The interview with Prof. Melanson was done in the rooms of the RFK Assassination Archive, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth: N. Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300, USA. Phone: +1-508-999-8686.

"I'm a professor of Political Science here at the University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth. I've written 5 books on American political assassinations including the RFK case. I'm the chair of the committee that oversees the archives here. We are the largest collection in the world and the most complete and the richest and have all the official files here as well as private papers and audio tapes and video tapes. It is a marvellous resource for students, for the public and for interested researchers and journalists like yourself. We get a lot of inquiries and a lot of use. This is the only place where all the material is together and is publicly accessible and complete. There are collections on other places, but it deserves a central facility for this case."

How much does the university support the archive?

"We have indirect support by the university, in that Helen Koss, who is our archivist, is employed by the university. It does a lot of work on this collection. Mostly our funding comes from private university sources, the library associates group gives us money to operate, the alumni association gives us money, the university research committee, so we don't have really a specific budget for the RFK collection. We do it on our own."

Can you show us something from the archive?

"We have the 50,000 page LA Police file, which wasn't released til 1988. We have 32,000 pages of FBI documents. That wouldn't make it very accessible, but we have indices that list the names of witnesses and subject matter, so that anyone can access both the LAPD and FBI files in terms of what they interested in. Then we have an index to the hundreds and hundreds of hours of tape recordings that we have, which includes documentaries, witnesses interviews, the original investigative interviews, some of these which were taped by the LAPD. We also have several hundred hours of videotape. And these indices make it all accessible for the public. We have a huge collection of photographs. You can see here not only police photos, but FBI photos. This is a photo of the actual struggling for Sirhan's gun just after the shooting. These are photos of the crime scene, we have several hundred of them.

Who took these photos?

"The FBI and the LAPD. What we're missing, what history and the rest of us are missing is, that there is no photograph of the actual shooting as it is taking place. There is no still photo, there is no film. But there may have been such photos. But if they were, they were lost or destroyed."

Why would they have been destroyed?

"It's possible that they're destroyed. There is a young man who was taking pictures during the shooting, by his account and by other witnesses. His film was returned with pictures before the shooting and after the shooting. But the authorities don't know what happened to the pictures that might have been of the shooting. I can only say, historically, that if the authorities had a real picture of the real shooting, they should have been joyous to release it because it would have proved their point. If, on the other hand, they have a picture showing that Sirhan was not where they said he was, or there was other sinister looking people, they may well have suppressed that evidence."

"These are the raw files that the index will lead researchers to. In these boxes are the actual documents from LAPD and from the FBI. Many of them are censored, sometimes foolishly, sometimes a lot of material is missing. We had the luxury of receiving some FBI documents that were placed in archives in California that were not censored. The ones that we received here was censored. So, for 300 pages we had the fun of getting an insight into what is it the FBI did not want us to see. It wasn't anything earthshaking, but it was very interesting in terms of the secrecy of US Government. And we have a trial transcript, which is a very important resource. It's not secret but it's 10,000 pages, and you can't access it in California conveniently. It's sort of locked up. So we have that here which is very important for researchers."

Was the release of these documents voluntary?

"In 1984, when we opened this archive, we opened with a private collection from California. And at that point, every single piece of paper was officially locked up in the case. Between 1984 and 1988, it took energetic efforts by citizens and the help of the archive partitioning to get the FBI files, the DA files and the LAPD files released. And I would say: the FBI did not resist because the law made them disclose the files. What they resisted was doing it for free. They tried to make us pay huge amounts by not granting us a waiver, even though we're a public institution. We had to get political intervention from Congressmen. We got that then. The LAPD, though, severely resisted. They lobbied, they said it would violate privacy, national security, they tried to sabotage our appearance in LA before the commissions that would do the releasing. So it was a very tough fight and took four years to accomplish. But now, the only things that we don't have are not the things that are were withheld, but the things which have been taken from the files or destroyed while they were in secret for 20 years. We have everything that there is to get, but still there is a lot missing."

Do you have anything else here?

"This is a collection of books on the assassinations. Unlike the JFK case (there are six hundred or more books written on that subject) this has a very small literature. I don't know the exact count, but I would say, even given the lowest circulation books, it is probably not more than fifty, which is rather interesting. And I would also say, that of those fifty, five are worthwhile and forty-five are so inaccurate or sensational or poorly done, they're not worthwhile. So, this is a case where, unlike the JFK case, the average reader, the interested person has difficulty finding a good treatment of the case in print. We have all of the books here. And here the people can compare what the authors say to what the officials said in the record."

