Killers in Cold Blood

by Ray Black

  Even so, a remarkable number of other witnesses went on insisting that a good-looking woman in a white polka-dot dress ‘appeared to be with Sirhan’ just before the assassination. If this ‘polka-dot woman’ scenario is true, we have a peculiar conspiracy, with a professional hit man, a decoy gunman and a very conspicuous woman in a memorable dress. There is no logical explanation for a member of an assassination team behaving in the way that this woman is alleged to have behaved. Why would she have given herself and her co-conspirators away like this? On this point I am more inclined to believe the LAPD’s interpretation, which is that the people were running away from the scene of a shooting, possibly instinctively running away from danger, but also intoxicated and elated at having witnessed a sensational and historic event. ‘They shot him! They shot him!’ ‘Who?’ ‘Senator Kennedy!’ The alternative, which is to portray the couple as successful assassins, is absurd. If they had been part of a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, they might well have tried to leave the crime scene as quickly as possible, but they would hardly have been shouting ‘We shot him!’ as they fled.

  Nevertheless, on June 4, the day immediately before the midnight assassination, Sirhan signed in at a firing range and was joined by a man and a shapely well-built woman, according to the range master of the gun club. The range master heard the woman say to Sirhan, ‘Goddamn you, you son of a bitch, get out of here or they’ll recognize us.’ An explanation is available; a topless bar waitress came forward to testify that she and her husband had innocently met Sirhan at the range. On the other hand, what the waitress said was contradicted by the reports of other gun club witnesses. Those who favour the polka-dot woman as one of the assassins portray the topless bar waitress as a decoy who was part of a complex assassination network. This still leaves unexplained the absurd conspicuousness of the polka-dot woman, and the open admission of involvement. Assassins do not shout ‘We did it!’ as they leave the scene of the crime.

  Sirhan meanwhile was left to take the rap for the murder. He has steadfastly maintained that he acted alone, yet what Sirhan thinks happened does not necessarily reflect what actually happened if an additional assassin network was in place. It is highly significant that Sirhan cannot remember the assassination at all, as if a segment of his memory has been entirely erased. As a jockey, Sirhan received a head injury in 1966, which may have made him especially susceptible to hypnosis. One interesting theory is that the CIA found this out when Sirhan later explored ‘mind control’ groups, and the CIA used hypnosis to ensure that he carried out orders and remembered nothing about his co-conspirators afterwards. He has been subsequently hypnotized in attempts to reconstruct his lost memory, and in his automatic writings he has come up with ‘Pay to the order of one hundred thousand dollars’ and ‘My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more and more of an unshakable obsession’. Was $100,000 the price for being part of the assassination team? Was Sirhan hypnotized into having a political motive?

  Even so, the question still hangs in the air – was the twenty-six-year-old guard Gene Cesar involved? He asked not to be called to the witness stand at Sirhan’s trial, a request which was unaccountably granted. He was probably the best person to give evidence of Sirhan’s actions because of where he was standing, right next to Bobby Kennedy, and of course the post mortem evidence pointed to him as the likeliest suspect. He claimed he was not called to the Ambassador Hotel for duty until a few hours before the shooting. At 11.15 p.m. he was assigned to check credentials at the doorway of Colonial Room (where the press conference was to be held) and was to clear the way for the Kennedy entourage en route. He claimed to have been put next to Kennedy by his employers: he was not there out of choice. But perhaps this was a case of a lucky break – like the Archduke’s car taking a wrong turning right in front of Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo in 1914.

  Gene Cesar said that when the shooting started he drew his gun and threw himself to the floor. Five witnesses confirmed that he drew the gun. Two witnesses said they saw him shoot, but Cesar insists that he did not do so. He successfully passed a polygraph (lie detector) test organized by Dan Moldea in 1994. Nevertheless, Cesar was standing directly behind Kennedy when Sirhan began firing and, according to his own admission, was in a position to shoot Kennedy at point-blank range. He also had been on guard duty in the pantry an hour earlier when Sirhan slipped into the area. The trajectory of the shots from the back, which went through Kennedy’s jacket as well as into his head, were perfectly aligned with where Cesar said he was. If he did not fire, then he must have been right next to whoever did shoot and witnessed them do it. He was never asked and never volunteered that information during the polygraph.

