Kennedy JFK Assasination

[Graeme]

Dennis David, who saw JFK's wounds on autopsy photos, indicates where he saw an entry wound.

The above is intriguing. From frames of the famous footage and various books, Kennedy's head appears to literally 'explode'. Half the poor mans head disappeared;
"...blowing off part of his skull and destroying the right front section of his brain".
At the Parkland Memorial Dr Malcolm Perry performed a tracheotomy (which obliterated the neck wound) and he was placed on artificial respiration.

Despite the gross anatomical damage, the man above can discern a "small hole" from a "postmortem photo"? Where are those photos now?

The autopsy was/is the problem;
"A great deal of the controversy and madness surrounding the assassination could have easily been prevented if a thorough autopsy had been performed. The brief postmortem examination, which should have taken two or three days, was rushed through in a few hours because Bobby and Jacqueline Kennedy insisted on staying at Bethesda Naval Hospital during the autopsy, and they reportedly made it known that they wanted it done quickly. Also, it is believed that Kennedy's brain, which would have provided answers to many questions about the head shot (and which was discovered missing from the the National Archives in 1966), was believed to have been disposed of by Robert Kennedy for fear it would become "a lurid public exhibition"

Postscript regarding Tippit. Abraham Zapruder gave $25,000 (received from Life magazine, for his colour footage of the assassination) to Tippit's widow. In 1999, the U.S. government paid Zapruder's family $16 million for the film, which was declared a permanent possession of the American people.

When do we move onto King and Bobby

 

[FLYBOYJ]

When do we move onto King and Bobby

Anytime....

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Interesting - that transcript reads like me lying to my mom when I was 8 years old about getting in trouble in school.

"yeah, well sort of, a little bit, kinda, but not really, actually no..."

It sure does....

This is one consparicy theory I have followed for a number of years because every corner of it has problems when you look at the official story. If one looks outside the box and reads about the Kennedys, their father, their connections, its no wonder JFK got "Whacked," in plain simple terms.

Its kind of funny - Graeme brings up MLK - the King family including Coletta Scott King (prior to her death) publicly stated that they believed James Earl Ray DID NOT kill MLK.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Despite the gross anatomical damage, the man above can discern a "small hole" from a "postmortem photo"? Where are those photos now?

Take your pick....


The Autopsy Pictures

The headwound according to witnesses

 

[Graeme]

INCREDIBLE

 

[FLYBOYJ]

It is. As stated, in every corner of this there is contradictory information with regards to the Warren Commission report and eye-witness testimony. I saw this the other day...

The Kennedy Assassination: Was There a Conspiracy? - The Lessons of J.F.K. - TIME

 

[Cyrano]

 

[FLYBOYJ]

What do you think about Robert Kennedy's assasination? I've seen a couple of documentaries about it and to say the least there was something shady in the investigation. Witnesses harassed, etc.

The LAPD did not want another fiasco so they quickly gathered evidence so well they actually destroyed critical evidence. Despite the signs of those times I'd find it ironic that another "nut" would come out and pop RFK just for his anger over RFK's support for Israel. Sirhan Sirhan was a Lebanese Christian and displayed some real bizzare behavior prior to the assassination. Two theories exist.

1. Sirhan was brainwashed and was the sole gunman
2. A security guard behind Kennedy was his killer.

"Robert F. Kennedy's assassination is greatly overshadowed by his brother John's in the American consciousness.

But the inconsistencies in the official account of the RFK case are just as well-documented, damning, and thoroughly covered up.

The evidence, when looked at objectively and with an open mind, points to a wider conspiracy and cover-up by forces including the U.S. government and LAPD.

At the time of his assassination, Robert Kennedy was well on his way to becoming the next president of the United States. He was a populist candidate, loved by minorities and the working class.

He spoke eloquently about peace, equality and justice. He would have likely tried to put an end to the Vietnam war and to limit or even abolish the CIA.

