Convulsive days indeed. Between the time written and finished, just before breakfast today; to proofing and revision, sometime after lunch; to prep to publish a little later, it's already obsolete. I, immersed in the misery of events on our own shores, get the news that Israel lobbed missiles into Iran. The absolute shock of seeing a United States Senator being manhandled by a group of thugs in uniform, wrestled to the ground and thrown into cuffs, four or five rabid, what were they...Don't remember seeing a group of personnel brought in to keep the piece rough-house an innocent bystander like that since the Angels beat that guy at the Stones concert at Altamont... I hear of no apologies from the despot's lair, nor expect such, or any nod toward duty, or honor, or even the most basic civility. No talk of resignation or removal. No remorse. All part of the plan. No one is safe, in the land of the free, the home of the brave. It's beyond comprehension, to be witnessing this obvious coup in real time. Jim Garland June 13, 2025
Convulsive Days
So much has happened in such a short time That it’s hard to convey The immensity of the wrong that’s been done, The ferocity of the plan rolled into place, The immediacy of the unrolling, The depth of the evil yet to be inflicted, The complicity of weak-spined politicians And their betrayal, cowardice, and Dereliction of duty and honor, The abrogation of our collective history, Our sense of duty, our status, our pride, Trying to build a new world order, With a clown at the helm,
A protest looms this weekend, I’ve attended the protests thus far, They’ve been family affairs, all ages Present and making their voices heard, Peacefully, and loudly, but gently insistent, With minimal overt police presence The crowd swelled and moved at will, Without counterprotest, though an Occasional flip-off from an opposition supporter Driving by.
But 6/14 is already one for the history books, As they say, though it looks like history books May themselves be history, The fourteenth will be the president’s birthday, And he’s arranged a military show of strength Akin to those they display in Russia, First in my lifetime, even Eisenhower, the old General, Knew such a parade was folly, And as a result, there’s a nationwide protest the same day, And today, as the National Guard, and Marines, And the thug army that call themselves ICE, Hold Los Angeles hostage, abducting, abusing, And shooting at citizens peacefully protesting, It looks highly possible that lines will be drawn In the sand on Saturday, and it’s also highly Possible that lines are crossed.
And the ramifications of what has changed, Our betrayal of our allies, Our warming relationship with our enemies, The weakening of our defenses, Tonight, it appears that Israel, Gone rogue, committing genocide in Gaza, Is poised to attack Iran, igniting the region, And we have nothing to say,
We abandoned Ukraine, insulted its leader, Withdrew our support in its ongoing War with Russia, our archest of foes,
So much has gone so terribly wrong For the fading dream of America, In such a short time, And it increasingly appears Those who have seized power With their relentless zeal to enrich themselves While they tear away at the foundations of our democracy, While they wage a racist war of terror against People of color, and children, and women, While they eliminate environmental protections, While they tear down public health, and education, While they burn books and alter history to suit their lurid beliefs, While they push us toward the end.
I go out after all the chores are done- This is really what I sat to write tonight- To the balcony, looking west, at twilight, Polaris faint in periwinkle light, the Dipper overhead, Sunset’s remainder a smudge of burnt orange Dissolving into lavender and purple like a bruise, Castor and Pollux sinking into haze Above the towering silhouette of fir and cedar
I go out after all the chores are done, To the cool of the evening, lights out on Route 22 Winding along the Willamette heading west to the coast, And the constantly present sound of roaring engines winding out, They’re racing on River Road, fast cars and massive trucks with modified exhaust, And hurtling down Commercial Street, over the crest of Salem Heights, They echo through the hills, I can hear them for miles Tearing through the night, And to these ears it sounds like doom, That in this age, setting at the precipice, the edge of disaster, The whining engines at night Send again clear understanding that we’ll never be smart enough, Or committed enough, to fix this, Too lazy and greedy and caught up in our image As an Exceptional people, fools for Detroit and big oil, Ready, always, to believe resources will forever be available, That the damage we do can be undone, That politicians are working for us, for our welfare, Will not deceive us, But leave us to get in our Pontiacs and ride This planet down.
I go out after all the chores are done, The remnants of sunset sinking into darkness, Days end, stars above, coastal breeze caressing boughs Of the massive fir across the street, the mother fir, Oldest in the neighborhood, reaching above the others Magnificent, stately, swaying gracefully in the wind And whispering its song, in the shadows, in the night.
