A Lie Too Big to Fail

by Lisa Pease

  Diamond’s questions showed an attempt to coercively lead the witness. How could Sirhan know “when he decided” to shoot Kennedy if he not only never decided to shoot Kennedy but also provably never did? This type of question is a “loaded question” or an “assumptive question” as it assumes something as true that has no basis in fact. We know for a fact that Sirhan did not kill Kennedy. How, then, could he answer such a question? When one uses such a question, discreditation, not fact-finding, is the clear goal.

  Note also how Diamond reframed Sirhan’s responses as affirmative statements. Again, the questions themselves and Diamond’s reiteration of the answers appear to be an attempt to implant and reinforce a belief in Sirhan that he was guilty of the crime. Under hypnosis Diamond reinforced to Sirhan that he had “four Collinses to drink.” But if he’d had that much to drink, someone would have noticed it! Sirhan was a small man who rarely drank at all. That amount of alcohol would have been on his breath and visible in his face and eyes. Most people have seen others who had that much to drink and note the redness in the eyes, the flushed face, and other obvious signs of being drunk.

  During each session, Sirhan skipped from seeing someone approaching to being choked. There was clearly some mental block on everything that happened in between. When Diamond tried to get Sirhan to recall what had happened in this missing period, during this final hypnotic session, Diamond again attempted to lead the witness:

  “There is Kennedy, Sirhan. Open your eyes, Sirhan. Sirhan, open your eyes. ‘You son of a bitch,’ you said, Sirhan.”

  “He can’t. He can’t.”

  “He can’t do what?”

  “Can’t send those bombers.”

  “He can’t send the bombers. You’re not gonna let him, are you Sirhan? Hmm?”

  “He can’t. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.”

  “Sirhan! Did you know that Kennedy was coming this way?”

  “No.”

  “Did you expect him?”

  “No.”

  “Sirhan, were you waiting for him?”

  “Uhhhh.”

  “Yes or no, Sirhan?”

  “No. Uhhh.”

  “No. Are you sure you weren’t waiting for him?”

  “No.”

  “But you see him now. He’s coming now. He’s coming down the hall. Look at him, Sirhan. Open your eyes.”

  “He’s running at me.”690

  But of course, Robert Kennedy never ran at Sirhan. Someone who likely had a gun in his hand, however, clearly ran in Sirhan’s direction, according to Virginia Guy and other witnesses. And of course, several people ran at Sirhan when they saw he had a gun, but Kennedy wasn’t one of them. Diamond kept on, pressing Sirhan in a way more suggestive of implanting rather than recovering a memory:

  “I order you to open your eyes and look at Kennedy. Look at him. There he is. He’s coming, Sirhan. He’s coming toward you, Sirhan. Don’t shake your head.”

  Was Sirhan shaking his head because that’s not what he saw? Sirhan mumbled something that sounded like “Bobby” followed by “Son of a bitch.” But Sirhan’s next statement made it sound like “Son of a bitch” wasn’t a term for Kennedy, but more a term of surprise: “What’s he doing here?” It’s also not clear if the “he” Sirhan referred to was Kennedy. If it was, it appears Sirhan was surprised to see Kennedy at that moment, which would hardly fit the story of a man trying to kill Kennedy. But Diamond used this against Sirhan: “You’re talking to Kennedy. You call Kennedy a son of a bitch? Sirhan, open your eyes and look at Kennedy.”

  Diamond continued with Sirhan, who was clearly genuinely upset about Kennedy promising to send bombers to Israel. What had been “he can’t” became “you can’t” as the session progressed, at which point Diamond, in an effort to nudge Sirhan’s memory along, asked, “Are you reaching for your gun, Sirhan?” At this, Sirhan made a grabbing motion across to his left hip with his right hand. Diamond asked Sirhan again, “Are you reaching for your gun?” He followed that up with, “How you gonna stop him?” Diamond prodded Sirhan further:

  Sirhan, open your eyes and look at Kennedy. Sirhan, open your eyes. He’s coming. Reach for your gun, Sirhan. It’s your last chance, Sirhan. Reach for your gun. Where is your gun? …

