WHO KILLED RFK
WHO KILLED RFK?
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Introduction
Robert F. Kennedy was shot down just after midnight on June 5, 1968, minutes after proclaiming victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. His assassination had an enormous effect on the course of American politics. The country lost a prominent critic of the Vietnam war and a committed champion of civil rights: the Democratic party lost its strongest presidential contender, enabling Republican candidate Richard Nixon to win the November election. More than four-fifths of all Americans are convinced that they haven't been told the truth about President John Kennedy's assassination. Far fewer are aware that the investigation into Robert Kennedy's death was just as flawed and corrupt.
 
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Murder in Los Angeles
Bobby Kennedy (as he was almost always called) hadn't planned to run for the democratic nomination in 1968. Many of his closest political advisors encouraged him to wait until 1972, when he had a better chance of winning. In 1968, Kennedy would be facing an incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, who was still popular in the polls-despite growing protest against his escalation of the Vietnam War.
But then Eugene McCarthy, the other democratic presidential contender, captured 42% of the vote in the March 12 New Hampshire primary. That meant Johnson was vulnerable-and that Kennedy had a chance to win.
Kennedy's entry into the race on March 16 angered Johnson and McCarthy supporters alike. But Kennedy was convinced that if Johnson won, there'd be "more war, more troops [and] more killing"-and less money for the domestic programs he'd so vigorously supported as Senator. McCarthy opposed the war, but Kennedy wasn't convinced he could win the presidency, even if he captured the nomination.
By the June 4 California primary, Johnson had dropped out of the race and Hubert Humphrey, his vice-president, had announced his own candidacy. Kennedy had won important victories in the Indiana, District of Columbia and Nebraska primaries, but the nomination was still far from secure. California would be a key test-whoever captured that state's 174 convention delegates would have the best chance of becoming the party's presidential candidate.
Early California returns showed McCarthy ahead. But then Kennedy pulled into the lead, and by late evening it was clear he'd taken the state. To celebrate the victory and to hear Kennedy speak, a beyond-capacity crowd of over 1800 supporters began to gather at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
The assassination
Tired but jubilant, Robert Kennedy stepped to the podium in the hotel ballroom and stood looking out over the sea of straw hats, balloons and smiling faces. He addressed the crowd with the same message of hope that had characterized his campaign. Lamenting the "division, the violence [and] the disenchantment" within America, he expressed confidence that "we can start to work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. I intend to make that my basis for running."
When the applause died down, Kennedy stepped off the podium and started to move toward the crowd. But someone in his party steered him in the opposite direction, toward the backstage exit. Earlier that day, hotel personnel (at the request of Kennedy's aides) had decided to take the Senator on a back route through the hotel's pantry area, to keep him away from the frenzied crowd.
Hotel maitre d' Karl Uecker led Kennedy and more than a dozen members of his entourage into a cramped corridor. Even there the crowd couldn't be completely avoided; dozens of busboys, waiters and campaign workers waited, hoping to get a close-up view. Kennedy smiled, nodded and stopped for an occasional handshake as he moved down the corridor and into the pantry.
It was about 12:15 am. Uecker was still slightly ahead of the Senator and to his right. Uniformed security guard Thane Cesar walked slightly behind, also on Kennedy's right. (In 1968, presidential candidates weren't given secret service protection, so the hotel had hired eight private security guards. Kennedy had requested that the guards keep their distance, so he wouldn't be surrounded by uniformed personnel.)
A young, dark-haired man began to approach Kennedy from the front. He was smiling, and bystanders thought he wanted to shake the Senator's hand. But the smile was betrayed by his words:
"Kennedy, you son of a bitch!"
High school student Lisa Urso saw the young man raise the gun and begin to shoot. "I saw the flash [from the gun] and then I saw the Senator .... He went forward, then moved backward...
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Someone called an ambulance and the Senator was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital. There a team of six surgeons labored to remove the bullet lodged in his brain. But his injuries were too severe. At 1:44 pm the next day, Robert F. Kennedy was pronounced dead.
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An open-and-shut case
In 1968 it wasn't yet a federal crime to shoot a presidential candidate, so the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) took charge of the investigation into Kennedy's murder. With the FBI's assistance, they spent the next fourteen months investigating the murder.
From the beginning, the LAPD claimed the assassination was an open-and-shut case. Numerous witnesses had seen Sirhan Sirhan, the 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant who'd been apprehended at the crime scene, fire at Kennedy. Sirhan himself admitted he must have shot the Senator (since so many witnesses had seen him), even though he couldn't remember anything about the evening from the time he'd had a cup of coffee with an attractive young woman until after he'd emptied his gun and lay pinned to the pantry steam table.