Really? Really? After all that History We chose THIS America? Really?
Passing a ranch home in Salem today, kind of an Industrial shade salmon, behind a stockade Fence with a few slats akimbo, hung A tattered and semi-folded sign which assured, “Trump Was Right About Everything”,
Really? Really? Did they drink the bleach and live? Or think Pence should have hung? E. Jean Carrol and all the rest are liars?
Right about Everything? Right to discredit the honor of being American, Envy of the world, from the home of freedom? Right To steal our pride in our history? Right to bow to dictators? Right to betray our allies? Right to coddle Our enemies? Right by losing our status As The Most Powerful Nation? Right to send the country into chaos? Right to make Our government a morally bankrupt mockery? Our commitment to Truth has vanished, with our Integrity, With our Decency, with our Character, With our Compassion. Right? Really? Really?
Who will elicit more respect, who will have more influence, Once we relinquish our Honesty, who in the world Fills that void? It would be Good to learn Cyrillic, get fluent in Mandarin.
Right? Really? To endanger the planet To reap the rewards? Right? The robber barons have won, now rich fools rule the land. Catastrophe has found a home in this Corrupted, dark, and greedy America.
A short time ago, I found a writer Who thought his foray into aging as Like “being on the off-ramp of life”, And that image has stuck with me, so Accessible, so common, and ever so relatable, Having turned seventy-one. Imagine. Really? After five years of covid, isolate in the west, I feel the slowing traffic Lining up for the off ramp, I look through the windshield, see the rest Speed on by. Good luck, safe trip,
Looks like a lot of bad road ahead.
I’m a sorry witness to this dreadful dissolution, This disavowal, of our history, our democracy, Our people, and our future. Really. Really.
Clouds run down the sky to the western horizon, Solid ceiling across the valley to the coast, Mountains obscured in mist, Fronds of chestnut and big-leaf maple unmoved, No whisper of breeze, it’s not quite warm,
The whine of distant mowers drift From houses down below, and traffic noise From River Road but muted, insular, The big Doug Fir across the street is writhing With a litter of young squirrels at play, a crow Lands on the topmost branch of a towering cedar, Watching over her realm,
It’s Memorial Day, but I am not remembering the dead, But their living, breathing selves are with me here; Never my mother’s protracted, agonized departure, But I hear her singing Ella’s scat in the kitchen, The smell of bacon frying and the dark warm waft Of coffee percolating, as sun beams through the window And jazz echoes in the stairwell, “Sam, breakfast!” And never my father’s mysterious disappearance and Death unattended in the desolate Keys, But sitting in his chair by the stereo hi-fi, Camel in One hand, trying to convince his recalcitrant teen That Errol Garner was a genius. It took years for me to hear it, But he was right, and I listen now. Now I know.
And Gramp Howard lining up The croquet ball and wicket, not Straddling the ball as we all did, but Addressing it like a golf putt, Left hand on his knee to support an arthritic back, With his right he draws the mallet back, And how he teases, “Hey Jimmy, how’s Barbie Booth?” he’ll ask, Having married me off early, While Nana Theresa chatters on in her living room filled with tchotchkes And incessant non-stop tales of family and Ireland, And Uncle Martin with a ready smile and a can of Schlitz, Aunt Marnie with lipstick-stained Viceroy filter and pointy rhinestone glasses, Uncle Ed, Big Ed the sheriff, stogies smelled like dog turds In the back seat of his Country Squire, windows closed, Connie in the front seat trying to keep a lid on The cousins fighting in the back.
And Ann in her scattershot life, rambling Around Europe, or North Africa, or the islands, Awash with a strong mix Of hope and cynicism, Wisdom and sarcasm, racing through town In a battered red Karman Ghia,
And Susan, so quietly delinquent, her talent And her understated passions- She picked up the guitar Shortly after I, a Yamaha Classical with nylon strings, and Within a short time she played So much better.
And Paige and Fredora and Bob Drinking mid-afternoon Budweiser in the kitchen At Gramp Garland’s farm, cigarette smoke Clouding under a nicotine-stained ceiling, Listening to Patty Page on a brown plastic Zenith tabletop radio, Gramp in the parlor, taciturn, ancient, With his corn-cob pipe and wire-rimmed glasses, And his General MacArthur looks,
And all the rest, all the rest.