Robert F. Kennedy was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles just after giving his victory speech in the California primary for the Democratic presidential nomination. Not even 5 years after the killing of his brother, RFK, a progressive, highly popular candidate for president, was also stopped by a bullet to the head from a supposed "lone nut."

While these circumstances are highly suspicious in themselves, we will see that as with the JFK assassination, the most basic facts–the trajectory of the bullets, the location of the supposed assassin, the nature of the injuries–are completely inconsistent with the government's story.

Evidence
• Powder burns on Kennedy's clothing and skin revealed that all three of his wounds were from a gun fired from 0 to 1-1/2 inches away. Sirhan's gun could not possibly have done this; according to the witnesses Sirhan's gun never got closer than three feet away. 1

• LA Coroner Thomas Noguchi, determined that the fatal shot came from about an inch away, right under Kennedy's ear. Thus the shot came from behind Kennedy, while Sirhan was several feet in front of him. In his autobiography Noguchi stated, ""Until more is precisely known…the existence of a second gunman remains a possibility. Thus, I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy." 7

• Three CIA operatives have recently been identified in photographs and video and placed at the Ambassador Hotel the night RFK was killed. The agents, David Morales, George Joannides, and Gordon Campbell worked together at the infamous Miami CIA station, JMWAVE. 9

• According to the BBC, "even under hypnosis, [Sirhan] has never been able to remember the shooting and defence psychiatrists concluded he was in a trance at the time…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." 9

• Sirhan Sirhan's revolver held a maximum of eight bullets. Kennedy was shot four times: one shot entered the head behind the right ear, a second one near the right armpit, a third just below the second and a fourth that went through Kennedy's jacket but did not hit his body. Five other people were shot in addition to Kennedy, one of whom was shot twice. Barring any more "magic bullets," that is a total of 10 bullets. Additionally, witnesses and photographs reveal that several ceiling tiles were pierced by bullets, making it nearly impossible that Sirhan was the only gunman.

• Thane Cesar was a security guard who was pressed up against Kennedy's back right side and was holding Kennedy's right arm in his left hand as Sirhan jumped out and fired his first two shots. Witnesses reported seeing Cesar fire back at Sirhan, one even specifying that Cesar "accidentally" shot Kennedy. "

While this site has good information, I disagree with their 9-11 consparicy stance in other sections of the site. In comparing a 911 conspiricy to the Kennedy Assassination there's as much holes in it as the Warren Commission report.

That's where I part company with "Conspiracy Theorist."

TruthMove - RFK

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Here's some other "stuff."

Disappearing Witnesses

I think the author Jim Marrs said Loyds of London put the odds of one in six million of these people witnessing "something" and turning up dead shortly thereafter.

 

[Cyrano]

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Good info FlyboyJ. I recall one more thing, a female witness who saw two persons, a woman and a man, leaving the Ambassador Hotel via back door. The woman was saying to the man "We shot him, We shot him". Later that witness was told by the police/FBI that she actually heard "they shot him, they shot him".

Yes, and that witness was badgered and bullied by the LAPD...

 

[Graeme]

From FLYBOY above.

Just to comment on two points;

• LA Coroner Thomas Noguchi, determined that the fatal shot came from about an inch away, right under Kennedy's ear. Thus the shot came from behind Kennedy, while Sirhan was several feet in front of him. In his autobiography Noguchi stated, ""Until more is precisely known…the existence of a second gunman remains a possibility. Thus, I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy." 7

In 1968, an investigator on Sirhan's defense team asked Sirhan why he didn't shoot Kennedy between the eyes. He was definitely close enough to the senator and, because it is accepted that he was in front of Kennedy, it would have been the most effective shot to take. Apparently, shooting Kennedy in the face was precisely what Sirhan had intended to do. Sirhan immediately replied, "Because the son of a bitch turned his head at the last second."

• Sirhan Sirhan's revolver held a maximum of eight bullets. Kennedy was shot four times: one shot entered the head behind the right ear, a second one near the right armpit, a third just below the second and a fourth that went through Kennedy's jacket but did not hit his body. Five other people were shot in addition to Kennedy, one of whom was shot twice. Barring any more "magic bullets," that is a total of 10 bullets.

