Conspiracy advocates, including Evans, who want
to see the case re-examined allege that Sirhan’s staring at a teletype
machine on the night of the murder is proof that he had been hypnotized.
Yet Sirhan frequently became entranced by things around him. This was part
of his make-up. In fact, this would not be the first time Sirhan had
experienced "trance-like states." He experienced them as a boy
growing up in Jerusalem, according to his mother.
A majority of hypnosis and mind-control experts within the scientific
community dismiss the notion that subjects can be hypnotized to commit
murder. They maintain that such a possibility of programming an unwitting
and unwilling subject is not possible. Furthermore, there would be no
guarantee of success for a "robotic assassin"; it is an erratic
tool. A hypnotist can plant a suggestion in the subject’s mind and ask
him to forget that suggestion but there is no foolproof way of preventing
another hypnotist coming along and recovering that memory.
Additionally, there is evidence, not presented at the trial, which
proves that Sirhan had been feigning amnesia. Sirhan has always proclaimed
that he could not remember writing in his notebooks, “RFK must die”
nor could he remember shooting Kennedy. There is, however, compelling
evidence that Sirhan knew what he had done. He confessed to ACLU lawyer
Abraham Lincoln Wirin that he “…did it, I shot him.” And he also
told defense investigator Michael McCowan that he remembered shooting
Kennedy.
Michael McCowan was a private detective who assisted Sirhan's lawyers.
In the pre-trial period McCowan had been talking to Sirhan about the
shooting. Sirhan had responded to a question asked by McCowan. McCowan had
been startled to hear how Sirhan’s eyes had met Kennedy’s in the
moment just before he shot him and before Kennedy had fully turned to his
left at the time he was shaking hands with the Ambassador Hotel kitchen
staff. McCowan asked Sirhan, “Then why, Sirhan, didn’t you shoot him
between the eyes?” Without hesitating, Sirhan replied, “Because that
son-of-a-bitch turned his head at the last second.”
If Sirhan had been lying then how was the "hypnotic defense"
and Sirhan’s "amnesia defense" constructed in the first place?
Sirhan claimed his lawyers had first put forward the idea that he had
been in a "hypnotic trance-like" state when he shot Kennedy. But
there is evidence that Sirhan had foreknowledge of "amnesiac and
disassociative states" before he committed the murder. Sirhan had
read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, a book about the multiple
murders of a Kansas farmer, his wife and two teenage children. The murders
were committed by Perry Smith and Richard Hickock in 1959 and Capote’s
book of the murder, manhunt, trial and executions of the murderers was
published in 1965. Sirhan identified with the short and stocky Perry
Smith. He felt great empathy for Smith. Smith, a small-statured man who
had suffered a deprived childhood, had bouts of shivering and trance-like
states and he believed in mysticism and fate. According to Capote, Perry
Smith, “….had many methods of passing [time]….among them, MIRROR
GAZING…EVERY TIME [HE SAW] A MIRROR [HE WOULD] GO INTO A TRANCE”
(emphasis added).
At the conclusion of Capote’s book the author quotes a team of
psychiatrists who found a number of similarities in their subjects;
“[The murderers] were puzzled as to why they killed their victims, who
were relatively unknown to them, and in each instance the murderer appears
to have lapsed into a DREAMLIKE DISSASSOCIATIVE TRANCE [emphasis
added] from which he awakened to suddenly discover himself assaulting the
victim…..Two of the men reported severe disassociative trancelike states
during which violent and bizarre behaviour was seen, while the other two
reported less severe and perhaps less well-organised, AMNESIAC
EPISODES [emphasis added] ….”. It is therefore likely Sirhan had
used his knowledge of how murderers behave to construct a possible
diminished capacity defense.
Intriguing as Evans's thesis is, there is no credible evidence that a
hypnotized Sirhan had been directed to kill Kennedy by the PLO -- apart
from hearsay and second-hand accounts by a number of individuals who were
close to Onassis. The record indicates that Sirhan was indeed motivated by
political considerations but he was an "unaffiliated terrorist"
rather than someone who had plotted with a terrorist group.
Sirhan may have been mentally unstable and angry at a society that had
relegated him to the bottom of the heap but there is sufficient evidence,
originating years before the shooting, that Sirhan clearly saw himself,
like today’s suicide bombers, as an Arab hero. The PLO and most
Palestinians certainly judged him this way. And Sirhan’s lack of remorse
is entirely in keeping with the terrorist way of rationalizing political
murder.
Sirhan and his brothers could not, or would not, assimilate into
American society. They abhorred U.S. culture, disliked the mores of the
American people and, most importantly, hated the support Americans gave to
the state of Israel. The family felt they were part of a minority group
alienated and misunderstood within the larger community.
As most Americans were unaware of the Palestinian issue in 1968 very
few journalists examined Sirhan’s background as a Palestinian Arab in an
attempt to explain the tragedy. Instead, commentators wrote Sirhan off as
yet another misfit with a gun who stalks and then murders a leading public
official with no apparent motive except his own demons.
The Palestinian/Arab cause is the sine
que non of the
assassination. As a poor working class immigrant Sirhan identified
with his downtrodden people living as refugees in Jordan, Egypt, Syria and
Lebanon. The period 1967-68, the year following the Six Day War, became a
crucial time in Sirhan’s life because it was the time when Israel became
dominant in the region having successfully defended itself against Arab
aggression. Having failed to eject the Jews from Israel/Palestine, Arabs
throughout the world felt powerless and weak and Arab pride had been
severely damaged. Their condition exaggerated Sirhan’s feelings of
inadequacy even though he lived thousands of miles away from the conflict.
Many "exiled" Palestinians, like Sirhan, sought retribution and
began to formulate plans to kill innocent civilians and hijack planes.
Sirhan’s answer to these problems took the form of killing a major
American politician who advocated support for Israel. Sirhan said,
“…this momentum just took hold of me and by June 5th 1968 [the first
anniversary of the Six day War] I couldn’t control it [anger]
anymore.”
To the Western mind terrorists are deranged and evil. However, their
acts are not the product of insanity but possess a logic all their own.
Terrorists have rational, if sometimes bizarre, motives. It is also true
that many terrorists (like Al Qaeda’s Ramzi Youssef) display symptoms of
a psychopathic nature – they are cold blooded and carry out their acts
of terror unremorseful. But their acts are not the products of delusional
or irrational minds. Nor was Sirhan’s. He did indeed crave attention and
success. He was depressed that society had relegated him to the bottom of
the heap.He felt an allegiance and empathy with assassins of the past. And
he dreamed of infamy. But without his sense of Arabness and without his
hatred towards Jews that had their roots in his childhood indoctrination,
it is unlikely Sirhan would have assassinated Robert Kennedy. All the
hatred that spewed forth from Sirhan’s gun can ultimately be traced back
to three sources – Anti-Americanism, Palestinian nationalism and
anti-Semitism. And this may have been the first act in an international
political drama that culminated in 9/11.
*See John Hiscock’s "Was Robert Kennedy Killed By A Real
Manchurian Candidate Style Assassin?" in the Independent (January
18, 2005) and Dominick Dunne’s article in Vanity Fair (December
2004).