Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (49 page)

Sirhan had written in Arabic:

they should be killed.

And next to that, the number:

Three.

Fiona, Niarchos, and Kennedy: The names were startling by virtue of their very juxtaposition.”
⁴⁴²

Yannis Georgakis was Onassis’s attorney, good friend, confidant, and closest business associate for many, many years—and he concluded that Onassis was behind Bobby Kennedy’s murder:

“The truth was, he was
shattered
by the very real possibility that Onassis had paid for the bullets that killed Bobby Kennedy, and not for the first time he wondered about the nature of Onassis’s deal with Hamshari.

‘Sometimes remarkable chains of circumstances can reasonably be ascribed to coincidence. But at some point the connection is so astonishing that one must assume that it could only have happened by design,’ Georgakis would later muse. ‘And when an Irish-American name, a Scottish name, and a Greek name— the names of Onassis’s three most loathed and troublesome en-emies—are found in a Palestinian killer’s notebook written in Los Angeles shortly after Onassis had given more than a million dollars to a Palestinian terrorist in Paris (far more than that Palestinian had demanded), and the first name on that list has already been killed, you must seriously consider the possibility that you have reached that point.’”
⁴⁴³

Onassis reportedly seemed to somehow have knowledge of Bobby’s death before it happened:

“Onassis heard the news at about ten o’clock on the morning of Wednesday, June 5, 1968, while having breakfast in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Bobby wasn’t dead but it looked bad. Meyer told him from New York.

‘Somebody was going to fix the little bastard sooner or later,’

Onassis said. He wasn’t a hypocrite, and the callousness of his reaction did not surprise Meyer. Onassis told him to call as soon as Kennedy was dead—’as if he wanted to know the result of the four o’clock race at Santa Anita,’ Meyer later said:

Thring (Onassis’ lover who was on board the yacht with him at this time) remembers the impassiveness with which Onassis took the news. ‘Hearing something like that when you are so removed from reality made it even more shocking for me. I didn’t expect Ari to be upset; I knew that Bobby’s death was vastly convenient for him; but his reaction was ... it was
as if he’d been told something he already knew.
”
⁴⁴⁴

As a final note, Onassis actually confessed to his role in the murder. Onassis made the confession to his lover, Helene Gaillet, who vividly recalls the event:

“He stood looking at the ocean, the lights of his yacht glittering across the dark water. Because his back was turned to her, it took Gaillet several moments to realize that he was talking: ‘like somebody praying, really ... that is the only way I can describe it.’ As she strained to catch his words, he turned around and said matter-of-factly,

You know, Héleène, I put up the money for Bobby Kennedy’s murder.”

Said as a simple statement of fact ... ‘I said something like, “Bobby Kennedy? Oh, Ari.”

He gave that little Levantine shrug of his, like
so what?
... Onassis had actually confessed his complicity in Bobby Kennedy’s murder, and, in her heart of hearts, she feared that she believed him. ‘In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that he was speaking the truth,’ she said. ‘It was part of Ari’s charm that he would trust you with an extreme confidence.”
⁴⁴⁵

Another close associate of Onassis, David Karr, who handled much of his dirty work, also claimed to know that “Onassis had been behind Bobby Kennedy’s murder.”
⁴⁴⁶

Christina Onassis (who once demanded of Jackie Kennedy:
“If you want my father’s fucking money, you keep his fucking name”
—and Jackie took both
⁴⁴⁷
) was told of her father’s complicity in the RFK assassination when she was twenty-one years old. She let it be known (to family confidants such as Georgakis) that she had always resented the weight of that burden. In what might best be described a sanitized version of events, she later told a journalist that:

“Ari had paid an Arab terrorist protection money to keep his Olympic airline safe from skyjacking, and terrorist attack, which were a huge risk at that time. He later learned that the terrorist, a Palestinian named Mahmoud Hamshari, had used the money to finance the murder of Bobby Kennedy.”
⁴⁴⁸

