by Lisa Pease
Is it possible Khoury and Levin lied? We already know Khoury lied to both the LAPD and the FBI by saying he went home and stayed there until it was time to go to the airport. I believe it is more plausible that Khoury left after checking in for his last round shortly after 9 P.M. went directly to the Ambassador Hotel. I believe that he asked or convinced Levin to cover for him. As we saw earlier, Khoury had no compunction about bribing teachers to get his grades changed.
Even if Khoury lied about not being at the hotel, and even if he also had a relationship with the CIA, that still wouldn’t necessarily make him part of any plot to kill Kennedy. The CIA may simply have felt the need to cover for him because the optics looked terrible, especially because the CIA did in fact have “an available pool of assassins” connected with Beirut, Los Angeles and the CIA.
A document from the Los Angeles division of the CIA from October 1976 surfaced during the Church Committee investigation with the subject “Review of ZRRIFLE file” and contained these two entries:
Tab M – Harold Meltzer
Harold Meltzer with aliases was involved in the rackets with upper echelon “hoodlums” throughout the U.S. … “In 1959 he furnished information to our QJWIN California office but has not since cooperated with us. N.B. he has the background and talent for the matter we discussed but it is not known whether he would be receptive.
Tab Y – Hanna Yazbeck
Yazbeck lived in Beirut and worked for QJWIN’s office intermittently during the past 10 years (dates not given—possibly 51-61.) Yazbeck’s chief bodyguard from 50-58 (not named) was a convicted murderer. The bodyguard was murdered. States that Yazbeck has an available pool of assassins. [Emphasis added.]499
What QJWIN California office? During the Church Committee, the CIA claimed they had a paid assassin as an employee, a man they would refer to only as QJWIN. They claimed QJWIN served as a “spotter” of talent for the CIA. This document, brought to my attention by author and investigator Hank Albarelli, is the first one I’ve ever seen that hints that QJWIN was not just a person, but a much larger assassination operation.
In addition, Beirut has long been an important staging ground for the CIA for operations against Syria and Iraq and other leaders in the Middle East. In 1957, the CIA tried, unsuccessfully, to foment a coup in Syria and failed in an attempt to assassinate Nasser in Egypt. David Atlee Phillips, who conducted propaganda and radio operations in the CIA’s coups in Guatemala, Indonesia, the Bay of Pigs and Chile, was stationed in Beirut, Lebanon from 1957 to 1958.
In 1958, the CIA successfully prevented the overthrow of King Hussein in Jordan but failed to prevent the overthrow of King Faisal in Iraq by Abdul Karim Kassem. So the CIA enlisted its “Health Alteration Committee” expert Sidney Gottlieb to send Kassem a poisoned handkerchief. Sy Hersh reported that Gottlieb claimed the CIA just wanted to make him sick, not kill him. But Bill Blum, who has a better record of accuracy on matters of interest to the National Security state, reported:
In February 1960, the Near East Division of the CIA’s clandestine services requested that the Agency find a way to “incapacitate” Kassem for “promoting Soviet bloc political interests in Iraq.” “We do not consciously seek subject’s permanent removal from the scene,” said the Near East Division. “We also do not object should this complication develop.”500
Over the next few years, the CIA worked with, among others, the man who would eventually take over Iraq, Baath Party member Saddam Hussein.501 Roger Morris recounted in the New York Times on the eve of America’s latest war in Iraq how the CIA staged the coup in 1963 that led to Kassem’s ouster and subsequent assassination:
As its instrument the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the CIA in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.
According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the CIA, the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq’s educated elite—killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.502
A key figure in the 1963 “death lists” was the Time magazine bureau chief in Beirut who later became Robert Blair Kaiser’s bureau chief in Rome, William McHale. Would the Beirut branch of the CIA have had an interest in Middle Eastern politics in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967? Might they have enlisted some assets via the California QJWIN office to help with that?
