I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you at scotthorton.org.
You can sign up for the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
All right, you guys, introducing Ashraf Nubani, a lawyer in Washington and a writer at Electronic Intifada.
And here's an interesting one.
It's time for Sirhan Sirhan to go free.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Good.
I'm doing well.
Thanks, Scott.
Good to have you back on the show here.
Really interesting piece on the convicted assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, June 5th, 1968, and he just won the California primary for the Democratic nomination to run for president and had just given a speech there at the Ambassador Hotel and turned around and went through the kitchen area there and was shot to death, and then a punk rock band was named after him and his older brother who'd been shot a few years before.
But then, so this guy went to prison, and to this day, he says he doesn't remember any of it.
He doesn't dispute his guilt, but he just says, like, jeez, I guess if you guys say so because he doesn't know that he did it, is that correct?
Well, basically, yes.
He has admitted from the beginning, from the trial phase onward, he's accepted responsibility.
But he's also consistently said that he doesn't remember the actual murder itself, pulling out his gun or shooting anyone, much less Robert Kennedy, and that's been his position for decades.
Now, so I'm a bit of a kook, mostly a former one, but anyway, I've read about this story for a very long time, and I've read a lot of conspiracy theory stuff about it, the lady in the polka dot dress, and I've read a lot of debunkings of that, such as these holes in the wall were already there, and they weren't gunshot holes, you know, they were already from other things that had gone on in that pantry previously, and who knows?
So what do you think about all that?
Well, so the way I became interested in this story, particularly, is it never sat well with me that the murderer of RFK was a Palestinian.
And so I'm writing a book on Islam in America, and one of the things I was looking into is to compare the penal systems and murder, specifically, and the death penalty, and the role of the family, the victim's family in each case.
And in Islam, while there is the death penalty, if the family forgives, then the person is not put to death.
And not only is he not put to death, because in Islamic jurisprudence, there's other forms of punishment, some of them people consider arcane or archaic.
The prison is not the only punishment, so a person doesn't necessarily spend the rest of their lives in prison.
And so I was looking into that forgiveness, and then I came across Sirhan's case, across the fact that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., RFK's son, had visited him in prison in December of 2017, and he came out saying, you know, I don't believe that he was the killer of my father, and he made amends with him.
He's been in support of a reinvestigation, and so have other of his children.
But there's a split amongst the family.
So this is what made me interested in the case.
And so I read both sides, both the conspiracy theories, you know, from the very legitimate to the way out, legitimate meaning that the possible scenario is based on the evidence that was still available, and those who, like Dan Moldea and others, who say that he acted alone and there was no conspiracy.
What is clear, and I wrote this in the article, is that, you know, being a Palestinian, I know that he wouldn't get a fair trial from the get-go, in the sense that there would be bias.
And that's why I said that the investigation of the LAPD was more of omission than commission.
In other words, you know, they had a gunman, they had a gun.
Why would they want to even look further?
And it became convenient that he's Palestinian, and that he said that this is in response to Kennedy's support for Israel.
That became the story, and all of the work that was done on the case, you know, was geared towards just one gunman.
And also the defense, the same thing.
They were looking, we need to save your life, Sirhan, plead guilty, we're not going to contest any of these things.
And they, under any, looking back at the case, any attorney would say that this was mishandled.
They should have questioned the evidence more thoroughly.
And all of these things have responses.
For example, the bullet holes, bullet holes or holes were seen.
Whether they were bullet holes or not, well, we don't know now, because the evidence was destroyed while the case was still in appeal.
So again, there's so many issues that were raised, and I wanted to get beyond that.
And the heart, the gist of the article was, look, it should be reinvestigated, to be fair.
The Kennedys want that.
Many people would like to see that happen.
But if that doesn't happen, what do you do with a person who's been in jail for 53 years?
It's a political assassination, yes, but, you know, things have changed.
A lot of the people that are involved are no longer around.
Obviously, older Americans are less forgiving, especially those who, people who loved Robert F. Kennedy and what he represented and the hope that he represented during those tumultuous times in the 60s, whereas younger people would look at it, and they would want to look at the circumstances and have other considerations.
So we get to the point where he's coming up for his 16th parole hearing today.
So in California time, it started at 8 o'clock or thereabouts and may take a few hours, yeah, or several hours.
And we'll see the results of this 16th attempt by Serhan and his attorneys to seek release.
