At Least Bobby Kennedy Said Thank You

(Paul Krassner is the editor and Zen Bastard of The Realist, which is probably bly the most influential counter-culture publication never quoted in a record company advertisement. In-between, he writes books like How A Satirical Editor Became a Yippie Conspirator in Ten Easy Years and edits Conspiracy Newsletter, as well as running around writing for publications like this one.

Krassner has been doing this for over ten years, ever since he stopped doing Playboy Interviews – he invented the form and took it to its most dazzling heights – and writing and talking in that scene. He is a co-founder of the Yippies and perhaps the foremost authority on the wit and wisdom of Lenny Bruce.

He is also about to start doing a column for CREEM, an idea of which

we are much enamored. When approached, Paul was at first hesistant, then grew interested. “Boy, I’d like to see the kind of mail I*d get. ” he said.

Title and subject matter: Questions. Your two cents worth can come here, for him. – Eds.)

Ed Sanders spent a year and a half gathering material for his book The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion. I’ve been investigating that case for six months on my own. What follows is an excerpt from “The Parts That Were Left Out of the Manson Book,” which will be published in its entirety in the upcoming 13 th Anniversary Issue of the Realist.

Sirhan ordered the Los Angeles Times every day until recently, when he became depressed by world events. “It's all violence, chaos, unrest," he said. “Whatever happened to the old days, peace and quiet?" –Life Magazine, Jan. 17,1969

In 1960, at the Comedy Workshop run by George Q. Lewis in a Times Square rehearsal studio, David Frye was doing his impression of Robert Mitchum, and Vaughn Meader was still searching for a gimmick. The election of John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon postponed Frye’s stardoln for eight years, but Meader seized the opportunity.

He started combing his hair with a pompadour dipping across his forehead. He consciously regressed to the Boston accent he had previously tried so hard to lose. His record album, The First Family, floated to sucess in that protective limbo between inoffensiveness and irreverence.

When President Kennedy was killed in 1963, Lenny Bruce began a show at the Village Theater with this opening line: “Vaughn Meader is screwed...”

It was a truism. Meader dropped out, emerging eventually in San Francisco as an involuntary flower child.

He returned to New York in 1968.I invited him to a Yippie meeting. And so Vaughn Meader got involved with politics again.

In February, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and I went to Washington, D.C. bn a Yippie mission. Robert F. Kerinedy got off the same train. We buzzed around like psychedelic Marx Brothers. After all, Lyndon Johnson was of course expected to run for re-election, and Bobby had said he wouldn’t seek the nomination. In return for this favor, LBJ referred to him as “that little shit” at a private barbecue.

Now, as Bobby walked along the station, Jerry said to me, “We’ve gotta do something.”

I remembered that in February, 1966 I sent reprints of Eric Norden’s article in Liberation, “American Atrocities in Vietnam,” to every Congressman and Senator. Bobby Kennedy was the only one who had responded.

Abbie simply followed his impulse. From six yards away, he roared: “Bobby! You got no guts!”

On March 31st, Vaughn Meader asked me for some LSD, which I provided. That evening President Johnson – the personification of Unhealthy Ego, yet preferring not to have happen to him what had happened to his predecessor – announced to the surprise of everyone except Lady Bird and those who had really made the decision, that he would not run for re-election.

My phone rang. I answered by saying, “I accept the nomination.” It was Vaughn, grateful that he hadn't taken the acid yet. LBJ’s news item might have affected the direction of his trip.

In April we held the first official Yippie press conference. Publicist Mike Goldstein had duped the Americana Hotel into providing a hall under the guise that it was for Judy Collins, who indeed was one of the speakers. She said that we were going to Chicago “for the children.”

I pointed out that LBJ’s withdrawal from the race didn’t change our decision to hold an alternative convention. I mentioned that Bobby * Kennedy’s rationale for not opposing him was that

he didn’t want to split the Democratic Party.

“Human life is more important than the Democratic and Republican Parties put together" – words which I would repeat to the jury a couple of years later as part of my stoned testimony in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial.

A reporter at the press conference asked me why the Yippies weren’t supporting Eugene McCarthy. I explained that there was no Yippie party line. Then I criticized thi Clean-for-Gene campaign by pointing out that Allen Ginsberg wouldn’t have been allowed to ring anybody’s doorbell unless he agreed to shave off his beard.

Another reporter asked me, “Would you cut your hair if it would end the war?”

Ginsberg popped up and asked the reporter, “Would you let your hair grow if it would end the war?...”

On the evening of June 4th, Robert and Ethel Kennedy had dinner in Malibu with several show-biz folks including Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. Part of the conversation was about the expanding use of nudity in films. Someone remarked,. “I can see the critics now – Kevin Thomas says: ‘The direction did not quite match the magnitude of the erection...’”

