RFK Jr: Dad believed Warren Commission "shoddy"

President John F. Kennedy listens as his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, speaks at a White House ceremony, May 7, 1963. / National Archive/Newsmakers

DALLAS Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is convinced that a lone gunman wasn't solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and said his father believed the Warren Commission report was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship."

Kennedy and his sister, Rory, spoke about their family Friday night while being interviewed in front of an audience by Charlie Rose at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas. The event comes as a year of observances begins for the 50th anniversary of the president's death.

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Their uncle was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dallas. Five years later, their father was assassinated in a Los Angeles hotel while celebrating his win in the California Democratic presidential primary.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his father spent a year trying to come to grips with his brother's death, reading the work of Greek philosophers, Catholic scholars, Henry David Thoreau, poets and others "trying to figure out kind of the existential implications of why a just God would allow injustice to happen of the magnitude he was seeing."

He said his father thought the Warren Commission, which concluded Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president, was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship." He said that he, too, questioned the report.

"The evidence at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman," he said, but he didn't say what he believed may have happened.

Rose asked if he believed his father, the U.S. attorney general at the time of his brother's death, felt "some sense of guilt because he thought there might have been a link between his very aggressive efforts against organized crime."

Kennedy replied: "I think that's true. He talked about that. He publicly supported the Warren Commission report but privately he was dismissive of it."

Journalist Charlie Rose, right, makes opening comments as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left, and Rory Kennedy look on, at the AT&T Performing Arts Center Friday, Jan. 11, 2013, in Dallas. The Kennedys are in Dallas as a year of observances begins for the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

/ AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez

He said his father had investigators do research into the assassination and found that phone records of Oswald and nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who killed Oswald two days after the president's assassination, "were like an inventory" of mafia leaders the government had been investigating.

He said his father, later elected U.S. senator in New York, was "fairly convinced" that others were involved.

The attorney and well-known environmentalist also told the audience light-hearted stories Friday about memories of his uncle. As a young child with an interest in the environment, he said, he made an appointment with his uncle to speak with him in the Oval Office about pollution.

He'd even caught a salamander to present to the president, which unfortunately died before the meeting.

"He kept saying to me, 'It doesn't look well,"' he recalled.

Rory Kennedy, a documentary filmmaker whose recent film "Ethel" looks at the life of her mother, also focused on the happier memories. She said she and her siblings grew up in a culture where it was important to give back.

"In all of the tragedy and challenge, when you try to make sense of it and understand it, it's very difficult to fully make sense of it," she said. "But I do feel that in everything that I've experienced that has been difficult and that has been hard and that has been loss, that I've gained something in it."

"We were kind of lucky because we lost our members of our family when they were involved in a great endeavor," her brother added. "And that endeavor is to make this country live up to her ideals."

[ammo17]

i don`t care what the warren commission says the DULLES BROS. were involved in that murder of the president.they were too cozy with the louisianna mafia,since the assasination debacle on fidel castro.

[1st-crackerhead]

makes me wonder why RFK would support the commission in PUBLIC . Was he cocerned for his health and well being also ??? looks like he was Right to be so. Why was Jackie silent ???

[abby_del_abbey]

Here we go again ....

[Filmguy870]

Shoddy.....it was clear from the beginning that this was not meant to do anything but close the door.

[OrganizedStalking]

Watch the first two or three episodes of The Men Who Killed Kennedy.
They even managed to find out one of the names of the shooters from the grassy knoll.

[time4action101]