From Dan Moldea's book, The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy, Moldea believes that the bullet holes in the wooden door panel that were seen in photographs of the crime scene were not actually bullet holes and that untrained eyes probably identified them incorrectly.

Another conspiracy issue was that bullets fired in 1975, from Sirhan's gun bore a different marking to those recovered from the assassination crime scene. However Moldea interviewed several police officers who admitted that Sirhan's gun had been reloaded and fired privately after the shooting so that officers could have souvenir bullets fired from the gun that killed Robert Kennedy. These extra shots-the exact number of which is not known-created a residue in the barrel of Sirhan's pistol that resulted in the 1975 bullets bearing different markings than the eight fired by Sirhan.

 

[syscom3]

I'm in Dallas texas this weekend.

Funny I saw this thread as I just got back from Dealy Plaza and the JFK assasination museum.

When I get back home, I will post the picture for everyone to enjoy.

Note to any of you who are also railfans..... theres a light rail station right next to this place. If you want to visit the museum, take the train.

 

[Graeme]

I'm in Dallas texas this weekend.

Funny I saw this thread as I just got back from Dealy Plaza and the JFK assasination museum.

When I get back home, I will post the picture for everyone to enjoy.

Note to any of you who are also railfans..... theres a light rail station right next to this place. If you want to visit the museum, take the train.

I doubt the truth to this..But I read somewhere that there is a 'sign' at the old depository/JFK museum that says "No guns allowed".

 

[syscom3]

I doubt the truth to this..But I read somewhere that there is a 'sign' at the old depository/JFK museum that says "No guns allowed".

Its everywhere.

Including the bar in the hotel.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I've been to the site twice - its true!

 

[FLYBOYJ]

From FLYBOY above.

In 1968, an investigator on Sirhan's defense team asked Sirhan why he didn't shoot Kennedy between the eyes. He was definitely close enough to the senator and, because it is accepted that he was in front of Kennedy, it would have been the most effective shot to take. Apparently, shooting Kennedy in the face was precisely what Sirhan had intended to do. Sirhan immediately replied, "Because the son of a bitch turned his head at the last second."

And it was the same defense team that argued that Sirhan seemed to be hypnotized with little or no recollection of the incident.

From Dan Moldea's book, The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy, Moldea believes that the bullet holes in the wooden door panel that were seen in photographs of the crime scene were not actually bullet holes and that untrained eyes probably identified them incorrectly.

Heard that as well but the LAPD destroyed the place so it couldn't be proven or dis-proven.

Another conspiracy issue was that bullets fired in 1975, from Sirhan's gun bore a different marking to those recovered from the assassination crime scene. However Moldea interviewed several police officers who admitted that Sirhan's gun had been reloaded and fired privately after the shooting so that officers could have souvenir bullets fired from the gun that killed Robert Kennedy. These extra shots-the exact number of which is not known-created a residue in the barrel of Sirhan's pistol that resulted in the 1975 bullets bearing different markings than the eight fired by Sirhan.

I never heard that but I find question in that whole scenario. It doesn't matter if the gun sat for a while, residue doesn't create the bullet fingerprint of the gun, it's the barrel bullet combination. Even if residue or corrosion is formed in the barrel, the fingerprint of the bullet exiting the gun shouldn't really change.

 

[mkloby]

I never heard that but I find question in that whole scenario. It doesn't matter if the gun sat for a while, residue doesn't create the bullet fingerprint of the gun, it's the barrel bullet combination. Even if residue or corrosion is formed in the barrel, the fingerprint of the bullet exiting the gun shouldn't really change.

That didn't make any sense to me either...

 

[FLYBOYJ]

More food for thought...