Sirhan also seemed to have a clear motive. When he was taken into custody, the police found in his pocket a newspaper clipping criticizing RFK for opposing the Vietnam War while favoring military aid to Israel. A background check revealed that as a young child in Palestine, Sirhan had seen the bloodied bodies of Arabs bombed by the Israelis, and his own brother was killed by an enemy truck as it veered to avoid sniper fire. Authorities reasoned that those early experiences had left Sirhan embittered against American politicians, like RFK, who supported Israel.
Even more incriminating was a notebook found in Sirhan's bedroom at his mother's house, in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena. It contained anti-American, procommunist sentiments, and two pages of scrawled, repetitive references to killing RFK. The most damning of these read, "May 18 9:45 AM-68 My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more the more [sic] of an unshakable obsession ... RFK must die."
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The cover-up
From the beginning, a handful of journalists and citizens remained skeptical about the LAPD's conclusions. But when these critics tried to substantiate their suspicions with data from police files, they met massive resistance. The LAPD replied that the files were under lock-and-key, accessible only to those law-enforcement officials with a "need to know." The Los Angeles authorities even initiated legal proceedings against some critics who questioned the official findings.
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... the LAPD continued to resist for three more years-until letter campaigns and media coverage made it politically inexpedient to keep the information secret any longer. On April 19, 1988, the files were sent to the California State Archives in Sacramento, where researchers could evaluate the evidence for themselves.
The files made it clear that the LAPD had engaged in a massive cover-up, both during the original investigation and in the intervening twenty years. They'd not only attempted to misconstrue or overlook data that didn't support their lone-assassin view, but they'd actively destroyed evidence that might suggest a conspiracy... Now it learned that:
* The results of the 1968 test firing of Sirhan's gun were missing.
* The test gun used for ballistics comparison and identification was destroyed.
* Over 90% of the audiotaped witness testimony was lost or destroyed. Of the 3470 interviews the LAPD conducted, only 301 were preserved. Key testimony-like 29 witness accounts that suggested conspiracy-was missing, while less important interviews-like that of Sirhan's Bible teacher-remained.
* On August 21, 1968, less than two months after the assassination, 2400 photographs from the original investigation were burned, in the medical-waste incinerator at LA County General Hospital. The LAPD claimed that the photos were duplicates, but there weren't any known logs or inventories of photos that could verify that.
Moreover, Scott Enyart, an amateur photographer who'd been taking pictures the night of the assassination and whose film had been confiscated by police, has never been given back all his photos. His pictures, the only ones that might have captured the actual shooting, weren't in the files.
But even with the limited data that remained, there was still ample evidence to substantiate what critics had been saying all along-that there was a conspiracy to kill RFK.
The evidence for such a conspiracy falls into three key areas. First, it now appears clear that it was impossible for Sirhan to have fired the bullets that killed Kennedy - which means there must have been a second gunman. Second, an abundance of testimony by eye-witnesses suggests that Sirhan had at least two accomplices. Third, Sirhan's political motive-his hatred of RFK for supporting Israel-seems to be either a fabrication of the LAPD or a motive planted by conspirators to divert suspicion 1 from a more sinister plot.
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Evidence for a second gunman
... The autopsy revealed three gunshot wounds in Robert Kennedy's body-one behind the right ear, a second near the right armpit and a third 11/2 inches below the armpit wound. A fourth bullet missed his body but pierced the right rear shoulder of his suit coat. All bullets entered from the right rear, at fairly steep upward angles and in a slightly right-to-left direction.
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... although witnesses disagree on whether Sirhan shot at RFK while the Senator was turned to his left shaking hands with busboy Juan Romero or whether the handshake had finished and Kennedy was walking forward, all agree that Sirhan approached Kennedy from the front and that the Senator never turned his back to Sirhan.
This is totally inconsistent with the autopsy evidence that the shots came from the rear.
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... it's never been shown that it was possible for Sirhan to have fired the fatal shots at RFK. And if he didn't, there must have been a second gunman.
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The LAPD's response to the question of extra bullets was to conduct a systematic
cover-up... they destroyed the ceiling tiles and doorframe wood in 1969, as well as records of tests done on the door frames or ceiling tiles. Then, when photos of this crucial area were released, they were identified only by number but lacked captions or labeling. Since there's no corresponding log to indicate what the numbers refer to, they aren't of much use as evidence.
When the destruction of the evidence was revealed in 1975, the LAPD claimed that they'd destroyed the tiles and frame wood because they were "too large to fit into a card file" (needless to say, so is a lot of evidence). Daryl Gates, who at that point was assistant chief of police, claimed that the destruction didn't matter because the tiles and frame wood contained no bullets and therefore weren't evidence.