  Cesar admitted owning a .22 calibre handgun, but said he was not carrying it that night. He said he had sold it in February, but the sales slip showed that he sold it three months after the murder. Incredibly, it was never tested by LAPD for ballistics, and it subsequently disappeared. In 1993 someone salvaged a nine-shot .22 calibre revolver, serial number Y-13332, from a pond in Arkansas. Some believe this is Gene Cesar’s gun, the gun that may have been used to kill Kennedy.

  Gene Cesar looks like the perfect suspect, yet many are persuaded that he is innocent. He had no criminal record. He volunteered to be questioned. He offered to submit his gun for investigation. He voluntarily told the police about the .22 he owned or had owned. He was co-operative about questioning and undertaking a polygraph test. He was open and honest about his political sentiments, which were anti-Kennedy. He had not been scheduled to work that night, but was called in at the last minute. In all of these ways he comes across as innocent. Gene Cesar once said, ‘Just because I don’t like the Democrats, that doesn’t mean I go around shooting them.’ On the other hand, in purely forensic terms he was – uniquely – in the right place at the right moment to have assassinated Robert Kennedy.

  The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko

  Alexander Litvinenko was a former Federal Security Service officer who somehow got caught up in the dark underworld of Russian politics. The years before his death he became relentless in his criticism of the Russian authorities and because of his outspokenness, died on November 23, 2006. Litvinenko was always considered to be a contradictory figure – some called him a traitor who betrayed his homeland and former comrades, others thought of him as a hero as he dared to tell the truth about Putin’s regime.

  Litvinenko was born in 1962 in the Russian city of Voronezh and many of his family had been prominent figures in the Russian military. On leaving school in 1985, he joined the army, quickly rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. According to Litvinenko, while in service, he was involved in working with the KGB as an informer. In 1988, Litvinenko left the army and entered the counter-intelligence department of the KGB. He worked in such divisions as Military Counter-Intelligence, Directorate of Economic Security and the Antiterrorist Centre.

  In 1991, when the KGB’s directorates had divided, Litvinenko worked for the FSB (Federal Security Service) and was involved in fighting terrorism and organised crime. In 1997, he moved to one of the most top secret divisions of the service, a unit called URPO where he specialised in counter-terrorism and infiltration of organised crime. The nature of his job meant he would certainly have made enemies.

  He assisted in the release of hostages seized by Chechen insurgents in Dagestan in January 1996 and also established confidential relations with the widow of the first President of Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudaev, in April 1996. However, it was his association with the businessman Boris Berezovsky that played a pivotal role in his downfall.

  Berezovsky was a former mathematician, turned businessman, who had made his fortune by selling cars and buying into state companies in some dubious, underhand deals. He was a shrewd and manipulative man who managed to inveigle his way into the Kremlin, quickly becoming an influential figure in the Russian leadership. As Boris Yeltsin’s health and popularity began to wane, Berezovsky realised he needed allies to protect his position and he
approached Litvinenko, who had previously investigated an earlier attempt on Berezovsky’s life.

  In 1998, Litvinenko called a press conference, in which he claimed that he had been instructed to kill the millionaire Berezovsky by the then head of the Russian security council. Protected by members of his FSB unit, Litvinenko claimed his superiors had threatened him with violence when he defiantly refused their order. Although the truth behind this accusation has been disputed, Litvinenko claimed it was just one tiny part of the corruption inside the FSB that he wanted to expose. Berezovsky, on the other hand, was allegedly using Litvinenko to strengthen his own influence within the FSB. Information also leaked out that Litvinenko had in fact been paid one and a half million dollars by Berezovsky for the press conference.