Then Bobby Kennedy the Candidate went out and got killed.

In New York, Abbie, Jerry and I met with Tom Hayden to follow the news. Tom already had on his bedroom wall a framed telegram inviting him to the funeral of Martin Luther King. Now he would hang alongside that a framed telegram inviting him to the funeral of Bobby Kennedy.

The telegrams remain on his wall as a twin memorial to Tom Hayden’s respectability.

Hank Messick, in his book Lansky, wrote:

“(Meyer) Lansky first heard of young Richard Nixon in 1940. At Duke University where he studied law, Nixon was something of an introvert. He read love sfories instead of dating girls and dreamed of becoming an FBI agent. When J. Edgar Hoover turned down his application, he opened a law practice in Whittier, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, and was named police prosecutor. “Bugsy Siegel had his headquarters in Los Angeles and had a keen interest in all things relating to crime, police and courts. In 1940 Nixon married, but his restlessness grew. According to his biographer, Earl Mazo, ‘During a brief trip to Cuba he spent a bit of his vacation time exploring the possibilities of establishing law or business connections in Havana.’

“The circumstances can be dismissed as a coincidence. The fact that Lansky’s partner bossed crime in California and that in Cuba Lansky himself sat at the right hand of Batista (the U.S.supported dictator who was overthrown by Fidel Castro’s forces a couple of decades later) may mean nothing. Yet Whittier is a long way from Havana for a young lawyer in search of new connections.”

On August 2, then District Attorney Evelle Younger stated: “If irresponsible sources suggest through the news media the existence of a national or international conspiracy, responsible law-enforcement authorities ought to be allowed to discredit the purported claims.”

Robert Kaiser in his book R.F.K. Must Die wrote: “But of course no one had made any serious claims about a conspiracy. What Younger wanted (it

was an open secret around the courthouse) was free rein to comment on the Sirhan case before trial and thereby gain the kind of national publicity that would further his own political ambitions.”

There is currently pending a lawsuit against Younger for conspiracy to suppress evidence in that case. He is already Attorney General of California. He would like to be Attorney General of the United States. He was considered as a potential replacement for FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who recently died of an overdose of natural causes.

He has been replaced by Patrick Gray, the man who called off an investigation of the murder of Los Angeles Times reporter Ruben Salazar during a Chicano anti-war demonstration.

Bobby Kennedy supposedly told Mark Lane that if he became President he would appoint as Attorney General Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney who was smeared in his attempt to investigate the assassination of JFK. It’s a fact that when Bobby was killed, he was himself in the process of investigating how Richard Nixon actually got into power.

“In any case, with the wai approaching, there was little opportunity for either Nixon or Lansky in Havana. But people had their eyes on the young lawyer. Before the war ended, he was tapped to run for Congress. Murray M. Chotiner, later to be involved in a messy scandal concerning influence peddling and a man who represented top gangsters, was one of those who helped select Nixon.

“Later, Mickey Cohen, the man who succeeded Siegel in the West, was to boast that he and assorted mobsters gave money and other aid to Nixon in the early stages of his political career...”

Since Lansky owns most of Miami, the switching of the Republican Convention this year from San, Diego is merely the act of political power – the Lansky Crime Syndicate – shifting its weight while straddling America with one foot in California, the other in Florida, and a decaying scrotum hanging over Texas, busy pretending that its balls are bi-partisan.

Further on, Messick says that, as his brother’s Attorney General, Robert Kennedy’s Organized Crime Drive “had picked up Lansky’s trail in the Bahamas and in Las Vegas when, suddenly, in 1963 President Kennedy was murdered in Dallas. Under President Johnson, the pressure slackened somewhat. Lansky was still worried about Robert Keiinedy, however, but that danger ended in 1968 when another bullet ended the life of the syndicate’s most dangerous foe.”

Ironically, Abigail Folger, a few months before she herself was stabbed to death by Katie Krenwinkel under the careless supervision of Tex Watson, expressed her concern about the implications of an article by Floyd B. Nelson in the Los Angeles Free Press, particularly this survey:

“To know there are too many bullets [fired in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel where Bobby Kennedy was shot], one only has to count them. Just count the actual bullets – in the places where they were found – not the wounds, nor the bullet holes in the clothing. Just the bullets:

“One recovered (in fragments) from Kennedy’s head. (Good Samaritan)

“One recovered from the back of Kennedy’s neck. (Good Samaritan)

“One recovered (in fragments) from Paul Schrade’s head. (Kaiser)

“One recovered (in pieces) from Elizabeth Evans’ forehead. (Huntington) “One recovered from left side of abdomen of William Weisel. (Kaiser) “One recovered from left thigh of Ira Goldstein. (Encino)

“One recovered from lower left leg of Irwin Stroll. (Midway)

“Two recovered from center divider, pantry doors. (Clemente photograph) “One recovered from doorframe of door back of stage. (Wire Service photo) “TOTAL: Ten bullets from an eightshot revolver.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 60

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 26.

