[2] My God, the Cosmos Shook

Allard K. Lowenstein encourages Senator Robert F. Kennedy to run for president but ends up wheeling him into the morgue. Years later, when he picks up the autopsy report, Lowenstein is stunned at what he finds. Through intimate private recordings, we follow Lowenstein as he begins questioning the official version of his friend’s murder.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Well, what are we listening to you here? We're listening
to an old PBS show called Firing Line with William F. Buckley,
who killed cock Robin. It is a lucky thing the
troops haven't raised the question. Buckley was an important conservative thinker.
He was the founder and editor of the National Review,
and he had a talk show and everybody would demand

(00:28):
a new trial for a chicken little It is an
old story in respect of John F. Kennedy, who was
apparently killed not by Lee Harvey Oswald but by a
grassy gnole. There are also the serious revisionists, and one
such as are venerable young antagonist Aled Lonstein, who does

(00:48):
not believe that Robert Kennedy was in fact killed by
Sieur Han Siohan. Lonstein was educated at the University of
North Carolina, became a lawyer at Yale. He was in
was for one term, but right now he is spending
most of his time on the re examination of the
death of Robert Kennedy. His old friend Buckley's guest is ELLERD. Lowenstein.

(01:11):
It's nineteen seventy five, seven years after Robert Kennedy's death.
A slack begin by askings Lonstein whether there is any
reason to believe there is a motherload down their vital
information for America. If yours the mises are correct. What
I found when I started to look at this case

(01:32):
is clearly the tip of something. Whether it's an iceberg
or whether it's a simple pin that has a tip,
I don't know. All one can honestly say is that
since the facts don't fit the present version, I think
you have to pursue what the facts are wherever they lead.
I still fatsize, when I'm not careful to look at

(01:55):
the facts, that it was a lone assassin, that nothing
else was involved. I do that because I was condition
to believing that. I suppose, I want so much to
believe it. When I was in Congress, my arrogance and
retrospect is almost embarrassing to even admit, because I was
convinced only people who were really unhinged would plunge on
in this ghoulish way. And so on. My wife said

(02:15):
the other day that I'm now in transit from being
former congressman to being current Coop. And you have that
sense as you listen to the way in which anyone
who raises these questions is stigmatized. It is not cooky.
It is not irresponsible, It is not flamboyance or dogma
to raise these questions. These are questions which have to
be faced. You're listening to the RFK tapes. I'm zach

(02:43):
start Pontier and I'm Bill Klayper. So what are we
doing today? Though? Today on the program, we're going to
follow Elerd Lonstein, who is the first major political figure
to start asking questions about the RFK Merman, And we're
going to learn about the case too. Are you're gonna
finally tell me what this grapping season? What all the
problems are? Let me tell you some of it? All right? Well,

(03:03):
what kind of stuff are you gonna tell me? Why
are you asking me all these questions? Just to wait?
Stick around, you'll find out, all right, Um, all right,

(03:28):
I'm very very cautious on microphones. It's harmless anyway. This
is a tape of an interview with Alard Lowenstein made
by author Gene Stein, just weeks after Kennedy's death. Remember
that conversation. It's about you talking to Bobby urging him
to run in New Hampshire. They're talking about the year
before when Robert Kennedy was a senator from New York

(03:49):
and hadn't yet entered the presidential race. I mean said
he wouldn't run unless it was some unfortnit you remember
you tell that. Well. He said that he would not
run unless they were accepting the event of some unforeseeable circumstance.
And so I just marched in and I said, I'm
an unforeseen circumstance. Now will you run? Lowenstein was a

(04:11):
well known liberal Democrat and a friend of Robert Kennedy,
but when he approached Kennedy to run for president, Kennedy said,
it can't be put together. I just glared at him,
and I said, we will understand. Of course, those of
us that think the honor and direction of the country
are at stake, don't give a damn whether you think
put together or not. I said, so now we're gonna

(04:32):
do it without you. When that's too bad, because you
could have been president of the United States. Would I
turned like any sort of fly landing on an elephant
and flew out, he said, staring out after me, and
but most for me, turning around his hand on I

(04:55):
should him and he just said, well, he said, I
hope you understand I want to do it, and that
I know what you're doing is what should be done,
but I just can't do it. So what is Lowenstein doing.
He's trying to get someone to run against President Lyndon Johnson. Why, well,
he's trying to end a little thing known as the
Vietnam War. I came here to speak to you about Vietnam.