  Following this conference, Litvinenko and a number of his associates were employed in the Executive Secretariat of the CIS, under the leadership of Berezovsky. Litvinenko took the position of a councillor of the Department for Security Issues.

  At the beginning of 1999, the Russian authorities – in particular the FSB – started a criminal prosecution against Litvinenko. He was arrested twice, in March and November, and spent a total of nine months imprisoned in the FSB prison at Fefortovo in Moscow. He was finally acquitted of ‘exceeding his authority’ in his place of work, but was rearrested in November. Again these charges were dismissed, but before they could bring a third criminal case against him, Litvinenko secretly fled to London with his wife Marina. He was immediately granted political asylum but in his absence Litvinenko was convicted back in Russia and given a three-and-a-half-year sentence.

  However, in Britain, Litvinenko did not let the matter rest and began an active propaganda campaign against the Russian leadership and the FSB. His accusations went as far as saying that Russia even had ties with al-Qaeda and that they were involved in a wide range of criminal activities, including drug trafficking in Afghanistan. Litvinenko was reunited with his old friend Berezovsky, who was now also living in self-imposed exile.

  Litvinenko not only spoke out verbally, he also published his first book in 2001 entitled Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within. His second book came in 2002, Lubyanka’s Criminal Grouping, which was published in the United States and exposed even more underhand dealings. In one particularly damning part of the book he accused the FSB of co-ordinating the 1999 Russian apartment bombings that killed over 300 people. Litvinenko soon had a long list of enemies and as such was relying on the British law enforcement agencies to keep him safe.

  Litvinenko said the first attempt on his life took place in December 1977 when he refused to carry out orders to kill Berezovsky. On his arrival in Britain, Litvinenko made it quite clear to the police that his life was in danger and had to contact them on several occasions warning them that he had received threats of physical violence.

  On November 1, 2006, Litvinenko was mysteriously taken ill and had to be hospitalised. Although at first doctors were uncertain what was causing the illness, it was later attributed to a highly toxic form of radioactive poison, polonium-210. Not only were significant amounts found in his body, traces of the substance have since been discovered at various locations in London visited by Litvinenko. Polonium-210 was first discovered by Marie Curie at the end of the 19th century and, although everyone has a small amount in their body, at high doses it damages tissues and organs.

  When interviewed, Litvinenko stated that he had met with three former KGB agents on the day he fell ill – Vyacheslav Sokolenko, Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi. Lugovoi is a former bodyguard of Russian ex-prime minister Yegor Gaidar, who incidentally also suffered from a mysterious illness in November 2006. Litvinenko’s wife, Marina, accused Moscow of arranging her husband’s murder, although she didn’t believe the order came from Putin himself.

  Also on November 1, Litvinenko met with the Italian acamedic Mario Scaramella. Scaramella told Litvinenko that he had received a threatening e-mail and told the Russian that his life might be in danger. Scaramella had no idea who sent him the message, but having spent the past four years helping the Italian government with an investigation into Russian activities in Italy, knew full well the intricacies of the KGB. The meeting was brief, just thirty-five minutes, in a London sushi bar, and of course Scaramella was totally unaware that his ally had already been poisoned.

  Litvinenko became weaker and weaker and eventually died on November 23 after suffering from a major setback which caused his heart to fail.

  On January 20, 2007, British police announced that they had identified the man they believed poisoned Litvinenko. The suspect was captured on camera as he entered Heathrow airport. By January 26, the police were able to confirm the man they wanted for the murder, as they had discovered a teapot which contained an off-the-chart reading for polonium-210, in London’s Millennium Hotel, where Lugovoi had stayed. The police said they wanted to charge former Russian spy, Andrei Lugovoi, believing that he administered the poison on November 1, when the two men met. The British government have prepared an extradition request asking that Lugovoi be returned to the UK to stand trial for Litvinenko’s murder.