So in another point, and it's in the article, but people should know that he was initially sentenced to death, but because of change of the law in California in 1972, and then it was abolished in 1976, he was resentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
That's why he's been eligible for parole since the 80s, and it's been denied every time.
Right.
And now, but so according to the Washington Post, the prosecutor agrees with you now.
Well, the prosecutor, so Gaskin is the newly elected prosecutor.
He's been there for over a year.
I don't know how long, but there's a push to also get him out like Newsom or recall.
He's a progressive prosecutor and his position is, it wasn't initially on Serhan's case alone.
His position was that our prosecutors are not going to attend these parole hearings because historically they viewed it as being biased against the inmate because they would always come in and say, we represent the victims and he should, this person should stay incarcerated and not be released.
So he said, we're going to leave that to the parole board to decide.
We don't need to be there.
And when the story broke from the Washington Post and what I wrote and others, it got closer to the time they started asking him and he said, look, we're taking that, I mean, we're taking the position that we're not going to be there.
And for some, they look at it as a green light for the parole board to release him if they so choose, which in essence, it can be viewed that way, obviously, if the prosecutor's office had gone there and argued against it, then we would know that that's their position.
But they chose to stay silent on it.
And I think that that gives him the only, that gives him a much better chance than he's ever had.
But I'm not hopeful.
I'm very pessimistic that the board would allow him to be released because again, it's a political assassination and it's still a very sensitive topic for America.
I really believe that we need to look at it in a fresh manner and consider, take everything into consideration before a decision is made of whether he should be released.
But according to California law, he should be released.
There's no doubt that he should be released.
And that's for different reasons.
One is they look at, for example, violence and all of his tests that he's taken in prison regarding his mental capacity and proclivity to violence or whether he would be a danger.
He's always tested at the lowest range, lowest possible range, because there's no one that can have a zero risk to violence, no matter who they are.
And so he wouldn't, you know, he wouldn't present a risk.
Also he would be sent to Jordan.
He's a Palestinian who was at the time in the 50s granted in the early 50s, or no, yeah, in the early 50s, 52 was granted Jordanian citizenship.
So he was a permanent resident at the time in 1968.
And because of this felony, he wouldn't be able to stay in the United States.
He would be deported.
So he wouldn't present a risk certainly to Americans, but again, he wouldn't present a risk to anyone.
And he's been there for over 53 years now.
He's had a good, an excellent prison record, meaning that, you know, there hasn't been trouble in prison.
He follows the rules and so forth, and he's taken responsibility.
But what complicates everything is that he doesn't remember the actual shooting.
And so the board, in doing research for the story, I saw some of the board's reasoning and they just, you know, they laid this big thing on him and it is, it's huge.
But they said, you killed Kennedy.
You don't understand what this means.
The way that politicians now deal with crowds has changed because of this.
The whole nation was traumatized and you're not taking, you can't, you know, you're not taking responsibility for that.
Well, how can he, I mean, almost no human being under such circumstances can, you know, take on that type of, you know, I mean, guilt and trauma.
And so it makes it difficult.
But if it was another person, then certainly he would have been released a long, long time ago.
Hmm.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I guess they let Hinkley out.
He's playing guitar on YouTube.
I don't know if you saw any of that.
Right.
No, I did.
I did.
I saw that, the shooter of Reagan.
So, yeah, there's, it's really, it's, you know, these cases are, again, they're a reflection of the issues that we have to deal with in society.
And Paul Schrade, and Paul Schrade was one of the victims.
He's now 96 years old.
He attended Sirhan's previous hearing in 2016.
And that was the first time.
And he actually, you know, he apologized to Sirhan and said, I should have been here earlier for you.
He just, he's just asking, you know, he doesn't say that there's necessarily any other, I mean, a conspiracy theory, but I do believe that there was a second gunman based on what he remembers.
And he's just asking that there be a reinvestigation.
And I think that there have been attempts by the prosecutor's office over the years to, I mean, they've let out information 20 years after the incident in 1988, I believe.
There was a...
Has he ever said that anyone put him up to it or that he had a friend there with him or anything like that?
So he remembered, no, he went, he remembers going there alone.
He does remember being with a lady at the time.
And you know, he was 24 years old and he said that he had taken alcohol and he was looking for coffee and all of a sudden he became agitated and, you know, as if there was some cue.
He doesn't, yeah, he doesn't, he doesn't remember the important parts.