"RFK Immediately Thought Brother's Assassination Was Conspiracy

Salon | May 03, 2007
David Talbot

One of the most intriguing mysteries about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that darkest of American labyrinths, is why his brother Robert F. Kennedy apparently did nothing to investigate the crime. Bobby Kennedy was, after all, not just the attorney general of the United States at the time of the assassination -- he was his brother's devoted partner, the man who took on the administration's most grueling assignments, from civil rights to organized crime to Cuba, the hottest Cold War flashpoint of its day. But after the burst of gunfire in downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, ended this unique partnership, Bobby Kennedy seemed lost in a fog of grief, refusing to discuss the assassination with the Warren Commission, and telling friends he had no heart for an aggressive investigation. "What difference does it make?" he would say. "It won't bring him back."

But Bobby Kennedy was a complex man, and his years in Washington had taught him to keep his own counsel and proceed in a subterranean fashion. What he said in public about Dallas was not the full story. Privately, RFK -- who had made his name in the 1950s as a relentless investigator of the underside of American power -- was consumed by the need to know the real story about his brother's assassination. This fire seized him on the afternoon of Nov. 22, as soon as FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, a bitter political enemy, phoned to say -- almost with pleasure, thought Bobby -- that the president had been shot. And the question of who killed his brother continued to haunt Kennedy until the day he too was gunned down, on June 5, 1968.

Because of his proclivity for operating in secret, RFK did not leave behind a documentary record of his inquiries into his brother's assassination. But it is possible to retrace his investigative trail, beginning with the afternoon of Nov. 22, when he frantically worked the phones at Hickory Hill -- his Civil War-era mansion in McLean, Va. -- and summoned aides and government officials to his home. Lit up with the clarity of shock, the electricity of adrenaline, Bobby Kennedy constructed the outlines of the crime that day -- a crime, he immediately concluded, that went far beyond Lee Harvey Oswald, the 24-year-old ex-Marine arrested shortly after the assassination. Robert Kennedy was America's first assassination conspiracy theorist.

CIA sources began disseminating their own conspiratorial view of Kennedy's murder within hours of the crime, spotlighting Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union and his public support for Fidel Castro. In New Orleans, an anti-Castro news organization released a tape of Oswald defending the bearded dictator. In Miami, the Cuban Student Directorate -- an exile group funded secretly by a CIA program code-named AMSPELL -- told reporters about Oswald's connections to the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee. But Robert Kennedy never believed the assassination was a communist plot. Instead, he looked in the opposite direction, focusing his suspicions on the CIA's secretive anti-Castro operations, a murky underworld he had navigated as his brother's point man on Cuba. Ironically, RFK's suspicions were shared by Castro himself, whom he had sought to overthrow throughout the Kennedy presidency.

The attorney general was supposed to be in charge of the clandestine war on Castro -- another daunting assignment JFK gave him, after the spy agency's disastrous performance at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. But as he tried to establish control over CIA operations and to herd the rambunctious Cuban exile groups into a unified progressive front, Bobby learned what a swamp of intrigue the anti-Castro world was. Working out of a sprawling Miami station code-named JM/WAVE that was second in size only to the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters, the agency had recruited an unruly army of Cuban militants to launch raids on the island and even contracted Mafia henchmen to kill Castro -- including mob bosses Johnny Rosselli, Santo Trafficante and Sam Giancana, whom Kennedy, as chief counsel for the Senate Rackets Committee in the late 1950s, had targeted. It was an overheated ecosystem that was united not just by its fevered opposition to the Castro regime, but by its hatred for the Kennedys, who were regarded as traitors for failing to use the full military might of the United States against the communist outpost in the Caribbean.

This Miami netherworld of spies, gangsters and Cuban militants is where Robert Kennedy immediately cast his suspicions on Nov. 22. In the years since RFK's own assassination, an impressive body of evidence has accumulated that suggests why Kennedy felt compelled to look in that direction. The evidence -- congressional testimony, declassified government documents, even veiled confessions -- continues to emerge at this late date, although largely unnoticed. The most recent revelation came from legendary spy E. Howard Hunt before his death in January. Hunt offered what might be the last will and testament on the JFK assassination by someone with direct knowledge about the crime. In his recent posthumously published memoir, "American Spy," Hunt speculates that the CIA might have been involved in Kennedy's murder. And in handwritten notes and an audiotape he left behind, the spy went further, revealing that he was invited to a 1963 meeting at a CIA safe house in Miami where an assassination plot was discussed.