Clearly, Fred Droz and Judy Groves saw Khoury at the hotel for reasons Khoury and the CIA felt necessary to deny. But even if Khoury were at the hotel and even if he worked for the CIA, that doesn’t mean he had anything do with the assassination plot. But when someone provably lies to the FBI and police, we can only speculate about what was behind the lie, and the speculation can take a dark turn. Perhaps he took the assassins to the airport, dropping them off at the terminal outbound for Beirut in the guise of picking his wife up on her inbound flight. Without more information, there remain a number of possibilities that imply guilt as well as innocence.
The Busboy
A SURPRISING NUMBER OF WITNESSES IDENTIFIED SOMEONE AS Sirhan who could not have been Sirhan, because the clothes didn’t match what Sirhan was arrested in. Did the conspiracy include a Sirhan double? In both the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, people pretending to be Lee Harvey Oswald or James Earl Ray surfaced at times when the actual Oswald and Ray were provably in other places at the same time. In the last chapter, we saw that Evan Freed reported a dark-haired man in a blue sport coat fleeing the pantry right after the shooting that looked remarkably like Sirhan but was clearly taller. We saw how Harold Burba mistook Michael Wayne for Sirhan at the Grand Jury.
But another man deserves our attention. Several witnesses mistook a slim young man in a white shirt and dark pants, sometimes with a jacket, with some sort of noticeable acne condition (Sirhan’s face was clear) and a slight foreign accent, who spoke in a way that sounded effeminate to some, and who may have had a slight stoop. This man was sometimes accompanied by a girl in a polka dot dress. And this may well have been the man Daniel Hall spoke to.
Both Sirhan and a white-topped doppelganger appear to have been seen in the pantry during the shooting as well as in a few places where Kennedy was speaking prior to June 4.
Ernest Vallero told the LAPD and FBI that someone who looked remarkably like Sirhan, of Arabian or Jewish descent, but who had a slight accent and provided him with an Israeli passport, applied for a job as a waiter at the Ambassador Hotel two to three weeks before the assassination. Vallero said the man very closely resembled photographs of Sirhan Sirhan. Vallero said the person became “rather ‘nasty’ in his speech” when Vallero told him there were no openings.503 But did he get into the hotel anyway?
Freddy Plimpton, the wife of George Plimpton, who engaged in the struggle with Sirhan, had seen a man with his hand right up to Kennedy’s head at the time of the shooting. She could not remember seeing a gun in the man’s hand, but felt strongly this was the man who had shot Kennedy. She assumed it was Sirhan, but the description she gave didn’t fit:
He did not seem out of place with these people who were sitting up on the platform. All of them were wearing white, which made me believe he was wearing white. According to people later on, I was told he was not wearing a white shirt, and I’m just very confused about that right now. … All of them were wearing white kitchen jackets ….504
Freddy may have been one of the best witnesses of all because she had been present at the incident in Chinatown
where firecrackers went off, sounding like guns, causing the Kennedy party a momentary panic. Freddy explained that she had thought to herself after that incident, if that had been a real shooting, what should she have looked for? So she was paying special attention to Kennedy and saw something that ran counter to the LAPD’s narrative.
From her position behind and to the right of Kennedy, she saw someone being pushed up against the steam table who was likely Sirhan, but—and she couldn’t say in what sequence things happened—she also saw someone who looked Filipino with his hand right up to Kennedy’s head. In other words, she felt she had seen both Sirhan and separately, someone with a hand to Kennedy’s head. She did not see a gun in the hand of the person with his hand to Kennedy’s head and was puzzled why she didn’t see the gun. She said this man “wasn’t very big” but appeared to be about 30 years old and said his eyes were squinted nearly shut:
I saw his hand up next to Robert Kennedy’s head. … I just looked at him and from his position and his posture, just assumed he was the guy who fired. … All I can say is I knew this guy was shooting Senator Kennedy. I just can’t say I saw the gun, no.505
If Sirhan had been the man Freddy had seen, no doubt she would have been asked to testify at the Grand Jury and the trial. The distance problem was an issue and anyone who could put Sirhan’s hand next to Kennedy’s head would have been welcome. But clearly, the police saw the problem in her statement and felt it better not to have her testify. Her husband George Plimpton, who had helped subdue Sirhan and had seen no other suspects, was called. But Freddy appeared to see, even if she didn’t understand that at the time, that someone other than Sirhan had shot Kennedy, likely with a concealed gun.