And that's why people like Dan Moldea say that, you know, he conveniently doesn't remember what would make him guilty, what would go to motive, and therefore it's obvious.
But he, in an interview with, I forget his name, in the UK, a famous journalist who just passed away probably just a few years ago, but he did a big interview at the time with Sirhan.
This was probably in the 90s or late 80s or early 90s.
And he said that, you know, I would never be in a conspiracy with anyone else.
That's like an insult.
You know, I, what I did, I did, you know, my anger towards Kennedy was because of his support for Israel and you just, you have to understand what it means for us Palestinians.
So he gave a motive as to that, but he said that he didn't act with anyone at all.
There are some people who believe that he was hypnotized and that was even some of the court papers that were submitted, but the judge rejected that.
They brought in a psychologist from Harvard, a hypnotist, who put him under hypnosis and he was convinced that he was highly suggestive to hypnosis and that this was a theory.
Now other people in their books, when you look at all of the work that has been done on the case, and some people obviously for money, most people did it for money.
The attorneys wrote books, is that he worked at a, at a horse track and there were connections to the mob at that horse track and, you know, because of the, the, the issues between the mob and the Kennedys, even with, with, with president Kennedy, that there could have been some connection there and that he was, you know, somehow a fall guy.
And that may very well be possible, but you know, it's, it's, it's, it's going to be difficult after all these years to, to attain that.
I do believe that his release is probably the best thing for, for, for everyone in the sense that obviously there are people who want him dead.
The moment that Sirhan is dead, especially in prison, he was stabbed in prison a couple of years ago.
If he dies, that's it.
There's no reinvestigation.
There's nothing, it's over.
And it'll always be that Sirhan was the, was the murderer.
If he stays and lives another, you know, he's 77, relatively good health.
If he lives another 10, 15 years, there will be growing calls for an investigation.
And that could open up another Pandora's box.
I think the best thing is to have him go to Jordan, live out his quiet life, you know, meet his maker.
He's a, he's a Christian Palestinian, by the way.
And one of the parole board members in one of the parole hearings had asked him, you know, about his Christian faith.
He wanted to know, are you a Christian?
As if that made some difference.
It certainly didn't, you know, cause the board to, to, to release him, but, but he, he, he is a believing Christian and so are the Kennedys.
And, and I think a lot, you know, many of them believe in forgiving him.
They just don't want to, the parts of the family or, I mean, not parts, but other members of the family just don't want to reopen the case.
But I do believe that another way of closing this chapter is if he's released, we've shown mercy and, and it could be, you know, close a chapter in, in, in, in this incredibly sensitive case for, for America involving the Kennedys in, in, in the sixties.
And it's always, you know, it's always been intriguing for people looking into, into this, the material out there is just, you know, a sea of material.
Yeah.
Hey, y'all check out our great stuff at libertarianinstitute.org slash books.
First of all, we've published no quarter, the ravings of William Norman Grigg, our Institute's late and great co-founder.
He was the very best one of us, our whole movement, I mean, and no quarter will leave his mark on you, no question.
Which brings us to the works of our other co-founder, the legendary libertarian thinker and writer Sheldon Richman.
We've published two collections of his great essays, Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.
Both are instant classics.
I'm proud to say that Coming to Palestine is surely the definitive libertarian take on Israel's occupation of the Palestinians and Social Animals certainly ranks with the very best writings on libertarian ethics, economics, and everything else.
You'll absolutely love it.
Then there's me.
I've written two books, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan and Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism.
And I've also published a collection of the transcripts of all of my interviews of the heroic Dr. Ron Paul, 29 of them, plus a speech by me about how much I love the guy.
It's called The Great Ron Paul.
You can find all of these at libertarianinstitute.org slash books.
Well look, I mean, I think it's worth bringing up too here that, you know, in the context of our own time, that the minimal official story of this is that it's blowback and consequences for Kennedy's support for Israel.
And I forgot the exact story now, but I believe there was a giant arms sale right around then that he had championed in the Senate that supposedly had motivated Sirhan Sirhan to do this.
And it's important, right, that, yeah, he's a Palestinian and an Arab, but he's not a Muslim and he's certainly not a fundamentalist or a radical extremist Islamist.
So what explains it?
When you have terrorism by, you know, a Middle Easterner over this issue, but they're not a Muslim.
You take that part out of the equation.
What do you have?
