Authors: Lamar Waldron
eventually be sentenced to six months in federal prison. First, though,
Rosselli would have to stand trial again in Los Angeles, for the Friars
Club charges that also involved four codefendants. Rosselli’s attorney
was working closely on the defense team’s strategy with distinguished
Los Angeles lawyer Grant Cooper, whose client in the trial had owned
a Las Vegas casino. Cooper’s client had also worked with Rosselli on an
aborted hit scheme, to silence the key witness in the Friars Club case.20
In late May, Bobby alternated between campaigning in Oregon and in
California, with the latter getting the lion’s share of his attention, due
to its huge slate of delegates. Though the state had recently elected con-
servative governor Ronald Reagan, Bobby’s campaign had gone well,
generally drawing huge and enthusiastic crowds as he rode in open
cars and stopped to give talks. Security was a problem, and was almost
impossible to manage effectively, especially in Los Angeles. Mayor Sam
Yorty and Police Chief Ed Davis were extremely conservative, with Yorty
considering Bobby “subversive.” Bobby had openly criticized Yorty in
Senate hearings following the 1965 riots in Watts, because of the deplor-
able conditions that had helped trigger the outburst. Yorty sometimes
didn’t bother to hide his racism, as when he used a slur to introduce a
black Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and then made a point of wiping
off his hand after shaking hands with the black official. Yorty’s police
chief, Edward M. Davis, continued the problems that led to the riots by
resisting hiring minorities to serve on the force. There was a growing
chasm of mistrust in 1968 between the police and liberals, minorities,
and those opposed to the war—the very groups Bobby was trying to
woo.21
During much of the time that Bobby was darting around the Los Ange-
les area, police security was almost nonexistent. Bobby had previously
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had a trusted friend in the LAPD, Captain James Hamilton, who had
founded the LAPD’s intelligence unit, but Hamilton had left the force
to take a security job with the National Football League (and had since
died), leaving no one to mediate the friction between the LAPD and
Bobby’s campaign. It would have been clear to anyone who attended
Bobby’s events that the police were not providing close security for the
candidate, though officers were often stationed in the area for crowd
control.
In an ordinary house in Pasadena on May 18, 1968, a twenty-four-year-old
former aspiring jockey named Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was writing in
his notebook, apparently as part of his interest in self-hypnosis. Sirhan
loved horses but was a compulsive gambler who had been losing hun-
dreds of dollars in recent weeks. In his notebook, Sirhan wrote “May
18, 9:45 AM,” then scribbled “RFK must die” and “Robert F. Kennedy
must be assassinated before 5 June ’68.” On the same page, Sirhan wrote
more statements about assassinating Bobby, followed by “Please pay to
the order of of of of of.”22
As Bobby continued to dash around Los Angeles in between trips to
Oregon, the security situation began to reach a critical point. Secu-
rity usually went well when Bobby visited towns just outside of Los
Angeles—like Pomona, on May 20, where he drew four hundred sup-
porters to Robbie’s Restaurant. There, a Pomona police officer kept
an eye on a young couple who appeared suspicious, until a manager
dealt with the problem. But security issues arose when Bobby was back
in Los Angeles, as he was for a rally downtown on May 24 and for a
small motorcade five days later. When Bobby’s motorcade stopped at
9th Street and Santee, Bobby left his car and walked into the crowd,
where he was soon mobbed. According to a Los Angeles police sergeant,
when a motorcycle officer attempted to rescue Bobby from the crowd,
an LAPD report says that “Kennedy and his aides berated the sergeant
and told him that they had not asked for the assistance of the police.”23
The police seemed to take that as a signal to back off even more,
though accounts differ greatly about whether Bobby’s staff rejected fur-
ther police protection in Los Angeles. Though Bobby had a rally sched-
uled at Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel on June 2, and his hoped-for
victory party on the night of the California primary, on June 4, the Los
Angeles police wouldn’t have official security roles at either event.24
While Richard Nixon would later make the most effective use of
television in the 1968 campaign, Bobby was adapting to the medium.
On May 20, 1968, his campaign aired a documentary about Bobby in
California and Oregon. Jewish voters were an important constituency
for Bobby, especially in California, and the TV special talked in general
terms about Bobby’s support for Israel. On May 26, Bobby gave a speech
at a Portland synagogue, urging the Johnson administration to “sell
Israel the fifty Phantom jets she has so long been promised.” The Jew-
ish vote in Oregon wasn’t large, but Bobby’s speech was covered in Los
Angeles area papers, which were read by his true intended audience.
Bobby lost the Oregon primary on May 28, 1967, by six points to Eugene
McCarthy, which made his winning California even more critical.25
Eugene McCarthy had been demanding a debate with Bobby, and
one was finally scheduled for June 1, 1968, in San Francisco. By most
accounts, Bobby did well, even when asked about wiretapping Dr. King.
However, the moderator pointed out that on most issues, the candidates
had few substantial differences.26
On June 2, 1968, Bobby Kennedy went to the Ambassador Hotel in
Los Angeles for a rally, which seemed to go smoothly. That was good
for Bobby and his staff, because the following day would be the most
intense of their campaign so far, a 1,200-mile trek that would drive Bobby
to the brink of exhaustion.