And I think of all the living, all those With me now, How we courageously face an uncertain future together, I feel so fortunate to have been Given the grace and opportunity to have Lived in the world as it has been, and the Miracle of having had a chance to love; And having love returned,
And imagine, too, having had the chance Of taking existence, and freedom, for granted, For such a long time, What privilege, what riches.
I’m engaged In this odd job Of reassembling myself too,
Using all of these old bits and pieces, parts left on the shelf for many years, forgotten.
A job far from complete. Indeed, only weeks old, months maybe, This being the opening salvo, the first steps of a long journey. Tinkering with a complicated machine and unsure of the process, and the shop manual useless; old and worn, and caught too many times in the rain.
I’m becoming immersed in this project and you keep handing me tools.
And from the shameless commerce division
The poem “The Mechanic’s Assistant” is available in the chapbook “The Cove”, by James Garland, published in 2020, and available from Amazon or can be purchased from the author.
Sitting at a table on the sidewalk outside a coffeehouse downtown. Dylan. “How does it feel to be on your own, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?” Feels like this:
Greenland is melting, the ocean’s a’risin’, And it’s all happening faster’n anyone knew, California’s burning ‘tween mudslides and earthquakes, Burning summer down with the end of the country blues.
We bow down to China, kiss the ring of Putin, Bribes from foreign enemies can’t be refused, That the president’s a traitor there ain’t no disputin’, And congress sings the chorus to the end of the country blues.
They’ll take whatever they can steal, come hell or high water, They’ll ruin everything they touch till there’s nothing left to lose, They’re gonna leave the planet ruined, our disregarded mother, They’re drivin’ the train to end of the line, to the end of the country blues.
Got a Hummer in the driveway, gets twelve miles to a gallon, Got a Caddy we tool around in so you know we paid some dues, If it gets above a hundred, our air is well conditioned, And with five-thousand tv stations we’ll ignore the end of the country blues.
The world order’s a’changin’, America fading backward, But oligarchs get that we’re fighting as they turn the screws, And I’ll stand out on the corner with a raised fist and a placard, Fighting for democracy, battling the end of the country blues.
So fuck you Mr. President, fuck you and all the rest, Surrounded yourself with imbeciles like there was no one else to choose, Nothing like the brightest, nothing like the best, Shepherding us to Armageddon and the end of the country blues.
They’ll take whatever they can steal, come hell or high water, They’ll ruin everything they touch till there’s nothing left to lose, They’re gonna leave the planet ruined, our disregarded mother, They’re drivin’ the train to end of the line, to the end of the country blues.
Kennedy died Tuesday night. Newspapers, radio filled with the news, A motorcade bringing the body from Hyannis To Boston this afternoon, "Leaving his Cape Cod compound, For the last time..."
This vivid day, too real, The too-bright sky filled with wisps Of cirrus clouds and cool sunlight, Strange to feel such Overpowering despondence, Anxious, jarring, awry.
Waves roll to shore, running down the sand, Two children launch a striped kite With a long tail, blue, orange, and yellow, North Hampton beach is covered With rotting kelp left by a passing storm, It's a great day For a funeral.
You’d think, with the lights flicking on At sunset, on Boar’s Head, and further Down along the coast, glinting, sparkling stars in the Distance, Massachusetts, the long arm of Cape Ann, Blue hills stretching out to sea Into the crimson sky of sunset, striated clouds above, Vivid orange pools in the sand Left by the outgoing tide, And breakers curling and cresting A hundred yards offshore, white spume Crowning the rocky jut of sandbar at the edge of the cove And the smell of brine so strong, The laugh of the gulls moving inland for the night, And the empty beach, the seaweed, the sand, You’d think I lived in a civilized place, But I don’t. I live among the Americans.
And from the department of shameless commerce-
“Americans” was a runner-up for the Mirabai Prize for poetry and published in The Raw Art Review Summer 2020.
“Americans” is available in the chapbook “The Cove”, by James Garland, published 2020 and available from Amazon.
There has been no more consequential presidential election than 1968. That American election was not decided at the polls. The election of 1968 was decided on June 5th, by the gun that was fired at point-blank range into Robert Francis Kennedy skull, just behind his right ear, killing him.
Robert Kennedy’s death enabled Richard Nixon’s presidency.
If the popular Kennedy had not been murdered, he would have handily beaten Nixon.