The DA's office attempted to dispel mounting public suspicion by conducting what critics would dub "the great pantry raid." Investigators descended upon the crime scene to conduct a meticulous search for bullets and bullet holes. Ignoring the fact that the most relevant holes (in the door jamb and ceiling tiles) had been removed and destroyed seven years earlier, they concluded that the one supposedly surviving hole (which in 1968 had allegedly been labeled as a bullet hole) was in fact a nail hole. The day after the raid, an official spokesman dramatically announced that "no other bullets were found last night."
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Don Schulman, a runner for KNXT-TV in Los Angeles, also reported seeing a gun other than Sirhan's. He'd been standing behind Kennedy as he walked through the pantry and had seen a security guard fire three times. Immediately after the shooting, Schulman reported his story on the radio and insisted that Kennedy was shot three times. Even though the early media reports and crime--scene witnesses generally asserted that the Senator was hit only twice, Schulman stuck to his story. The autopsy proved him right.
(In later law-enforcement interviews, when Schulman was under pressure to be "absolutely positive" about what he saw, Schulman stated that he didn't see the guard shoot Kennedy, as his first statement seemed to imply. He did assert that he saw the guard fire three times and Kennedy hit three times, but admitted he couldn't necessarily connect the two events.)
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When the FBI followed up on Khaiber Khan's story (he was the Kennedy volunteer who'd seen a blond woman at the Wilshire Boulevard headquarters three times prior to the assassination), they found an interesting discrepancy.
Two other workers at the headquarters, Ellenor Severson and Larry Strick, had seen Sirhan there (without a blond companion) at about 2:00 pin on June 2; they also asserted that Khan was present at that time. Strick claimed he'd asked Sirhan if he needed help, and Sirhan had replied, "I'm with him," pointing to Khan. Severson corroborated Strick's story. But Khan claimed that he wasn't at headquarters at that time, that he couldn't remember any such incident and that he'd never seen Sirhan before the assassination.
When the FBI and the LAPD began to pursue this angle of the case, they found that Khan had an interesting history. According to their files, he'd once been influential in the Iranian government and had later fled to the US to escape the Shah. Lately he'd been working at the local Kennedy headquarters, recruiting young volunteers for the campaign.
While this information on Khan's background was true, it was incomplete. In a 1965 article in The Nation, Fred J. Cook revealed important facets of Khan's life that never appeared in the official files. In 1944, at age 20, Khan joined British intelligence and ran an Iranian spy ring. After World War II, he served as a liaison between the occupying allied forces in Iran and several Iranian tribes, and was awarded an aristocratic title for his efforts.
Cook credited Khan with helping the CIA overthrow Iranian Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. The coup rid the US of the left-leaning premier who'd nationalized a British oil company and put a puppet ruler, Shah Reza Pahiavi, in power.
According to Cook, Khan achieved great power in Iran, until a falling out with the Shah sent him into exile in London. From there he lived an opulent lifestyle, directing his spies to gather damaging evidence about the Shah's finances. In 1963, he entered the US; shortly afterwards, he was able to document the Shah's theft of US foreign aid and bring this to the attention of Congress and the Johnson administration.
Although his public discrediting of the Shah infuriated certain elements of the US State Department (which believed the Shah was an essential pillar of US interests in the Persian Gull), it undoubtedly also had the blessing, if not the backing, of some elements within government and intelligence circles.
There's certainly evidence that Khan was doing something that the British and US governments perceived as worthwhile. In London, two Scotland Yard detectives provided security for him, and he drove a Rolls Royce with Washington DC plates. Once in the US, the House of Representatives filed a bill to grant him political and economic relief from the oppression of the Iranian government.
Given Khan's background, political connections and wealth, it's highly unusual that he would choose to serve the Kennedy campaign as a local volunteer. The timing of his volunteer work is also strange. Although he claimed to have "personally spent considerable time" at Kennedy headquarters, in reality he'd only worked there four days (June 1-4).
Of course, none of these oddities render Khan guilty of anything. But the question remains why the investigating agencies simply ignored Khan's background as a master of espionage... was it because Khan might alert the LAPD to conspiratorial leads that they were determined not to pursue?
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Who had a motive?