(05:24):
The war was in full swing. The US military may
now have to rethink basic technical and strategic concepts, and
Vietnam troops may have to be redeployed. There were over
half a million American soldiers over there, and they were
coming back in bodybags by the thousands. We have sought
to strengthened free people against domination by aggressive foreign powers.

(05:47):
The majority of Americans thought that we had to stand
up to the communists somewhere in Vietnam had become that somewhere.
The United States is therefore prepared to take all necessary steps,
including the use of armed forces, in defense all freedom.

(06:09):
But both Lowenstein and Johnson were Democrats, right, Yeah, so
it's a little bit of a brave, controversial thing for
Loestein to do, then go after the sitting president of
his own party. Yeah, and to get rid of Johnson,
Lowenstein needed to find someone to run against him, and
Bobby had told them, now yep. So he found Senator

(06:30):
Eugene McCarthy from Minnesota. And the entire history of this
war in Vietnam, no matter what we call it, has
been one of continued error and of misjudgment. The first
primary who was in New Hampshire, and nobody thought Senator
McCarthy had any kind of chance against President Johnson. But
when the results came in, Johnson won, but by only

(06:50):
seven points. Here we go. Robert Kennedy looked at those
results and he saw the unforeseen circumstance. I am announcing
today my candidacy of the presidency of the United States.
The remarkable New Hampshire campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy has

(07:12):
proven how deep are the president of visions within our
party and within our country. Until that was publicly clear,
my presence in the race would have been seen as
a clash of personalities rather than issues. But now that
that fight is won over policies which I have long

(07:33):
been challenging, I must enter that race. And then just
two weeks later, I shall not see and I will
not accept the nomination of my party for another term
as your president. President Johnson drops out of the race.
Good night, and God bless all of you. Lowenstein gets

(07:55):
what he wants, except now he's caught between McCarthy and Kennedy.
Soon after Kennedy joined the race, Lonstein found himself on
a bus with Kennedy on the way to a campaign event.
I got on the bus and he was sitting there
and Times had announced that day I was going to switch.

(08:16):
The New York Times had published an article saying Lonstein
was about to join the Kennedy campaign. And he was
all smiled and waving at me. He dragged me over.
Nice said, don't smile at me. I said, don't believe anything.
You're reading the New York Times. And he said, well,
you're gonna switch, aren't you. And I said, I looked
at him Nice, I'd rather fight than switch. And he

(08:40):
pulls me into the seat and he starts jabbing at me,
and he says, now come on, he said, and we
went through the hole in McCarthy discussion again, and I
got up and I left him at the back of
the bus and a note came back, and I thought,
who the hell is sending me a note on a bus?
And it was from Kennedy and I opened the thing,
and what it was was this extraordinary note. It's just
it said to al who taught us, who knew the

(09:04):
lesson of Emerson and taught us. To the rest of us,
you should get the note. I'm gonna shrew it up.
But it's something like they did not see, nor did
thousands of young men pressing to the barriers of their careers.
Yet see that if a single man planned himself on
his convictions and there abide, the huge world will come
round to him. And I said from his friend Von Kennedy,

(09:27):
Lowenstein wouldn't switch. So Kennedy started the campaign without him.
Robert Kennedy has always fought for the family farmer. Now
I'm joining a tremendous amount, just personally for the farmer,
which ten children. You do well in Indiana, but the
farmer does well in Indiana. We're going to do better
in New York. How can we make the people in