What is happening in our country right now, the destruction of our fragile democracy by an ultra-right wing and racist republican party intent on removing our constitutional rights freedoms. our access to health care, restricting free speech, punishing the poor and enriching the rich, building concentration camps in foreign countries and in Florida to imprison citizens and immigrants kidnapped off the streets without due process, breaking the rule of law, ignoring the constitution, rewriting and whitewashing our own history with lies; all directly tied to the election of 1968.
We would not be here had Bobby Kennedy lived.
Bobby Kennedy was murdered on the day he won the California Presidential primary. The very day it was determined, by electoral representation, that he would be the next Democratic candidate for the presidency. He had given his victory speech to a exultant crowd of supporters at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles, and was being escorted through a back pantry by a part-time security guard, a recent hire named Thane Eugene Cesar. Witnesses told police that they had seen the security guard holding his gun. Cesar admitted to police he’d pulled his weapon. Thane Eugene Cesar was never treated as a suspect by the LAPD. He was never detained. He was never investigated.
The murder of Bobby Kennedy was, shockingly, left largely to the Los Angeles Police Department. There was an assist by the FBI.
The Los Angeles Police Department rushed to judgment, berating witnesses offering statements which differed from the narrative they determined the story to be. They destroyed evidence. The forensics did not match the narrative.
The murder of Robert Kennedy should be reopened as a cold case. It has not been solved. Indeed, everything I thought I knew about the case has been proved wrong.
Bobby Kennedy was a sure bet to beat the perennially unpopular candidacy of Richard Nixon. JFK beat Nixon handily in 1960. Bobby Kennedy would have demolished Nixon in ’68. Kennedy was adamant about stopping the war in Vietnam. Kennedy was a unifying figure, speaking passionately to curb rioting in Washington on the evening of the murder of Martin Luther King. Bobby also had a strong connection with the Hispanic community through his support of Cesar Chavez and creating a medical plan for members of the farm worker’s union. He also carried the aura of the Camelot years, the hope and progress of JFK’s dynamic presidency. Bobby Kennedy, though always controversial, was a hugely popular and progressive candidate.
He would have demolished Nixon.
He was murdered the day he won the democratic candidacy.
We are living now in the repercussions of that wrenching of power by forces working in the far-right wing of the republican party for decades. It was a wing of the party which, bolstered by the brutal racism and antisemitism of the German Hitler cult in the thirties, opposed America’s entry into World War Two. The America First Committee was formed at Yale Law School to encourage and lobby to keep the U.S. out of the war in Europe. The German-American Bund held a pro-nazi rally at the Madison Square Garden in 1940 which attracted thousands. The opposition was enough to delay U.S. involvement in the war until the Japanese bombed Pear Harbor.
And after the war the far-right brought their agenda back to Washington. Senator Joseph McCarthy repeatedly referred to his own copy of Mein Kampf.
McCarthy created a seat for Richard Nixon on the House Un-American Activities Committee.
President Gerald Ford was a member of the America First Committee while at Yale. Ford pardoned Nixon.
It’s been going on a long time. The murder of RFK must be reopened. There was no more consequential murder in the history of the republic than the Killing of Senator Robert Kennedy. His assassination, and the ascendancy of Richard Nixon fundamentally changed the direction, and nature, of our country. Mean-spirited conservatism and division replaced compassion and optimism. “Nattering Nabobs of Negativity” and “The Silent Majority” replaced trying to stop the war and bolster civil rights. The very nature of the country was altered.
So, who are the republicans, really? This party marching in lockstep behind a lazy, felonious, lying, destructive president (and an unelected megalomaniac), dismantling the republic, defying the constitution, and reversing decades of social, environmental, and economic progress, they weaken the country and spread global chaos and fear? Why are they refuting our allies and allying with our sworn enemies? Why are they kidnapping citizens off the streets, out of homes, workplaces, schools, and churches? Why are they deporting people to be imprisoned in foreign countries without due process?
Why has 47 surrounded himself with a cabinet that cannot conceivably offer guidance because they know nothing about, or are actively trying to destroy, the government departments they are charged to lead?
Why? Why are they in power?
This is not oligarchy. And it’s not chaos. It’s the plan.