Who hated Bobby Kennedy enough to have him murdered? RFK began to accrue enemies during his brother's presidency (when he served as attorney general). Both Kennedys angered some of the most powerful individuals or groups in America, including:
* the Mafia, who'd been the victim of the administration's unprecedented crackdown on organized crime (RFK had actually deported New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello)
* FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who'd been forced by the attorney general to go after the Mafia (Hoover had denied for years that organized crime existed and preferred to concentrate on eliminating "communists")
* elements of the CIA, who'd participated in the 1961 attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs (the Kennedy brothers who felt they'd been misled by the CIA about the strength of Castro's forces refused to send air support when the invaders met powerful resistance; afterwards, JFK fired CIA director Allen Dulles, and Bobby Kennedy took on a role in CIA policy that was anathema to some of the most swashbuckling CIA veterans)
The old animosities only increased when RFK announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. Both his old enemies and several new ones had a lot to lose from an RFK presidency. That list included:
* ex-Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, whom RFK, as attorney general, had sent to prison for jury tampering (if RFK became president, Hoffa would have had to serve his entire thirteen year sentence, but President Nixon pardoned him)
* right-wing and racist groups, like the Ku Klux Klan, who feared RFK's strong commitment to civil rights
* Southern California ranchers who feared Kennedy's support of Cï¿½sar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union-and who, according to an FBI report, had once put out a $500,000 contract on RFK's life (if the union leaders succeeded in organizing thousands of farm workers, the ranchers' profits and power would plummet)
* hard-line cold warriors in the military and intelligence community-even the defense industry-who saw that an RFK presidency would create a complete reversal of US policy in Vietnam
With enemies like these, the pat explanation that Sirhan Sirhan assassinated RFK for his support of Israel seems far less persuasive-especially since RFK's Middle East stance differed very little from the other candidates'. The individuals or groups mentioned above had much more powerful reasons to keep RFK from becoming president in 1968.
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Re-opening the case
The question is often asked: why bother to re-investigate this case? It's been so long, why stir up painful memories?
There are at least three arguments for reinvestigation. First, and most obviously, if Sirhan didn't kill RFK, his murderers should be brought to justice.
Second, we need to understand the root causes of the violence that threatens our democratic system. It's important to know whether Robert Kennedy was killed because of a muddled young Palestinian with a political grudge, or because powerful interests in America didn't want him to be president. If the latter's the case, those powerful interests can strike again, whenever they feel threatened.
Third, the LAPD's handling of the case must be reviewed, because law enforcement agencies and officials must be accountable to the public. The JFK and MLK assassinations have both been reviewed by organizations beyond the local jurisdiction, but the RFK assassination case has never been.
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Even if it's too late to bring RFK's murderers to justice, it will strengthen American democracy to know the truth about. his murder. That truth can help check the powerful interests who manipulate the American political process to their own ends.
NINA RHODES HUGHES
RFK assassination witness tells  CNN: There was a second shooter
By Michael  Martinez and Brad Johnson,  CNN
updated 9:40 AM EDT, Mon April 30,  2012
STORY  HIGHLIGHTS
Witness says Sirhan Sirhan was not the only   shooter in the pantry
Sirhan was the only person charged and   convicted in RFK assassination
Witness says FBI altered her account of RFK shooting
Sirhan is serving a life sentence in the   1968 assassination
Los Angeles  (CNN) -- As a  federal court prepares to rule on a challenge to Sirhan Sirhan's conviction in  the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, a long overlooked witness to the murder is  telling her story: She heard two guns firing during the 1968 shooting and  authorities altered her account of the crime.
Nina Rhodes-Hughes wants the world  to know that, despite what history says, Sirhan was not the only gunman firing  shots when Kennedy was murdered a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel.
"What has to come out is that there  was another shooter to my right," Rhodes-Hughes said in an exclusive interview  with CNN. "The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups."
Her voice at times becoming  emotional, Rhodes-Hughes described for CNN various details of the assassination,  her long frustration with the official reporting of her account and her reasons  for speaking out: "I think to assist me in healing -- although you're never 100%  healed from that. But more important to bring justice."
"For me it's hopeful and sad that  it's only coming out now instead of before -- but at least now instead of  never," Rhodes-Hughes told CNN by phone from her home near Vancouver, British Columbia.
Sirhan, the only person arrested,  tried and convicted in the shooting of Kennedy and five other people, is serving  a life sentence at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California.
The U.S. District Court in Los  Angeles is set to rule on a request by the 68-year-old Sirhan that he be  released, retried or granted a hearing on new evidence, including Rhodes-Hughes'  firsthand account.
At his 1969 trial, Sirhan's original  defense team never contested the prosecution's case that Sirhan was the one and  only shooter in Kennedy's assassination. Sirhan testified at his trial that he  had killed Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought," and he was convicted  and sentenced to death, which was reduced to life in prison in 1972.
After the trial, Sirhan recanted his  courtroom confession.
In the recent federal court filings,  state prosecutors led by California Attorney General Kamala Harris argue that even if there  were a second gunman involved in the Kennedy shooting, Sirhan hasn't proven his  innocence and he's still guilty of murder under California's vicarious liability  law.
Previously reported
Sirhan Sirhan, convicted RFK assassin, to face parole board
Sirhan's new legal team disputes  Harris' assertion about that state statute.
