New Revelations from the Recently Released RFK files - Part 1
By Lisa Pease, author of A Lie Too Big to Fail
Having extensively researched CIA and FBI files on both the JFK and RFK assassinations for more than 30 years, I’m uniquely positioned to identify what’s new and important in the recently released RFK files. So far, I have found three big stories in the recently released records. I’ll start with the first story and continue in subsequent articles to illuminate the other two important stories I’ve found. There are also several smaller stories, which I will get to eventually.
Just before the RFK files were released, a reporter from CBS News contacted several people who have written books about the RFK assassination to ask what they expected to find in the files. I told the reporter I was especially eager to see the CIA files, as I knew they had been involved in the LAPD’s investigation but had only seen portions of the LAPD’s communications, never the responses.[1]
It’s a fact that the CIA was involved in the LAPD’s assassination investigation. But there could be innocent or sinister theories for why that would be. If the LAPD had invited the CIA into the case, that could indicate the CIA was not involved and was only summoned due to their ability to track down information about the numerous foreigners who became, however temporarily, part of the LAPD’s investigation. However, it could also have been possible that the LAPD invited the CIA into the investigation because they had planned it together. If, on the other hand, the CIA had invited themselves into the investigation, that would reveal a vested interest in the outcome of the investigation and would also appear to exonerate the LAPD in the planning of the assassination.
So the first thing I wanted to know from the files was simply that: did the LAPD invite the CIA in? Or did the CIA invite themselves in?
The first semi-answer came from an important CIA file released back in 2021, that I did not see until this year, after my book came out and after the updated paperback version had gone to print, that contained two documents.
The first page of the 2021-released document was the CIA’s response to Dan Rather’s questions about whether Manny Pena and Enrique “Hank” Hernandez, the two LAPD officers in charge of the conspiracy side of the investigations of “Special Unit Senator,” the Los Angeles Police Department unit formed to investigate RFK’s assassination, had worked for the CIA. The CIA denied any connection, despite the fact that both of them had been credibly linked to the CIA.[2]
I had seen the first document in the files years earlier and had to laugh upon seeing it again because the CIA has been known, frequently, to lie on the record when people got too close to their ties to the assassinations of the 1960s. In fact, several years back, I saw a comment in a forum where a poster said to his knowledge, the CIA had never lied to the Warren Commission. I was able to find a lie the CIA made to the Warren Commission in five minutes. Helms denied to the Warren Commission that the CIA had ever had any interest in Oswald, a lie that is now completely exposed with previous and current file releases.
In the recently released RFK files, there is another “big lie” file about Oswald, also in response to the Dan Rather inquiries, in which the CIA goes to great lengths to say they knew nothing about Oswald before the assassination, something proven to be ridiculously false over the years, and something even Dan Rather raised questions about in his special.
The second document in the 2021 file, however, dropped a bombshell, albeit with lawyerly language:
Sirhan Sirhan’s security file reflects that he had never been of interest to the Agency prior to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. On 5 June 1968 when Sirhan was identified as the probable assassin, the Director of Central Intelligence met with the Deputy Chief of the CI Staff, the Assistant Deputy Director for Plans, and the Director of Security and directed that the CI staff would be the focal point for action in the Sirhan case. The CI staff was to collect all available information on Sirhan and provide appropriate portions of this material to the Office of Security for release to the Los Angeles Police Department. This material was to be released to the LAPD through the Office of Security’s Los Angeles Field Office.[3]
(I found the use of “reflects that” telling, as if the file might have had more in it at one time but has been altered to “reflect” a certain version of events.)
So James Angleton’s CIA Counterintelligence group was designated as the records collection point for the RFK assassination investigation, just as his team had run point for the JFK assassination, and could control what was released to the LAPD from the CIA’s end, by the CIA’s OS LAFO contact:
Mr. William Curtin, the Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Office, contacted Inspector Yarnell of the LAPD on 5 June 1968 and advised him that the Agency was prepared to cooperate with the LAPD in its investigation of Sirhan.
From that one sentence, it appeared CIA initiated contact with the CIA first, but I wasn’t ready to declare a conclusion until I read Sirhan’s 815-page 201 file, released in 2025 by the Luna Committee. In there, we find this important bit of information from William Curtin himself:
When the announcement of the Subject’s [Sirhan’s] identity and foreign background was made public on 5 June 1968, upon instructions from Headquarters, I contacted Inspector Harold YARNELL, in the absence of [LAPD] Chief Tom REDDIN.[4]
Inspector Yarnell was a member of the LEIU – the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit – a private network of intelligence officers at various police departments across the country. Yarnell had been the Secretary-Treasurer of the LEIU and became the Commander of the LAPD Intelligence Division, where he interfaced with, among others, Lt. Jack Revill of the Dallas Police Department (named chief of the Dallas Intelligence Unit).[5]
But it’s what Curtin wrote next that proved the CIA had forced its way into the investigation and not been invited:
Inspector Yarnell was informed of our desire to aid the Los Angeles Police Department in any way that we could in the conduct of their investigation of the Subject. He expressed his appreciation and stated that they would gladly accept any information we wished to pass along to them. However, he advised that their case against the Subject appeared to be airtight and that he did not at that time foresee that they would be calling on us for any assistance.[6]
In other words, the LAPD’s response to the CIA’s offer of help had been essentially, thank you, but no thank you. That is quite notable. The LAPD didn’t yet know what they didn’t know. But the CIA knew there would be things the LAPD didn’t know, names that would need to be investigated.
