Forty years ago today, Senator Robert Kennedy was murdered right after giving his presidential primary victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. This was two months after Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down by the Hollywood-based James Earl Ray. The nation was in shock, and in the chaos, the murder of RFK was never closely looked at. Police Chief Daryl Gates took over the investigation and basically removed it from public view for the next twenty years.
Rather than getting into the rabbit hole of assassination research, this diary will examine the factual relationships between Peter Ueberroth and the various actors in the traumatic event.
Peter Ueberroth's day in the sun has long past, but there was a time when he was one of the most sought after men in the country. After successfully running the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Ueberroth's future appeared limitless, he was a supernova with broad appeal, and on the short list of future presidential candidates. So what happened?
Other than a short stint as Commissioner of Baseball, Ueberroth withdrew from the public and focused on building a private fortune estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. By the time he tried to get back into politics and joined the farce that was the California governor's race in 2003, Ueberroth's time was over, he had been forgotten, and his public career has been relegated to occassional appearances as an Olympic spokesman.
Ueberroth is very much a conservative Republican and has always been politically active in the shadows, however. Insiders are well aware of his support of George W. Bush, which goes back to the days when Ueberroth was instrumental in making W the part-owner of the Texas Rangers and transforming the bankrupt businessman into an overnight millionaire.
The Olympics were what catapulted Ueberroth into stardom. Before that, he was simply the owner of a travel agency located in the suburbs of Los Angeles. There was one man who was responsible for picking Ueberroth to head the Los Angeles Olympics; his name was Paul Ziffren, a powerful Southern California real estate speculator and lawyer. The first person to testify at Sirhan Sirhan's trial was Paul Ziffren.
Ueberroth worked closely with Daryl Gates in staging the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Gates, an Orange County resident and neighbor of Laguna Beach-based Ueberroth, was in charge of RFK's security in 1968. Unfortunately, he provided no security, removing all police from the event, claiming that someone had told him that Kennedy did not want the LAPD there. Gates went on to destroy crucial evidence and denied all access to the case for the next two decades.
Rafer Johnson was the man chosen to light the Olympic torch at the L.A. Coliseum. Peter Ueberroth was the man who picked Johnson for this prestigious honor. Johnson was a pivotal actor in the Kennedy assassination. Hired as RFK's bodyguard, Johnson hung back as Kennedy preceded through the pantry. After Sirhan Sirhan had charged Kennedy and shots were fired, Johnson appeared and was the first to get the murder weapon. Somehow the gun got back into Sirhan’s hands before Johnson regained control. Strangely, Johnson refused to hand over the weapon to the officers on the scene until he got to police headquarters, keeping it in his pocket until hours later. Rafer Johnson would go on to work with Peter Ueberroth at Ambassador’s International, which is kind of ironic, seeing the trauma he must have endured when his idol was shot down at the hotel of similar name.
The 1984 Olympics were a triumph for USC as much as for anyone. Upgrades to the Coliseum, the Sports Arena, an entire new swim complex, and other Olympic spoils benefited the conservative campus. USC dominates the Southern California region and so it's no surprise that USC dominated the Sirhan Sirhan trial as well. The lawyers, the judge, the criminalist, the psychiatrists were all out of USC. Peter Ueberroth is a life trustee of USC.
Because of RFK's assassination, Orange County's Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968. Nixon rose to power on the back of Orange County's most dominant landowner, James Irvine, the founder of the Irvine Company. Donald Bren owns the Irvine Company today. Bren is extremely rich, worth tens of billions of dollars, owning what some call the most valuable property in the United States. Peter Ueberroth was once president of the Irvine Company and is close friends with Bren.
Preceding Ueberroth as president of the Irvine Company was Robert Maheu, more famously known as Howard Hughes' personal attorney. Maheu was a an associate of Thane Eugene Cesar. Cesar was the armed security at the Ambassador Hotel that night and had the only other known weapon at the event. Cesar once said, "I definitely wouldn’t have voted for Bobby Kennedy. His brother John sold the U.S. down the river. He literally gave it to the Commies, the minorities, the blacks."
Many in Southern California have wondered how Ueberroth, a fairly insignificant owner of a small travel agency, rose to such prominence in such a short time and it’s interesting to note his connections to such a pivotal event in SoCal history. It would be quite informative if a reporter explored this further. Where was Ueberroth the night RFK was killed? How did he feel? Did a do a jig like Howard Hughes did when he heard the news? Was he too busy that night with something more pressing? And why didn't he pursue a political career? I'm sure we'll be seeing Peter Ueberroth more in the coming days as the China Olympics rolls through and I suppose it's as good a time as any to ask these questions.