The republican party has been gaming the system for decades to get where they are right now. Republicans control all branches of government. Gerrymandering, denying voters rights (usually directed at blacks, women, and minorities), and relentless propaganda through conservative mouthpieces. It didn’t start with Rogan. It didn’t start with Rush. It didn’t start with Fox. Though they have done their best to spread, propagandize, and normalize hate, lies, and intolerance, the history of republican politic clearly goes much further back, steeped in Klan lore, white supremacy, antisemitism and violence wrapped in Christian dogma and a twisted sense that patriotism is a white, male domain.
Looking through the history of republican politics, I look back first to the Robert F. Kennedy assassination.
The investigation into the murder of Robert Kennedy must be reopened.
I was a fourteen-year-old freshman at Ipswich High, waiting for summer release, on June 5th, 1968. In the course of the year the school had run a mock democratic convention, with the student body aligning and campaigning for their chosen candidate. I’d chosen McCarthy. In the school-wide “convention” in the gymnasium, Robert F. Kennedy won the overall endorsement of Ipswich High students. And then, just like that, he was dead.
I was devastated. We were all devastated. I remember a sketch in a notebook I made, a clenched power fist raised in front of a tombstone reading “The United States of America- July 4, 1776 – June 5, 1968”. Bit of a cringe, but I was 14, and for me the murder was personal. What little hope I had for the political future of the country died on the pantry floor of the Ambassador Hotel.
I was 10 when they killed JFK. It was like being there again with Cronkite, my mother crying, watching the funeral cortege, horse-drawn, flag-draped November march down Pennsylvania Avenue in 1963, and the firestorm of conspiracy surrounding the murder of the fallen president. Then, shockingly, JFK’s murderer, Lee Harvey Oswald, gunned down by Jack Ruby while in custody.
Even as I considered it a watershed moment in American history, and took the tragedy as an existential blow, I, like most Americans, took for granted that the very public murder of Robert Kennedy was solved, without controversy or mystery. The image lived in my mind: the massively talented footballers Rosey Greer and Rafer Johnson wrestling the gun from the hands of assassin Sirhan Bishara Sirhan. The heartbreaking image of the dying Kennedy laying on the floor of the kitchen pantry at the Ambassador Hotel. Case solved, right?
The very day, the very hour, that Robert Francis Kennedy declared his victory in the California primary, making him the next Democratic candidate for the presidency, he was killed.
But we all know how that election turned out: the dems proffered Hubert Horatio Humphrey, the incredibly unpopular LBJ’s unremarkable vice-president, a native Minnesotan and party hack. To a fourteen-year-old, the choice reflected a bitter and cynical disregard for the anti-war movement, which, through years of activism had convinced LBJ not to run for re-election. Of course, Richard Nixon prevailed in that 68 election.
Remarkable, though, how.
It has come to light in the decades since that Nixon interfered with the peace talks in Paris to end the war in Viet Nam. Seeing a surge of support for Humphrey in the latter stages of the campaign, he went behind the back of a sitting President of the United States to offer the Vietnamese assurances that if they stalled the peace talks until after the election, he would offer them a better deal. The Vietnamese agreed, and the talks halted. With no progress toward peace, any nascent enthusiasm for Humphrey faded and the fate of the race was sealed. Treasonous.
The certainty that Richard Milhous Nixon would be unable to stomach another loss to another Kennedy. And the certainty that Nixon would lose going head to head with another Kennedy.
An old man with a long memory. I was of the elementary school generation who routinely endured nuclear bomb drills, squatting down under our wood-and-metal desks as if we would be anything other than cinders when the big one fell. I was the kid with Kennedy bumper stickers on his fat-tire red Schwinn. Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the dais at the United Nations, vowing to bury us, on Walter Cronkite. The tension of the cold war, Cuban missile crisis, the Bay of Pigs, Gary Powers, Captain Lloyd Bucher; the long arc of history. I was just a kid, but I was paying attention. I still am. I am not a historian, or a lawyer, or a specialist in government function. Just an old guy who’s read the papers. And watched. And voted.
Maybe you shouldn’t pay any attention to an old fool like myself- it’s not like I’ve had a wildly successful run in the lucrative field of poetry, but I’ve splayed out my history in piles of unread notebooks, most not worth a damn. Here we are, a nation on the brink of ruin, and I’m left wondering why.