Why is there more interest in the JFK assassination?

"Well, there are several reasons for that. One is that RFK was not a President, only a presidential candidate. But I think, the major thing is that Oswald was seen as a mystery character. There were questions about where the shots came from. In this case, it seemed so simple with that smoking gun and a man was arrested and he confessed and there was a trial. And the officials were able to use that as propaganda, to say the only people who think there is a conspiracy are those nuts because...look how simple the case is! And I think, the public, absent of the real data which was locked up for twenty years, came to believe that and rightly so. It was a major propaganda effort by the officials to say this is a simple case and we've solved it. Today, one of the problems is that people think that where had these questions been if they weren't raised originally? They don't realise that we've faced twenty years of secrecy and that some of the issues are now coming out. Public awareness of the problems in this case is frankly very, very low compared to the JFK case."

Why doesn't anyone argue for the conspiracy theory?

"It's partly a difficulty in bringing this to public attention. I've written a book, several other people have written books. But in President Kennedy's case, you've had thirty years of books, documentaries, re-investigations. One of the things in this case is that no one outside the original investigation force; the LAPD and FBI; no one beyond LA, beyond the officials who give us the original version, has ever looked at this case: not the US Congress, not the FBI, no one has re-investigated. So I think the public think maybe there is nothing to be re-investigated if the Government or somebody hasn't re-investigated. And in fact, that's not the case. So, there is a lack of interest, even today. One of the problems is as follows, I think: Oswald died before he could be brought to trial, and he may have had a different version of the events and he didn't it present to us. James Earl Ray never got a trial, and now he's claiming he is innocent in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and he wants a new trial. Sirhan Sirhan is sitting in jail, saying 'I did it, I just want to be paroled'. I think, the public thinks: if the man who was sentenced says that he did it, why do these other people, myself included, allege to know more about the events that occurred? He would know. There are complex reasons for that, that we might go into. But Sirhan ironically himself is one of the biggest obstacles to public consciousness about the issues of this case."

Would you care to share a conspiracy theory?

"My theory about Sirhan's involvement is that he was definitely firing a gun and therefore should have been convicted of some kind of attempted murder if in fact they couldn't prove diminished responsibility. But I see Sirhan basically as a pawn in a conspiracy. My view is that while he was there shooting he didn't mastermind a plot to kill RFK. He was not a conscious participant with others where he was recruited into a plot. I see him as someone who is/was manipulated through his mind largely, through hypnosis, to shoot, firing a gun, to be a distraction for others who assassinated RFK. Unfortunately, Sirhan doesn't know enough about that to be able to provide leads or show leads on it for us and it is something that people other than Sirhan will have to try to figure out."

Who are your colleagues here?

"Helen Koss, a part time student helper. She's currently writing a book, 'The trial of Sirhan Sirhan'."

How much material do you have here?

"Two hundred tapes, one hundred books, five hundred plus photos."

When did you start to doubt the official version?

"I started thinking differently about this case back in 1976 as a reviewer for a magazine. I was sent a book by William Turner and John Christian, called 'The Assassination of RFK'. I read it and it was mind boggling and I thought: if this is true, if these authors are correct, this case is as controversial, it has as many questions as President Kennedy's assassination. But I didn't really know if the authors were telling the truth, I hadn't researched it. Then I begun doing research in the case in about 1982 or 1984 when I was recruited by the late Greg Stone, who was an aid to Congressman Allan Lowenstein. And Stone and Lowenstein along with Paul Schrade, a shooting victim in the assassination and friend of Senator Kennedy, they had all been pursuing these issues and they recruited me into the case. And that's when we began doing interviews and trying to get the documents released. But it was that one book that brought it to my attention. If I as a sceptical political scientist who knew there were controversies in the president's shooting, if it took me 8 years to even realise that there were controversies in the RFK case; and when I read a book I can fully understand how there are people, the majority of the public perhaps, who haven't come to that realisation yet."

What was Robert Kennedy's importance then and now?