Their current battle has prosecutors  and Sirhan's new lawyers engaging directly the merits of new evidence -- as well as  witness recollections such as Rhodes-Hughes' account -- never argued before a  judge.
Prosecutors under the attorney  general are contending that Rhodes-Hughes heard no more than eight gunshots  during the assassination. In court papers filed in February, Harris and  prosecutors argue that Rhodes-Hughes was among several witnesses reporting "that  only eight shots were fired and that all these shots came from the same  direction."
Sirhan's lawyers are challenging  those assertions.
In a response also filed in federal  court in Los Angeles, the defense team led by New York attorney William Pepper contends that the FBI misrepresented  Rhodes-Hughes' eyewitness account and that she actually had heard a total of 12  to 14 shots fired.
"She identified fifteen errors  including the FBI alteration which quoted her as hearing only eight shots, which  she explicitly denied was what she had told them," Sirhan's lawyers argued in  February, citing a previously published statement from Rhodes-Hughes.
In this NBC photo taken in 1965, TV actress Nina Roman, today known  as Nina Rhodes-Hughes, left, and her "Morning Star" co-star Elizabeth Perry,  right, meet Robert F. Kennedy at NBC's Burbank studios. Two and a half years  later, Rhodes-Hughes witnessed Kennedy's assassination.
The FBI and the California attorney  general's office both declined to comment to CNN on the controversy over  Rhodes-Hughes' witness account since the matter is now being reviewed by a  federal judge.
Rhodes-Hughes was a television  actress in 1968 who worked as a volunteer fundraiser for Kennedy's presidential  campaign.
The FBI report indicates that  Rhodes-Hughes was indeed inside the kitchen service pantry of the Ambassador  Hotel during the crucial moments of the Kennedy shooting, but she contends the  bureau got details of her story wrong, including her assertions about the number  of shots fired and where the shots were fired from.
Rhodes-Hughes, now 78, tells CNN she  informed authorities in 1968 that the number of gunshots she counted in the  kitchen pantry exceeded eight -- which would have been more than the maximum  Sirhan could have fired -- and that some of the shots came from a location in  the pantry other than Sirhan's position.
Robert Kennedy was the most  seriously wounded of the six people shot inside the hotel pantry on June 5,  1968, only moments after the New York senator had claimed victory in  California's Democratic primary election. The presidential candidate died the  next day; the other victims survived.
The Los Angeles County coroner  determined that three bullets struck Kennedy's body and a fourth passed  harmlessly through his clothing. Police and prosecutors declared the four  bullets were among eight fired by Sirhan acting alone.
Rhodes-Hughes tells CNN the FBI's  eight-shot claim is "completely false." She says the bureau "twisted" things she  told two FBI agents when they interviewed her as an assassination witness in  1968, and she says Harris and her prosecutors are simply "parroting" the  bureau's report.
"I never said eight shots. I never,  never said it," Rhodes-Hughes told CNN. "But if the attorney general is saying  it then she's going according to what the FBI chose to put into their report."
"There were more than eight shots," Rhodes-Hughes said by phone. She says that during the FBI interview in her Los  Angeles home, one month after the assassination, she told the agents that she'd  heard 12 to 14 shots. "There were at least 12, maybe 14. And I know there were  because I heard the rhythm in my head," Rhodes-Hughes said. She says she  believes senior FBI officials altered statements she made to the agents to "conform with what they wanted the public to believe, period."
"When they say only eight shots, the  anger within me is so great that I practically -- I get very emotional because  it is so untrue. It is so untrue," she said.
Contacted by CNN for comment, Sirhan  lead attorney William Pepper called the alleged FBI alteration of Rhodes-Hughes'  story "deplorable" and "criminal" and said it "mirrors the experience of other  witnesses."
Other  witnesses also mentioned more than eight shots
Law enforcement investigators have  always maintained that only eight shots were fired in the RFK assassination, all  of them by Sirhan. His small-caliber handgun could hold no more than eight  bullets.
But released witness interview  summaries show at least four other people told authorities in 1968 that they  heard what could have been more than eight shots. The following four witness  accounts appear not in FBI reports but in Los Angeles Police Department  summaries:
-- Jesse Unruh, who was speaker of  the California Assembly at the time, told police that he was within 20 to 30  feet behind Kennedy when suddenly he heard a "crackle" of what he initially  thought were exploding firecrackers. "I don't really quite remember how many  reports there were," Unruh told the LAPD. "It sounded to me like somewhere  between 5 and 10."
-- Frank Mankiewicz, who had been  Kennedy's campaign press secretary, told police that he was trying to catch up  to the senator when he suddenly heard sounds that also seemed to him to be "a  popping of firecrackers." When an LAPD detective asked Mankiewicz how many of  the sounds he'd heard, he answered: "It seemed to me I heard a lot. If indeed it  had turned out to have been firecrackers, I probably would have said 10. But I'm  sure it was less than that."
