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VERY Curious George: George Plimpton, the Paris Review, the CIA and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

 

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COMMENT: 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.

The lat­est 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?
  • One won­ders why this detail has not emerged before–at least we’ve nev­er heard of George Plimp­ton’s pres­ence at the Ambas­sador before. Plimp­ton was note­wor­thy and it is “curi­ous” that this detail has remained eclipsed over all these years. (After the pub­li­ca­tion of this post, a num­ber of readers/listeners sup­plied ref­er­ences to the Plimpton/RFK assas­si­na­tion link. See the com­ments below.
  • If, in fact, Plimp­ton was CIA, was he part of the “Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party/Good Guy” CIA (as described by John Lof­tus) or the much larg­er, much more pow­er­ful GOP/transnational corporate/Underground Reich CIA?

We should not fail to note that the assas­si­na­tion of Robert F. Kennedy is again under scruti­ny, and may wind up back in court. 

“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. . . .

Discussion

3 comments for “VERY Curious George: George Plimpton, the Paris Review, the CIA and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy”

  1. Pete Hamill described this scene in the Vil­lage Voice: June 13, 1968, Vol. XIII, No. 35

    “The scene assumed a kind of insane fury, all jump cuts, screams, noise, hurtling bod­ies, blood. The shots went pap-pap-pap-pap-pap, small sharp nois­es like a dis­tant fire­fight or the sound of fire­crack­ers in a back­yard. Rosey Gri­er of the Los Ange­les Rams came from nowhere and slammed his great bulk into the gun­man, crunch­ing him against a serv­ing table. George Plimp­ton grabbed the guy’s arm, and Rafer John­son moved to him, right behind Bill Bar­ry, Kennedy’s friend and secu­ri­ty chief, and they were all mak­ing deep ani­mal sounds and still the bul­lets came.”

    from: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/05/pete_hamills_ey.php

    Posted by Mark | May 19, 2013, 8:00 pm
  2. I had to check that too, I had always thought ex-foot­ball play­er Rosey Gri­er dis­armed Sirhan.

    Here’s a two-minute clip from a PBS show where Gri­er does say George Plimp­ton was there, but was not strong enough to get the gun out of Sirhan’s hand. Gri­er dis­armed him.

    It would be inter­est­ing to hear what Gri­er would say about Thane Eugene Ceasar-

    http://www.pbs.org/wnet/pioneers-of-television/video/rosey-grier-on-the-kennedy-assassination/

    Posted by Swamp | May 20, 2013, 8:49 am
  3. Plimp­ton at the Ambas­sador has been men­tioned in a cur­so­ry fash­ion. Turn­er & Chris­t­ian p. 197 of Car­roll & Graf edi­tion Assas­si­na­tion of RFK and Tal­bot’s Broth­ers p. 367 Free Press hard­cov­er edi­tion. But more effort
    has gone into dis­cred­it­ing Shane O’Sul­li­van­s’s doc­u­men­tary alleg­ing the pres­ence of CIA oper­a­tives Joan­nides, Morales and Camp­bell at the Ambas­sador.
    Was Plimp­ton the oth­er CIA man there?

    Posted by Dennis Ziebart | May 20, 2013, 9:41 am

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