"We have to remember: he was the most effective spokesperson against the Vietnam War. He had run a presidential campaign that opposed the US war policies, and while there were others with those views, he was the only one who had a chance of being elected president. He was also the only candidate that youth and minorities and united farmworkers and a whole bunch of folks felt he was really sincerely for their causes and would help them if elected. He had a constituency that other politicians just didn't share. Also as we may all know he was perhaps the last charismatic presidential candidate, the most charismatic from that year to the present. My view is that RFK would have been elected President if he had not been assassinated. We must recall that Hubert Humphrey, who got the nomination when Kennedy was shot, Humphrey almost beat Richard Nixon to the White House. It was a very close election; no doubt in my mind that had RFK been the nominee of the party, he was so much more effective than Humphrey, he would have been President. The importance of his issues during the campaign was crucial. The fact that we were deprived of a Kennedy presidency, whether you like or dislike it, is of momentous consequence historically. And at that time he was also an irreplaceable political commodity to particular enemies, if we look at the negative side. If you were organised crime in the US and you saw RFK headed back to Washington, you must have thought at that point that you had to do something because it would be intolerable. Because the Kennedy administration under John and Robert had attacked organised crime like no other administration. There were certain enemies that they had energised when President Kennedy was there. And I think his tough stands at the time of his assassination were unique too."

Could you explain this point about organised crime?

"Specifically organised crime was a major enemy. They had talked about assassinating President Kennedy and they talked about assassinating RFK when he was Attorney General because of the vigorous war on crime that the Kennedy administration pursued. With RFK possibly coming back to the White House, organised crime, which had always been his enemy, would be very high up in the list of suspects. RFK was opposing the Vietnam War very vigorously. We have the whole Oliver Stone thesis about the military-industrial complex assassinating President Kennedy. Without saying if it's true or not, the fact is that it was RFK who had the vigorous opposition to the war and would have made enemies of those who wanted to continue the present policies, whether they were in the Pentagon or in the intelligence community. Also RFK had made very dangerous enemies in the CIA when he was in the White House as his brother's advisor. The Kennedy brothers shook up the CIA severely after the Bay of Pigs, they fired some of it's legendary heroes, and RFK had control of the CIA to a certain extent. So he had made a lot of enemies there as well. And further down the list: we have the powerful ranchers in the West for whom Kennedy's support of the United Farmworkers was intolerable. Kennedy's stand on civil rights had energised those hate groups such as the KKK and the American Nazi Party. All of his stands brought him enemies, enemies of the kind that contains, within their groups, people who wouldn't hesitate to kill or to use violence. I believe that it was without knowing which of those groups, I don't know which of those groups, the LAPD doesn't know, the FBI does not know and history does not know, but it may have been an amalgamation. If we know that the CIA and organised crime co-operated to try to assassinate Fidel Castro, it is certainly thinkable that elements of one or more of these groups co-operated to assassinate RFK. But the enemies were very real and very formidable."

And RFK's importance today?

"RFK's importance nowadays is that he left a political legacy of taking on very difficult issues, championing for those who do not have power in this political system. And while there are a lot of people like President Clinton who use the Kennedy legacy or refer to it, I don't see anybody of presidential calibre who embodies the Kennedy legacy. I don't see someone running for President in the US who says, 'My constituency is disadvantaged groups, youth, I'm opposing military build-up...'. We talk about percentage now. RFK was in a very different category. So his legacy is there and it is drawn upon. But I don't see it being pursued actively by anybody of presidential stature. There is not a RFK in the issues sense or even in the charisma sense in the American political system today nor has there been since his assassination."

What evidence is there for a conspiracy?

"There are several categories of evidence which suggest to me that there was a second gun. First of all, and most compellingly I think, all of Sirhans bullets were accounted for. He had eight shots to fire, seven bullets were removed from the bodies of the shooting victims, there were five people shot as well as Senator Kennedy, that makes six. Seven bullets were recovered from their bodies, and one bullet, according to the officials, was lost in the ceiling. If there were any bullets recovered from the crime scene, there would be too many bullets for Sirhans gun. And we have overwhelming evidence, I think, that there were other bullets there. FBI agent William Bailey has stated that he saw what would be too many bullets, lodged in a doorframe. We have photographs identifying bullets in a doorframe. We have reporters and witnesses and even police officers who said, 'yes, there were bullets in that doorframe. So there are too many bullets for Sirhan's gun."

