Thane Eugene Cesar, CIA Asset, and Robert F. Kennedy's Assassin
John Simkin, https://spartacus-educational.com/ reports:
Donald Schulman was a young KNXT-TV courier/runner present in the Ambassador Hotel pantry. Shortly after the shooting he reported seeing a security guard (Thane Eugene Cesar) fire a gun from behind Kennedy, seeing three blood spots erupt on Kennedy, and seeing three guns in the pantry; his early radio/TV account was later treated as inconsistent with the official lone-gunman conclusion.
Karl Uecker was the Ambassador Hotel assistant maître'd who was leading Kennedy by the wrist through the pantry. He testified (Grand Jury, trial, and later statements) that he grabbed Sirhan's gun arm after the second shot, pinned it down, and that Sirhan was never close enough behind Kennedy to fire the contact/near-contact shots described in the autopsy; he maintained Sirhan's muzzle was at least 1½ feet in front of Kennedy's head.
William W. Harper was a Pasadena consulting criminalist and firearms/ballistics expert with decades of experience. In 1970–71 he examined the recovered bullets, compared them with test-fired rounds from Sirhan's revolver, and concluded the fatal Kennedy bullet and a bystander bullet were not fired from the same weapon, supporting a two-gun theory; his affidavits and findings were cited by critics of the official investigation.
Thane Eugene Cesar was interviewed and he admitted he pulled a gun but insisted it was a Rohm. 38, not a.22 (the caliber of the bullets found in Kennedy). He also claimed that he got knocked down after the first shot and did not get the opportunity to fire his gun. The LAPD decided to believe Cesar rather than Donald Schulman, Karl Uecker and William W. Harper and the case was closed.
Cesar admitted that he did own a.22 H & R pistol. However, he claimed that he had sold the gun before the assassination to a man named Jim Yoder. William W. Turner tracked down Yoder in October, 1972. He still had the receipt for the H & R pistol. It was dated 6 th September, 1968. Cesar therefore sold the pistol to Yoder three months after the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
Cesar had been employed by Ace Guard Service to protect Robert Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel. This was not his full-time job. During the day he worked at the Lockheed Aircraft plant in Burbank. According to Lisa Pease, Cesar had formerly worked at the Hughes Aircraft Corporation. Lockheed and Hughes were two key companies in the Military-Industrial-Congressional Intelligence Complex.
Thane Eugene Cesar was a Cuban-American who had registered to vote for George Wallace's American Independent Party.
Jim Yoder claimed that Cesar appeared to have no specific job at Lockheed and had “floating” assignments and often worked in off-limits areas which only special personnel had access to. According to Yoder, these areas were under the control of the CIA.
Yoder also gave Turner and Christian details about the selling of the gun. Although he did not mention the assassination of Robert Kennedy he did say “something about going to the assistance of an officer and firing his gun.” He added that “there might be a little problem over that.”
Cesar was afraid that the assassination had been captured on film. It was. Scott Enyart, a high-school student, was taking photographs of Robert Kennedy as he was walking from the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel to the Colonial Room where the press conference was due to take place. Enyart was standing slightly behind Kennedy when the shooting began and snapped as fast as he could.
As Enyart was leaving the pantry, two LAPD officers accosted him at gunpoint and seized his film. Later, he was told by Detective Dudley Varney that the photographs were needed as evidence in the Sirhan trial. The photographs were not presented as evidence but the court ordered that all evidential materials had to be sealed for twenty years.
In 1988 Scott Enyart requested that his photographs should be returned. At first the State Archives claimed they could not find them and that they must have been destroyed by mistake. Enyart filed a lawsuit which finally came to trial in 1996. During the trial the Los Angeles city attorney announced that the photos had been found in its Sacramento office and would be brought to the courthouse by the courier retained by the State Archives.
The following day it was announced that the courier's briefcase, that contained the photographs, had been stolen from the car he rented at the airport. The photographs have never been recovered and the jury subsequently awarded Scott Enyart $450,000 in damages.
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