The Van Praag audio analy­sis con­cludes that the Pruszyn­ski record­ing is authen­tic and that all 13 sounds are gun­shots — not a sin­gle one of them a burst­ing bal­loon or any oth­er non-shot noise, shot ric­o­chet or echo.

It also finds that some of the shots were fired too rapid­ly, at inter­vals too close togeth­er for all the shots to have come from Sirhan’s inex­pen­sive hand­gun, and that the five shots which Van Praag says were fired oppo­site the direc­tion of Sirhan’s eight shots — those five being the 3rd, 5th, 8th, 10th and 12th shots in the sequence — dis­played an acousti­cal “fre­quency anom­aly” indi­cat­ing the alleged sec­ond gun’s make and mod­el were dif­fer­ent from Sirhan’s weapon. . . .

3b. Under hyp­no­sis, Sirhan was able to recall a con­sid­er­able amount of infor­ma­tion about “the girl in the pol­ka-dot dress”–a fig­ure report­ed by many eye­wit­ness­es to have cel­e­brat­ed the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Kennedy and appeared to have impli­cat­ed her­self and oth­ers in the crime.

“Con­victed RFK Assas­sin Says Girl Manip­u­lated Him” by Lin­da Deutsch [AP]; yahoo.news; 4/28/2011.

Con­vict­ed assas­sin Sirhan Sirhan was manip­u­lated by a seduc­tive girl in a mind con­trol plot to shoot Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his bul­lets did not kill the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, lawyers for Sirhan said in new legal papers.

The doc­u­ments filed this week in fed­eral court and obtained by The Asso­ci­ated Press detail exten­sive inter­views with Sirhan dur­ing the past three years, some done while he was under hyp­no­sis.

The papers point to a mys­te­ri­ous girl in a pol­ka-dot dress as the con­troller who led Sirhan to fire a gun in the pantry of the Ambas­sador Hotel. But the doc­u­ments sug­gest a sec­ond per­son shot and killed Kennedy while using Sirhan as a diver­sion.

For the first time, Sirhan said under hyp­no­sis that on a cue from the girl he went into “range mode” believ­ing he was at a fir­ing range and see­ing cir­cles with tar­gets in front of his eyes.

“I thought that I was at the range more than I was actu­ally shoot­ing at any per­son, let alone Bob­by Kennedy,” Sirhan was quot­ed as say­ing dur­ing inter­views with Daniel Brown, a Har­vard Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor and expert in trau­ma mem­ory and hyp­no­sis. He inter­viewed Sirhan for 60 hours with and with­out hyp­no­sis, accord­ing to the legal brief.

San­di Gib­bons, a spokes­woman for the Los Ange­les Coun­ty dis­trict attor­ney, said pros­e­cu­tors were unaware of the legal fil­ing and could not com­ment.

The sto­ry of the girl has been a lin­ger­ing theme in accounts of the events just after mid­night on June 5, 1968, when Kennedy was gunned down in the hotel pantry after claim­ing vic­tory in the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry.

Wit­nesses talked of see­ing such a female run­ning from the hotel shout­ing, “We shot Kennedy.” But she was nev­er iden­ti­fied, and amid the chaos of the scene, descrip­tions were con­flict­ing.

Through the years, Sirhan has claimed no mem­ory of shoot­ing Kennedy and said in the recent inter­views that his pres­ence at the hotel was an acci­dent, not a planned des­ti­na­tion.

Under hyp­no­sis, he remem­bered meet­ing the girl that night and becom­ing smit­ten with her. He said she led him to the pantry.

“I am try­ing to fig­ure out how to hit on her.... That’s all that I can think about,” he says in one inter­view cit­ed in the doc­u­ments. “I was fas­ci­nated with her looks .... She nev­er said much. It was very erot­ic. I was con­sumed by her. She was a seduc­tress with an unspo­ken unavail­abil­i­ty.” . . .

. . . Sirhan main­tained in the hyp­notic inter­views that the mys­tery girl touched him or “pinched” him on the shoul­der just before he fired then spun him around to see peo­ple com­ing through the pantry door.

“Then I was on the tar­get range ... a flash­back to the shoot­ing range ... I didn’t know that I had a gun,” Sirhan said.

