New revelations from the recently released RFK files - Part 2
Hints of an earlier plot to kill RFK
By Lisa Pease
The 2025 release of new files on the RFK assassination contains key information pertinent to a curious report that emerged shortly after the assassination. After RFK was killed in Los Angeles in Mid-May 1968, a report circulated to a handful of tourists in a few random countries from Israel to Haiti and even smaller media in the US, indicating Senator Robert F. Kennedy had been shot while running for President. Given that this was three weeks before the actual assassination took place, I thought there might be an interesting thread there, but when you write a book, you can’t put in everything you know, so this was one of the many stories I decided not to investigate. However, newly released records give this report increased significance. I now believe those reports may have reflected an earlier, failed plot to kill RFK that did not come off, necessitating the action at the Ambassador Hotel in June.
On June 8, 1968, just two days after Senator Robert Kennedy had died, Philo Dibble, outwardly a Foreign Service Officer but evidently working for the CIA in Counterintelligence Operations in the Near East division (CIOP/NE), alerted the Department of State, the FBI, the White House Situation Room and several people at CIA, including James Angleton as the head of CI and the official CIA point person on the RFK assassination investigation (see my earlier article on the newly released files here) of a strange report. The releasing officer on this communication was Birch D. O’Neal. O’Neal was the chief of Angleton’s molehunting unit, the Special Investigations Group (SIG).
The FBI began receiving reports from countries that included Iraq, Syria, Czechoslovakia and even Haiti from US citizens who had recently been abroad that they had heard rumors that RFK had been “shot” in Los Angeles in Mid-May. One person reported hearing it on the BBC, and other reports indicate it might have come from a Reuters report. Most of the people reporting had heard this second-hand. So what happened in Mid-May to give rise to these reports?
Shortly after RFK finished a speech at Valley College in the San Fernando Valley in California on the evening of May 15, 1968, as he was leaving the scene in an open car, a projectile of some sort struck Kennedy in the head, but the object and his reaction varied widely in the reports.
According to the Reuters account, published in the Toronto Star on May 16, 1968: “Senator Robert Kennedy was reported struck by a pebble as he left a campaign meeting last night. The incident happened as New York Democrat’s [sic] open car moved out from Valley College.”
The Times Standard, published in Eureka, California, added a couple of details: “Senator Kennedy’s drive in California was marred by in its first hours when he was struck by a pebble apparently thrown by youngsters from a Los Angeles overpass under which he was driving in an open car. A Kennedy spokesman said he was not hurt.” This appears to be the version of the story the FBI used, as internal references talk of a “stone-throwing incident.”
Across the pond, papers in England and Ireland reported a story that seemed more serious in their wire versions:
“Senator Robert Kennedy was struck by a missile as he left a campaign meeting in Los Angeles last night.
“An eye witness [sic] said he was knocked to his knees inside his car by the impact. Police said he was not injured.” (The report, copied below from The Daily Mail in Hull, Humberside, England, also noted the crowd was so large that 5,000 people could not get in!)
It’s easy to see how an overly eager radio reporter, seeing that headline come across the wires, would report that Robert Kennedy had been “shot.” But no reports that I found suggested he had been hit by a bullet. That doesn’t mean someone wasn’t trying to kill him.
I remember going to Dealey Plaza for the first time, the spot where Bobby’s older brother, JFK, was shot. I was with a coworker who had also been a Marine sniper, and he was eager to explore the plaza with me. I asked him to “pick his spot,” and after we went behind the 90-degree angle of the picket fence on the “grassy knoll,” he said, “I don’t even need a gun. I could kill him with a stone from here.” So as I read these reports, it occurred to me that the hurler of the “missile” or “pebble” may have been someone with some expertise.
The LAPD’s Final Report says a “small missile (possible flash bulb)” reportedly struck RFK on the forehead. An FBI report says Officer P. J. Piampiano “saw the object and described it as very small.” A separate LAPD summary notes “An officer saw the object and reported that it was possibly a flashbulb.” (It’s curious that the object could not be definitively identified.) I also remembered from my research for my book A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy that bullets could be concealed in other objects.
I wondered if something could have been concealed in an object like a flashbulb designed to detonate on impact (like nitroglycerin), because a bomb threat to the event had been called in shortly before RFK spoke that night at the May 15 Valley College event.
A male had made an anonymous call to the LAPD’s West Valley division claiming his brother had been talking for a couple of weeks about planting some kind of explosive at “the Kennedy thing at Valley College.” He said his brother had left with a paper bag (according to an FBI report) or a “small suitcase containing a bomb” (per an LAPD report), and he had not seen him for three hours. “He’s talking like he’s going to blow up the auditorium,” the caller said.
The newly released RFK files allowed me to make a connection I couldn't have before because a key piece of info had been blacked out in the original release. I believe the call came not from a brother but from the would-be bomber himself, whom we now know—thanks to the 2025 file releases—was a student at Valley College and had literally been granted parole that same day under extraordinary circumstances. The Valley College info had been blacked out when the FBI’s report on this was released decades earlier.