  Take the gun out of your pants. You’ve got the gun in your hand now. Let me see you shoot the gun, Sirhan. Shoot the gun. Shoot the gun. Shoot the gun. Sirhan, take the gun and shoot it.”691

  At this, Kaiser noted “Sirhan’s right hand pounded climactically on his right thigh—five times. His right forefinger squeezed and twisted three more times in a weakening spasm. Then he was still.”692

  Accordingly, Dr. Brown wrote in his declaration, “I came to the conclusion that Dr. Diamond was unduly suggestive to Mr. Sirhan, in that Dr. Diamond systematically supplied specific suggestions to Mr. Sirhan to fill in the gaps of Mr. Sirhan’s memory for the day and evening of the assassination. Such interviewing methods would not meet any current standard of non-suggestive interviewing.”

  Dr. Brown also found that Sirhan had a “low score on memory suggestibility,” which explained why Diamond’s efforts did not succeed in implanting a new memory.”693 Dr. Brown believed because of this, Sirhan’s memory of what happened was still locked somewhere in his mind. After 60 hours of interviews, this is what Dr. Brown learned:

  Mr. Sirhan was led to the kitchen area by a woman after that woman had received directions from an official at the event. Mr. Sirhan did not go with the intent to shoot Senator Kennedy, but did respond to a specific hypnotic cue given to him by that woman to enter “range mode,” during which Mr. Sirhan automatically and involuntarily responded with a “flashback” that he was shooting at a firing range at circle targets. At the time Mr. Sirhan did not know that he was shooting at people nor did he know that he was shooting at Senator Kennedy.694

  Dr. Brown commented, as have many others, that Sirhan’s attempt to play pool with his friend Gaymoard Mistri the night of the assassination “does not suggest the motivation of an obsessed assassin planning to kill a presidential candidate that same evening.”695

  One part of Dr. Brown’s declaration stunned me, because it coincided with the downstairs bar episode where the girl in the polka dot dress chatted up Eve Hansen and Eve’s sister Nina Ballantyne, telling them they couldn’t get served at that end of the bar and toasting “our next president” without naming Kennedy. In his statement, Dr. Brown included a transcript of the portion where Sirhan recalled wandering into a ballroom where an all-Mexican band was playing. Dr. Brown assumed this was the Embassy Room upstairs, but in fact the Mexican band was playing downstairs in the Ambassador Ballroom, which makes sense with the rest of Sirhan’s story.

  I recall a band…all Mexican…the brightness…a lot of people…I’m getting tired…I wasn’t expecting this…it is getting hot…very hot…I want to get a drink. A make-shift bar area…I see a bartender…a white smock…he looked Latin…we just nodded…I told him what I wanted…it’s like I have a relationship with this guy…Tom Collins…I drink it while I’m walking around…a tall glass… it looks like lemonade glass…I want to go back for more… [Tell me everything about the relationship with this guy] He looks like in Abbott and Costello…the short one…this bartender…he wasn’t looking for a sale…he wasn’t talkative…it is like he’s communicating with gestures…a nod after I paid for it.

  I’m still looking around…he didn’t make it (the drink) right in front of me…he made it and brought it over…after that I came back again…it was like a routine between us…like I’m more familiar…like I’m a regular customer of his…I don’t remember seeing him before…it seemed like he was a professional…he never initiated a conversation but after the second time it was like there was a communication between us…like it happened with a nod… [Freely recall anything about this communication] It seemed familiar…like a return business…when he saw me come back he knew what I wanted…it is hard to figure out if he’s targeting me or I’m targetin
g him…I don’t remember him saying anything like “shoot Kennedy” or anything like that…he’s just very quiet…we make eye contact with a nod…he knows his business…I begin to get tired…I sat down on one of the couches…I remember feeling that I had to go home…. [All grammar, brackets, ellipses and emphasis in the original.]696

  Perhaps the bartender was giving Sirhan his final hypnotic commands. Or perhaps he was drugging him, or both, as these options are not mutually exclusive. I have often wondered if the “Tom Collins” drinks that Sirhan thought he had been drinking could have been drugged drinks. The Senate report on the CIA’s MKULTRA mind control projects described how the behavior of a person under the influence of barbiturates went through these three stages as the drugs were increased. Sirhan’s behavior, as described by witnesses, would have fit the description of Plane 2.