Under what Brown called the con­di­tion of hyp­notic free recall, he said Sirhan remem­bered see­ing the flash of a sec­ond gun at the time of the assas­si­na­tion. With­out hyp­no­sis, he said, Sirhan could not remem­ber that shot.

5. Among the rea­sons that Sirhan’s con­vic­tion was real­ized was the remark­able coun­sel he received. Grant Coop­er was tied to Mob­ster John­ny Rosel­li and under indict­ment at the time he rep­re­sent­ed Sirhan. His con­duct would have been more appro­pri­ate for a pros­e­cu­tor than a defense attor­ney.

“RFK Assas­si­na­tion Legal Case Update” by Russ Bak­er; WhoWhat­Why; 4/5/2013.

. . . . Although Sirhan pled guilty at his orig­i­nal tri­al in 1969, Pep­per con­tends that Sirhan was betrayed by a lead mem­ber of his orig­i­nal legal team, Grant Coop­er, who Pep­per notes was him­self under fed­eral indict­ment at the time for ille­gally pos­sess­ing grand jury pro­ceed­ings in anoth­er famous case, involv­ing card cheat­ing at the Bev­erly Hills Friar’s Club. Coop­er, who faced pos­si­ble jail time for that, end­ed up being let off with a $1000 fine.

Intrigu­ingly, his client in the Friar’s affair, John Rosel­li, was an orga­nized crime fig­ure with CIA ties often named as a pos­si­ble con­spir­a­tor in the death of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy.

The defense had Sirhan admit guilt and sought to por­tray him as both men­tally defi­cient and act­ing on impulse. Pep­per notes that the attorney’s per­sonal vul­ner­a­bil­ity was known to the judge and pros­e­cu­tion, and that they nev­er­the­less said noth­ing while Sirhan’s real inter­ests were not rep­re­sented, and excul­pa­tory evi­dence was sup­pressed. Although Sirhan con­fessed to shoot­ing at Robert Kennedy, he lat­er said that he could remem­ber noth­ing at all of that trag­ic day. . . .

. . . If Sirhan had been rep­re­sented by capa­ble attor­neys deter­mined to learn the truth about the polit­i­cally fraught sec­ond mur­der of a Kennedy broth­er in five years, things might have turned out dif­fer­ently. Instead, his attor­neys per­suaded Sirhan to plead guilty in hopes of avoid­ing the death penal­ty; Sirhan put up no resis­tance to this strat­egy since, as he would lat­er reveal, he had zero recall of what hap­pened on the night of the shoot­ing. He was sen­tenced to the death penal­ty any­way, though sev­eral years lat­er the sen­tence was com­muted to life in prison after Cal­i­for­nia abol­ished the death penal­ty.

Pep­per, in his recent fil­ing, directs much of his out­rage at attor­ney Grant Coop­er:

As a mat­ter of record he accept­ed, with­out even the most per­func­tory exam­i­na­tion or chal­lenge, all of the State’s bal­lis­tic evi­dence…. As a result, defense Coun­sel Cooper’s indict­ment [for ille­gally pos­sess­ing grand jury pro­ceed­ings in anoth­er case] went away. He was reward­ed for obtain­ing the guilty plea and death penal­ty sen­tence….

Indeed, here’s what Coop­er said in his clos­ing remarks:

“Now, let me state at the out­set that I want this to sink in if any­thing sinks in—we are not here to free a guilty man.We tell you as we always have, that he is guilty of hav­ing killed Sen­a­tor Kennedy….we expect that under the evi­dence in this case, whether Mr. Sirhan likes it or not, under the facts of this case, he deserves to spend the rest of his life in the pen­i­ten­tiary….Don’t we know from dozens and dozens of wit­nesses that this defen­dant pulled the trig­ger that killed Sen­a­tor Kennedy?…there is no ques­tion about that.”

…“I wouldn’t want Sirhan Sirhan to be turned loose as he is dan­ger­ous, espe­cially when the psy­chi­a­trists tell us that he is going to get worse and he is get­ting worse. There is a good Sirhan and a bad Sirhan and the bad Sirhan is nasty… we as lawyers owe the oblig­a­tion to do what we think is right to the fullest extent of our abil­ity but we also owe an oblig­a­tion to soci­ety. And, I, for one, am not going to ask you to do oth­er­wise than to bring in a ver­dict of guilty in the sec­ond degree.”

