I suddenly got interested in the accounts of Sirhan being seen with...
Jim Garrison Keillor@books_rum
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Apr 05, 2024
~4 min read
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I suddenly got interested in the accounts of Sirhan being seen with groups of Arab students affiliated with Pasadena City College. One account said they were a group of pro-Baathists. Espcially in light of the feds' surveillance of Arab groups after the Six Day War
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This is one of the guys. Also went by the name Omar Ramzi for some reason
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Faizullah Khan was another
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Sirhan was seen watching the horses at Hollywood Park with another Arabic man, probably not his brother
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Sirhan seen in a gun store attempting to buy a revolver with a woman, possibly of Arab descent, just before the assassination
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Interesting details about Sirhan's political beliefs and his friendships with some pro-Arab campus socialists at PCC
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Slightly different subject, but this is a very rare interview w/Sirhan from before the assassination, after his horse-riding accident. Almost sounds like he went into a trance, doesn't know how he fell. Then his doctor refers him to a neurosurgeon
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The Fez Restaurant on Vermont seems to have been a local meeting spot for the Arab community
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Whatever happened to Sirhan psychologically, it's significant that he had severe childhood trauma from surviving the nakba, he belonged to a community of Arab immigrants, and he had strong anti-Zionist and Arab nationalist leanings
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Then there's this woman who saw Sirhan with two Arab-looking men at campaign headquarters, one of whom was campaign worker Khaibar Khan according to the FBI. She's dismissed as a "feather brain"
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Larry Streck also saw Sirhan with Khan, an Iranian businessman who was quite a character and hired many Middle Eastern people to work on the campaign
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Am I going on a deep dive into the career of Khaibar Khan Gudarzian, RFK campaign worker and "World's Best Dressed Man"? Reader, I am. tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.10…
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Khan was a very, very strange choice as a campaign worker for RFK. He reportedly hated JFK for his support of the Shah of Iran, and then testified to congress, alleging that the Shah had misappropriated US funds. Gudarzian threatened the precarious US-Iran relationship
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A lot of very powerful people wanted to maintain US-Iran relations, and Gudarzian was making wild allegations that could've ended economic support for Iran
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The article maintains that Gudarzian's claims against the Shah were fabricated - but why? And why would RFK hire such an enormously unpopular and even hated man to work on his campaign? And what was his real purpose on the campaign and why was he seen with Sirhan?
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Khan would bring in 4 to 8 Middle Eastern people a day to work on the campaign. On June 2nd, "One of those men was Sirhan"
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Khan himself claimed he had seen Sirhan at campaign headquarters but didn't know him, and he was one of the witnesses who saw Sirhan with the girl in the polka dot dress sirhansresearcher.com/WWGTG%20Part%2…
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State Dept. memo from August 1967 on the government's efforts to deport Gudarzian (and other outspoken Iranian dissenters who protested against the Shah) history.state.gov/historicaldocu…
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Found a PhD dissertation on Iranian dissidents during the 60s and apparently RFK was quite popular with the dissident Iranian student movement in the US - people who hated the Shah
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The dissertation discusses the ways that the CIA funded Iranian student groups throughout the 60s, trying hard to move them to support the Shah. The Shah was devastated that LBJ would not seek reelection. He (and probably the CIA) were relieved when RFK died
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Link to the dissertation. Interesting stuff dl.uncw.edu/Etd/2009-1/sha…
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To me Khaibar Khan is not an entirely scrupulous or trustworthy person, but genuinely hated the Shah and wanted to derail US support for him, and genuinely wanted to help RFK become president for that reason. And we have two eyewitnesses who saw Sirhan in his company.
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If I had to resort to complete speculation, whoever programmed Sirhan also hated Khan, who was a "spectacular irritant" to the US government. Maybe there was a plan to assassinate Khan as well? One that didn't go through for whatever reason.
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Then there's the Walter Crowe mystery. Crowe was childhood friends with Sirhan and a member of several communist organizations. He told an FBI informant that he felt great guilt because he had helped Sirhan develop the state of mind necessary to kill RFK
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Crowe and Sirhan had had many political discussions and shared many political opinions and Crowe never quite elaborated on how he felt responsible for encouraging Sirhan to develop the "state of mind" to kill RFK
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Philip Melanson writes that Crowe was under surveillance by the LAPD and possibly the FBI during his friendship with Sirhan, and that the informant he spoke to was William Divale who infiltrated the student communist movement and wrote a memoir
