COMMENT: Our long jour­ney in polit­i­cal research began with the inves­ti­ga­tion into the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. That killing was a coup d’e­tat, fol­lowed in time with the mur­ders of Mar­tin Luther King and JFK’s broth­er Robert at the hands of the same inter­ests.

A cou­ple of recent sto­ries touch on aspects of the inves­ti­ga­tion.

A New York Times obit­u­ary for McClandlish Phillips notes his work expos­ing the Jew­ish back­ground of Daniel Bur­ros, leader of a New York Ku Klux Klan chap­ter and a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty.

The obit­u­ary (pre­dictably) fails to note that Bur­ros’ name, address and tele­phone num­ber were in the sup­posed “leftist/communist” Lee Har­vey Oswald’s address book at the time of his arrest. (So were the name, address and tele­phone num­ber of George Lin­coln Rock­well, the fuhrer of the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty, who was shot to death in 1967.)

Bur­ros is alleged to have com­mit­ted sui­cide fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of Phillips’ sto­ry. As we have not­ed in AFA #13 (among oth­er pro­grams), Bur­ros alleged­ly killed him­self at the home of Roy Frankhouser, a Penn­syl­va­nia KKK leader and him­self a con­tract agent for the CIA. As Frankhouser not­ed, com­ment­ing on Bur­ros’ death: “Bad case of sui­cide. Three bul­lets. . . .” 

The con­nec­tions between the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty milieu and the 544 Camp Street/531 Lafayette Place milieu that fig­ured in Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion are cov­ered in FTR #188. Gar­rison’s thor­ough vin­di­ca­tion by the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions is cov­ered in FTR #190.

We’ve cov­ered the reopen­ing of the RFK assas­si­na­tion inves­ti­ga­tion in past posts. Suf­fice it to say that Sirhan was a pat­sy and an appar­ent mind-con­trol job.

Many inves­ti­ga­tors feel that Robert Kennedy’s actu­al assas­sin was Amer­i­can Nazi Thane Eugene Cesar.

In a recent post updat­ing the RFK killing, Russ Bak­er notes that Sirhan’s first attor­ney func­tioned more like a pros­e­cu­tor, rail­road­ing Sirhan into prison. More impor­tant­ly, attor­ney Grant Coop­er was under indict­ment at the time in a case involv­ing John­ny Rosel­li, one of the Mafia fig­ures involved with the CIA’s anti-Cas­tro efforts and believed by many to have been part of the mob ele­ment involved with the JFK assas­si­na­tion. 

“McCan­dlish Phillips, Who Exposed a Jew­ish Klans­man, Is Dead at 85” by Mar­galit Fox; The New York Times; 4/10/2013.

EXCERPT: McCan­dlish Phillips, a for­mer reporter for The New York Times who wrote one of the most famous arti­cles in the news­pa­per’s his­to­ry — expos­ing the Ortho­dox Jew­ish back­ground of a senior Ku Klux Klan offi­cial — before for­sak­ing jour­nal­ism to spread the Gospel, died on Tues­day in Man­hat­tan. He was 85. . . .

. . . Mr. Phillip­s’s most renowned arti­cle appeared on Page 1 on Sun­day, Oct. 31, 1965, under the head­line “State Klan Leader Hides Secret of Jew­ish Ori­gin.” It was a rig­or­ous­ly report­ed pro­file of Daniel Bur­ros, a 28-year-old Queens man who was the Grand Drag­on of the New York State Ku Klux Klan, a chief orga­niz­er of the nation­al Klan and a for­mer nation­al sec­re­tary of the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty. . . .

. . . . The arti­cle remains a case study in a reporter’s per­se­ver­ance in the face of intim­i­da­tion. It is also a case study in the severe, unin­tend­ed con­se­quences that the air­ing of fierce­ly guard­ed truths can have for the guardian: despite threat­en­ing to kill Mr. Phillips if the arti­cle went to press, Mr. Bur­ros, in the end, killed only him­self. . . .

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

EXCERPT: . . . . 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. . . .