UNCONVINCING BOOK ON HOW CIA ROGUES KILLED THE KENNEDYS

CIA ROGUES AND THE KILLING OF THE KENNEDYS: How and Why US Agents Conspired to Assassinate JFK and RFK (Skyhorse Publishing. 2013)

By PATRICK NOLAN, Foreword by Dr. Henry C. Lee

Review by Hugh Murray

            After Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in Dallas, he asserted that he was just a patsy.  After Sirhan Sirhan was arrested in California for the killing of Robert Kennedy, Sirhan proclaimed, “I did it for my country.”  A Bobby enthusiast reacted in disbelief before television cameras.  How could he say that?  After all Bobby has done for the country!  What the bewildered Democratic activist failed to comprehend was that he and Sirhan were referring to two different countries.  The Democrat interpreted Sirhan’s words as describing the US.  But Sirhan had spoken them meaning Palestine, the Middle East, where he and his family were born.

            There is an unwillingness by Nolan to admit the obvious.  Sirhan most likely sought to kill Sen. Robert Kennedy because of the Democrat’s support for Israel.  There was no need for CIA hypnotic sessions, or Manchurian candidate psychological triggers sparked by a coffee urn or a polka dot dress; Sirhan was aiming to display Palestinian anger about American politicians and their Middle-Eastern policies.

            I recall speaking with an Arab colleague in New Orleans in 1969 about the murder of Sen. Kennedy.  “Oh, Sirhan is a hero.  If he were released, he would be celebrated in the Middle East!”  Nolan provides information that the night of the murder, Sirhan had 4 Tom Collins and also appeared drugged.  Recall, that we derive our English word assassin from hashish which was used by murderers of the Middle East centuries ago.  The narcotic gave us the word assassin, they were so closely linked.  Yet, even if drunk and drugged, the reason for killing may have been rational – to reveal hatred for American policies.  Sirhan probably got his liquor from the hotel’s political victory parties in that day’s primaries.  And Sirhan did  not need to get his drugs from any CIA MKULTRA programs; after all, Sirhan’s brother was then in jail on a drug charge.

            Nolan does present arguments that others were involved in the assassination of Bobby.  But the accomplices need not have had any connection to the CIA, rogues or regulars.  They might have been other Arabs, or they may have been connected to the Mafia, as John H Davis   contended decades ago.

            A third of the book concerns Oswald and the murder of President Kennedy.  The CIA did have various programs which drugged citizens with LSD and experimented on unsuspecting victims.  Certainly, there is ample reason to conclude that Oswald had connections to the CIA, the FBI, and possibly other government agencies.  However, there is no convincing reason to think that Oswald was victimized through one of the CIA MKULTRA programs with hypnotism, drugs, etc.  After his arrest, he did deny bringing curtain rods or a rifle into the Texas School Depository.  That did not necessarily mean he had been drugged.  He may have simply lied.  Many authors have provided better explanations for Oswald’s behavior, without inserting a Deus ex machina.  Generally there are two major alternative narratives: 1) Oswald was a Marxist who defected to the USSR, returned to the US, but subscribed to the Communist and Trotskyist newspapers, shot at conservative Gen. Walker, distributed pro-Castro leaflets, and finally shot President Kennedy; or 2) Oswald as a Marine studied Russian in the intelligence service, became a fake defector but lived in the USSR for two years, on his return pretended to be a Marxist, but was working with right-wing and CIA operatives like Guy Banister, David Ferrie, and George de Mohrenschildt.  Oswald was to obey orders on 22 November 1963, which may have kept him on the 2^nd floor lunch room when the shots killed Kennedy.  Thus Oswald was made to appear guilty by the real assassins.  He was a patsy, and then killed to prevent a trial.

            Variations on these themes dominate the literature.  But did Oswald have to be drugged or drunk or hypnotized to perform his mission?  There is little doubt the CIA ran some unpleasant programs.  A Soviet defector to the US, whom a leading CIA operative suspected was really a plant, was tortured for 5 years before the CIA decided the man was honest in his defection from the Soviet side.  Yuri Nosenko then emerged from his isolation.  But not even Nolan suggests such tortures were inflicted upon Oswald.

            One thing I find most ironic, and the irony is unmentioned by Nolan.  For the trial of Sirhan, both the defense and prosecution had their doctors hypnotize Sirhan.  They hoped to discover details of the night of the assassination that Sirhan was unable to remember.  What I find fascinating is the dog that did not bark.  Not long before the trial of Sirhan, in New Orleans the District Attorney Jim Garrison conducted a probe of a plot to kill President Kennedy.  To discover more details about who and what was discussed by the conspirators, he had a key witness hypnotized.  There was a media storm of protest – the DA was attempting to plant false information in the mind of the witness.  This notion did much to discredit the Garrison investigation, and there were articles in the nation media denouncing the use of hypnotism in judicial proceedings.  Yet, no one seems to have objected when Sirhan was hypnotized!  The media was now quiet; the dog did not bark anymore.  Garrison had been discredited, and there was no further need to use the issue of hypnotism.

            Nolan writes: “It was the McCarthyism of the 1950s that culminated in the assassinations of the 1960s.  JFK and RFK chose to travel a different path.  They confronted the rabid anti-Communism of their day…because of this, they were cut down in their prime.”(pp. 10-11)  Unfortunately, McCarthyism is a scapegoat for Nolan.  Attacking McCarthyism may comfort liberals, but is this accurate?  Robert Kennedy worked for Sen. McCarthy’s investigating committee in the 1950s.  And when the majority in the US Senate voted to condemn the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Mass. Senator John Kennedy was absent and did not vote to condemn McCarthy.

            I concede, anti-Communism may well have contributed to the assassination of Pres. Kennedy.  But I do not see it as a factor in the killing of his brother.  Sirhan announced he did it for his country.  He was an early example – like the suicide bombers that now plague the neighbors of Islam.  He was contemporaneous with hijackers for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, etc.  Sirhan could not pilot a plane; he could no longer jockey a horse; but he could alter the political landscape of America the night Bobby was killed.

            Nolan’s stress on the CIA MKULTRA and other programs and psychological manipulation is generally unconvincing in relation to Oswald and Sirhan.  Yes, the CIA in the 1950s and 60s was probably involved in coups in various countries like Guatemala, Iran, the Congo, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc., but it was during the Cold War when the Soviets were also engaged in trying to change governments to their liking.  But this does not mean that the CIA programmed Oswald and Sirhan to be patsies.  Nolan has written a disappointing book.

            My final criticism of Nolan’s thesis is this – if the CIA were involved in the killing of the Kennedys, and these CIA conspirators included those whom he identifies, like high officials James Angleton and Richard Helms, and Helms eventually heads the CIA, then are they really CIA ROGUES at all?