Sirhan Sirhan

Sirhan Sirhan was born on March 19, 1944, in Jerusalem, four years before the rebirth of the state of Israel would forever change the destiny of Palestinians then living in that region. Since 1920 Palestine had been ruled as a British Mandate, under the authority of the League of Nations. The Mandate was a way of preserving peace between the well-funded, politically powerful Zionist movement, which claimed the entire region as a homeland for the Jewish people, then in exile throughout the world, and the Arab allies of the British during the first World War, who had been promised the entire region for their own when they helped wrest it from the Turks. Palestinians and Jews both trace their ancestry to Abraham and have lived together, sometimes in peace and sometimes at war, in the land since earliest recorded history.

Sirhan was the 5th of 7 children born into a comfortable middle class family; his father a civil servant with the city water department. With the end of the second World War the Jewish question became predominate in international circles, due to the tremendous numbers of homeless Jewish refugees in post-war Europe. During the period between 1945 and 1948, determined Zionist guerrillas fought both the British and Palestinian troops to secure their homeland. By 1947 snipers and terrorist bombs were a part of daily life in the region. The violence was witnessed by young Sirhan. In 1948 he witnessed an explosion at the Damascus gate that left the street strewn with bodies. Later, playing with one of his older brothers in the street, he was horrified to see sniper fire overtake a Zionist truck that was coming their way. As the driver swerved to avoid the sniper fire, he ran over the older boy, killing him instantly and traumatizing Sirhan in a way that would remain with him despite the increasing frequency of terrorist attacks that he would witness.

In 1948, shortly after the declaration of Israel's independence of May 14, the Sirhan family fled their home, leaving behind all they owned, to spend 9 years among the masses of poverty-stricken refugees that would inhabit the camps on Israel's borders. Throughout this period Sirhan's mother, Mary, who was a Christian raised in the Lutheran faith, took increasing solace in religion. She too was changed by the death of her son. She did not permit the children to play in the streets with other children. The stress of trying to live with a large family in small quarters, in a situation marked by the rage and frustration of the dispossessed, was too much for Sirhan's father. He became hostile toward his children, beating them frequently. The older boys rebelled; the younger children cowered. In the meantime, Sirhan's mother grew increasingly obsessive about the children's safety.

There were some semblances of normatily, however. From 1951 to 1956 the children attended a Lutheran school. Sirhan got along well in school. He was considered mature beyond his years, was engaging and well liked; although never a strong student, he did average work. In 1956, following the resumption of hostilities with the successful Israel attack upon the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, the Sirhans sought help from Lutheran missionaries and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to immigrate to America. The family settled in Pasadena California. Sirhan's father did not stay in the United States but soon returned to Jordan. For Sirhan, there was much ambivalence in his father's departure: on the one hand, it brought peace; on the other, abandonment.

The Sirhan family did not immediately thrive in California. Many of the children had trouble adjusting. Sirhan's greatest tragedy during this time was the death of his favorite sister from leukemia. Of all the children he had been the most promising. He learned English quickly and successfully completed high school. He was outgoing and popular enough to have been elected twice to student council. His sister's illness changed him completely. He had entered Pasadena City College in the fall of 1963, but when she became ill, he was too troubled to take further interest in his studies. Although he enrolled for four semesters, he never attended class and was finally asked to leave. By his own account, her suffering and death had a great impact on him. She had been his closest friend.

Following this Sirhan worked a number of jobs before he began, in 1965, as a stable boy and "hot walker" at the Santa Anita race track. He began to cultivate an ambition to be a jockey. At 5'5" and a slight 120 pounds, he showed promise in this area. He gradually worked his way up to exercise boy and began his training. Following a move to the Granja Vista Del Rio Ranch in Corona, his ambitions were cut short by a fall. He began to complain of blurred vision and constant pain. A year later he filed a workman's compensation claim that resulted in a $2000 settlement.

Throughout this time of transition in his difficult life, Sirhan began to be politically active. His library card revealed his interest in Arab and American accounts of the situation in the Middle East. He expressed his desire to return to Jordan. Increasingly sensititve to developments in this part of the world, his hatred for Israel and the Jews grew. In fact his private frustrations and inner turmoil were becoming politicized. In his high school history book, he had underlined passages about assassinations of the Archduke Ferdinand and President McKinley. In the margin he wrote: "many more will come." After his graduation he joined the Organization of Arab students and was remembered as virluently anti-Israeli. In 1967 the Six Day War, that ended with the humiliating Arab defeat and the capture by Israelis of the Holy City of Jerusalem, brought his frustration to a height. Sirhan quit his job at the health food store after a bitter argument with his employer over American support of the Jewish state.