  Plane 1: No evident effect, or slight sedative effect.

  Plane 2: Cloudiness, calmness, amnesia. (Upon recovery, the subject will not remember what happened at this or “lower” planes or stages.)

  Plane 3: Slurred speech, old thought patterns disrupted, inability to integrate or learn new patterns. Poor coordination. Subject becomes unaware of painful stimuli.697

  In the 1950s, the CIA had experimented extensively with both hypnosis and drugs separately and in combination in their effort to completely control a person’s behavior. CIA documents hint that the right combination had been found, but the CIA also decided to stop putting on paper anything related to these efforts.698 The CIA’s records show that the best results were obtained via a combination of drugs and hypnosis, not just one or the other.

  Remember, too, that no one smelled alcohol on Sirhan’s breath. And Sirhan’s recollection maps to the same downstairs bar where Eve Hansen saw three men sitting in the dark with their backs against the wall near the bar where a girl in a polka dot dress intercepted her when she went to order a drink. Was the girl protecting the operation when she essentially intercepted Hansen and her sister at the bar? Although Hansen paid for the drinks it was the girl, not the bartender, who brought them to her, according to one report.

  Maybe this makeshift “bar” wasn’t a bar at all, but a staging center for dispatching Sirhan and possibly the others sitting in the dark. It’s an intriguing possibility that fits all the evidence without distortion. And remember, the original plan early in the night was for Kennedy to finish his speech at the private Embassy Room party for key campaign operatives and donors, and to proceed downstairs to the public “victory party” in the Ambassador Room. That option would have sent Kennedy down the narrow hallway from the end of the stairs into the Ambassador Room, right past the makeshift bar. It might have been even easier to kill him there than in the pantry. The final route was not set until Kennedy started speaking. But it appears the conspirators had a plan to take him out whichever way he went. That’s why I think talk of a security breakdown or a betrayal by a Kennedy insider is simply a distraction. The conspirators just had two plans and apparently at least two different patsies at the ready. The thin, younger woman in the polka dot dress and the acne-faced Sirhan lookalike might have been waiting downstairs with another team of assassins at the ready.

  Hans Bidstrup described seeing in Sirhan’s milky white drink “a small red object which looked like a piece of red candy” in Sirhan’s drink, “round on one side and flat on the other.”699 Bidstrup was not a drinker, and it’s very possible he just didn’t know what a half a maraschino cherry looked like. On the other hand, bartenders usually use whole cherries, not half cherries, to garnish drinks. When the CIA was experimenting with hypnosis, they often combined drugs with hypnosis, trying to find the perfect combination to make someone wholly pliable, including scopolamine. In a 1993 publication, the CIA discussed a 1955 Soviet plot to drug someone they wished to capture with candy coated with scopolamine.700 In large doses, scopolamine is a toxic poison. But in small quantities, scopolamine produces amnesia, high tolerance to pain, and a reduction of one’s willpower, all things that could have aided in the framing of Sirhan that night.

  Scopolamine also causes the pupils to dilate, a condition Officer Placencia thought he noticed in Sirhan’s eyes upon his arrest. While the older, more experienced Officer White said he did a test which provided Sirhan’s eyes were behaving normally, remember that White was also a veteran of the force and would have known that if Sirhan were found to be under the influence of any substance, the jury might not convict him, and may have simply lied about Sirhan’s eyes to cover up what Officer Placencia had observed.

  After Sirhan drank whatever this mysterious bartender prepared for him, he began to feel very sleepy. He remembered going back to his car to go home, but realized he was too tired to drive. He decided to return to the hotel for coffee but found his way, possibly through a post-hypnotic suggestion, to the same bartender. There, according to Dr. Brown’s notes, Sirhan was intercepted by an attractive woman with a polka dot dress who was sitting at the bar talking to the bartender. She overheard Mr. Sirhan asking for coffee and she said that she knew where the coffee was. The woman in the polka dot dress then took Mr. Sirhan by the hand and led him to the anteroom behind the stage where Senator Kennedy was speaking. There they discovered a large silver coffee urn and cups. Sirhan poured coffee, and remembered wondering, “How do I pay for this?” He remembered being very sexually attracted to the woman.