Bobby Kennedy knew that he and his brother had made more than their share of political enemies. But none were more virulent than the men who worked on the Bay of Pigs operation and believed the president had stabbed them in the back, refusing to rescue their doomed operation by sending in the U.S. Air Force and Marines. Later, when President Kennedy ended the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 without invading Cuba, these men saw not statesmanship but another failure of nerve. In Cuban Miami, they spoke of la seconda derrota, the second defeat. These anti-Kennedy sentiments, at times voiced heatedly to Bobby's face, resonated among the CIA's partners in the secret war on Castro -- the Mafia bosses who longed to reclaim their lucrative gambling and prostitution franchises in Havana that had been shut down by the revolution, and who were deeply aggrieved by the Kennedy Justice Department's all-out war on organized crime. But Bobby, the hard-liner who covered his brother's right flank on the Cuba issue, thought that he had turned himself into the main lightning rod for all this anti-Kennedy static.

"I thought they would get me, instead of the president," he told his Justice Department press aide, Edwin Guthman, as they walked back and forth on the backyard lawn at Hickory Hill on the afternoon of Nov. 22. Guthman and others around Bobby that day thought "they" might be coming for the younger Kennedy next. So apparently did Bobby. Normally opposed to tight security measures -- "Kennedys don't need bodyguards," he had said with typical brashness -- he allowed his aides to summon federal marshals, who quickly surrounded his estate.

Meanwhile, as Lyndon Johnson -- a man with whom he had a storied antagonistic relationship -- flew east from Dallas to assume the powers of the presidency, Bobby Kennedy used his fleeting authority to ferret out the truth. After hearing his brother had died at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Kennedy phoned CIA headquarters, just down the road in Langley, where he often began his day, stopping there to work on Cuba-related business. Bobby's phone call to Langley on the afternoon of Nov. 22 was a stunning outburst. Getting a ranking official on the phone -- whose identity is still unknown -- Kennedy confronted him in a voice vibrating with fury and pain. "Did your outfit have anything to do with this horror?" Kennedy erupted.

Later that day, RFK summoned the CIA director himself, John McCone, to ask him the same question. McCone, who had replaced the legendary Allen Dulles after the old spymaster had walked the plank for the Bay of Pigs, swore that his agency was not involved. But Bobby Kennedy knew that McCone, a wealthy Republican businessman from California with no intelligence background, did not have a firm grasp on all aspects of the agency's work. Real control over the clandestine service revolved around the No. 2 man, Richard Helms, the shrewd bureaucrat whose intelligence career went back to the agency's OSS origins in World War II. "It was clear that McCone was out of the loop -- Dick Helms was running the agency," recently commented RFK aide John Seigenthaler -- another crusading newspaper reporter, like Guthman, whom Bobby had recruited for his Justice Department team. "Anything McCone found out was by accident."

Kennedy had another revealing phone conversation on the afternoon of Nov. 22. Speaking with Enrique "Harry" Ruiz-Williams, a Bay of Pigs veteran who was his most trusted ally among exiled political leaders, Bobby shocked his friend by telling him point-blank, "One of your guys did it." Who did Kennedy mean? By then Oswald had been arrested in Dallas. The CIA and its anti-Castro client groups were already trying to connect the alleged assassin to the Havana regime. But as Kennedy's blunt remark to Williams makes clear, the attorney general wasn't buying it. Recent evidence suggests that Bobby Kennedy had heard the name Lee Harvey Oswald long before it exploded in news bulletins around the world, and he connected it with the government's underground war on Castro. With Oswald's arrest in Dallas, Kennedy apparently realized that the government's clandestine campaign against Castro had boomeranged at his brother.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Part 2...