By chance, I met another man who may have seen the same person Freddy Plimpton described. He insisted that Sirhan had been in a white busboy uniform when he shot Kennedy. He did not believe there had been a conspiracy. He showed me a photo proving he was at the Ambassador Hotel that night. I met him while we were both extras on the set of the film Bobby, Emilio Estevez’s fictional story interspersed with documentary footage of Robert Kennedy that used the assassination as the backdrop. Estevez and his researcher, with whom I had shared some information for the film, pointed me toward this man on the set. His story was strange, but it fit much of what I was learning, so I took down his name and number on a sheet I regrettably never saw again. In a nutshell, here is his story. It’s not the kind of story one forgets.
He claimed to be in the pantry during the shooting. He was behind Kennedy and saw a man dressed in a white busboy uniform, whom he was certain was Sirhan, shoot Kennedy. In the aftermath, someone who claimed to be from an Australian television station asked if he could interview him on camera—in Australia. The man thought that was silly because most stations would have had a local Los Angeles affiliate film the interview and then transmit it to them. But in the shock of the situation, he agreed and hopped on the plane. During the long flight, his seatmate, a man who claimed to be an oil industry executive, grilled him about what he had seen in the pantry. When he got to Australia, the interview was very short—just a few minutes—and he was quickly put on a plane back home. He thought that was nuts. Why fly him that far only to interview him on camera for only a few minutes? He believed to the day that I spoke to him he had seen Sirhan wearing a white busboy’s uniform. But Sirhan was captured in a blue velour shirt and jeans. Whoever the man in the busboy uniform was, it could not have been Sirhan. Until I read Freddy’s and others accounts, I had dismissed his story as simple a case of misremembering Sirhan’s clothes. But after a great deal more research, I now wonder if he and Freddy Plimpton saw the actual shooter.
Bill White may have seen this man earlier. He told the LAPD about a “busboy” who aroused his suspicion:
Inf. additionally stated that he obs. a busboy, described as M-Latin, 5’2”, slim build, approx. 18 yrs. of age, wearing a white, buttoned down jacket and dark pants, wandering about the anteroom and anchor desk area of the Embassy Rm., pretending to sweep up cigarette butts. Inf. states however that there were no butts to be picked up, and he does not know if this busboy was genuine or used this activity as a disguise.506
The anteroom and anchor desk were immediately behind the stage where Kennedy spoke his last public words, just outside the pantry.
Midge Singer may have seen this man too. About 20 minutes before Kennedy was shot, Midge crossed the pantry on her way to the stairway down to the Ambassador Room. On the way, she bumped her right shoulder “against a man her own height or shorter.” She was 5’3”. “This man had on a white jacket, dark complexion. She thought it was a busboy.” After seeing Sirhan’s picture in the papers, she felt that was the man she had bumped into, but was not certain.
One witness shared a story that would explain so much about this evidence. But by the time the FBI went looking for him, the witness had apparently fled.
