15-06-2010, 08:37 AM
Robert Kennedy's assassin 'plotted to kill brother Edward too'
By David Gardner
Last updated at 8:01 AM on 15th June 2010
The gunman who assassinated Robert Kennedy may have also plotted to kill his younger brother, Edward, according to FBI files published yesterday.
Sirhan Sirhan allegedly offered a fellow prison inmate ‘a million dollars and a car’ to carry out the hit in 1977.
The prisoner, whose name was redacted in the document, told agents that he knew the target was the brother of slain President John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy.
Plot: U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (pictured) was said to be the target of an assassination plot by Sirhan Sirhan, who is serving a prison sentence for killing brother Robert
He was in the cell next to Sirhan in Soledad, California, for 18 months and said the assassin told him to contact his mother for more details if he was interested in carrying out the murder.
‘He advised he declined the contract,’ said the FBI report.
Sirhan, now 66, is serving a life sentence at Pleasant Valley State Prison in California, for shooting Bobby Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the night he won the primary election to seal his nomination as the Democrat presidential candidate.
Slain: Senator Robert Kennedy lies dying after being shot on the campaign trail by Sirhan Sirhan
Assassin: Sirhan Sirhan is arrested at the hotel where he shot Senator Robert Kennedy
Chilling: One of the many threats against the life of Edward Kennedy, released by the FBI
The mentally unbalanced Palestinian Christian claimed his motive was because RFK had promised military support for Israel if he was elected to the White House.
Although the FBI alerted Senator Kennedy’s office and the police, agents never established the seriousness of the threat.
The Massachusetts senator died in August last year after battling brain cancer. He was the last surviving brother of the storied American political family.
The FBI released 2,352 pages of documents The previously classified files showed how he lived much of his life in the shadow of repeated threats on his life.
Most of the threats were made during his unsuccessful attempt to beat Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980. They included investigation into warnings from groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the US National Socialist White People’s Party.
Warning: A death threat sent to Robert Kennedy's widow Ethel reads 'If Ted runs for Pres. or YP he will be killed. We hate Kennedys. Stop him.'
Chappaquiddick: The car in which Mary Jo Kopechne drowned is fished from the water. Edward Kennedy was driving when the accident happened
About four months after Robert Kennedy's assassination, the FBI office in Seattle alerted the agency's office in Boston and the director's office of four letters containing death threats.
Letter number two, which had originally been received by police in Canada, read: ‘To whom it may concern, a warning to the Kennedys. John Kennedy number one assassinated, Robert Kennedy number two assassinated, Ted Kennedy number three to be assassinated on Oct. 25, 1968. The Kennedy residence must be well protected on that date.’
After his brothers' assassinations, Kennedy wrote in his memoir "True Compass" released last year, that he was easily startled at loud sounds, and would hit the deck whenever a car backfired.
Victim: Mary Jo Kopechne, left, drowned after Senator Kennedy, seen here wearing a neck brace after the accident, drove the car in which she was riding off a bridge into a pond on Chappaquiddick island
The new files also show that the FBI was told almost immediately of Edward Kennedy's car crash on Chappaquiddick Island off the coast of Massachusetts in July 1969, but authorities kept his identity secret.
Mary Jo Kopechne drowned after Senator Kennedy drove the car in which she was riding off a bridge into a pond on Chappaquiddick island.
He swam to safety, leaving Miss Kopechne in the car. The 28-year-old former worker with Robert Kennedy's campaign was found dead in the submerged car's back seat 10 hours later.
Senator Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and got a suspended sentence and probation.
In his memoir he wrote that his actions on Chappaquiddick were ‘inexcusable’.
He said he was afraid and ‘made terrible decisions’ and had to live with the guilt for more than four decades.
Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe named in Mafia plot to smear Kennedy's, FBI file reveals
Mafia bosses planned to ensnare Bobby and Edward Kennedy in compromising situations with women in retaliation for a crackdown on organised crime, according to FBI documents released yesterday.
