American Conspiracies - Jesse Ventura [47]
Dr. Spiegel thinks there were probably “one senior programmer and many accessories.”29 A couple names of hypnosis experts have surfaced over the years as being possible Svengalis behind Sirhan. Both did work for either the CIA or FBI and claimed to have been technical advisers on The Manchurian Candidate movie. Both are now dead. One was Dr. William J. Bryan, who phoned the KABC radio station not long after the assassination and said that the suspect had probably been acting under post-hypnotic suggestion. Bryan, the founder and executive director of the American Institute of Hypnosis, was known for hypnotizing the Boston Strangler, Albert De Salvo, after his arrest, to see what the mass murderer might reveal. (Strangely, again, De Salvo’s name appears in Sirhan’s notebook, even though Sirhan didn’t have the foggiest idea who he was.) In 1977, Bryan is said to have told a researcher who asked him about Sirhan and programming, “I’m not going to comment on that case because I didn’t hypnotize him.” After Bryan was found dead in his Vegas hotel room in 1977, supposedly of natural causes, some call girls came forward saying he’d once bragged of having hypnotized Sirhan.30
In the same league as Bryan was Dr. William Kroger, a world authority on hypnosis who consulted for the FBI and the LAPD, and who died in 1996 at almost ninety. While alive, he was referenced in Philip Melanson’s book on the assassination under the pseudonym of Jonathan Reisner. Kroger and Bryan each “had an interest in the links between mystical orders and hypnosis, as well as in the uses of auto-hypnosis.”31 Melanson made it clear that he suspected “Reisner” as the man who programmed Sirhan. In the two years before Kroger died, my coauthor on this book conducted a couple of interviews with the man. Although Kroger denied having anything to do with Sirhan, he did admit knowing Jack Ruby and Sam Giancana, as well as George White, the chief field officer for the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program.32
One clue to Sirhan’s “handlers” might be the lawyers who took his case for free. One was Grant Cooper, a well-known L.A. criminal attorney. Sirhan selected his name, and that of Russell Parsons, right away from a list provided by the ACLU—a list Sirhan had asked for. Parsons did legal work for the mob, having been Mickey Cohen’s counsel. Cooper, at the time, was defending one of mobster Johnny Rosselli’s pals in a cheating scandal at the Friar’s Club.33
Cooper gave Sirhan the motive that he was angry at RFK for giving jets to Israel. Prior to this, there was “not a single reference to Zionism, Israel, Palestine, [or any of] the terms Sirhan would spout at his trial as propelling him to murder.”34 Years later, Sirhan said that “Cooper sold me out.”35 During conversations with his attorney, Sirhan once asked Cooper, “If I got the money, where is it?”36 In the strange notebooks he kept before the assassination, there were references to a figure of $100,000. Also, at least a dozen times, the notation: “Please pay to the order of Sirhan,” always on the same pages where he scrawls things like “RFK must be be be disposed of.”37
So it looks like somebody was telling Sirhan he’d be getting paid handsomely for the deed. One fellow he knew by an alias of Frank Donneroumas had hired Sirhan to exercise and groom horses at the racetrack. The first place he worked was “a Syndicate meeting place,” and another track where Sirhan worked “was frequented by some of the nation’s most infamous racketeers.” Donneroumas’s real name was Henry Ramistella, with a record of narcotics violations in both New York and Florida.38
It’s been long known that Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa had made threats against RFK. Joseph Marcello, brother of New Orleans Mob boss Carlos Marcello, can be heard telling an informant on tape, when the subject of the Kennedys came up: “We took care of ‘em, didn’t we?” There’s also a file on a Roy Donald Murray, who was overheard by cops saying that he’d pledged some Vegas funds for a Mob contract on Robert Kennedy.39