From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/6169006.stm
CIA role claim in Kennedy killing
New video and photographic evidence that puts three senior CIA
operatives at the scene of Robert Kennedy's assassination has been
brought to light.
21 November 2006
The evidence was shown in a report by Shane O'Sullivan, broadcast on
BBC Newsnight.
It reveals that the operatives and four unidentified associates were
at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles in the moments before and after
the shooting on 5 June, 1968.
The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were
based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los
Angeles.
'Decoy'
Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary on an anti-
War
ticket and was set to challenge Nixon for the White House when he was
shot in a kitchen pantry.
A 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested as the lone
assassin and notebooks at his house seemed to incriminate him.
However, even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember the
shooting and defence psychiatrists concluded he was in a trance at the
time.
Witnesses placed Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy
but the
autopsy showed the fatal shot came from one inch behind.
Dr Herbert Spiegel, a world authority on hypnosis at Columbia
University, believes Sirhan may have been hypnotically programmed to
act as a decoy for the real assassin.
Evidence
The report is the result of a three-year investigation by filmmaker
Shane O'Sullivan. He reveals new video and photographs showing three
senior CIA operatives at the hotel.
"What were they doing there? It's our obligation as friends of Bob
Kennedy to investigate this."
- Paul Schrade
Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers
who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base for its
Secret War on Castro.
David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends:
"I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los
Angeles when we got the little bastard."
Gordon Campbell was Chief of Maritime Operations and George
Joannides
was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations.
Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA
liaison to the Congressional investigation into the JFK assassination.
Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is
assassinated.
Memory
There have been calls for a fresh investigation into the shooting
Monday, 20 November would have been Bobby Kennedy's 81st
birthday. In
Los Angeles, his son Max has just broken ground on a new high-school
project in memory of his father on the old Ambassador Hotel site.
Paul Schrade, a key figure behind the school project, was walking
behind Robert Kennedy that night and was shot in the head. He believes
this new evidence merits fresh investigation:
"It seems very strange to me that these guys would be at a Kennedy
celebration. What were they doing there? And why were they there? It's
our obligation as friends of Bob Kennedy to investigate this."
Ed Lopez, a former Congressional investigator who worked with
Joannides in 1978, says:
"I think the key people at the CIA need to go back to anybody who
might have been around back then, bring them in and interview them,
and
ask - is this Gordon Campbell? Is this George Joannides?"
This report was shown on Newsnight on Monday, 20 November, 2006.