© MALDEF / YouTubeRobert F. Kennedy and Paul Schrade
Letter from RFK Jr. Supports New Investigation
The ban on video and audio recordings at Sirhan Sirhan's parole hearing on February 9 meant the world depended on the one reporter allowed inside the hearing to tell us what happened. He had to condense "more than three hours of intense testimony" into 854 words.
Elliot Spagat's lively account of the proceeding for the Associated Press omitted one very important document that shooting victim and Kennedy family friend Paul Schrade presented to the parole board. This was a letter from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to US Attorney General Eric Holder, dated September 25, 2012, supporting Schrade's request for a new investigation of his father's murder:
Paul was a close friend and advisor to my father. He was standing beside my father when Daddy was killed and Paul was himself wounded by a bullet. With boundless energy and clear mind, Paul continues to pursue my father's ideas, an endeavor to which he has devoted his life. He organized with the support of my mother and my family the building of the new Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools on the former Ambassador Hotel site. Paul and his team...strongly believe this new evidence is conclusive and requires a new investigation. I agree and support his request for a new investigation.
© Daniel Schwen / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Schrade found the hearing "very abusive" and upsetting. He later told reporters waiting outside that "Sirhan was being tortured in there." In a radio interview, he said the parole board was "cold and ruthless about keeping this guy in jail, knowing there's evidence [of his innocence] in the files". He found the panel's treatment of Sirhan "despicable," destroying his dignity with petty questions that made the commissioners "look like amateur psychiatrists."
*****
Another important document submitted to the parole board two days before the hearing was a new declaration by Dr. Daniel Brown, a psychologist from Harvard Medical School. Since May 2008, Dr. Brown has spent over 100 hours with Sirhan, including a two-day visit last September.
The aim of these sessions was threefold: to "conduct a detailed forensic psychological assessment" of Sirhan's mental status; to allow Sirhan "to develop a more complete memory...for the events leading up to and of the night of the assassination"; and to determine whether or not Sirhan was the "subject of coercive suggestive influence" at the time of the shooting and if this accounted for his amnesia.
The declaration states that, in Dr. Brown's expert opinion, Sirhan is normal, does not have a psychiatric condition or personality disorder and shows no evidence of any violence risk if released (the primary consideration for any parole panel).
In his sessions with Sirhan, Dr. Brown found "a variety of personality factors that are associated with high vulnerability to coercive suggestive influence: an extreme dissociative coping style; hypnotically-induced altered personality states; extremely high hypnotizability; and high social compliance":
Mr. Sirhan is one of the most hypnotizable individuals I have ever met, and the magnitude of his amnesia for actions not under his voluntary [control] in hypnosis is extreme. This unusual combination of personality factors makes Mr. Sirhan the type of individual extremely vulnerable to coercive social influence [and accounts for his] uncharacteristic behavior and strong amnesia for that behavior on the night of Senator Kennedy's assassination...Dr. Brown's declaration traces the seeds of this "coercive suggestive influence" back to his experiences at a local race track, where "Mr. Sirhan regularly practiced self-hypnosis with fellow stable boys...Mr. Sirhan was observed to quickly enter a very deep state of hypnotic trance...and to then respond compulsively and uncritically to suggestions he behave in certain ways for which he subsequently became amnesic."
"Mr. Sirhan recalls being in the hospital for several weeks. Sometime thereafter he was taken to a military firing range and trained to shoot upon command at vital human organs while in an hypnotic state."[...]
Dr. Brown compares the notebooks to "a coerced internalized false confession" and claims they should have been ruled inadmissible at trial. He concludes:
Mr. Sirhan has been in prison for over four decades for a crime that in all likelihood he never committed...Extensive psychological testing by me and others shows no evidence for any clinically significant psychiatric condition and low evidence for violence risk, combined with the new evidence that raises reasonable doubt that Mr. Sirhan was the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, and also reasonable doubt about his previous written and verbal self-incriminating statements being voluntary and reliable, there is, in my opinion, no justifiable reason to deny his parole.*****
Since he has spent all of his adult life in prison for a crime that he may not have committed, nor has volition about, knowledge of, nor memory for, the compassionate response would be to let Mr. Sirhan live the remainder of his life free. There is little risk here.
Shane O'Sullivan is an author, filmmaker and researcher at Kingston University, London. His work includes the documentary RFK Must Die (2007) and the book Who Killed Bobby? (2008). He blogs on the Sirhan case at http://www.sirhanbsirhan.com
Comment: For a deeper look at how the 'Deep State' constructs and perpetrates assassinations and the myth of the 'lone nutter,' watch the profoundly insightful must-see documentary: 'Evidence of Revision: The Assassination of America'.