(09:49):
the city understand our problem? Well? He left me to
President United Look, Indiana, I can't choose the next president
of the United States. Then while Kennedy was in Indianapolis,
something terrible happened. Could you lower those signs please? I

(10:10):
have some very sad news for all of you, and
that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was
killed tonight in Memphis. In cities across America, riots were
breaking out. The crowd in Indianapolis was mostly black, and
there was a fear that the news of doctor King's
death could provoke violence, but Kennedy was determined to talk

(10:33):
to them. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love
and to justice between fellow human beings. He died and
the cause of that effort. For those of you who
are black and are attempted to be filled with hatred

(10:55):
and distrust of the injustice of such an act against
all white people, I would only say that I can
also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling.
I had a member of my family killed, but he
was killed by a white man. That night, there were

(11:16):
no riots in Indianapolis. What we need in the United
States is not hatred. What we need in the United
States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and
wisdom and compassion toward one another, feeling of justice toward
those who still suffer within our country, whether they be

(11:39):
white or whether they be black. A couple days later,
many American politicians and civil rights leaders gathered at the
Evan Easter Baptist Church in Atlanta for the funeral of
Martin with the King. Kennedy and McCarthy were there, and

(12:03):
so was Lowenstein. See if I can remember, I think
Kennedy was one pew. One was one pew ahead of
the other, I mean lower down. I think that Kennedy
was a pew ahead, and McCarthy was with his wife.
Did you said you felt like hiding under well, I
didn't hear all my heroes gathered in one twice. It
seemed a bit much. And we sang earnestly, tenderly Jesus

(12:25):
is calling, which has to be the most moving him
in the world. You know that you should really use
that in your book. Earnestly Tenderly Jesus is calling. You
know that calling for you and for me. And it
ends up calm home, Calm home, Ye who are weally,

(12:46):
come home? Come home. So it is the most extraordinary
hero to sing it right after Martin King had died
and you, who are weary, come home. I mean that
was when everybody broke broke apart, And I think that

(13:07):
was the moment of that church. Everything after that was
sort of redundant. But you were going to say what
Bobby said about are you talking about? Yeah? I don't
think he said thinking of me. He hadn't said to
people before. But it was this um, the sense of imminence,

(13:33):
of the eminence of the possibility of death. It's totally
untrue to say that he had any premonitions at all,
but what he did have was just an awareness and
an acceptance and a feeling that this made life something
that you live now and you have to do what

(13:55):
you what you can do. So I'm not happy to
We will talk some more. And that's the end of
that tape. That you initially went to Kennedy and asked
him to run and that he turned you down. Is
that accurate? It is, but it isn't. But since we're
not going to get into all that in the book.
For the point of this, the point of visibly to

(14:16):
set the context, the tape you're hearing now is Lowenstein
discussing his investigation into Robert Kennedy's murder for a book
he's writing. The book was never published, and these tapes
have never been heard by anyone outside his family. Reconstruct
what happened here the night of Joan Chourth thanks to
sixty eight. We were at a large election returns party,

(14:40):
and it seemed clear by the time we left the
party that he was winning, that Rob Kennedy was winning.
Right here, Lonstein and his wife Jenny speak to Lonstein's
co author. They start with that faithful night of the
California primary. The two of them were at home in
New York and Lonestein was talking on the phone. Now

(15:00):
the phone call is going on when the operator breaks
in and says, I have an emergency phone call. Will
you please hang up? I have an emergency phone call
from Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and I never had a
phone well interrupted that way. Before we hang up, television
is across the hall in that room, and Kennedy is

(15:21):
on the television. We want to deal with our own
problems within our own country, and we want Pete in Vietnam.
Phone rings again two minutes later, and Stick Goodwan Dick
Goodwin was an advisor to Robert Kennedy. Goodwin says, why
do you chatter so much on the phone, Bob? He
always calls him, Bob. Bob has been trying to reach