You have someone who has something in common with all the rest of the anti-Western terrorists too.
And that is that they're siding with the victims of our government's policy.
And you know, I just saw a thing this morning.
This is why I'm angry.
I saw a thing this morning where Tulsi Gabbard says that ISIS and Al-Qaeda, she just made this up too.
Oh, Al-Qaeda is there also in Afghanistan.
And the reason they did the suicide attack that killed a dozen Marines at the airport is because we won't convert to their religion.
They can't stand it that we won't convert.
She's one of the best anti-war ladies in the Democratic Party.
How do you like that?
Right.
Yeah, no, that's been frustrating about Afghanistan.
So people should remember that ISIS wasn't around before we were there.
People are just, you know, they're not thinking straight at all.
And obviously the Taliban and ISIS are opposed to each other and the Taliban want, you know, they want security in that part of Afghanistan or Afghanistan totally.
But going back to Sirhan, yes, so this blowback, you're absolutely right.
And it would have been sensitive, obviously, at the time and certainly in the 70s and the 80s after Israel occupied territories, the West Bank and Gaza, that, you know, any mention of that would have, it was just impossible.
And that's, and I allude to this in my article that, you know, even the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has changed so much and went through so many phases that we just can't use that anymore.
And, you know, California law, all law has mitigating circumstances.
If you look at Sirhan's life as a refugee and as a Christian living in Palestine as a boy and what he went through and what he saw, the upheaval of his homeland at the time, he was born in 1944, so he would have been, you know, he would have been four years old in 1948, but, you know, all the upheaval afterwards.
And that's why in 1952, Jordan gave citizenship to those Palestinians living in Jerusalem and the West Bank or areas of Jerusalem.
And so he saw, his older brother and his younger brother said that, you know, he saw people being killed.
He remembers planes, you know, things like that in his childhood, which should have been taken into consideration.
And the other thing is that, you know, remember, if he had, if he was like a Palestinian, you know, terrorist, the LAPD at the time would have like come down very hard on him.
It's interesting how this happened, Scott, is that his brother saw him on TV and said, that's my brother.
They went to the local police station to say, hey, this is my, this is our brother.
So first they got kicked out of the station.
And then when they realized that, you know, that this was their brother, things calmed down for the investigators.
In other words, if they were just looking for, you know, if someone had assassinated someone right now, they would send out their, you know, their, their, their, their special forces and they would shoot up things before anything.
And they would cover up what they want to cover up and do whatever they want.
But actually, because the, you know, this, this refugee family comes and says, oh, this is our brother.
You know, they, they took, they treated them much better.
But the point is, is that, yes, this, like he was, he was just treated as a Palestinian who, who, who, who was, uh, uh, who was angry at Kennedy because of his support for Israel.
Later investigations showed that the plane sales actually weren't at the same time as this, uh, you know, as this occurrence.
But I haven't had an ability to go further in, in, into that.
But even, you know, so.
So people will say.
The war was a year before, right?
So I mean, Kennedy's position on that war and its aftermath would be part of the whole scenario.
Yes.
He was developing.
Yes.
And, and Robert F.
Kennedy had traveled to Jerusalem, uh, in, in the forties, um, I think 48 or 49, he had been there and he developed, you know, uh, an appreciation of respect for what, uh, Jews and, and, and, uh, later Israelis had done in terms of building a nation.
But even at that time, everyone recognized that there was a refugee population was being created, that Palestinians were being dispossessed from their land.
But no, we, we, we, people, uh, respect power.
And so he had developing views on, on, on that issue, certainly.
But by 1968 and elections coming up, um, there was, there was, uh, uh, you know, the, the, the Zionist, what make up the Zionist lobby was, was, was pretty much in power, but the blowback is there like the nuclear, you know, the nuclear, uh, power issue that, or the, or making nuclear weapons that Israel took from the, from the U S and all of that.
I mean, that's, those things were happening, uh, and, and, uh, they were being covered up at the time.
So they could have said anything about Sirhan, uh, as well at the, uh, at the time.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, um, so I guess probably somewhere in Georgetown and I don't mean one town North of here in central Texas.
I mean, the bad one outside of DC, they're saying that, no, listen, because what will happen is he'll go to Jordan and everybody's going to lift them up on their shoulders and call him a hero for striking down the imperialist pig dog and this kind of thing.
And so we can't have that.
And by the way, that will not happen.
That will not happen.