The investigation into the murder of Robert F. Kennedy must be reopened. The clues to where we are, I think, are in the past. This didn’t just happen, in the same way that 47 is not capable of directing the current administration’s actions. 47 does not have the vision, ambition, the work ethic, or the capability of directing the destruction of the United States. His interest is, and always has been, accumulating as much wealth as he can get without working for it, having his ego stroked, and golfing. He is someone’s tool. Or fool. You choose. He’s the beard, the clown face put on to appease the “base”. Who, exactly, is calling the shots?
Look, even a cursory glimpse into the trove of information regarding the murder of RFK already extant left me absolutely shocked. Take a dive into the information assembled by the Mary Ferrell Foundation, an invaluable resource of assembled transcripts, microfilm files of LAPD and FBI interviews and documents, and an archive of material of record. And the archives of the LAPD, the LA County DA’s Files, and Wikipedia, and on and on. The information is out there.
I come away convinced that Sirhan was not the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy. And asking who, and why.
The basic investigation was so flawed, either through gross incompetence or by design, that it quickly becomes apparent that the Los Angeles Police Department, the investigating force behind the murder, utterly and completely botched the job. Perhaps by design.
Shocking that the investigation into the killing of someone as famous as Kennedy, and a prominent national figure and probable next president, was left to the local police. There was an assist by the F.B.I., but the investigation, incredibly, was left to an LAPD special investigative team called “Special Unit Senator”. And it’s amazing what they missed, and what, and who, they didn’t look at. The botched forensics. The badgering of witnesses until their stories were recanted. The security guard whom witnesses said pulled a gun, was interviewed but never as a suspect- his gun was never checked in spite of reports that there was gunpowder residue on his face. Destroyed, falsified, evidence. The bullets. The photographer. The case desperately needs to be looked at again from the dispassionate point of view of fifty-seven years passed. The murder needs to be re-investigated using modern techniques, and an investigation free from divisive partisanship. The murder, and the investigation performed in 1968 , rife with irregularities, obfuscations, and its rush to judgment, demands to be reopened.
So many tendrils of falsity. When it came to the assassination of RFK, I spent a lifetime bemoaning the desperate capriciousness of fate. Come to find out, it was a setup. A lot of information is out there.
The investigation into the murder of Robert Francis Kennedy MUST BE REOPENED. Treat it like a cold-case file. And in the course of re-investigating any case, who is the first prime suspect? The answer is: who had the most to gain by the victim’s death? RMN?
Here are just a few of the most outrageous facts screaming out out that there should be more than enough fodder to reopen the killing, and the investigation, from 1968:
The gun: RFK was shot with a .22 caliber pistol. Sirhan shot at Kennedy with a .22 caliber pistol which held a clip of 8 bullets. Five bystanders were wounded in the attack. Three bullets struck Kennedy; two were removed from his body and bullet one grazed his jacket and went into the ceiling. There were two bullet holes in the ceiling; police surmised that the bullet had ricocheted and created the second hole. Magic bullet? Eight bullets. But two additional bullets were removed from the wooden door jamb Kennedy had passed through to enter the kitchen. 10 bullets. Maybe 11. The door jamb was removed and the evidence was destroyed by the LAPD. It was never entered into Sirhan’s trial. A tape recording of the gunfire in the pantry was analyzed by a team in 2004, led by Phillip van Praag, who determined that thirteen shots were fired in five seconds. Sirhan’s gun held eight bullets.
There were two guns. And two gunmen.
The autopsy: The coroner, Thomas Naguchi, found that RFK had been shot three times, from the rear and at a sharp upward angle, and from powder burns determined that the shots had been fired at point-blank range, or from a distance of 1-3″, with the fatal shot entering the skull just below his right ear. No witnesses put Sirhan that close to Kennedy, and all witnesses put Sirhan approaching the front of Kennedy and to his left.
The Security Guard: Thane Eugene Cesar, had been hired by Ace Security one week before the murder. Escorting RFK through the pantry, taking his elbow to guide the Senator through the pantry, was his second gig for Ace. Cesar was an employee of Hughes (Howard) Aircraft. Witnessed told police that they’d seen him drawing his gun in the pantry, though he denied firing it. He said he was carrying a .38, though admitted owning a .22. He said he’d sold the .22 prior to the murder. He lied- the buyer of the gun told investigators that he’d purchased the gun a couple of months after the murder and produced a bill of sale. Thane Eugene Cesar had far-right political leanings and was vocal about hating Kennedy. He was seen running form the pantry after the shooting, but then returned (to ditch the .22?). He was questioned by police and released, never detained, never looked at as a suspect in spite of reports of gunpowder residue on his face. His gun was never tested. It was his second assignment, a part-time security guard, unvetted, charged with protecting the candidate who would in all probability be the next president of the United States of America. Thane Cesar was to escort Robert Kennedy, holding his elbow, through the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel, to a waiting press conference. Thane Cesar led RFK to his death.
