Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once urged the Obama administration to scrutinize an audio recording believed to contain the sound of his father’s 1968 assassination, suggesting it captured more shots than the firearm used by the convicted shooter was capable of firing.
The appeal was made in a letter Kennedy Jr. sent in September 2012 to then-Attorney General Eric Holder. That correspondence was among a large batch of documents released Wednesday by the National Archives, which pertain to the government’s investigation into the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Kennedy Jr.’s letter advocated for “a new investigation” into the circumstances surrounding the murder and included testimony from Paul Schrade, a former United Auto Workers vice president who had been wounded during the shooting that also claimed Kennedy’s life.
“He was standing beside my father when Daddy was killed and Paul was himself wounded by a bullet,” Kennedy Jr. wrote, highlighting Schrade’s proximity to the tragedy.
“Paul and his team of nationally prominent attorneys including former U.S. Attorney Rob Bonner strongly believe this new evidence is conclusive and requires a new investigation. I agree and support his request for a new investigation,” RFK Jr. added.
According to the newly released records, Kennedy Jr.’s appeal was relayed to the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, which undertook a review of the audio evidence in question. The recording had been captured by a journalist who was present during the assassination.
Schrade contended that the recording reveals at least 13 shots were fired from two different .22 caliber revolvers, suggesting the presence of a second shooter positioned in a different direction.
The weapon used by Sirhan Sirhan, who was convicted for the assassination, was a .22 caliber Iver Johnson revolver with an eight-round capacity. Schrade maintained that Sirhan did not have the opportunity to reload his firearm during the attack.
The FBI’s Digital Evidence Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, eventually examined the recording, but was unable to determine how many shots had been fired.
“The designated area recorded on specimen Q1 was of insufficient quality to definitively classify the impulse events as gunshots,” the FBI report dated May 13, 2013, stated.
The report further concluded that analysts were not able to “confirm the number of gunshots or determine the identification of specific weapon(s)” based on the audio.
The document release was ordered under President Trump’s January 23 executive directive, which called for the declassification of materials related to Robert F. Kennedy’s murder, along with files concerning the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the 1968 killing of Martin Luther King Jr.
{Matzav.com}