That will not happen.
Um, so Jordan, first of all, Jordan would try not to accept him unless the Americans gave the green light.
And if they do, it would be that he would not, you know, he would be muzzled.
He's there.
Nothing like that would happen.
And, and I don't think that anyone would want to, to, to, to do that, uh, at this point, especially in Jordan.
Um, you know, civil society has, has changed and that would not happen.
You know, if he went to Libya's, uh, Gaddafi's Libya at the time.
Yeah.
But not, not, not Jordan in, in, in 2021.
Definitely not.
So that, that, that definitely is, uh, misguided.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so geez, I guess we should hit refresh on the news.
I mean, it's, it sounds like the hearing started an hour before we started here.
So let's see if there's anything in Google news before I let you go here, but, um, prosecutors will not oppose is the latest is, and so we got, I don't know if there's a better Twitter feed to follow.
It's more up to date than that, but yeah, I think it will take, but, but it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's on point at this, at this time.
It's very timely.
Oh, I mean, do they usually wait for a while before they announce their decision?
They will, you know, usually they announce their decision at the hearing, but the hearing itself can take a few hours, uh, once they hear from everyone and go over the evidence and the attorney makes the case and, uh, if there are witnesses, uh, or, or, or, uh, so it could, it could take a few hours, but they will make the decision, uh, at, at the time.
It is highly unlikely that they will take it under advisement, but that's possible.
But then that would indicate that they're seeking political, uh, you know, political direction from someone.
Is there like specific legal precedent for, okay, everybody agrees that you are partially guilty and that you've taken responsibility for that.
But then also we think that maybe there's less responsibility because somebody else did it.
You mentioned earlier, briefly, the, this man that's now a 96 Paul Schrade, is that it?
Um, he says, well, you're not the guy that shot me.
You were not the gunman.
That was somebody else.
The second gunman, you know, and that was from the victim himself.
So he may be right or wrong about that, but that's sure not nothing.
But then I wonder how that plays into the argument that, yeah, no, I'm guilty and I accept responsibility for it and everything.
And you have other people saying that, geez, he's really not responsible.
I wonder if that undermines his argument or if that's really just a separate argument that and I, and specifically I wonder whether that's some judge has ruled about how that's to be taken into account before or anything like that, you know?
Yeah.
So it's real quickly, it is, it cuts both ways obviously.
And the vicarious liability means, so if he had, if he had gone into that hotel room with the intention to kill Kennedy, but his, it's not his bullet that actually killed him, but he had the intention, well, they would say, you're just as guilty as if you had done it because you intended, it just happened that you didn't kill him.
But you know, he is dead by someone else's bullet.
And that would have never happened had you not been in, in, in the room with the intention to kill him because there are so many different theories.
One is that the, what's his name, Thane Eugene Caesar was, was an off-duty guard who, who, who was behind Kennedy, who had a gun, who slipped and fell, but he said he never discharged his gun.
So, you know, whether he could have possibly, so if he did it, let's say accidentally, then Sirhan would still be liable because he, he, he put, you know, he, he made that situation where, where Eugene fell and, and he discharged his gun accidentally and he killed Kennedy if that were the scenario.
And that was what Kamala Harris's office actually argued in opposition to reopening the case in, in, in, in, back in 2012, 2013, when she was the attorney general, the, the, that was their position that, you know, he, he's, whatever happened, he's also just as liable.
But so it, it cuts both ways, but it's just, it's, it's catch 22 then if, if, if, if we were to, to, to take it in that way, then yeah, he would never be out because that would always be an argument that the parole board or anyone could make is that, you know, again, you were responsible for Kennedy's killing and this is not just any person.
It traumatized the nation.
You're not taking responsibility until you could remember and you, you know, are remorseful, but how remorseful would it take for, for people to say, you know, he's been remorseful enough.
That's why I'm saying 53 years in jail is, is kind of, you know, I think it's a respectable way of saying I did my time regardless of what the intention was and regardless of what happened.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, man, I really appreciate you coming on the show to talk about this very interesting subject and one that I haven't paid much attention to.
So good to catch up.
Thank you.
Thanks Scott.
All right, you guys, that is Ashraf W new Bonnie.
He is an attorney in Washington DC and he writes for the electronic into FADA, electronic into FADA.net.
The Scott Horton show anti-war radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA, APS, radio.com, antiwar.com, scotthorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org.