... My father, then a police Sgt in Prov. RI, (later to retire a LT) and also a highly decorated WWII Army Air Corps pilot, picked up his 'Lazy boy' chair, then dropped it and stormed out the door when ruby shot oswald point blank in the heart... a hr or so he came back, apologized to us. He said that a cop killer (eyewitnesses saw oswald kill dallas PD JD Tippits in the movie theatre) and prime 'suspect' in the murder of our beloved President wasn't immediately put into federal custody was 'NO MISTAKE' . He said the whole bloody thing was a set up and many from the fed gov't were part of it.. When Bobby and MLK were murdered months apart with Kings murderer making it safely out of the US only to be found asleep in a car in London, He knew and so did I and my entire family and extended family from Boston to Miami to Chicago to LA knew the US wasn't as it appeared to be... Dr. Ellsberg, nixon and his 'dirty tricksters' which no average citizen in the US at the time believed such behavior was possible led to nixon's impeachment (the coward quit and ford pardoned the crumb) as nixon was facing 10 years minimum federal time for lying on signed depositions...
If nixon wasn't pardoned there was a strong chance he was going to prison...
Just look what has happened to our nation over the last 30 + years and you'll know that this consolidation of wealth, flagrant violations of federal law that go unpunished by fed authorities (rove & cheney for instance)...
We've been at constant war and there is a cop on every corner with the 1st and 4th Amendments to the US Constitution shredded... All this goes back to the planned elimination of a just federal gov't system that grew more powerful yearly as states rights gradually became more and more diminished. The election 2000, a total fraud ought to convince anyone that we aren't being properly represented to a point that gets more criminal every month.
Signed,
Daniel Carroll
Sunset Beach, CA 90742

[ichibandan]

I used to believe in the multiple shooter theory--until I visited my brother in Dallas and we went to the Book Depository. You can't go to the very spot where Oswald shot , but you used to be able to go to the spot on the floor below( not sure if that's still the case).When I got up there and looked out, it would be clear to anyone who has shot a rifle that those were much easier shots than all the conspiracy theorists are representing. The road makes this very sharp 110 degree turn almost under the window. The floors in the building have 7 foot ceilings. That makes the rifle muzzel about 50 feet away from the target and shooting almost straight down. Fish in a barrel for a Marine-trained shooter.

[kerm2013]

I dont think anyone ever said it was impossible to shoot from that location. there was more debate about the fact oswald couldn't have got 3 shots off in the specified amount of time, not to mention the fact that the bullets hit kennedy at completely different angles.

[josephp5]

For people thinking that Kennedy's forward head motion when he was shot "proves" that the bullet came from the front:

There have been many experiments done where an object with a hard outside shell and a soft gelatinous interior (like a human head---bony outside and brains on inside) is shot with a high velocity bullet. The object always moves TOWARDS the direction that the bullet came from! Not in the direction of the bullet! This may seem counter-intuitive at first---shouldn't the object being shot move in the direction of the bullet path? But people thinking this neglect to take into account something called the "jet-recoil" effect.

The long and short of the "jet-recoil" effect is that the bullet causes a massive pressure build-up when it penetrates the bone shell, causing the skull to fracture and brain matter to spray out cracks in the front. The total momentum of the brain matter spraying out the front it greater than the momentum of the bullet, so the head moves TOWARDS the bullet.

Kennedy was shot from behind. The third bullet entered his head from the back; brain matter shot forward, and Kennedy's head moved backward. It is not proof that the bullet came from the front.

[josephp5]

First sentence should read, "...Kennedy's BACKWARD head motion..."

[brucesmall]

Robert Kennedy was attorney general, and loved his brother. He had not only the substantial family resources but also the Justice Department and the CIA available to him. If anyone else had been involved Robert would have tracked them down. He would never have given up.

[PourpaixPourpaix]

I believe it was President Johnson who was in charge at the time, and he very publicly backed the Warren Commission. It's been widely said that Johnson disliked Kennedy but couldn't get away with firing Kennedy, in a political sense. However, use of office on a personal quest to prove something contrary to the Johnson administration's position would have given Johnson just the excuse he needed.

[mollycruz]

Right after JFK was shot in the neck from behind, the chauffeur turned and shot toward what he thought was the source of the gunfire, but Kennedy had risen and tilted forward from the impact, and the shot hit him in the head, clearly blowing his brains backward, and unfortunately amounted to the coup de grace of the incident. A careful perusal of the famous film by Zapruder shows the quick turn and shot,just after the car passes the billboard that obstructed the view, and another CBS film shot from above, presumably from a news blimp, shows the flash of the shot, doubtless the reason for the 'grassy knoll' theory, though of course there was no damage to the windshield of the limousine and the shell was found in the car or on the stretcher with Kennedy. The first radio report I heard of the event stated clearly, "A secret service man has accidentally shot President Kennedy", but that was the only time I heard it. I believe this man was sheltered from publicity due to the inadvertent nature of the event and his innocence. As for Oswald and his associates, it was obviously more complicated than anyone was told.

[doerndiego]

Not so weird when you consider the government attempted to kill Castro with exploding cigars.