Twelve days later, Inspector Yarnell called William back and set up a meeting with Yarnell, Captain Brown (the Chief of Homicide at LAPD) and Curtin. At this point, Yarnell’s tune changed slightly. Although they felt they had a rock-solid case against Sirhan (which they didn’t—see my book for why the case for Sirhan’s guilt falls flat), Yarnell said they were pursuing a possible conspiracy angle and needed information about Sirhan and possible associates. The CIA’s one request in response is that all mention of their cooperation be kept from the press. And for the most part, it was.
But I find even this confession of the alliance and circumstances possibly incomplete, because Sirhan had not yet been identified when Chief Reddin gave his 7:00 a.m. press conference on June 5. As I wrote in my book, after viewing the tape from that conference:
Throughout the press conference, Reddin’s delivery was calm, articulate, and professional, until he came to one particular question. He had just explained that the LAPD was checking with other agencies for any information they might have on the suspect— “the immigration service, the CIA, the Bureau of Customs, Social Security, the Post Office department—”
“Why the CIA, Chief?” a reporter asked.
Suddenly, Reddin became visibly rattled and nearly choked as he tried to get the agency’s name out. “The C-A … the C-A … the C-I-A has types of information that might help us identify who the person might be. We’ll give them his picture.” Reddin regained his composure shortly after, but it was a bizarre break—and the only such break—in an otherwise seamless presentation.[7]
Perhaps Reddin had learned of the CIA’s call to Captain Brown and was planning to share their unknown suspect’s picture with the CIA, but right about this time, Munir Sirhan, the brother of Sirhan who was at his early morning job and watching the TV in the breakroom saw a picture of his brother on TV and went with his brother Adel to the local Pasadena police to identify him. So maybe Curtin’s timeline is an official lie.
There’s also the weird question the LAPD asked Sirhan about him being married. After the shooting, Sirhan was extensively questioned for a few hours before Reddin heard Sirhan had asked for a lawyer and shut down the questioning. The LAPD and the DA’s assistant who questioned him recognized Sirhan was in some sort of dissociative state. He couldn’t remember what kind of car he drove and couldn’t or wouldn’t give his name. Even his interrogators didn’t believe he was lying. Before his identity had been revealed, one LAPD officer asked Sirhan if he were married (to which Sirhan replied, quite oddly, that he didn’t know).
It turns out the CIA knew of another man called “Sirhan Sirhan” in the United States who was married, and had been married in 1957 (Sirhan Sirhan had never married and would have only been 13 at the time!), and a reporter with ties to the CIA and Israel named John Kimche had written about him a week after the assassination took place. Kimche thought the Sirhan he was writing about was the Sirhan Sirhan in custody because his source had been right so many times before. The CIA tracked down the man, identified by a friend as “Sirhan Sirhan,” and reported back that he was really Sirhan Salim Sirhan Abu Khadir, a resident of Detroit.”[8] But who told the LAPD within hours after the shooting that the guy in custody might have been married? Might the CIA have planted this story with Kimche after the fact to explain earlier initial misinformation? Had someone from Israel called it in to try to paint Sirhan as someone with ties to Al Fatah (which Sirhan Bishara Sirhan did not have)? Maybe the LAPD just asked if he was married for no reason. But they also asked if his name was “Jesse,” and there was, in fact, a suspect named “Jesse” that apparently had been taken into custody separately from Sirhan and released. So the question may not have been random at all.
There are still many mysteries in this case. But the CIA pushing their way into the LAPD’s investigation, while not surprising to those who have long assumed a CIA hand in the assassination of RFK, is genuinely new information, with genuinely sinister implications.
(Part 2 coming soon)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-gabbard-rfk-assassination-files-release/
Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (Feral House: 2025 paperback edition), pp. 98-99.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/SIRHAN%20SIRHAN%20INVESTIGATI%5B16011338%5D.pdf, p. 4
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/rfk/releases/2025/0612/07165005_sirhan_sirhan_201.pdf, p. 24
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/SIRHAN%20SIRHAN%20201%5B16506077%5D.pdf, p. 74
Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (Feral House: 2025 paperback edition), p. 58.
Sirhan 201 file, p. 779.