On June 9, 1968, Winfred Holder, a desk clerk at the Hope Hotel, struck up a conversation at the Cordova Bar with a man who gave his name as John David Wright. Wright was a black man about 28 to 30 years old and approximately 5’6” to 5’8” tall with two gold front teeth.507 Holder’s important information was summarized in the LAPD’s Final Report:
Wright told Holder that he had worked as a kitchen reporter at the Ambassador Hotel for two or three months preceding the assassination.508
Wright described a “kitchen reporter” as one who reports what the kitchen needs. The FBI tried to discount Wright’s account by stating there was no such role as a “kitchen reporter” at the Ambassador Hotel and no one employed at the hotel that night by that name. Both of those statements may be true, and Wright may have fabricated those details to explain his presence in a place where he wasn’t supposed to be. But Wright could have been telling the truth re this, a truth the Ambassador Hotel would not wish to acknowledge to law enforcement. According to journalist Fernando Faura:
It is a common practice of California farmers and businessmen to hire illegal aliens, known as “mojados” or “wetbacks,” and to pay them substandard wages. There were “mojados” in the kitchen that night. Understandably, no one ever heard from them, except the FBI and the police.509
Wright might have been working there for cash that night, unofficially, with no record of his employment to be found. Wright had, in fact, worked for the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel on and off for more than seven years, with the last official date of employment in 1962. So if anyone was positioned to grab a couple of weeks of freelance time off the books and paid in cash, it would have been Wright. And the FBI’s assertion that Wright wasn’t there and had to have made this up doesn’t make sense due to Wright’s next comment about a girl and coffee.
Wright stated that he saw Sirhan in the kitchen several times during the evening of June 4, 1968. Sirhan was drinking coffee and a pretty girl was with him … and that the girl with Sirhan had dark hair and was “well built.”510
This information is important because Sirhan’s last memory in the pantry before he was choked after the shooting was of pouring coffee for an attractive young woman. But Sirhan’s account of the girl was not known at the time the FBI first interviewed Holder. None of the public reports of a girl in a polka dot dress at the time suggested she and Sirhan had coffee together. This information didn’t come out until Dr. Bernard Diamond hypnotized Sirhan in January 1969:
“I recollect giving a girl a cup of coffee. I served myself. I don’t remember paying for it …” … He remembered meeting a girl, remembered giving her coffee. She looked Armenian. Or Spanish. She said she was tired and sleepy. …
“The girl kept talking about coffee. She wanted cream. Spanish, Mexican, dark-skinned. When people talk about the girl in the polka dot dress,” he figured, “maybe they were thinking of the girl I was having coffee with.”511
Since neither Wright nor Holder could have gotten this information from any public source at the time Holder reported the conversation, Holder’s account of w
hat he heard from Wright gives both of them credence. Wright then described how Kennedy was shot:
Wright told Holder that when Senator Kennedy came through the kitchen, he saw one man try to hold the Senator’s arm to keep him still and saw Sirhan with the pistol, but did not see him pull the trigger and thought that somebody else did the actual shooting.512
This also maps to what the rest of the evidence suggests: Sirhan pulled focus while others did the actual killing. And from what Holder reported, it sounded as if Wright might have been on the periphery of the plot:
Wright also said that the people in the Ambassador kitchen had been talking for two weeks about how they planned the shooting of Kennedy.513
The FBI summary of Holder’s recollections was more forthcoming:
As Senator Kennedy came through the kitchen, he saw one man try to hold Senator Kennedy’s arm to keep him still. This was the man with dark glasses whose picture was in the paper. He saw Sirhan with a pistol, but he did not see him pull the trigger, and he thinks somebody else did the actual shooting of Senator Kennedy.
People in the Ambassador Hotel’s kitchen had been talking for two weeks about how they planned the shooting of Senator Kennedy.
He knew a lot that he could not tell or it would be his neck.514
Wright made contradictory statements, saying he didn’t have to worry about money one minute and then saying he was going to Pensacola (Florida) for a construction job.
Holder was not the only person Wright talked to before leaving town. He told a woman whose name is redacted in the FBI’s files a similar story. She told the FBI nearly the same story Holder had, but she added that Wright told her he had told his story to the police, a report the LAPD denied. But that doesn’t mean Wright was lying, as the LAPD provably lied about a lot of the evidence in this case, so we cannot take their assertion at face value.
Wright had lived all over, including in Kansas City, where he may have worked for General Motors, although General Motors denied that to the FBI. Curiously, Thane Eugene Cesar’s public records and only available email address from a public record company indicated he too worked at General Motors in Detroit, even though Cesar never appeared to have lived in Detroit.
