes clear that Cesar should have been a prime suspect for Los Angeles Police. The long-suppressed official files, which Brad and I painstakingly catalogued, cross-referenced and analysed, revealed that he had means, opportunity and possibly motive. He also possessed a .22 calibre revolver almost identical to the gun which fired the bullets that hit Kennedy, and that he lied to detectives about the date on which he disposed of it.
But those same official documents showed that Cesar had never been thoroughly interrogated by LAPD or the FBI, and that his account of the events changed significantly in the surprisingly brief interviews which did take place. Unsurprisingly, many of the journalists and amateur investigators who wrote about the assassination posited that he had played the central role in the shooting.
The major problem with these theories was that Cesar later passed a privately-organised lie detector test which apparently proved he had not done so. As Chapter 13 explains, Dan Moldea, a veteran reporter who initially believed Sirhan was innocent then reversed his views, paid for the polygraph and ultimately became Cesars de-facto agent, handling media requests for him. Indeed, in 2019, Moldea was involved in a somewhat convoluted, and ultimately unsuccessful, scheme to enable a filmed interview between Cesar and Kennedys eldest surviving son.
Within hours of Cesars death, Robert Kennedy Jnr. issued a statement on Instagram denouncing the erstwhile security guard as a bigot who hated the Kennedys for their advocacy of Civil Rights for blacks and asserting that compelling evidence suggests that Cesar murdered my father. Both claims rather overstated the facts. Whilst Cesar was undoubtedly racially bigoted, there is little foundation for the allegation that he hated Americas leading political dynasty, and because the police and legal authorities badly botched their limited enquiries the evidence that he assassinated Robert Kennedy is far from compelling. The polygraph, too, is a substantial stumbling block to be examined carefully rather than ignored as inconvenient.
For Brad and I, this book was the product of more than 25 years painstaking research. When we set out to write it, both of us agreed that the assassination of Robert Kennedy was too important to be clouded by loose or poorly--supported allegations and speculative conclusions.
We were determined that we would lay out, methodically and with every source detailed, the evidence, and allow readers to decide for themselves what was most likely to have occurred. Inevitably, though, the long years of research in thousands of pages of once-suppressed official files, together with interviews with those who were there, led us to our own shared verdicts.
The first of these was that since all the evidence clearly showed that Sirhan had not killed Robert Kennedy, someone else must have done so. But our second conclusion was to us more important: we called for a new, official and transparent investigation into the murder and its aftermath as the only responsible means of proving beyond any doubt who that someone was.
We were, of course, not alone in this; other journalists working on the case, each with their own theories, made much the same plea. But, in depressing scenes which have repeated themselves over the decades since 1968, they could not find a way to work together to bring the necessary political and public pressure to bear.
There is, however, one remaining glimmer of hope. In 2019 a group of lawyers, doctors, actors, musicians, researchers and historians formed a Truth and Reconciliation Committee, and issued a pubic demand for major public inquests into the four political assassinations of the 1960s: John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jnr., and Robert F. Kennedy.
Their call for action is backed by one of the last survivors of the shooting in the Ambassador Hotel pantry, Paul Schrade: a brave and honourable man who both Brad and I have been privileged to know, and whose remarkable quest for justice is detailed throughout this book.
Brad, too, was a believer in the importance of TRC, and on his behalf as well as my own, I urge readers to support it and sign its petition for the long overdue re-opening of these still-unresolved crimes. Its website may be found at https://www.americantruthnow.org/.
Tim Tate
Wiltshire, England, July 2020.
Prelude
Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles
Wednesday, June 5, 1968: 12.00am, Pacific Daylight Time
We want Bobby! We want Bobby!
The Embassy Room ballroom is packed tight. Amid the traditional paraphernalia of American elections balloons, placards, button badges and straw boaters 1,800 excited campaign workers and supporters repeatedly chant the name of the winner of Californias Democratic primary.
We want Bobby! We want Bobby!