On March 23, 1968, according to an FBI report dated June 6, 1968, Stephen Dale Ahern had called the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. RFK was scheduled to appear there on March 24. Ahern told the theater operator, “There is a bomb inside, it will go off tomorrow afternoon at 4:30 p.m.” He knew Kennedy was scheduled to speak there at 4:15 p.m. He then called the Los Angeles Times and told “whoever answered” that RFK would be shot. Next, he called American Airlines and said RFK would be shot when he got off the plane. Ahern then went to the airport to see Kennedy land and even shook his hand. Then he drove to the Greek Theatre and attended the entire rally. He told the FBI he originally made those three calls “to see what news” his reports would generate. That’s the end of his signed statement in the FBI files.
But right after that, in the same file, SA William J. Rehder added something extraordinary: The Monday after RFK’s appearance at the Greek Theatre, Ahern made an appointment with his psychiatrist, Dr. Cagle of the Oliveview [sic] Sanatorium, “to explain to Dr. Cagle that he had an urge to kill Senator Kennedy for some reason which he was unable to explain within himself.”
At this, Dr. Cagle notified Ahern’s probation officer, Officer Gottlieb (who does not appear to be related to Sidney Gottlieb, the head of CIA’s MKULTRA mind control and chemical research programs) to have Ahern’s probation suspended, begging the question of why he was on probation in the first place.
On May 9, 1968, Ahern was interviewed by two court-appointed psychiatrists who declared him sane. If Ahern were truly sane, then he was likely acting under a hypnotic compulsion, as I described in my book. That could be why he felt an “urge to kill Senator Kennedy” that made no sense to him logically. Did he attempt to follow through? With a small object, perhaps a tiny bomb that didn’t go off? Did he really not want to kill him, as indicated earlier, and the small object was simply innocuous?
The day of RFK’s appearance at Valley College, Ahern was put back on “active probation” under the supervision of Officer Gottlieb, under the condition that he would continue to see a psychiatrist. So he was essentially released on his own recognizance the very day RFK was to speak there. The bomb threat wasn’t called in until approximately 7:50 p.m., long after court had closed for the day, but shortly before RFK’s much delayed appearance there at 8:30 p.m.
Curiously, even after this bomb threat, and even though officers were “assigned to clear a walkway overpass,” Kennedy still was hit by something “very small,” as Officer P. J. Piampiano, who saw the object, described it, just as he went under an overpass at around 10 pm. “While passing under an overpass, a small object fell from overhead and struck him on the forehead. The object was possibly a flashbulb since there were numerous individuals taking pictures from the overpass.” Frank Mankiewicz, RFK’s press secretary, also said it was a flashbulb that had fallen “near” the Senator. RFK was not injured from this in any way.
So you have a student at Valley College with an urge to kill RFK released just in time for him to get to the event. True to pattern, he called in a bomb threat first. I don’t buy his explanation that he called in the earlier bomb threats to see what publicity that would generate. That sounds like the explanation someone gives when they’ve been hypnotized to do something but don’t know it, who invent explanations as to why they do seemingly crazy things. It appears Ahern was being set up to be either an assassin or a plausible patsy in a plot that didn’t come off on May 15.
It’s clear that the assassination of RFK on June 5 was the result of a carefully plotted, well-thought-out and possibly rehearsed plan, as I described in my book. So I’ve often wondered why Thane Cesar joined the plot so “late” – he only joined Ace Security, the company the Ambassador Hotel called to beef up their own security for the June 4 event, on May 25, 10 days after the Valley College incident and 10 days before the assassination of RFK on June 5. His last-minute arrival to the plot would make a lot more sense if there were one or more earlier plots that did not include him that had failed. Only then did Robert Maheu, perhaps in desperation, since the window of opportunity was rapidly closing, decide to use someone who could ultimately be linked back to himself (but who wasn’t until I first exposed the link with the publication of my book A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 2018).
Cesar had worked for Maheu at Bel Aire Security in Los Angeles when Howard Hughes lived there, before he moved to the Las Vegas desert. Cesar was reported to be one of Hughes’ bodyguards. Cesar was known to John Meier, a Hughes assistant, as one of Maheu’s men. Shortly after the assassination, Cesar’s name surfaced in a press report. When Meier brought up Cesar’s presence in the pantry, Maheu got very angry and told him never to mention that name again. Meier always called Maheu an “assassin” to me, to the point where I had to ask if Maheu had killed someone. “No, I mean he planned assassinations,” Meier told me, which explains why the CIA entrusted their Castro assassination plots to Maheu.
There are many more stories in the newly released RFK files, but one seems to dramatically overshadow the rest and will be the subject of the third article in this series.
Part 1 of this article may be read here.
