BBC Newsnight tonight showed a film compiled by Shane O'Sullivan which asserts that three CIA agents closely tied to covert operations against Cuba and other Latin American countries were present at the Ambassador Hotel the night Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. The film and original footage from 1968 are available at the Newsnight website.
The conviction of Sirhan Sirhan has always been subject to speculation as the autopsy report showed that the fatal shot had come from behind RFK. Sirhan Sirhan had stood some distance in front of RFK, face to face with him at the time of the shooting.
One of the CIA agents present at the Ambassador Hotel that night was seen in the lobby and in the ballroom throughout the evening. David Sanchez Morales hated the Kennedys. He later told his lawyer that he had been present in Dallas when JFK was killed as well as in Los Angeles when RFK was killed.
From the Guardian:
Morales was a legendary figure in CIA covert operations. According to close associate Tom Clines, if you saw Morales walking down the street in a Latin American capital, you knew a coup was about to happen. When the subject of the Kennedys came up in a late-night session with friends in 1973, Morales launched into a tirade that finished: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." From this line grew my odyssey into the spook world of the 60s and the secrets behind the death of Bobby Kennedy.
Working from a Cuban photograph of Morales from 1959, I viewed news coverage of the assassination to see if I could spot the man the Cubans called El Gordo - The Fat One. Fifteen minutes in, there he was, standing at the back of the ballroom, in the moments between the end of Kennedy's speech and the shooting. Thirty minutes later, there he was again, casually floating around the darkened ballroom while an associate with a pencil moustache took notes.
Other connections between JFK and RFK assassinations to JM-Wave are already documented:
- David Atlee Phillips was involved in JM-Wave and was seen with Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City in advance of the JFK assassination and also at meetings of anti-Castro Cubans in Phillip's company.
Connections to George H.W. Bush are intriguing:
- Donald Gregg, CIA operative for 31 years and later National Security Advisor to Vice President George H.W. Bush, was said to have been involved in JM-Wave and also is known to have been involved in the southeast Asian assassination programme known as Operation Phoenix.
- Theodore Shakley, black ops specialist and later appointed CIA's Associate Deputy Director for Operations by George H.W. Bush, was the director of JM-Wave and Cuban operations until JFK's assassination and later headed Operation Phoenix, being station chief and presumably Morales's boss at the time of RFK's assassination.
In addition to Morales, the two other agents identified as present at the Ambassador Hotel that night are Gordon Campbell and George Joannides. All three had worked together at JM-Wave in 1963, where Ayers had been Morales's case officer. Morales was stationed in Laos in 1968. Gordon Campbell was chief of psychological warfare operations at JM-Wave, butwas called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigating the death of John F Kennedy.
Certainly this film opens a line of inquiry which has never been addressed before. Why were three CIA operatives experienced in assassination and covert operations present at the assassination of a presidential candidate on American soil?
Newsnight website has tonight's show, including an interview with Shane O'Sullivan who seems very sane and sensible, as well as the film shown tonight and original footage. I can't seem to link the clips directly, so you have to go to the Newsnight site and click through from there.
It is worth remembering that Richard Nixon was a protege of Prescott Bush, George H.W. Bush's father and George W. Bush's grandfather.
For those who think this is some sort of crass infotainment, the film I'm pointing you to is 5 minutes on the premier news show of the BBC, a non-profit organisation.
"One thing is clear as I travel this country, the American people want no more Vietnams."
Robert F. Kennedy, moments before he was shot, 6 June 1968