"Secondly, the best evidence, in my mind, shows that Sirhan Sirhan's bullets could not have killed RFK. Sirhan Sirhan was in front, he fired from one to six feet away, depending on your perspective, and RFK was hit from behind, at a sharply upward angle, at point-blank range. Sirhan Sirhan was in the wrong place. There were more bullets than could have been fired by his gun. And the joke is that we have several solid witnesses who saw another gun. Three witnesses, one more since my book, alleged that a man in a suit fired a gun. They are not saying that this man killed Kennedy. They are simply saying: we saw during the shooting a man in a suit firing a gun. Also there was a witness who saw a man in suit draw a gun. Also there has always been witness Don Schulman who said that a security guard drew and fired a gun. So we have other guns there, Sirhan Sirhan in the wrong place and more bullets than he could fire. The thing that keeps us from believing this, I think, is that the authorities took such great pains to cover it all up. For example, the police removed what in those photos look like extra bullets, too many bullets for Sirhan Sirhan's gun. They removed ceiling tiles, they removed the doorframe and destroyed the material. And that material, according to the witnesses I have talked to, did contain these extra bullets. Secondly, they manipulated the witnesses. They told two of the witnesses who saw another gun that it was a secret service man, implying that he was RFK's protection. The witnesses were ignorant of the fact that there was no secret service protection for RFK. With the other witnesses, they simply didn't take their statements that there was another gun. So they were able to cloud this issue. And I think, had this issue been reinvestigated a couple of years after the original assassination, the proof of a second gun would have been easy to come by. Now it's much more difficult with the passage of time and the destruction of evidence. But we do have these photos of extra bullets, and we still have witnesses who give that account."

Will the case be reopened?

"Opportunities to reopen the case are rather limited. We have currently before the LA Grand Jury a petition signed by 50 distinguished people (e.g. Oliver Stone, Arthur Schlesinger). What this petition asks for is not for a full fledged re-investigation, rather we've asked the Grand Jury to hold the LAPD accountable for their destruction of evidence or their brow beating of witnesses, for their failure to pursue leads. So it's a 'law-and-order law enforcement, hold the agency accountable' kind of petition. We hope if they do that and prove that the LAPD didn't solve the case that then other authorities hopefully beyond LA will see that the case needs to be reopened. Whether that's happen or not? As a political scientist, I think is doubtful at best. Because even with all of the awareness of President Kennedy's assassination that Oliver Stone's film 'JFK' generated, with the public's demand for the release of the documents, even that case is currently not scheduled for reinvestigation. And the RFK case is not nearly as controversial for the public. So the opportunity exists, the evidence exists, we may make some progress with this petition to the Grand Jury. But I do not envision a full scale investigation in my political future that I can foresee."

What was the impact of Bill Klaber's radio program and your book?

"The result of that was that even TIME magazine, which has been traditionally very hostile to conspiracy theories or to reopening the case, talked about Klaber's documentary and about the case. So it generated some newspaper attention which was visible. It also paved the way for serious discussions about the case. The fact that Bill and myself are currently doing a book that will address the legal process in the trial is a result of his documentary and the interest of this documentary. I think the indirect effect is probably greater, in that I would bet that seven to nine-tenths of the audience that listened to that documentary were never aware that there was controversy and cover-up in the RFK case. And that has to have an impact. I believe these people may not be writing to their congressman, they may not be demanding things right now, but I think the difference is that, when we talk about the issues of the RFK case, the public will be more receptive and understand that those issues are real because of Klaber's documentary. My book had a similar obvious and hidden impact. I've gotten a lot of mail from people asking what they can do. In the back of the book is a list of people you can write to. The second thing that both the Klaber documentary and my book have done is to encourage responsible witnesses to come forward. This is interesting in that any time there is a public discussion, you get irresponsible calls from people saying, 'I know who killed RFK, it was the Martians or it was my brother'. It is so interesting that both my book and Klaber's documentary brought forth people with important stories to tell who did not know that there was a controversy, who did not know that their story was important or that they had seen anything until they read the book or until they heard that documentary."

Do you believe the mass media is part of the cover-up?

"The story of the US mainstream media in assassination cases is not that they were involved in some huge conspiracy. But they seem to have a basic tendency which makes it impossible for them to recognise the truth. Firstly: they regularly get their information from official sources. That was certainly the case during the Sixties, but it is still a problem. Secondly: a joke from the JFK case: 'Polls show that seventy-five to ninety percent of Americans believe that JFK was assassinated by a conspiracy. That's the good news. The bad news, the other fifteen percent work for the FBI, CBS News, NY Times and the Justice Dept. I think that's very true. They call us 'conspiracy theorists', I call them 'the lone assassin theorists'. They jumped to the conclusion that there was no outside involvement, they jumped to the conclusion that we only have lone nuts in US, that it's only in Europe, in Central and South America where they have conspiracies and that's their ideological position and they stick to it. I can show you the newspaper clippings, where the LA Times and CBS News were giving opinions when it was too soon to know if Sirhan was guilty and had acted alone. That doesn't mean they're part of a conspiracy, or allowing the bad guys to get away, they are just simply too stuck in their ways. OF course, they can't just change overnight, because if they listened to Klaber's documentary or read my book they would have to ask themselves, 'Where were we in 1968, 1975, 1980, what did we report back then?'. And the answer would be, 'You were wrong, you swallowed the government propaganda and failed in your duty'. That would be intolerable for the highly paid, renowned journalists. That is the problem. It is greater in the RFK case because public awareness that there were controversies and presumably a conspiracy is far less developed. It is therefore far easier for the media to dismiss the truth by simply maintaining that there is no public interest."