-- Estelyn Duffy LaHive, who had  been a Kennedy supporter, told police that she was standing just outside the  kitchen pantry's west entrance when the shooting erupted. "I thought I heard at  least about 10 shots," she told the LAPD.
-- Booker Griffin, another Kennedy  supporter, told police that he had just entered the pantry through its east  entrance and suddenly heard "two quick" shots followed by a slight pause and  then what "sounded like it could have been 10 or 12" additional shots.
An analysis of a recently uncovered  tape recording of the shooting detected at least 13 shot sounds erupting over a  period of less than six seconds. The audiotape was recorded at the Ambassador  Hotel by free-lance newspaper reporter Stanislaw Pruszynski and is the only  known soundtrack of the assassination.
Audio expert Philip Van Praag told  CNN that his analysis establishes the Pruszynski recording as authentic and the  13 sounds electronically detected on the recording as gunshots.
"The gunshots are established by  virtue of my computer analysis of waveform patterns, which clearly distinguishes  gunshots from other phenomena," he said in an e-mail. "This would include  phenomena that to human hearing are often perceived as exploding firecrackers,  popping camera flashbulbs or bursting balloons."
Van Praag's Pruszynski recording  findings are now a major point of controversy among new evidence being argued  between the two sides in the Sirhan federal court case. Harris contends that his  findings amount to an "interpretation or opinion" that is not universally  accepted by acoustic experts.
CNN initially reported on Van  Praag's audio analysis in 2008 and then with additional details in a BackStory  segment in 2009.
Shots fired  from two different locations
California prosecutors have argued  that witnesses heard shots coming from only one location, but Rhodes-Hughes  tells CNN that while the first two or three shots she heard came from Sirhan's  position several feet in front of her, she also heard gunshots "to my right  where Robert Kennedy was."
According to the autopsy report, the  coroner concluded that the senator's body and clothing were struck from behind,  at right rear, by four bullets fired at upward angles and at point-blank range.  Yet witnesses said Sirhan fired somewhat downward, almost horizontally, from  several feet in front of Kennedy, and witnesses did not report the senator's  back as ever being exposed to Sirhan or his gun.
In his analysis of the Pruszynski  sound recording, Philip Van Praag found that five of the gunshots captured in  the tape were fired opposite the direction of Sirhan's eight shots. Van Praag  also concluded that those five shots -- the third, fifth, eighth, 10th and 12th  gunshots within a 13-shot sequence -- displayed an acoustical "frequency  anomaly" indicating that the alleged second gun's make and model were different  from Sirhan's weapon.
A chance  meeting with Robert Kennedy
The path that eventually led Nina  Rhodes-Hughes to the Ambassador Hotel kitchen pantry began 2ï¿½ years earlier  during a chance meeting with Robert Kennedy at NBC-TV studios in Burbank,  California. She was being made up for her co-starring role in the daytime drama "Morning Star" when Kennedy suddenly entered the makeup room. The actress was  starstruck. "I saw Robert Kennedy and everything else disappeared from view," she said. "There was an aura about him that was very captivating. He kind of  pulled you in. His eyes were very deep set and they were very blue. And when you  looked at him, you got very drawn in to him."
As Rhodes-Hughes remembers it, the  senator had arrived to pre-record an interview on "Meet the Press" and the two  discussed political issues while awaiting their separate TV appearances. "Here I  am, just an actress in a soap opera, and he took the time to have an in-depth  conversation with me," said Rhodes-Hughes, who was then known professionally by  her screen name Nina Roman.
As impressed as Rhodes-Hughes was  with Robert Kennedy, she says the senator indicated that he himself was  impressed with her ability to quickly memorize many pages of TV script. She says  he confided to her that he had no such talent himself but that his older  brother, the assassinated President John F. Kennedy, had possessed similar  skills.
"Our conversation basically was the  clincher for me," Rhodes-Hughes told CNN. "I said to him, 'You know, I have  followed your career in politics and I really believe in you and I love all the  things that you did -- and are trying to do, and propose to do -- and so if ever  you declare yourself a candidate for the presidency, I will work for you, heart  and soul.' And he smiled and said, 'Well, I don't know if that's going to  happen.' And he was very humble and very sweet."
Rhodes-Hughes says that later, in  the spring of 1968, shortly after Kennedy announced his candidacy for the  presidency, she helped form a campaign support group in Los Angeles called "Young Professionals for Kennedy" and assisted in raising funds for the  California phase of the senator's White House bid.
