Paul Schrade on second gunman in RFK shooting

[Peter Lemkin]

"One can always try to pick apart one part of someone's position. It can be done as correction or as a way to try to make the entire belief system they have look as if it has fallen on its face."

I'm in agreement with much/most of what you said but having speed-read that chapter, Shane does reach the conclusion that those 3 guys aren't who he thought they were. I suspect that as a result of this, someone like the BBC won't touch this story again as the report on Newsnight (which blew my mind at the time) has essentially backfired. That is a big shame because this case clearly warrants serious re-investigation. I found Shane's book to be mostly excellent.
I wonder why Van Praag/Joplings book didn't seem to get published or become widely available. They had a website for it but the book never seemed to surface.

That has no impact on the rest of what you said which i largely agree with.
As far as the hypnosis/brainwashing issue, I struggle to find an adequate explanation for Sirhan's notebook scrawls for example without that coming into play. Also Dan Brown's work with him appears to back that up.
All the same, I hope Tom can come up with a documentary, book, essay or similar. I'm extremely interested in what he has to say.
I wonder if Sirhan is aware of Polka Dot Dress girl's death. Pepper seemed to suggest a while back that they thought they knew who she was and was still alive. Again, it'd be interesting to know if Bill Pepper and Tom agree on her identity and i also wonder why, if Bill Pepper was certain, why he didn't blow this case apart.
In the recent appeals, Kamala Harris seemed to suggest that even though the defence may have proved the second gun, Sirhan was still guilty and should stay in jail.
I must add that i am surprised that more researchers haven't looked at this case as it appears to be the most obvious miscarriage of the political assassinations from the 60's and RFK's friend Paul Schrade has long voiced his concern.
Hardly anyone in the JFK research community seems interested. I've often thought that this case leads back to Dallas and that's why RFK could not be allowed to become president. Of course I could be wrong.

Tom is there anything else you feel able to offer ?

BTW. i'm a care worker, musician and music researcher...i'd be somewhat out of my depth working on something like this before someone suggests I do some real investigating for myself !

RFK's assassination is the easiest to 'crack', but there is no will to do so and lots of opposition to do so. MLK's is also quite easy to 'break'. JFK was the most complex - but they were all done by the same general set of entities for the same general reasons [along with the assassinations of hundreds of others]. Shane did a great job on his work, but I know there was intense 'fight-back' from the cover-up squad in CIA and others of that ilk. They may well have convinced him and others that what was correct was seemingly not. I don't rule out that they are not who he first thought and Ayers and Smith thought they were...but I think that that likely stands, whatever Shane has been railroaded into thinking at this point. I really don't care what the NYT, BBC or other MSM say or do, they are all controlled to some extent by the very intelligence creature that was behind these kinds of covert operations and are institutionally set up to not look where they are not supposed to nor present information that upsets certain issues of 'national security' lies. It is up to independent media and citizen activists. The government and its agencies/entities will never help solve these crimes they helped commit and/or cover-up. They can't and won't. They need to be removed and replaced, I don't believe they can be reformed. The system is rotten and getting more so by the hour.

I'm happy to hear Tom's thinking of how he comes to his conclusions. He has apparently been deeply involved in/with primary sources and important secondary ones. I did bristle at the conspiracy theorist remark for those who believe S.S. was subjected to some kind of mind-control and/or hypnosis. He obviously has a different take than I and most other researchers on RFK [to my knowledge]. Let the truth prevail, wherever it lies.

This forum is open and welcoming to researchers and those who are simply interested - and all those in between. Even an expert researcher on one or several topics is a novice on others, and we all started out as naive on any of this. We all learn more as we go along. Having studied many covert operations and assassinations, et al. I don't find the 'simplicity' is the best solution argument as convincing. These were all made to be too complex to untangle/resolve/be revealed truthfully. We have done yeoman's work to get as far as we have. The problem is with our information we still can't much effect change and accountability because the bad guys still basically run the country/polity/culture they have subverted over and over again. IMHO