  Litvinenko blamed the Kremlin shortly before he died, saying, ‘You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.’

  This statement came after the mysterious poisoning of yet another prominent opponent of the Kremlin, Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko. In 1978 a Bulgarian dissident was assassinated by a jab from an umbrella tip bearing the toxin ricin.

  Shortly before his death, Litvinenko had also been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was another critic of the Putin government.

  Of course, the Kremlin denies any involvement in any of these murders, but a toxicologist who was asked to look into the death of Litvinenko, said that polonium-210 is ‘only found in government-controlled institutions’. Once it is administered there is absolutely nothing that can be done to save the exposed person.

  Litvinenko’s supporters say that Putin benefits by eliminating such a fierce critic but Nikolai Kovalyov, who once headed the Federal Security Service, defended the KGB by saying, ‘. . . defectors who did incomparably more harm to Russia than Litvinenko continue to live in the West safe and sound.’

  PART FIVE: Atrocities

  The Rape of Nanking

  For more than six weeks, the citizens of Nanking, the then capital of China, were held to ransom by unforgiving Japanese troops occupying the city. The Rape of Nanking, as it was quickly named, following the rape and murder of more than 20,000 women, showed that the Japanese soldiers had absolutely no regard for their victims and that the accepted rules of warfare and the welfare of prisoners in occupied territories had no place in the country’s main city. Those who were raped were often mutilated and killed. Sometimes victims were kept captive so that gang rape and further abuse could be carried out on a regular basis. Not only were women at risk, including the elderly, even children as young as seven or less were subjected to this heinous brutality and then killed when they had outlived their usefulness.

  The atrocities began in Nanking in December 1937 when the Japanese Imperial Army marched into the city. More than 300,000 of the capital’s inhabitants were murdered and the brutal slaying of innocent men, women and children would become regarded as the worst atrocity of the twentieth century so far.

  A particularly tough battle at Shanghai began in the summer of 1937 where Chinese forces put up a particularly effective resistance to their Japanese enemy. The Japanese authorities had already announced that they would conquer China in three months, but fighting at Shanghai delayed their occupation until the late autumn. The stubborn resistance of the Chinese infuriated their enemy who were determined for revenge. Nanking became the centre for their exacted revenge which was metred out by the Japanese who defeated the Chinese in Novemb
er the same year.

  More than 50,000 Japanese soldiers marched on Nanking, which had taken on the role of the country’s capital after Beijing had found itself under siege. As a result, the population in Nanking had grown quickly from 250,000 to nearer one million inhabitants with many of those arriving after fleeing the dangerous northern Chinese countryside. Refugees swelled the city’s population and, by the autumn of 1937, Nanking found itself targeted by Japanese bombs which were concentrated on the downtown areas of the capital which were densely populated.

  The trouble had started in September 1931 when a Chinese bomb – which was incidentally planted by Japanese secret agents – destroyed a Japanese express train. The Mukden Incident, as it was called, sparked an escalation in attacks from the Japanese who declared all-out war on China in July 1937. Japan defended its actions against China, stating that it needed additional territories for its overpopulation and that colonisation of other lands was a necessity. Japan stated that its own resources were inadequate and that it needed those that China could provide. Japan also defended its stance on the take-over of China by claiming that Japanese inhabitants in China would save the country from the ‘inner turmoil’ that it was suffering. Finally, the Japanese reasoned that claiming parts of China would strengthen the whole of East Asia.

  When Japanese soldiers reached Nanking they were met with minimal resistance from tired and disorganised Chinese military units. On December 13, 1937, the Japanese assault, attacking the city from all angles, began and the soldiers started to go into hiding. Fearing the worst from their unforgiving captors, Chinese soldiers began to blend in like civilians. The 90,000 Chinese soldiers that surrendered to the Japanese were viewed and treated by their captors as subhuman, and the invading army looked on their prisoners of war with utter contempt. To surrender, as far as the Japanese were concerned, was the ultimate act of cowardice.