Weeks later, as he claimed victory  in the California primary, addressing hundreds of supporters in the Ambassador  Hotel's Embassy Room shortly after midnight on June 5, Kennedy paid tribute to  the many volunteers, like Rhodes-Hughes, who had assisted his campaign.  Referring to his own role during his brother's successful run for the presidency  in 1960, Kennedy told them, "I was a campaign manager eight years ago. I know  what a difference that kind of an effort and that kind of a commitment makes."
Trying to  keep Kennedy from heading to the pantry
For Rhodes-Hughes there was one more  commitment to keep. She had promised Kennedy aide Pierre Salinger that following  the candidate's victory speech she would try to meet the senator as he exited  the ballroom and usher him to a backstage area where Salinger had been keeping  abreast of the California primary returns. She says although she and another  campaign volunteer made sure to carefully position themselves to greet the  candidate, the opportunity never came. According to Rhodes-Hughes, shortly after  Kennedy completed his remarks in the Embassy Room, he was whisked away by others  down a corridor and toward the kitchen pantry while she scurried to catch up.
"No, no, that's the wrong way!" Rhodes-Hughes tells CNN she shouted to the senator and his escorts as she chased  after them in an unsuccessful effort to turn them around. "It's this way! Come  back! You're going the wrong way!"
Kennedy and  Sirhan almost face-to-face
Rhodes-Hughes says that after she  entered the kitchen pantry's west entrance, she could see Kennedy in left profile, "greeting" well-wishers a few feet ahead of her. She says a moment  later she was looking at the back of the senator's head, as he continued onward,  when suddenly the first two or three shots were fired.
"I saw his left profile. And then,  very, very quickly, he was through greeting, and he turned and went into the  original direction that he was being ushered to," Rhodes-Hughes told CNN. "At  that point, I saw the back of his head and part of his shoulders and back."
"My eyes were totally on him, and  all of a sudden I started hearing popping sounds, which I thought at first were  flashbulbs from a camera," she said. It was Rhodes-Hughes' account of Kennedy's  movements in the pantry that Sirhan's lawyer Pepper focused on in particular  when CNN asked him to comment on Rhodes-Hughes' account of the shooting.
"This observation is vital," said  Pepper. "Her clear recollection of being some short distance behind the Senator  and seeing his left profile and then seeing him quickly turning so that the back  of his head was in her sight at the time the shooting began -- this reveals that  the Senator was almost directly facing Sirhan just before he took three shots,  from behind, in his back, and behind his right ear at powder burn range, making  it impossible for Sirhan to have been Robert Kennedy's shooter," the defense  attorney said in an e-mail to CNN. "It clearly evidences the existence of a  second gunman who fired from below and upward at the Senator."
Rhodes-Hughes says that while she  was behind Senator Kennedy, looking at the back of his head and hearing the  first two or three gunshots, Kennedy did not appear to be struck by bullets at  that point.
Still believing the first shots were  merely flashbulbs, she says she then took her eyes off the senator, while  turning leftward, and caught her first glimpse of Sirhan standing in front of  Kennedy and to the candidate's left.
She told CNN that the 5-foot-5-inch  tall Sirhan was propped up on a steam table, several feet ahead of her and  slightly to her own left. Rhodes-Hughes says part of her view of Sirhan was  obstructed and she could not see the gun in his hand but she says that, as soon  as she caught sight of Sirhan, she then heard more shots coming from somewhere  past her right side and near Kennedy. She told CNN that at that point she was  hearing "much more rapid fire" than she initially had heard.
In his recent analysis of the  Pruszynski recording, Philip Van Praag found that some of the tape's 13 captured  shot sounds were fired too rapidly, at intervals too close together, for all of  the gunshots in the pantry to have come from Sirhan's Iver Johnson revolver  alone.
Sirhan's lawyers report in their  federal court papers that gunshot echoes have been ruled out as the cause of the  Pruszynski recording's "double shots." Ricochets also are ruled out according to  Pasadena, California, forensic audio engineers who verified Van Praag's  Pruszynski findings for the 2007 Investigation Discovery Channel television  documentary "Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassination."
'They've  killed him! They've killed him!'
Rhodes-Hughes told CNN she heard  gunshots coming from some place not far from her right side even while Sirhan  was being subdued several feet in front of her. "During all of that time, there  are shots coming to my right," she said. "People are falling around me. I see a  man sliding down a wall. Then I see Senator Kennedy lying on the floor on his  back, bleeding. And I remember screaming, 'Oh no! Oh, my God, no!' And the next  thing I know, I'm ducking but also in complete shock as to what's going on.
"And then I passed out," she said.
Rhodes-Hughes says that, moments  later, while she was regaining consciousness from having fainted to the floor,  she noticed that her dress was wet and that she was missing a belt and one of  her shoes. It was clear to her that she had been trampled, but she was unhurt.