On June 3, Bobby went “from Los Angeles to San Francisco, back
to Watts and Long Beach, on to San Diego, and back to [Los Angeles,
all] in thirteen hours,” according to Evan Thomas. The first problem
arose that morning, as Bobby’s small “motorcade crept through San
Francisco’s Chinatown”—when suddenly, a series of what sounded
like shots erupted. Bobby’s wife “dove for the bottom of the car,” while
Bobby, “standing on the rear hood of a convertible, remained upright
and continued to wave to the surging crowd.” But a journalist “who was
running alongside the motorcade saw Kennedy’s knees buckle” at the
sound, which turned out to be only firecrackers. Even so, “Ethel was
[so] badly shaken” that Bobby asked a reporter to comfort her while he
continued to smile and wave.27
That night, after side trips to Watts and Long Beach, Bobby was in
San Diego for a rally at the El Cortez hotel. The strain and pressure were
getting to Bobby, and soon after beginning his speech to the crowd of
three thousand, Bobby suddenly fell silent. Thomas wrote that Bobby
“nearly collapsed. He abruptly sat down on the stage and put his head
in his hands.” NFL football star and friend Roosevelt Grier got Bobby
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“into a bathroom, where he threw up. He lay on the floor while Grier
knelt and mopped his head.” Then Bobby got to his feet and walked
back to the stage, where he completed his talk, finishing with his classic
words: “Some men see things as they are, and ask—why? I dream of
things that never were, and I ask—why not?”28
Chapter Fifty-five
On June 4, 1968, California’s primary was underway when the first exit
polls at 3:00 PM showed Bobby Kennedy winning by eight points over
McCarthy. Even if Bobby won the same day’s primary in South Dakota,
Humphrey would still have a big lead in delegates, though not a major-
ity. A win in California could very well propel Bobby to the nomination,
setting up a race in the fall with Richard Nixon that would echo the 1960
fight between JFK and Nixon.1
At 6:30 PM, Bobby—accompanied by his family and advisors—
headed to the Ambassador Hotel, where he planned to greet his sup-
porters in the Embassy Ballroom later that night, then talk to reporters
in a smaller room. For his personal security, Bobby had only his one
unarmed bodyguard, Bill Barry, plus athletes Roosevelt Grier and Olym-
pic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson, both unarmed. Dan Moldea
found the hotel had hired “18 security guards for crowd control,” includ-
ing eleven unarmed guards who worked for the hotel. The rest were
armed guards hired for the night from Ace Security—again, for crowd
control, not personal protection. There were no Los Angeles police offi-
cers at the hotel that night, though some were stationed nearby.2
The Ambassador Hotel was full of parties on the night of June 4, 1968,
including several for large companies and other political races, for both
liberal and conservative candidates. Sirhan Sirhan went to a private
party first, after seeing a name he recognized from high school on the
marquee. His former classmate wasn’t there, so Sirhan said he “drank
four Tom Collins.” For the diminutive Sirhan, that was a lot of alcohol.
It was almost as if he were steeling himself for a difficult upcoming task,
using liquid courage to buttress the self-hypnosis he’d been studying.
Bobby would leave Los Angeles the next day, June 5, and Sirhan had no
way of knowing when Bobby would be back. After downing the drinks,
Sirhan felt woozy, but went to his car and got his pistol.
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Bobby watched TV coverage of the results anxiously with family, friends,
and advisors in his suite on the Ambassador’s fifth floor. By 11 PM, it
finally looked like Bobby would be victorious. Less than an hour later,
Moldea wrote that Bobby “took a freight elevator down to the kitchen
[and] walked through the pantry and anteroom,” toward the doors to
the Embassy Ballroom.3
Hotel ballrooms and kitchens are often connected by a maze of hall-
ways and pantries, used to whisk food and celebrities to waiting crowds.
Gaining access to such areas is usually not difficult, especially if some-
one looks as if they belong there, either as a worker or someone dressed
for business. In Sirhan’s case, the fact that his darker skin and black hair
made him look Hispanic helped, since he resembled the Ambassador’s
busboys and kitchen workers. Various other people also managed to
get into the pantry area behind the ballroom, though some people were
turned away. Guarding the pantry area was Ace Security guard Thane
Cesar, armed with his own .38 pistol. However, Cesar was there only
for crowd control, not as a bodyguard, and had only recently started
working part-time for Ace at night to earn extra money.4
The plan was for Bobby to enter the Embassy Ballroom and make
some remarks. He would then exit out the back door, turn right, go
through some swinging doors into the pantry, past an ice machine, head-
ing to the smaller Colonial Room to meet the press. While some thought
that route was a last-minute decision made at the end of Bobby’s speech,
work by Larry Hancock shows the route had been known since at least
10:00 PM, an hour prior to Bobby’s arrival at the ballroom. Hancock
documented that several hotel “security personnel . . . stated [to law
enforcement] that Kennedy staff had told them, well before the Sena-
tor arrived to make his address, that RFK would be exiting though the
pantry.”5 Kennedy had to address the press in the Colonial Room, and
there was no other effective way for him to get there, since walking
off the stage and trying to exit through the packed ballroom wasn’t a
realistic option.
Shortly before midnight, Bobby entered the Embassy Ballroom to the
rousing cheers of almost two thousand rapturous supporters. Bobby
clearly relished his victory, but he talked about the themes close to his
heart, including
. . . the direction we want to go in the United States . . . what we’re
going to do for those who still suffer in the United States from hun-
ger; what we’re going to do around the rest of the globe; and whether
we’re going to continue the policies which have been so unsuccessful
in Vietnam. . . . We should move in a different direction. . . . My thanks
to all of you, and now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there!6
As the crowd went wild and began chanting his name, a beaming
Bobby left the stage and headed toward the ballroom exit to the pantry
that would lead him to the waiting reporters.
Sirhan Sirhan had been seen carrying a drink as late as 10 PM. He later
said he was drunk when he went into the press room in the Colonial
Ballroom, where he stared at a teletype, which the teletype operator
later confirmed. Sirhan claims he wandered into the Embassy Ballroom
before Bobby arrived, looking for coffee to help him sober up, and that
someone directed him to the pantry area. He says he spoke briefly to a