(15:41):
you for an hour. He's gone down to make his
victory statement, but would you please stay off the phone,
because as soon as he gets back up here, he
wants to talk to you. I go upstairs. Jenny was
in the bedroom and we're talking on the bed. Sitting there.
We were having this very soulful conversation about what ALP

(16:04):
thoughts about Robert Kennedy, and I said to Jenny, I
don't know why I love this man this much. I
love him so much. I love him more than anyone
in public life. He means more than any public figure
since missus Roosevelt. I mean more than me than any
public figures and selling a Roosevelt. The phone rings as

(16:26):
I said that, and I said, well, he certainly picked
a very good line to come in on. I picked
the phone up and I said, wow, you really pulled
it off. And if someone calling, tell me he's been shocked.

(16:52):
We ran downstairs and the television was going for a
lobby audio. People are crying, and we stayed up all
night in tears, trying to find something something to say
that all Goodwin called me back. He said you ought

(17:13):
to get out here right away, and so I left
the next morning for California. On the flight out. They
kept having bullet rooms about his health. That is, about
every hour they interrupt the flight and they'd say optimistic
things anyone. So I got off the plane and I

(17:34):
didn't know what to expect, but I was hopeful when
I got out that something might be Salvage. Lowenstein lands
in Los Angeles and is driven to Good Samaritan Hospital.
I go up to the fifth floor where he is.
I remember one thing about that that I don't mind
telling you. I don't want to discuss being on fifth
floor very much because it's all self serving. I think
that whole business is thing and I was there when
he died, is really a bit thick. There was one

(17:58):
magazine on that floor was sitting on a table, the
only one that I saw, and it was the Life
magazine dealing with the assassination of Martin Luther King. Senator
Robert Francis Kennedy died at one forty four am today,

(18:22):
June six, nineteen sixty eight, with Senator Kennedy at the
time of his death his wife Ethel. He was forty
two years old when he died. I walked out and

(18:50):
I got onto the elevator on the fifth floor as
the body was wheeled on on a moving cut with
the body was Edward Kennedy. I was crying, sort of
out of control, not sort of moderately. The elevator went

(19:12):
to the basement. As we got to the basement, it
turned out that the body was being wheeled into the
autopsy room, and I walked with it with Kennedy till
they went in. And I left the hospital having left
the body on the autopsy room, having no notion that
five or six years later, when I finally read the autopsy,

(19:35):
you would say what propelled me into this whole business?
Based on the evidence that we have available to this day,
and all the credible evidence that we had, we are
satisfied that Sirhan baschera Seranne is the murderer Senator Robert
Kennedy and only he alone is the murderer. In nineteen
sixty nine, when the trial of sir answer, had you

(19:56):
react to that at it in any way? I wanted
him and guest. That was my complete and total reaction.
So Lowenstein, like everyone else, said, hey, they got the
guy gun in hand, no doubt about it. I felt
it was inexcusable to allow its being to live. That
was that, and over the next few years, A few

(20:17):
people started raising questions about what happened that night, but
not Lowenstein. I had nothing to do with the assassination inquiries.
It was much too painful, and I was convincing when
it raise. It was being ghoulish. And I think that
all of that would have stayed permanently of my attitude
until the enemy list, the enemy's list that's coming up

(20:44):
after the break. Having lost a close one eight years
ago and having want to closet one this year, I
can say this winning is a lot more five. So,

(21:06):
in nineteen sixty eight, after Kennedy had been killed, Richard
Nixon became President of the United States, The war in
Vietnam went on, and yeah, we got tricky Dick. And
then a few years later Watergate happened. Five people have
been arrested and charged with breaking into the headquarters of
the Democratic National Committee in the middle of the Knife.