That evening, Kennedy zeroed in on the Mafia. He phoned Julius Draznin in Chicago, an expert on union corruption for the National Labor Relations Board, asking him to look into a possible mob angle on Dallas. More important, the attorney general activated Walter Sheridan, his ace Justice Department investigator, locating him in Nashville, where Sheridan was awaiting the trial of their longtime nemesis, Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa.

If Kennedy had any doubts about a Mafia involvement in his brother's murder, they were immediately dispelled when, two days after JFK was shot down, burly nightclub owner Jack Ruby shouldered his way through press onlookers in the basement of the Dallas police station and fired his fatal bullet into Lee Harvey Oswald. Sheridan quickly turned up evidence that Ruby had been paid off in Chicago by a close associate of Hoffa. Sheridan reported that Ruby had "picked up a bundle of money from Allen M. Dorfman," Hoffa's chief advisor on Teamster pension fund loans and the stepson of Paul Dorfman, the labor boss' main link to the Chicago mob. A few days later, Draznin, Kennedy's man in Chicago, provided further evidence about Ruby's background as a mob enforcer, submitting a detailed report on Ruby's labor racketeering activities and his penchant for armed violence. Jack Ruby's phone records further clinched it for Kennedy. The list of men whom Ruby phoned around the time of the assassination, RFK later told aide Frank Mankiewicz, was "almost a duplicate of the people I called to testify before the Rackets Committee."

As family members and close friends gathered in the White House on the weekend after the assassination for the president's funeral, a raucous mood of Irish mourning gripped the executive mansion. But Bobby didn't participate in the family's doleful antics. Coiled and sleepless throughout the weekend, he brooded alone about his brother's murder. According to an account by Peter Lawford, the actor and Kennedy in-law who was there that weekend, Bobby told family members that JFK had been killed by a powerful plot that grew out of one of the government's secret anti-Castro operations. There was nothing they could do at that point, Bobby added, since they were facing a formidable enemy and they no longer controlled the government. Justice would have to wait until the Kennedys could regain the White House -- this would become RFK's mantra in the years after Dallas, whenever associates urged him to speak out about the mysterious crime.

A week after the assassination, Bobby and his brother's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy -- who shared his suspicions about Dallas -- sent a startling secret message to Moscow through a trusted family emissary named William Walton. The discreet and loyal Walton "was exactly the person that you would pick for a mission like this," his friend Gore Vidal later observed. Walton, a Time magazine war correspondent who had reinvented himself as a gay Georgetown bohemian, had grown close to both JFK and Jackie in their carefree days before they moved into the White House. Later, the first couple gave him an unpaid role in the administration, appointing him chairman of the Fine Arts Commission, but it was mainly an excuse to make him a frequent White House guest and confidant.

After JFK's assassination, the president's brother and widow asked Walton to go ahead as planned with a cultural exchange trip to Russia, where he was to meet with artists and government ministers, and convey an urgent message to the Kremlin. Soon after arriving in frigid Moscow, fighting a cold and dabbing at his nose with a red handkerchief, Walton met at the ornate Sovietskaya restaurant with Georgi Bolshakov -- an ebullient, roly-poly Soviet agent with whom Bobby had established a back-channel relationship in Washington. Walton stunned the Russian by telling him that the Kennedys believed Oswald was part of a conspiracy. They didn't think either Moscow or Havana was behind the plot, Walton assured Bolshakov -- it was a large domestic conspiracy. The president's brother was determined to enter the political arena and eventually make a run for the White House. If RFK succeeded, Walton confided, he would resume his brother's quest for détente with the Soviets.

Robert Kennedy's remarkable secret communication to Moscow shows how emotionally wracked he must have been in the days following his brother's assassination. The calamity transformed him instantly from a cocky, abrasive insider -- the second most powerful man in Washington -- to a grief-stricken, deeply wary outsider who put more trust in the Russian government than he did in his own. The Walton mission has been all but lost to history. But it is one more revealing tale that sheds light on Bobby Kennedy's subterranean life between his brother's assassination and his own violent demise less than five years later.