She then looked across the room and  saw Kennedy once again, lying on the floor and bleeding, this time with his wife  Ethel kneeling and trying to comfort him. Rhodes-Hughes says the sight horrified  her, sending her screaming out of the pantry and back through the corridor,  where she was attended to by her then-husband, the late television producer  Michael Rhodes.
"I'm running out of the pantry and  I'm yelling, 'They've killed him! They've killed him! Oh, my God, he's dead!  They've killed him!'" Rhodes-Hughes told CNN. "Now, the reason I said, 'they' is  because I knew there was more than one shooter involved."
Little more than 25 hours later,  Kennedy was pronounced dead at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.
Rhodes-Hughes describes the events  of early June 1968 as "the most iconoclastic experience" of her life.
"Although it was 44 years ago, I  will swear that this is exactly what happened. I remember it like it was almost  yesterday, because you don't forget something like that when it totally changes  your life forever," she said. "It took a great toll on me. For a while, even the  backfiring of a car would send me into tears."
Never called  to testify
Despite the fact her FBI interview  summary indicates Nina Rhodes-Hughes was inside the kitchen pantry during the  assassination, she was never called to testify at Sirhan's 1969 trial or at any  subsequent inquiry over the years. Rhodes-Hughes says she made a point of  telling two FBI agents in 1968 that she would be willing to make herself  available to appear as a witness anywhere at anytime and to testify "that there  were more shots."
"They never wrote that down," she  says of the FBI agents who conducted the interview in her Los Angeles home. She  also says that when the pair of agents departed following their visit, they  forgot to take along their attachï¿½ case and, minutes later, had to return to her  residence and retrieve it.
Rhodes-Hughes says that, in the  months following the June 5, 1968 assassination, she and some others who had  been at the Ambassador Hotel refused news media interviews so as to avoid  interfering with preparations for Sirhan's trial. It wasn't until the 1990s that  Rhodes-Hughes was asked whether she would ever be willing to testify under oath  -- an invitation coming not from a prosecutor or law enforcement official but  from author Philip H. Melanson, a chancellor professor of policy studies at the  University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
At Melanson's request, Rhodes-Hughes  reviewed her 1968 FBI interview summary for the first time and found it  contained more than a dozen inaccuracies. She provided Melanson with a  statement, but the professor died some years later and Rhodes-Hughes once again  missed her opportunity to testify. Before his death, Melanson published  Rhodes-Hughes' statement in "Shadow Play," a book he co-authored with William  Klaber in 1997 and one of several Melanson wrote on the Robert Kennedy  assassination.
Rhodes-Hughes recounted the Kennedy  shooting and her initial contact with Melanson in a 1992 interview on "Contact," a local TV program carried at the time in Vancouver by Rogers Cable.
Defense attorney William Pepper  calls Rhodes-Hughes' recollections "significant verification" of new  assassination evidence that the Sirhan legal team is currently presenting. "It  provides further verification of a dozen or more gunshots and mirrors the  experience of other witnesses which confirms the existence of the cover-up  efforts," he told CNN.
"Along with all of the other  evidence we have provided, one wonders why it has taken so long for this  innocent man to be set free, a new trial to be ordered or, at least, a full  investigatory hearing to be scheduled," Pepper said. "Nothing less than the  credibility and integrity of the American criminal justice system is at stake in  this case."
Sirhan Sirhan's current legal team  is doing something his original lawyers never did. They are asserting that  Sirhan did not shoot Kennedy.
Sirhan's original defenders had  decided at the outset that Sirhan was the lone shooter. Because Sirhan's initial  lawyers presented a diminished capacity case in 1969, they never pursued  available defenses. Evidentiary conflicts, and issues such as a possible second  gun, simply were not addressed at Sirhan's 1969 trial. Most of the original  prosecution's evidence was stipulated by the original defense team, which agreed  that Sirhan had killed the presidential candidate.
Nina Rhodes-Hughes opposes freedom  for Sirhan Sirhan, whom she regards as one of two gunmen firing shots inside the  Ambassador Hotel kitchen pantry. "To me, he was absolutely there," she said. "I  don't feel he should be exonerated."
Rhodes-Hughes insists the full truth  of Robert Kennedy's murder has been suppressed for decades, and says she hopes  that it will now finally come out and that the alleged second shooter will be  identified and brought to justice.
"There definitely was another  shooter," said Rhodes-Hughes. "The constant cover-ups, the constant lies -- this  has got to stop."
FINALLY; FROM A F KENNEDY FAMILY MEMBER
 
RFK Jr.  BELIEVES IN CONSPIRACY
 
What to make of RFK Jrï¿½s conspiracy view of the JFK assassination
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