The rumor - passed on by an informant in 1965 - suggests plans to use associates of entertainer Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe to lure the Kennedys - as well as their brother-in-law and 'rat pack' member, Peter Lawford - into actions they would regret.
Agents in Milwaukee took the information from an unidentified source 'who had furnished reliable information in the past,' according to the memo.
Plot: Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra, pictured at the Cal Neva Lodge in in Crystal Bay, Nevada, in the Sixties, were mentioned in the Mafia plans, according to the FBI file
However, the informant could not verify that any of the details about the rumor were true.
The FBI statement accompanying the papers, dated August 3, 1965, said: '[The file] contains report of a rumour from an informant suggesting that elements of the Mafia wanted to attack the character of Edward and Robert Kennedy and their brother-in-law Peter Lawford by working through associates of Frank Sinatra to compromise them at a New York party.
'Both Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe were to be involved.
'This is allegedly to be accomplished by working with outfit associates of Frank Sinatra to arrange for their women to be placed in compromising situations in the presence of any or all of the two Kennedys and Peter Lawford.'
At the time, Mr Lawford, also an actor, was married to Kennedy sister Patricia.
The memo came nearly two years after the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy.
His brother Robert had been attorney general from 1961 until September 1964 when he resigned to campaign for a Senate seat from New York, which he won that autumn.
As attorney general, he lobbied for legislation that expanded federal powers against organised crime and greatly increased the resources available to the Justice Department.
Edward Kennedy had been representing Massachusetts in the Senate since a special election in 1962.
The FBI files include a one-page document generated about the same time that talks about sex parties at the Hotel Carlyle in New York City.
Among those mentioned as participants were the Kennedy brothers along with Lawford, Sinatra, Monroe - who died in 1962 and allegedly had affairs with both Bobby Kennedy and John F Kennedy - and entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.
Unlike the Milwaukee memo, the reference to sex parties came with no documentation that would indicate where the information came from or what the FBI thought of its veracity.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnew...d-too.html
By David Gardner
Last updated at 8:01 AM on 15th June 2010
The gunman who assassinated Robert Kennedy may have also plotted to kill his younger brother, Edward, according to FBI files published yesterday.
Sirhan Sirhan allegedly offered a fellow prison inmate ‘a million dollars and a car’ to carry out the hit in 1977.
The prisoner, whose name was redacted in the document, told agents that he knew the target was the brother of slain President John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy.
Plot: U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (pictured) was said to be the target of an assassination plot by Sirhan Sirhan, who is serving a prison sentence for killing brother Robert
He was in the cell next to Sirhan in Soledad, California, for 18 months and said the assassin told him to contact his mother for more details if he was interested in carrying out the murder.
‘He advised he declined the contract,’ said the FBI report.
Sirhan, now 66, is serving a life sentence at Pleasant Valley State Prison in California, for shooting Bobby Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the night he won the primary election to seal his nomination as the Democrat presidential candidate.
Slain: Senator Robert Kennedy lies dying after being shot on the campaign trail by Sirhan Sirhan
Assassin: Sirhan Sirhan is arrested at the hotel where he shot Senator Robert Kennedy
Chilling: One of the many threats against the life of Edward Kennedy, released by the FBI
The mentally unbalanced Palestinian Christian claimed his motive was because RFK had promised military support for Israel if he was elected to the White House.
Although the FBI alerted Senator Kennedy’s office and the police, agents never established the seriousness of the threat.
The Massachusetts senator died in August last year after battling brain cancer. He was the last surviving brother of the storied American political family.
The FBI released 2,352 pages of documents The previously classified files showed how he lived much of his life in the shadow of repeated threats on his life.
Most of the threats were made during his unsuccessful attempt to beat Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980. They included investigation into warnings from groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the US National Socialist White People’s Party.
Warning: A death threat sent to Robert Kennedy's widow Ethel reads 'If Ted runs for Pres. or YP he will be killed. We hate Kennedys. Stop him.'