It takes a moment to real­ize that this is not the pros­e­cu­tor, but the defense lawyer. No won­der most of us take for grant­ed that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy—and act­ed alone. . . .

6a. In a past post, we not­ed the pro­found rela­tion­ship between the pres­ti­gious “pro­gres­sive” lit­er­ary peri­od­i­cal The Paris Review and the CIA. Exem­pli­fy­ing what is known as “the left CIA,” the agents and assets grac­ing the pages of the Paris Review com­prise a sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment of post-World War II Amer­i­can literati and intel­li­gentsia. The pub­li­ca­tion was edit­ed by George Plimp­ton, per­haps best known for his book Paper Lion.A recent issue of Van­i­ty Fair con­tains a short  arti­cle about George Plimp­ton. In this sto­ry, we find an inter­est­ing and, per­haps, very sig­nif­i­cant detail about Plimp­ton’s career. Plimp­ton was at Robert F. Kennedy’s elbow at the Ambas­sador Hotel the night he was killed and “dis­armed the attacker”–a pre­sumed ref­er­ence to pat­sy Sirhan Sirhan.

Although one cer­tain­ly can­not draw con­clu­sions from this, it rais­es some inter­est­ing ques­tions: Might Plimp­ton actu­al­ly have been CIA him­self? Might his pres­ence at the Ambas­sador have been con­nect­ed to the assas­si­na­tion plot? Did he have any­thing to say about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­spir­a­cy and a pos­si­ble sec­ond shoot­er?

“Curi­ous George” by A. M. Homes; Van­i­ty Fair; June, 2013.

EXCERPT: . . . .He would sort of pop up around the edges of these impor­tant moments in his­to­ry. For exam­ple, he was stand­ing next to Robert Kennedy when he was assas­si­nat­ed in Los Ange­les, and George lit­er­al­ly helped dis­arm and sub­due the attack­er,” says Bean. . . .

6b. About the CIA, the Paris Review and George Plimp­ton:

“Exclu­sive: The Paris Review, the Cold War and the CIA” by Joel Whit­ney; Salon.com; 5/27/2012.

EXCERPT: . . . . The Paris Review has been hailed by Time mag­a­zine as the “biggest ‘lit­tle mag­a­zine’ in his­to­ry.” At the cel­e­bra­tion of its 200th issue this spring, cur­rent edi­tors and board mem­bers ran down the ros­ter of lit­er­ary heavy­weights it helped launch since its first issue in 1953. Philip Roth, V. S. Naipaul, T.C. Boyle, Edward P. Jones and Rick Moody pub­lished their first sto­ries in the Review; Jack Ker­ouac, Jim Car­roll, Jonathan Franzen and Jef­frey Eugenides all had impor­tant ear­ly sto­ries in its pages. But as Peter Matthiessen, the magazine’s founder, has told inter­view­ers — most recent­ly at Penn State — the jour­nal also began as part of his CIA cov­er.

[Edi­tor George] Plimpton’s let­ter on Paster­nak is essen­tial, how­ev­er, because for many years a small group of jour­nal­ists has been try­ing to pry more infor­ma­tion out of Matthiessen on the still-unknown extent of the CIA’s role with the Paris Review — and many in par­tic­u­lar have won­dered what the leg­endary Plimp­ton him­self knew of the magazine’s CIA ori­gins. . . .

. . . . In the doc­u­men­tary “Doc,” Plimp­ton admits that Matthiessen found­ed the Review as a CIA cov­er. But Plimp­ton says that none of the oth­er edi­tors knew this until the 1960s. Matthiessen con­firmed that in his Penn State inter­view, and says it would have been ille­gal for him to tell them of the agency’s involve­ment.) “This was right after the war. It was when the CIA was start­ing up. It was not into assas­si­na­tions and all the ugly stuff yet,” he adds in “Doc,” speak­ing to doc­u­men­tar­i­an, Immy Humes. “There were so many guys sign­ing up for the CIA. It was kind of the thing to do.” Matthiessen declined sev­er­al requests to dis­cuss the Paris Review and the CIA with Salon.

