American Conspiracies - Jesse Ventura [48]
Same as with his brother’s assassination, it’s hard to conceive that the Mob had enough power to pull this off without government help. Of course, it’s possible they knew of MK-ULTRA and of the hypnosis experts, and paid one of those guys to program Sirhan—knowing the CIA and FBI would want to keep that from being exposed. But it still smells to me like there was intelligence involvement. CIA agent David Morales, who hated the Kennedys, allegedly once told his attorney: “I was in Los Angeles when we got Bobby.” Morales had once come up with a similar scenario for assassinating Castro in a pantry.40
Can we still get to the bottom of what happened? Maybe, if Sirhan’s mind can be “de-programmed.” That’s what his new attorney, William Pepper, wants to do. He was James Earl Ray’s last attorney, too, and he’s pushing to start new psychological evaluations of Sirhan with an expert in regression therapy.41 I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that one, because recently I had a personal experience with a guy who claims to be a programmed “Manchurian Candidate.”
I was filming an episode about “Big Brother” for my new TV series when I met with him in the basement of a parking garage, very much like Deep Throat in All the President’s Men. He says that his father was in the CIA, and he was taken as a “candidate” at the age of six, selected partly because of his nationality (he’s an American Indian). He says his parents didn’t have a choice. The only reason he knows today is, he was in a bad car wreck. He had to get a full-body MRI, where they discovered four different implants.
The accident also jostled him to the point where he’s getting his memory back about what was done to him, and what he’s done. I asked him point-blank, “You have killed people?” He said, “Yes, I have.” He told me he was fourteen when he was first sent to do “ops.” He keeps referring to “we,” meaning that there are way more than him. He said, “We’re all getting together now because we want our lives back.” They’re going to go public. “That’s one of the reasons I did the interview with you, because we think we might want to have you with us,” he said. I told him, “I don’t know if I’ve got that much courage.” He said, “Well, we just feel that we need someone with credibility to stand there with us and say, ‘Listen to what these people have to say, they’re not all crazy. Or if they are, they were made to be that way.’”
Is this man a real “Manchurian Candidate”? Or is he nuts and making it all up? Like my son said, maybe he had something traumatic happen to him as a kid that set this off. Well, maybe, but whatever happened, he believes it. There’s no doubt in my mind about that, from the stories he told me. Also, he had a handler, a girl who accompanied him. She said, “I’m one, too. I know his case, and I’m also here to control his multiple personalities. We get strength through each other.”
Being left with the impression of how strongly he believes this, then clearly I could see him being able to perform an act of violence. How do I feel about the government—or whoever it is—doing something like this to someone? They should be in jail. These are evil people who don’t belong out in society, because obviously they have no regard for another human life. Or are these people so callous that, looking at the “big picture,” they view a body or two as simply collateral damage? They’re beyond human feelings? If some have to be destroyed to achieve the goal, it’s better for the mass of humanity. I don’t fit into that mold. These are the types of things you attribute to the Nazis. Sure, some were exceptionally intelligent, but they were an empire based and designed on evil.
If Robert Kennedy had survived the first attempt on his life, and tried to implement all that he wanted to do, he’d have been “killed again.” All the people making money off the Vietnam War, would they let the golden goose be stopped? And to reopen his brother’s case? I compare this to President Obama’s inaugural address. When I heard him give that dynamic speech the day he took office, I turned to my