Chappaquiddick: The car in which Mary Jo Kopechne drowned is fished from the water. Edward Kennedy was driving when the accident happened
About four months after Robert Kennedy's assassination, the FBI office in Seattle alerted the agency's office in Boston and the director's office of four letters containing death threats.
Letter number two, which had originally been received by police in Canada, read: ‘To whom it may concern, a warning to the Kennedys. John Kennedy number one assassinated, Robert Kennedy number two assassinated, Ted Kennedy number three to be assassinated on Oct. 25, 1968. The Kennedy residence must be well protected on that date.’
After his brothers' assassinations, Kennedy wrote in his memoir "True Compass" released last year, that he was easily startled at loud sounds, and would hit the deck whenever a car backfired.
Victim: Mary Jo Kopechne, left, drowned after Senator Kennedy, seen here wearing a neck brace after the accident, drove the car in which she was riding off a bridge into a pond on Chappaquiddick island
The new files also show that the FBI was told almost immediately of Edward Kennedy's car crash on Chappaquiddick Island off the coast of Massachusetts in July 1969, but authorities kept his identity secret.
Mary Jo Kopechne drowned after Senator Kennedy drove the car in which she was riding off a bridge into a pond on Chappaquiddick island.
He swam to safety, leaving Miss Kopechne in the car. The 28-year-old former worker with Robert Kennedy's campaign was found dead in the submerged car's back seat 10 hours later.
Senator Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and got a suspended sentence and probation.
In his memoir he wrote that his actions on Chappaquiddick were ‘inexcusable’.
He said he was afraid and ‘made terrible decisions’ and had to live with the guilt for more than four decades.
Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe named in Mafia plot to smear Kennedy's, FBI file reveals
Mafia bosses planned to ensnare Bobby and Edward Kennedy in compromising situations with women in retaliation for a crackdown on organised crime, according to FBI documents released yesterday.
The rumor - passed on by an informant in 1965 - suggests plans to use associates of entertainer Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe to lure the Kennedys - as well as their brother-in-law and 'rat pack' member, Peter Lawford - into actions they would regret.
Agents in Milwaukee took the information from an unidentified source 'who had furnished reliable information in the past,' according to the memo.
Plot: Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra, pictured at the Cal Neva Lodge in in Crystal Bay, Nevada, in the Sixties, were mentioned in the Mafia plans, according to the FBI file
However, the informant could not verify that any of the details about the rumor were true.
The FBI statement accompanying the papers, dated August 3, 1965, said: '[The file] contains report of a rumour from an informant suggesting that elements of the Mafia wanted to attack the character of Edward and Robert Kennedy and their brother-in-law Peter Lawford by working through associates of Frank Sinatra to compromise them at a New York party.
'Both Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe were to be involved.
'This is allegedly to be accomplished by working with outfit associates of Frank Sinatra to arrange for their women to be placed in compromising situations in the presence of any or all of the two Kennedys and Peter Lawford.'
At the time, Mr Lawford, also an actor, was married to Kennedy sister Patricia.
The memo came nearly two years after the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy.
His brother Robert had been attorney general from 1961 until September 1964 when he resigned to campaign for a Senate seat from New York, which he won that autumn.
As attorney general, he lobbied for legislation that expanded federal powers against organised crime and greatly increased the resources available to the Justice Department.
Edward Kennedy had been representing Massachusetts in the Senate since a special election in 1962.
The FBI files include a one-page document generated about the same time that talks about sex parties at the Hotel Carlyle in New York City.
Among those mentioned as participants were the Kennedy brothers along with Lawford, Sinatra, Monroe - who died in 1962 and allegedly had affairs with both Bobby Kennedy and John F Kennedy - and entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.
Unlike the Milwaukee memo, the reference to sex parties came with no documentation that would indicate where the information came from or what the FBI thought of its veracity.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnew...d-too.html
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.