Over the years, Kennedy would offer bland and routine endorsements of the Warren Report and its lone gunman theory. But privately he derided the report as nothing more than a public relations exercise designed to reassure the public. And behind the scenes, he continued to work assiduously to figure out his brother's murder, in preparation for reopening the case if he ever won the power to do so.

Bobby held onto medical evidence from his brother's autopsy, including JFK's brain and tissue samples, which might have proved important in a future investigation. He also considered taking possession of the gore-spattered, bullet-riddled presidential limousine that had carried his brother in Dallas, before the black Lincoln could be scrubbed clean of evidence and repaired. He enlisted his top investigator, Walt Sheridan, in his secret quest -- the former FBI agent and fellow Irish Catholic whom Bobby called his "avenging angel." Even after leaving the Justice Department in 1964, when he was elected to the Senate from New York, Kennedy and Sheridan would slip back into the building now and then to pore over files on the case. And soon after his election, Kennedy traveled to Mexico City, where he gathered information on Oswald's mysterious trip there in September 1963.

In 1967, Sheridan went to New Orleans to check into the Jim Garrison investigation, to see whether the flamboyant prosecutor really had cracked the JFK case. (Sheridan was working as an NBC news producer at the time, but he reported back to RFK, telling him that Garrison was a fraud.) And Kennedy asked his press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, to begin gathering information about the assassination for the day when they could reopen the investigation. (Mankiewicz later told Bobby that his research led him to conclude it was probably a plot involving the Mafia, Cuban exiles and rogue CIA agents.) Kennedy himself found it painful to discuss conspiracy theories with the ardent researchers who sought him out. But he met in his Senate office with at least one -- a feisty small-town Texas newspaper publisher named Penn Jones Jr., who believed JFK was the victim of a CIA-Pentagon plot. Bobby heard him out and then had his driver take Jones to Arlington Cemetery, where the newspaperman wanted to pay his respects at his brother's grave.

At times, this drive to know the truth would sputter, as Robert Kennedy wrestled with debilitating grief and a haunting guilt that he -- his brother's constant watchman -- should have protected him. And, ever cautious, Bobby continued to deflect the subject whenever he was confronted with it by the press. But as time went by, it became increasingly difficult for Kennedy to avoid wrestling with the specter of his brother's death in public.

In late March 1968, during his doomed and heroic run for the presidency, Kennedy was addressing a tumultuous outdoor campus rally in Northridge, Calif., when some boisterous students shouted out the question he always dreaded. "We want to know who killed President Kennedy!" yelled one girl, while others took up the cry: "Open the archives!"

Kennedy's response that day was a tightrope walk. He knew that if he fully revealed his thinking about the assassination, the ensuing media uproar would have dominated his campaign, instead of burning issues like ending the Vietnam War and healing the country's racial divisions. For a man like Robert Kennedy, you did not talk about something as dark as the president's assassination in public -- you explored the crime your own way.

But Kennedy respected college students and their passions -- and he was in the habit of addressing campus audiences with surprising honesty. He did not want to simply deflect the question that day with his standard line. So, while dutifully endorsing the Warren Report as usual, he went further. "You wanted to ask me something about the archives," he responded. "I'm sure, as I've said before, the archives will be open." The crowd cheered and applauded. "Can I just say," continued Kennedy, "and I have answered this question before, but there is no one who would be more interested in all of these matters as to who was responsible for uh…the uh, uh, the death of President Kennedy than I would." Kennedy's press secretary Frank Mankiewicz, long used to Kennedy ducking the question, was "stunned" by the reply. "It was either like he was suddenly blurting out the truth, or it was a way to shut down any further questioning. You know, 'Yes, I will reopen the case. Now let's move on.'"

Robert Kennedy did not live long enough to solve his brother's assassination. But nearly 40 years after his own murder, a growing body of evidence suggests that Kennedy was on the right trail before he too was cut down. Despite his verbal contortions in public, Bobby Kennedy always knew that the truth about Dallas mattered. It still does."