(21:28):
It was well known that Lowenstein had no great love
for Nixon. Now I'm convinced the president is guilty of
a great number of these offenses and should do modem office,
but I'm not the court. And during the Watergate hearings,
it became public that the Nixon administration had something called
an enemy's list, a list of people that Nixon wanted
to get, and he was willing to use the Justice Department,

(21:50):
IRS or anything else to go after these people in
some way or another. And number seven on that list
was former Congressman Ellard Lowenstein. The trip wire that made
me feel that I should look at things was precisely
the fact that if there was someone in the highest,

(22:13):
most sacred office willing to use power so improperly on
someone as obscure as I, what made me think that
weren't other people in less high office willing to use
power improperly against major figures. And in that event, don't
I owe it to look at what may have occurred

(22:34):
in the case of the assassination? Lonstein looked at how
Nixon had abused his power, and it raised his suspicions
into the murder of his old friend Robert Kennedy. I
went into this convinced that I would find there was
nothing to it, and that would put my mind to ease.
I would have done my duty, was what I thought
it was, to deal with this difficult question and be

(22:55):
finished with it. So the first thing he does is
he takes a look at Robert Kennedy's autopsic report, and
he described it something as the world moved, or I
forget his exact worlds, but I remember what I said
was my God, the cosmos shook. But it was true
the first time I read that. The repercussions to me
of having my cosmology, not the cosmology, but my cosmology's

(23:18):
suddenly shaken by the discovery that everything I always assumed
now I had to be re examined. The autopsy findance
they vealed that there were three gunsh at looms. Here's
Thomas Nagucci. He was the corner of Valley County and
he's the one that did the autopsy on a gunsh at.

(23:41):
One was found that behind light ear and were abundance
of a powder a deposit on the edge of the
right ear. From the gunpowder deposits on Kennedy's ear, Nogucci
could determine how far away the gun was when it

(24:03):
was fired, and we came to conclusion that the muzzle
distance would be, which was how far one inch one
inch from the light ear. The autopsy says that the
bullet that killed sign of Kennedy ended at one inch

(24:24):
from behind his right ear, as Pierce Lowenstein on the
Buckley Show again and that he was hit by three bullets,
all of the fire at point blank range. A fourth
went through his right shoulder pad. Every credible eyewitness consists
that what they saw was that Sir Hand was standing
at an average of two feet to a yard away

(24:44):
and in front. And when you tell them that the
bullets went in from behind in an inch, they flatly
say that there is no way Sirhan could have fired
those bullets the people closest in. And it's worth perhaps
stressing this point. One is was the assistant made d
Carl Yuker. We start going, I'm leading Santa Kennedy, leading

(25:07):
him towards the kitchen. Carl Yuker was matri d in
the hotel, a German fellow, and he was either given
the job or assumed the job of leading Kennedy through
the pantry and right here and saying, as a sendor,
we have to go now, and he starts looking at me,
and we start going at the same times when somebody
moved into maybe between the the steam table and myself.

(25:32):
I hit one shot and I thought it wasn't a
fire crack or something, and I heard the second shot
going off, and then I realized I saw that gun.
Carl Juker hears two shots, and after the second shot
he grabs her hand and grabs the gun hand and
wrestled them down to the steam table. I had to
his hand with a gun in. I pushed him down
and put him over the steam table. And here's her

(25:54):
hand starts shooting very rapidly. So wait, slow this down
for me. Where was Yuker when Kennedy was shot? He
was standing between Sir Han and Kennedy. And if anybody
knew where the gun was, it was Yuker. And where
did he say? It was about the foot and a
half I would say foot and a half two feet,

(26:16):
So there was a foot and a half to two
feet from Kennedy's Yes, but if the bullet which the
autopsy said from doctor Nigucci, that the bullets must have
been about an inch away from his head. No, Shan
never came that close to Kennedy. A man came up
from in front of him or where the direction that

(26:36):
he was going in, and the shot started sort of
approached the senator from the front, and he was sort
of smiling. Then suddenly it seemed like there was one shot. Now,
how far was Sir Hand from Senator to Kennedy at
the time, I would say approximately from three to six feet.
I was astonished at the autopsy, which completely jolded me.