But whether or not Plimp­ton knew of his old friend’s work as a spy, the oth­er edi­tors’ ties to the CIA through the Con­gress for Cul­tur­al Free­dom last­ed beyond the John F. Kennedy assas­si­na­tion and the buildup to and U.S. entrance into the Viet­nam War. . . .

7a. Stat­ing the obvi­ous, Robert F. Kennedy’s kids RFK jr. and Rory have stat­ed that they believe that Pres­i­dent Kennedy was not assas­si­nated by a lone nut.

“RFK Chil­dren Speak about Assas­si­na­tion in Dal­las” by Jamie Sten­gle; Asso­ci­ated Press; 1/12/2013.

EXCERPT: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is con­vinced that a lone gun­man wasn’t sole­ly respon­si­ble for the assas­si­na­tion of his uncle, Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, and said his father believed the War­ren Com­mis­sion report was a “shod­dy piece of crafts­man­ship.”

Kennedy and his sis­ter, Rory, spoke about their fam­ily Fri­day night while being inter­viewed in front of an audi­ence by Char­lie Rose at the Win­spear Opera House in Dal­las. The event comes as a year of obser­vances begins for the 50th anniver­sary of the president’s death.

Their uncle was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, while rid­ing in a motor­cade through Dal­las. Five years lat­er, their father was assas­si­nated in a Los Ange­les hotel while cel­e­brat­ing his win in the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his father spent a year try­ing to come to grips with his brother’s death, read­ing the work of Greek philoso­phers, Catholic schol­ars, Hen­ry David Thore­au, poets and oth­ers “try­ing to fig­ure out kind of the exis­ten­tial impli­ca­tions of why a just God would allow injus­tice to hap­pen of the mag­ni­tude he was see­ing.”

He said his father thought the War­ren Com­mis­sion, which con­cluded Lee Har­vey Oswald act­ed alone in killing the pres­i­dent, was a “shod­dy piece of crafts­man­ship.” He said that he, too, ques­tioned the report.

“The evi­dence at this point I think is very, very con­vinc­ing that it was not a lone gun­man,” he said, but he didn’t say what he believed may have hap­pened. . . .

7b. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s wife was found dead of hang­ing, an alleged sui­cide. One won­ders if a mes­sage was being sent. The late Ms. Kennedy report­ed­ly had wres­tled with psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems and sub­stance abuse, which no doubt will keep the main­stream pun­dits sat­is­fied.

Obvi­ous­ly, we can­not say for sure whether Ms. Kennedy took her own life or was the recip­i­ent of “assist­ed sui­cide.” We would note in this regard that plen­ty of peo­ple strug­gle with sub­stance abuse and psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­ders and don’t kill them­selves.

Rush Lim­baugh got hooked on “Hill­bil­ly Hero­in” (Oxy­con­tin) and sought treat­ment for his addic­tion. He did­n’t hang him­self. (If he had, he’d have need­ed dock rope, plus a block and tack­le. The most telling com­ment I’ve heard on Lim­baugh came from come­di­an Mark Rus­sell who com­pared Rush to the Hin­den­burg, although admit­ting that it was inap­pro­pri­ate to com­pare a flam­ing Nazi gas-bag to a mag­nif­i­cent air­ship.)

“Coro­ner: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s Estranged Wife Mary Died of ‘Ashyx­i­a­tion Due to  Hang­ing’ ” by Dylan Sta­ble­ford [The Look­out]; yahoo.com; 5/17/2012.

EXCERPT: Mary Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., died of “asphyx­i­a­tion due to hang­ing,” accord­ing to the results of an autop­sy per­formed on Thurs­day.

Mary Kennedy was found dead in her Bed­ford, N.Y., home on Wednes­day. The 52-year-old design­er had strug­gled with alco­hol and drug prob­lems.

In 1994, the for­mer Mary Richard­son mar­ried Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an envi­ron­men­tal lawyer and son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. The cou­ple had four chil­dren togeth­er. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed for divorce in May 2010. . . .