John Kiriakou described the physical evidence in the RFK assassination as internally contradictory. Sirhan Sirhan’s gun held eight rounds. The crime scene contained more bullets than eight — a count Kiriakou cited as decisive proof that a second shooter was present.[1] In a separate telling, he put it as investigators recovering one more bullet than Sirhan’s gun could hold.[2]
Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi, who conducted the autopsy, found that the shot that killed Kennedy entered from behind and below his right ear at a range of one to two inches. Witnesses and photographs, however, placed Sirhan in front of Kennedy, and contemporaneous accounts established that Sirhan never got within several feet of him.[3] Kiriakou has also described the finding as powder deposition at the back of Kennedy’s head, despite Sirhan firing from across the room.[2]
Kiriakou noted that a hotel security guard named “Caesar” appears on video standing directly behind Kennedy at the moment of the shooting. National Geographic tracked the man down years later.[4]
Sirhan Sirhan remains imprisoned. Kiriakou described his continued incarceration as indefensible given the physical evidence. Kiriakou also noted a possible connection to MK-Ultra: Sirhan has said he has no memory of the shooting, and Kiriakou cited this in the context of CIA behavioral-control research.[5]
A formative memory
John Kiriakou recalls his mother crying all day when Robert Kennedy was shot and killed, part of the 1968–69 upheaval — with the King assassination and the Kent State shooting — that he says formed his political conscience as a boy.[6][7] In a separate telling, he traces the same memory to a couple of months after the King assassination: his mother crying as she told him Robert Kennedy had been killed, part of what he calls a “nightmarish” 1968.[8]
Kiriakou has also said, separately, that he believes the FBI — not James Earl Ray alone — killed Martin Luther King Jr.[2]