In February of this year, at the Uni-

versity of Missouri’s 4th Annual Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Symposium in Kansas City, Ed Sanders was introducing a song he had written about Bobby. “In the course of my research in Los Angeles,” he said, “it became evident that Robert Kennedy was killed by a group of people including Sirhan Sirhan.”

In his book, The Family, he’d written: “It is possible that the Process had a baleful influence on Sirhan Sirhan since Sirhan is known, in the spring of ‘68, to have frequented clubs in Hollywood in the same turf as the Process was proselytizing. Sirhan was very involved in occult pursuits. He has talked several times subsequent to Robert Kennedy’s death about an occult group from London which he knew about and which he really wanted to go to London to see.”

Now the Process was suing and pursuing Ed. I had never seen him so shaken. He ordered a full vegetarian dinner and Ihen couldn’t eat any of it. He was having trouble sleeping. He mumbled things to himself occasionally as though they were marginal notes describing his state of depression.

I recalled how cheerful he had been four years ago at that Yippie press conference when he was just one of the Fugs. In the carpeted hallway of the Americana, as a follow-up to that reporter’s question about cutting my hair, we had played a game of how open one might be to self-sacrifice in the pursuit of peace.

Ed won with this question: “Would you go down on a terminal leper if it would end the war?”

Certainly Vaughn Meader would. His new comedy album is called The Second Coming.

As for David Frye, he’s on the Johnny Carson show doing his impression of — Lyndon Johnson! Not Richard Nixon, because “he’s got enough problems.” Vaughn Meader may have been screwed when President Kennedy was killed, but David Frye isn’t even waiting for Nixon’s death before he stops doing his impression of him.

Did you know that the people who really run this country have been planning the assassination of President Nixon so that martial law could be declared?

Ex-police informer and provocateur Louis Tack wood stated in an interview to be published in, book form as The Glass House (edited by Donald Freed):

“They had an overall plan. You see, like I say, most of them are sergeants from the start, most of them make money you wouldn’t even believe, and their major plan, let me tell you, their

major plan is that they want a full police state. I don’t just mean California, but all over. They talk about it all the time. Total police state, you see my point. And when they get to the top of the organization, they’re saying that whenever it comes they’re going to be number one man, number two man, ‘I’m going to be up there making that big dough.’ See my point? Plus the prestige of having this. You know, ‘I’ll be in it.’ I’m saying, people who are involved are now looking at the future. ‘Wow, when do we get this police thing?’ They gotta plan working right now where they’re trying to figure out how can they get Nixon — it’s not just their plan, it’s a plan that came down through the channels — how to create it big enough to declare martial law.”

Don’t you think gangsters are capable of such behavior?

Isn’t it American Chauvinism to believe that the CIA and the Rand Corporation could systematically set up dictatorships in Vietnam and Greece but not here?

Do you imagine that the selection of Spiro Agnew as Vice-President in 1968 was not part of a deal?

Would you like to see him do his famous impression of Adolph Hitler?

How did the source of bullets in Dallas magically transform John Conally from a Democrat to a Republican?

Do you still blame the Yippies for putting Richard Nixon in the White House?

Do you accept the notion that organized crime was behind the killing of Bobby Kennedy?

Can you conceive the possibility that organized crime was behind the killing of Sharon Tate’s unborn child?

Would you rather bring Sharon Tate’s unborn child to life or prevent the assassination of Richard Nixon?

Why is it that when the CIA looks into the bathroom mirror all they see is the Mafia?

Is it possible for Meyer Lansky to be a Fascist and a Jew simultaneously?

Would you say that Charles Manson, when he got out of jail in the spring of ’67 and ended up in Haight–Ashbury, was a voluntary or an involuntary flower–child?

One night he was tripping heavily on acid at the Avalon Ballroom. It was a Grateful Dead concert. He was talking to Jerry Garcia in the lobby. A.hippie was sort of passing by, and Garcia said, “Spare change?” The hippie gave him a dime.

“See,” Garcia said to Manson, “we all look alike.”

At one point in their conversation, Manson used the adjective evil. Garcia responded: “There are no evil people. There are only victims.” It blew Manson’s mind. During the whole next set he lay on the floor, hypnotizing himself into a lump of no–thought as if to prevent his need for revenge from escaping.

Charlie Manson is the perfect reflection of a society that preaches law and order but practices the manipulation of justice:

And, like Nixon, he was chosen.

We’ll return to Armageddon in just a moment, but first this message from our new sponsor: If you’ve been having difficulty trying to decide whether to buy the mouthwash people hate the taste of or the mouthwash that people love the taste of, we’re proud to welcome Yin–Yang Mouthwash to the network...