(26:58):
More astonished when I talked I witnesses who reiterated that
there was no way that anyone but Sirhan could have
done it because they saw him doing it, and proceeded
to tell me that he was standing here shooting this way,
thinking that would calm my concerns. None of them could
explain the autopsy. I then thought the autopsy must be wrong.
It was to step by step that I was obliged

(27:18):
to realize that short of closing my mind totally, there
was no way that I could accept the official version.
By this time, both Sirhan and the police files for
the case had long been locked away, So Lonesteam flies
to Los Angeles to present his questions to the district attorney.
I want, like a child who apparent expecting and hoping

(27:40):
to be able to say, well, look, this is what
this is, and this is what that is. And I'd
come out of it with the sense that there was
no reason not to accept the official interpretation or answers,
and I got there. It was a very large meeting.
There wasn't like there was one man there. They had
their whole staff. They're expert on this. They're expert on that.
Their pr man in what it called the Surhand room

(28:01):
where they had some of the trappings of the case,
and they tried to show me artifacts which would be
impressive and show me how careful they bends. Now in
that session, they were not prepared to concede the merits
of any of the questions. In effect, they said then
what they said, ever since the business about their own

(28:22):
coops and nuts are raising the questions and self seeing people,
They told Lonstein only kops and nuts were raising questions.
We had a sort of almost like a tag battle
over some of the things that were clearly on the record,
where they flatly said things weren't on the record that
were on the record. Now, after going through all that,

(28:44):
realized that there were two possibilities. One was they didn't
know the case, or they were deliberately trying to mislead me.
There was no third possibility. Lonestein felt that either they
didn't know what they were talking about, or they were lying.
He walked out of the Surhan room more suspicious than
when he walked in. And I remember driving that night

(29:09):
through a dark mountain road to Malibu, over the edge
of the rim of the mountains the coast or a
friend and saying that this. I couldn't deal with this
because my cosmology depended on not having conspirators destroying the

(29:30):
democratic process. And yet now I couldn't, as a matter
of faith any longer simply assert that it had to
be looked into. I had to deal with the question
of how much was I prepared to do? How DoD
it's a private citizen investigate of anything as mammoth as this.
How do you get the resources? Where do you go next?

(29:53):
What do you do? Next? Week? On the RFK Tapes,
Lowenstein figures out what to do. The Alard came here
and slept on that sofa, and I became interested in
the whole truth of this, and me and Bill hit

(30:15):
the road for California. Crimetown is Me, Zack start Pontier
and Mark Smerlin. The RFK Tapes is made in partnership
with Cadence thirteen. This show is produced by Jesse Rudoy,
Bill Klaiber, Ulla Kulpa, and Ryan Murdoch. Our Senior producer

(30:36):
is Austin Mitchell, editing by Mark Smerlin, fact checking by
James Williamson. This episode was mixed, sound designed and scored
by Kenny Qciak. Additional music by John Quciak. Our title
track is Maria Tambien by Krungman. Our credit track this
week is Pressure by Corners. Music supervision by Josh Kessler

(31:03):
and Dylan Bostick at Heavy Duty Projects. Archival footage courtesy
of the Hoover Institution, the University of North Carolina and
the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Archival research
by Brennan Reese. Our intern is Kevin Shephard. A very
special thanks to Kate, Jenny and the entire Lowenstein family.

(31:25):
Thanks to Gene Claibour, Emily Wiedeman, Green Card Pictures, Alessandro Santoro,
Jennifer Scarbeck, Aaron Smithers, Judith Ferrar, Paul Schrade and the
team at Caden's Thirteen. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at the RFK Tapes. For additional content and
a full list of credits, visit RFKA tapes dot com

(31:49):
for more information on the Robert Kennedy Murder Pick up
a copy of Bill's book shadow Play from Saint Martin's Press.
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