The girl in the polka-dot dress: Multiple witnesses saw Sirhan with two people in the pantry prior to the murder, a man and a woman in a polka-dot dress. Multiple witnesses saw a man and a woman in a polka-dot dress run from the entrance of the Ambassador Hotel. One, Sandra Serrano, stated to police that she saw the woman inn the polka-dot dress and an unidentified man running from the Ambassador Hotel laughing, yelling “We did it.”
After repeated interviews with LAPD, during which she repeated her statement, she was browbeaten into recanting her witness statement with interrogative techniques like this questioning by Enrique Hernandez, polygraph examiner for the Special Unit Senator;
Hernandez: “I think you owe it to Senator Kennedy, the late Senator Kennedy, to come forth, to be a woman about this. If he, and you don’t know and I don’t know whether he’s a witness right now in this room watching what we’re doing in here. Don’t shame his death by keeping this thing up. I have compassion for you. I want to know why. I want to know why you did what you did. This is a very serious thing.”
Serrano: “I seen those people!”
Hernandez: “No, no, no, no, Sandy. Remember what I told you about that: you can’t say you saw something when you didn’t see it…” (From the archives of the Mary Ferrell Foundation).
“Be a woman about this.” Sandy Serrano recanted her statement. Police used her denial to convince other witnesses, also claiming to have seen the pair, to drop their stories. The woman and the man seen with Sirhan were never identified. Never interviewed.
The Photographer: There was one photographer in the pantry of the Ambassador at the time of the killing. Scott Enyart was a 15 year old student with a camera, standing on a steam table behind the senator when the gunfire started. He was tackled by police and detained. His camera and film were confiscated and destroyed by the LAPD, and never saw the light of day. Enyart successfully sued the city of Los Angeles in 1997 for his missing property, and was awarded almost a half-million dollars. He said he’d shot three rolls of film. None of the pictures that were taken have ever been publicly seen.
So many tendrils of deception, of suspicion, that surround this nearly 57 year old event, a profound tragedy for the Kennedys, and for the nation.
Sometimes it is helpful, even necessary, to plumb history for an explanation of current events, and I know that this is one of those times.
I suspect that if an investigation were to uncover who was behind the plot to murder the Democratic presidential candidate in 1968, Robert Francis Kennedy, it might very well explain who is behind the ascension of Donald Trump and the rise of the cult of extreme conservatism creating chaos in this country, and across the globe. I contend that the forces that propelled Richard Nixon to the White House in 1968, forever changing the face of our nation, are the same forces supporting the destruction of the republic. I contend that these forces are seeking to re-align world order around tyrannical despots, installing Donald Trump as the figurehead for a totalitarian America.
I don’t think for a minute that 47 is anything but a mouthpiece, a tool for a larger organization, working on an agenda that is yet to come to light.
As I’ve said. I’m not a legal mind, or a historian. Just a citizen who would like to know what is happening to our once-great country. I see Democrats wringing their hands, some even still trying to “work across the aisle”. I hope it works, but don’t carry a lot of optimism for it.
But reopen the investigation into the murder if RFK? Might just find something to work with.
I’ve spread my own investigation farther back than the assassination, and future articles will be coming. Next, will be another look back at McCarthyism. Senator Joe McCarthy chaired the House on Unamerican Activities Commission in the late forties and early fifties. “Tail Gunner Joe” boasted about his copy of “Mein Kampf”.
Senator Joe McCarthy made room for Richard Nixon on the HUAC. They became friends, drinking buddies. Nixon continued to defend McCarthyism even after Joe McCarthy was disgraced after the McCarthy-Army hearing.
Another avenue of investigation: the Tulsa Race Riot, or more properly Massacre, of 1921. What happened to the white citizens of Tulsa who burned Black homes and businesses and murdered Blacks? Elected officials, National Guard, local law enforcement; no one went to trial, no one faced charges. Many victims stories are told from that day. Hardly any stories are told of the perpetrators. Who were they?
James Garland Poetry 