Whatever
Happened to Sirhan Sirhan?
Sirhan
Sirhan, or S.S. as I like to call him, grew up in Pasadena. He went to
John Muir High School where he was part of the California
Cadet Corps. Contrary to popular belief, S.S. wasn’t a crazy
Islamic extremist. Although he was the son of a Palestinian immigrant,
his family was Christian and he attended a Lutheran church in Pasadena.
Warning:
Do not read this paragraph if you’re upset by facts.
S.S. was
a Rosicrucian. His journal was filled with Rocicrucian imagery and symbols
like the swastika. By coincidence, Adolph Hitler was an initiated Rosicrucian.
Rosicrucians believe among other things, that all blacks must die before
man can evolve.
You may
now continue reading.
S.S. was
a small man and turned to the world of horseracing to make his living.
He was a frequent visitor to Orange County where he’d come down to
the Santa Ana River to train horses. He was a pretty good jockey, not
great, but then he took a bad fall that damaged his brain and that pretty
much ended his career.
Because
of his horseracing accident, S.S. went to ten different psychologists.
They report that it was easy to plant ideas in S.S.’s head. On a
side note, Orange County is home to the study of false memories, UCI’s
research on implanted and real thoughts is world renowned. Elizabeth
Loftus can tell you all about it. Apparently, it’s remarkably
easy to get inside people’s heads through simple hypnosis and create
false memories.
The extensive
therapy S.S. was receiving made him the perfect subject. He was easy to
put under hypnosis and it became very easy for psychologists to manipulate
his behavior. S.S.’s diary showed how mentally unstable he was and
how he was becoming increasingly agitated and anti-Semitic. You just have
to read his journals to see what he was thinking. Here was an assassin
with a paper trail a mile wide.
S.S. hated
Jews with the passion of Hitler. When RFK promised to support the Jewish
state of Israel, Sirhan had had enough. One year to the day that Israel
had inflicted a humiliating defeat upon the Arab countries in the Six
Day War of 1967, S.S. tried to kill Robert Kennedy.
S.S. went
to the shooting range and shot for hours beforehand to practice. He got
himself drunk, consuming four Tom Collins in the hours before the shooting.
After having his last drink with a woman at the bar, S.S. made his way
toward the quickly approaching candidate in the crowded kitchen pantry.
Witnesses saw him lunge at Kennedy firing wildly. Some claim that twelve
shots were fired, S.S’s gun only held eight. This fact is hard to
determine because LAPD’s Daryl Gates destroyed all the evidence.
It’s almost unanimously agreed that none of his shots delivered the
fatal bullet however, which was fired within inches of the back of RFK’s
head.
When S.S.
was captured, he looked to be drugged and seemed to be in a trance. After
the assassination, S.S. wouldn’t talk. Abraham Lincoln Wirin, chief
council for the Southern California branch of the ACLU, was the first
attorney to see the accused assassin. He visited S.S. daily in his cell,
but never represented him. Wirin is best known for having supported the
internment of Japanese and for defending Nazis and their right to march.
There’s a revealing quote about A.L. Wirin in regard to the other
Kennedy assassination; “I say thank God for Earl Warren. He saved
us from a pogrom. He saved our nation. God Bless him for what he has done
in establishing that Oswald was the lone assassin– even if he was
innocent.”
S.S. had
plenty of people who wanted to defend him. F. Lee Bailey and Marvin Belli
tried to get in, but Wirin made sure it stayed with the local talent.
Sirhan’s attorneys were Grant Cooper and Emile Berman, both former
attorneys for the Marines. The judge was Herbert Walker, USC Law, a Republican
appointed by Earl Warren. Additionally, the criminalist and psychiatrists
were all out of USC. Hypnosis continued throughout the trial.
S.S. was
sentenced to death, but because California repealed the death penalty
for a brief time, he was resentenced to life in prison. Access to S.S.
is extremely restricted.
Aaron
Dahl
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