Was Dr. William Joseph Bryan, Jr. really Sirhan's manipulator? What evidence is there?

"The evidence is varied. There are a couple of points to make, though. Firstly I should mention something which has relevance to this case, namely the US Government's research into mind control, hypnosis and LSD, which was completely contrary to the Constitution, and therefore illegal, and took place during the Sixties and Seventies. I believe that the Sirhan case was an off-shoot from that. The Government was researching ways of programming spies, assassins and saboteurs. A few members of this Government programme, such as Dr. Bryan, got out of control. Bryan's relationship to Sirhan came out because he was such a "pompous ass". He told several colleagues, and other people, that he had hypnotised Sirhan. That's hardly concrete evidence, but it's all we have; it would be very doubtful that an official file exists. Since publication of my book, I've met two of Bryan's former colleagues, whom I know now to have been much more vital to the Government's mind control research than Dr. Bryan. Bryan was simply the biggest show-off out of all of them. I can't reveal the names of these two doctors at this time, but they worked closely with Bryan on these things and are still alive. I have a great deal of evidence which I would be happy to give to the authorities if they wish to have it. Bryan and these two doctors worked on the same things in the CIA's mind control research. Bryan is dead, but the other two are still alive. I would really like to see them questioned about this most bizarre piece of the puzzle. These were people, who, like Sirhan, were in the right place at the right time, as Southern California was a hotbed of mind control research. Bryan and his colleagues worked in clinics there. Sirhan was looking for help at that time to combat a mysterious ailment. He readily agreed to be hypnotised. He was a perfect subject, because he was very easy to influence. After the assassination, when the authorities hypnotised him on many occasions, attempting to determine his mental state, they found that he was easy to hypnotise, and so on. That's very circumstantial, and the public often finds it difficult to understand. I would also prefer to be discussing the number of bullets in Sirhan's gun than discussing the possibility of "Manchurian Candidates". There's less of a leap into the realm of the mind. But I seriously believe that Sirhan's manipulation through hypnosis played a really important role in this case."

Why did Sirhan Sirhan need psychiatric help?

"A year or so before the assassination, Sirhan had a serious fall from a horse and injured himself. It destroyed his dreams of becoming a jockey. His whole character changed. He became very solemn, withdrawn. Strangely enough, he was described as "cured". Despite this he went from doctor to doctor, complaining of strange symptoms and more. My theory is, that after seeing ten or so doctors, and trying some self-hypnosis to relieve the pain, he was in the perfect position to go to a certain clinic, which may have been recommended to him, where he landed in the hands of Dr. Bryan and possibly his colleagues. There's no record of Sirhan ever visiting a psychiatrist, but he was bound to have done so, given his interest in hypnosis and his desire to find some way of relieving the pain he suffered from."

Have you ever received threatening phone calls or been watched?

"There haven't been any threatening calls yet. But some things have happened in LA which were linked to the group I work with."

Which group is that?

"Paul Schrade, Floyd Nelson of the RFK Assassination Truth Committee, and others.

We were definitely and without doubt watched. I'm not sure how sinister the purpose was but it is certain that the LAPD can't stand critics. And there we were, making their lives difficult and criticising them. We know now, that the former Chief of Police Daryl Gates set up a secret team who followed people they suspected, whether that person was Jane Fonda, the Mayor or people from the Police Commission. Here's a couple of examples:

Floyd's apartment was in a very run down area in North Hollywood. The police were never there when they were needed. There were shootings, drugs were being dealt on the street corner, but there was no sign of the police. Once when I arrived on RFK business, suddenly there, right in front of the building was a police car! And I don't mean an undercover car - a totally normal police car! It was as if they wanted to say, 'Hey, we're watching you!'

My favourite example is: Once when I was in LA to take part in the hearings of the police commission concerning the release of the files, there was a message for me at my hotel which said that I should contact Commander Matthew Hunt at LAPD. When I spoke to him, he told me I could not appear before the commission the next day, because so and so. I shouldn't even try. However, what was far more interesting for me was, how had he got hold of my address? I hadn't informed anyone where I was staying and he hadn't asked any of my colleagues. I think it was LAPD's way to say: 'We know who you are and where you are and we're watching you...'"