While he was working at the ranch in Corona, Sirhan became interested in the occult sciences and mind control. He believed that mind control was the answer to helping his achieve his personal and political objectives. After his injury, his interest intensified. He began to practice mind control and meditative exercises, ranging from self-hypnosis to attempts to exert subconsious control over others. Early in 1968 he joined the Rosecrutions, a mystical order promising self-improvement through control of the mind. His personal and political amibitions became linked, to the point that Senator Robert Kennedy's promise of 50 Phantom jets to Israel caused something within him to snap. He had thought President Kennedy's understanding of the Arab position was promising, had hope the same from RFK. He considered these recent statements to be betrayal.

Throughout this period Sirhan kept a notebook (or diary) in which he recorded his disappointments and hopes and practiced his mind control exercises. The two became inseparable in his mind. The entries, such as the one seen below, were seemingly incoherent or disjointed statements written over and over again; however, anyone who has taken a positive thinking course will recognize this technique as a way that the expressed statement is supposed to be reinforced in the subconscious. As a thought becomes imprinted in the subconscious, success becomes assured. On the entry for January 31, 1968, Sirhan scrawled for the first time "RFK must die." This thought appeared over and over, in almost trancelike fashion, as Sirhan begins to prepare himself psychologically for the deed he has resolved to do. On May 18, 1968 (below), he has written: "My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more of an unshakable obsession."

Sirhan resolved to assassinate Kennedy on June 5, 1968, on the first anniversary of the Six Day War, which also happened to be the day after the California presidential primary that was central to Kennedy's aspirations. After watching a documentary of RFK's life story, which seemed to link the Senator's future to the Israeli cause, Sirhan began stalking his victim. Witnesses pinpoint him on several occasions trying to get within striking distance of the candidate, at Robbie's Restaurant in Pomona, and at a rally at the LA Sports Arena, at the Ambassador Hotel, and then at the El Cortez Hotel in San Diego. On Saturday, June 1, he purchased two boxes of .22 caliber hollow-point high velocity ammunition and began to practice with a weapon originally purchased by his brother the past February. He was moving himself toward accompishing his goal.

On June 4, the day of the primary election, Sirhan spent the afternoon practicing rapid-fire shooting at the San Gabriel Gun Club. He drove to Los Angeles, to the Ambassador Hotel, where Kennedy and his supporters were awaiting election results. He parked his car, wandered around the hotel visiting at least one other political gathering, and downed the first of his four Tom Collinses in the process--just as he had prepared himself to do in the self-induced "trances" in his notebook. He then walked to the second floor banquet area where Kennedy supporters were crowded to hear the election results. There he had two more Tom Collinses. He returned to his car and tucked his pistol into the waistband of his trousers. He came back into the hotel to drink coffee and talk with an unidentified woman. At 10:30 he talked to an electrician and an unemployed mechanic about Kennedy, sounding surprisingly negative for someone at a Kennedy rally. At 11:45 Sirhan approached a couple of the kitchen personnel to ask if Kennedy planned to leave the banquet hall through the kitchen. It appeared likely from the size of the crowds that he would, so Sirhan positioned himself by the tray rack to wait.

The rest went according to script: when Kennedy left the stage and started toward the pantry to make his exit, Sirhan stepped forward and, according to many witnesses, shot him repeatedly. Sirhan was scuffled to the ground by body guards Rosy Grier and Rafer Johnson, still shooting, wildly, wounding bystanders. He was packed away, while Kennedy's wounded form, shot twice in the armpit and once through the head, held center stage. He would die the following morning. In the police car Sirhan stated: "I did it for my country." From then on he alternately denied any memory of the shooting and took a certain pride in it. In Arab papers thoughout the Middle East, headlines read: SIRHAN BISHARA SIRHAN: A COMMANDO, NOT AN ASSASSIN. Commando sources said that in shooting Kennedy, Sirhan was acting on behalf of all dispossessed Palestinians by stiking a supporter of Israel.

Sirhan's trial was thoroughly California in the barrage of psychological tests and experts brought upon the scene. But Sirhan refused to have his sanity made an issue. The central issue was the Arab-Israel conflict--he was a terrorist, not a lone nut. The possibility that he might have been both a paranoid schizophrenic and a political assassin did not seem to be one of the alternatives. On April 17, 1969, the jury found Sirhan guilty of first degree murder, endorsing his sanity. He was sentenced to the gas chamber in spite of a handwritten plea for clemency by Senator Edward Kennedy. However, his sentence was commuted to life in prison when the Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional. So far he has been denied parole.

In 1979 Sirhan, in a born-again Christian phase, gave a press conference during which he made this statement:

As far as the loss of a human being, loved by his family and all that, loved by his children--on that basis my aciton was undefensible. I acknowlege that, and I am willing to pay the price. But as far as a poltician, a self-seeker, getting votes and preferring one ethnic group against another in this great democracy, for personal interest, I have no--what's the word? I don't feel that he was even fair in that respect.

The other side to the story is that Sirhan was programmed to do the deed (or to set up whoever was to do it), a victim, not a practicioner of mind control.