User:Fritzpoll/ConspiracyTheory/The security guard

The security guard

For decades, researchers have identified Thane Eugene Cesar as the most likely candidate for a second gunman in the RFK assassination. 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 as a maintenance plumber at the Lockheed Aircraft plant in Burbank, a job that required a security clearance from the Department of the Defense. He worked there from 1966 until losing his job in 1971. According to researcher Lisa Pease, Cesar had formerly worked at the Hughes Aircraft Corporation, but author Dan Moldea wrote that Cesar began working at Hughes in 1973, a job he held for seven years and a position Cesar said required the second highest clearance level at the plant.

Cesar was a Cuban American who supported segregationist George Wallace for President. He appeared to have no specific job at Lockheed and apparently had "floating" assignments and often worked in off-limits areas which only special personnel had access to. According to some researchers , these areas were under the control of the CIA.

When interviewed, Cesar admitted that he pulled a gun at the scene of the shooting but insisted the weapon 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, which interviewed Cesar shortly after the shooting, did not regard Cesar as a suspect and did not ask to see his gun.

Cesar admitted that he did own a .22-caliber H & R pistol, and he showed it to LAPD sergeant P. E. O'Steen on June 24, 1968. When the LAPD interviewed Cesar three years later, 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. Yoder still had the receipt for the H & R pistol, which was dated September 6, 1968, and bore Cesar's signature. Cesar therefore had sold the pistol to Yoder three months after Kennedy's assassination despite Cesar's claim in 1971 that he had sold the weapon months before the murder. Author Dan Moldea wrote that that Cesar submitted years later to a polygraph examination performed by Edward Gelb, former president and executive director of the American Polygraph Association. Moldea reported that Cesar denied any involvement in Kennedy's assassination and passed the test with flying colors.