  “All of a sudden,” Sirhan remembered, they were told to move by some official in a suit, not a uniform, with dark hair and “a big, full face.” The man seemed to be “in charge,” according to Sirhan. The man pointed them in the direction of the pantry and the girl “acknowledge[d] his instruction.”

  Earl Williman, an assistant chief set electrician for Desilu Studios (per the FBI, because to the LAPD he said he worked at Universal Studios), appeared to have seen the man that directed Sirhan and the girl to the pantry. In his FBI interview, Williman described entering the anteroom behind the stage during Kennedy’s speech. Oddly, a young woman in a beige dress wanted to know what Williman was doing in that area and took his name down. There, Williman noticed a stocky, well-dressed man about 50 years old and six feet tall, with “a fat round face.” He appeared to Williman to be Latino, with dark skin and bushy hair.701

  Williman noted the man was wearing a “polka dot necktie” and remained seated during the time he saw him.702

  Was the polka dot pattern somehow meaningful to our story? When Derren Brown constructed his test of whether someone could be programmed, the polka dot pattern was the first of two triggers. The hypnotized subject grew alert and followed whatever command followed the sighting of the polka dot pattern. Similarly, in the film The Manchurian Candidate, the hypnotically programmed character Raymond Shaw is activated using two triggers. The first trigger was an audio command: “Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?” At this, Shaw was compelled to find a deck of cards and play solitaire. The second trigger was the Queen of Diamonds card. As soon as he saw this card, he did whatever he was next directed to do, including “go jump in a lake.” This was not the fictional imagination of some author who knew nothing about hypnosis. Richard Condon, the author of the book by the same name on which the famous film was based, had done a lot of solid research on hypnosis, including much of the lesser-known literature. In his fictional work, he cited several important nonfiction studies that indicated it is possible to program someone to do just about anything under hypnosis. He was not inventing this scenario from thin air.

  Another person wearing a polka dot pattern that night, who met with a tragic death, was Kathy Fulmer. Fulmer, a 19-year-old, was at the pantry doors at the west end, right where Kennedy entered the pantry just before the shooting. She was wearing a polka dot scarf. As the shooting started, she reportedly ran off saying “They shot him. They shot Kennedy.”

  On June 7, Fulmer went to the police and offered herself up as the girl Sandra Serrano must have seen, but upon viewing her, Serrano denied this.703
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  Just before jury deliberations began in Sirhan’s trial, Fulmer was found semi-conscious in a motel. She died at a nearby hospital shortly after her arrival from an overdose of Seconal.704 No motive for suicide had been found. Just four weeks earlier, Ernie Johnson had told the LAPD that around 8:30 P.M. the night of the primary, he saw a “woman in a polka dot scarf” arguing with another woman in a polka dot dress and a “Mexican” (who was not Sirhan) in the pantry.705 Might that have been the man in the gold sweater that Serrano and others had seen that night with both Sirhan and the woman in the polka dot dress? Had Fulmer been involved in some way? Might she have been able to signal people in the pantry that Kennedy was coming? Had she been silenced lest the truth surface? Or was it all just a coincidence?

  There was another woman wearing a polka dot “kerchief or something” that photographer Bill Epperidge noted. While Fulmer was tall and thin, this woman was short and on the heavy side. Epperidge said this olive-skinned woman in her early twenties tried to push her way into a line that had formed near Kennedy as he was on his way to the stage. Epperidge felt she didn’t belong there “and gave her a poke in the ribs to get her out of the way,” but the girl was very persistent, and Epperidge poked her a second time. He saw this same girl one more time as Kennedy was exiting the stage through the anteroom. She was standing “to the right just off the platform” as they exited.706

  A woman in a polka dot dress, a man in a polka dot tie, a woman at the entrance to the pantry in a polka dot scarf and a woman backstage with another polka dot “kerchief” or scarf is interesting. Yet in the hundreds of pictures I’ve seen from the hotel that night, I’ve never seen anyone wearing any clothing item with polka dots. Was that by design? Was the polka dot pattern some sort of hypnotic trigger? Was it a way for conspirators to identify each other? Did it perhaps serve both purposes? Did the LAPD destroy photos that showed any people in polka dot patterns because they knew this would be a way to identify conspirators?