Historical Perspective

By 1966, Robert Kennedy had clearly undergone a personal transformation. Many had considered him a power-focused and ruthless politician (in the vein of “Don’t get mad, get even”) who had been focused on bitter enemies such as Organized Crime. But tragedies that were both personal and historical had transformed him into a worldly, forward-thinking intellectual who suddenly seemed to have no less in mind than the personal well-being of every less fortunate individual on the planet and how their lot could be improved by strategic political leadership. Nothing evidenced this change more than his address to the students of Cape Town University in South Africa on June 6, 1966. Some students had already begun protesting the racist government policy of apartheid. Rather than avoid a hotly divisive political issue, Kennedy tackled it straight on, claiming the higher moral and philosophical ground:

“Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape men’s lives. Everything that makes man’s life worthwhile—family, work, education, a place to rear one’s children and a place to rest one’s head—all this depends on the decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people, and I mean
all
of its people. Therefore, the essential humanity of man can be protected and preserved only where government must answer—not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, not just to those of a particular race, but to all of the people.”
⁴⁴⁹

His words were stirringly reminiscent of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, almost as though he was invoking that document at a global level, as a call to international equality:

“We must recognize the full human equality of all of our people before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not because the laws of God command it, although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.”
⁴⁵⁰

Kennedy evidenced that he had mastered the art of placing political movements in both historical and philosophical perspective, and even doing so in a manner that was up close and personal:

“In a few hours, the plane that brought me to this country crossed over oceans and countries which have been a crucible of human history. In minutes we traced migrations of men over thousands of years; seconds, the briefest glimpse, and we passed battlefields on which millions of men once struggled and died. We could see no national boundaries, no vast gulfs or high walls dividing people from people; only nature and the works of man—homes and factories and farms—everywhere reflecting Man’s common effort to enrich his life. Everywhere new technology and communications brings men and nations closer together, the concerns of one inevitably becomes the concerns of all. And our new closeness is stripping away the false masks, the illusion of differences which is the root of injustice and of hate and of war.”
⁴⁵¹

The eloquent speech has become known as “The Ripple of Hope” address for the stirring words in one of the last passages:

“Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance

æ There is a Chinese curse which says, ‘May he live in interesting times.’ Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged, will ultimately judge himself, on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.”
⁴⁵²

That candescent hope that seemed to materialize in millions of people as a result of his inspired leadership, made his sudden loss on June 6, 1968 all the more poignant. It had seemed that a man who had championed compassion and equality was about to ascend to the presidency. And then he was gone.

When a train carried Robert Kennedy’s body from Washington D.C. to New York on the afternoon of June 8, 1968, thousands of people instinctively lined the tracks over the entire route to pay him their final respects.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

American Conspiracies:
Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies that the Government Tells Us, Jesse Ventura & Dick Russell, 2010

Shadow Play:
The Untold Story of The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination, William Klaber & Philip H. Melanson, 1998

An Open and Shut Case,
Dr. Robert Joling & Philip Van Praag , 2008

“Testimonial, An Open and Shut Case”, Robert Vaughn, 2008.
http://www. anopenandshutcase.com/?page_id=4

The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination:
New Revelations on the Conspiracy and Cover- Up, 1968-1991, Philip H. Melanson, 1994

Rearview Mirror:
Looking Back at the FBI, the CIA and Other Tails, William Turner, 2001

Who Killed Robert Kennedy?
(The Real Story Series), Philip H. Melanson, 2002

Nemesis, Peter Evans, 2004

“Two Guns Used in RFK Assassination, Experts Say”, Pierre Thomas, March 27, 2008, ABC News.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/LegalCenter/story?id=4534689

“New Evidence Challenges Official Picture of Kennedy Shooting”, James Randerson, February 22, 2008, guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/ feb/22/kennedy.assassination

“Simple Facts about the Robert F. Kennedy Assassination”,
http://flag.blackened.net/ daver/ index.html