EXTRA 4ifiran :43 a t I EXTRA oges Vol. LXXVIII, No. 24-S Ann Arbor, Michigan, Thursday, June 6, 1968 FREE COPY Two Pc 11 A I President declares mourning The nation woke up to shock and sorrow this morning as the news of the death of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy spread from coast.to coast and around the world. President Johnson proclaimed this Sunday a national day of mourning on learning of the senator's death. In a statement issued from the White House, the Presi- dent said "Kennedy affirmed this country-affirmed the es- sential decency of its people, their longing for peace, their de- sire to improve conditions of life for all. "He believed in the capacity of the young for excellence and in the right of the old and poor to a life of dignity. "Our public life is diminished by his loss." While Kennedy was still fighting his losing battle for life against wounds from an assassin's bullets, the President went on radio and television last night and named a special com- mission to search for ways to "put an end to violence-and the preaching of violence. Johnson declared he was "shocked and dismayed' by the shooting of Sen. Kennedy and went on to declare that "we 4cannot, we must not tolerate the sway of violent men among we. We must not permit men filled with hatred, and care- less of innocent lives, to dominate our streets and fill our homes with fear." Fear was being expressed across the country that there would be a wave of rioting similar to that which followed the murder of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in April. For many people at Resurrection City in Washington, the shooting has become a black versus white issue. "I'm glad he didn't die," a Resurrection City marshal said early last night. "You know why? Because if he dies Washington's going to go up, Chicago's going to go up." As word of Kennedys death spread through sleeping Los Angeles, a crowd of people began gathering at the hospital on Wilshire Boulevard. Police sealed off the immediate area. Yesterday, the President outreached his legal powers to put Secret Service bodyguards around all major presidential aspirants and their families. Congress moved in haste to supply the legal authority by today. In another response to the shooting several thousand w Army troops were placed on alert as a precautionary measure. Officials emphasized that at this point no troop deploy- ments are planned but "we're watching the situation" in case violence should break out in Los Angeles, Washington or elsewhere. Kennedy's death has removed in a tragic manner the , chief challenger to Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey's quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. Humphrey, expressing "profound personal loss" at Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's death, called on Americans this morn- ing to recommit themselves to the principles of humanity and individual justice. "Our hearts go out to his wife and dear children, and to his family-which has already known tragedy beyond that which any should endure," Humphrey said. Loses fight 24 for hour life LOS ANGELES - Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, 42, died today at 1:44 a.m. PDT (4:44 a.m., EDT), slightly more than 24 hours after being shot in the head in a savage attack in a downtown Los Angeles hotel. The death was announced at 2 a.m. PDT by Frank Mankiewicz, the senator's press secretary. Mankiewicz had made an unscheduled visit to Good Samaritan Hospital's press room after advisingnewsmen earlier that there would be no further medical bulletins on the senator's condition un- less there was a significant change. With Kennedy at the time of his death were his wife, Ethel, now ex- pecting her eleventh child, his brother Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, and his sister-in-law, Mrs. John F. Kennedy. Three of the Kennedy's ten children were in the hospital, but not in the room. A Roman Catholic priest was also in attendance at the time of, death Sen. Kennedy had been administered the last rites of the church shortly after the shooting took placeTl I t early Wednesday morning. J iI e r Mankiewicz, who had been briefing the press on Ken- nedy's condition since immediately after the shooting, said the fatal shot was "the bullet that went into the head near the right ear." That slug entered Kennedy's brain, and sur-gen co d tdath e- urfry mi te prton al . geons conducted a three-hour, forty-minute operation early yesterday to remove all but a tiny fragment. But the senator's condition never improved. "It was not a question of his sinking," Mankiewicz said, "but of not rising. He needed a rally and steady improvement in his con-LOS ANGELES (P) - His name dition, and that did not develop." is Sirhan Bishara Sirhan. Mankiewicz said the body would be sent "sometime this Police say he is a cool, close- morning" either to Washington or New York. "The family mouthed Jordanian who fired a here will go with.-him," he said. "These are the plans at the bullet from close range into the time." brain of Sen. Robert Kennedy. Kennedy the leader: A moral imperative Later, it was announced that the body will be flown by jet today to St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, where it will lie in state from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day until Saturday, when a requiem mass will be held at 10 a.m. The body will be transported by train at 12:30 p.m. Sat- urday to Washington, D.C., for burial in Arlington National Cemetery, next to the grave of his brother, the late Presi- dent John F. Kennedy. Graveside services for the family and close friends will tentatively be held at 5:30 p.m. Deputy Police Chief Noel McQuown said a post-mortem would be conducted at the pospital before Kennedys body was removed. The precise cause of death was still unknown early this morning, but a neurosurgeon quoted one of the doctors on the team that performed yesterday's operation as saying they had discovered "a sizeable blood clot in the head" caus- ed by the bullet wound. Dr. Lawrence Pool said he was told by Dr. Henry Cuneo, "The superior cerebellar artery, at the forward end of the brain stem, was torn." Bone and lead fragments were lodged mostly in the cerebellum, that part of the brain which controls muscle movement. Before his death, Kennedy's doctors had indicated that if he were to live, he might suffer some form of perma- nent paralysis. By Urban Lehner Co-Editor "I run to seek new policies," Ro- bert Kennedy said March 16 as he announced himself a Presidential candidate. "At stake is not simply the leadership of our party or ev- en our country-it is our right to moral leadership on this planet. I cannot stand aside from the con- test." Throughout his 42 years there were few contests which Robert Francis Kennedy, third son in a highly competitive family of eight children, could stand aside from. He actually reveled in struggle. As a youth, first in preparatory schools and then as an undergrad- uate, he forced himself by sheer hustle and hard work to be a good football player. As an adult, he never held a job which did not in- volve him in conflict, and he de- rived great satisfaction from his stints as campaign manager and chief political mentor for his late brother in races for the Senate and the Presidency. It is perhaps this which makes his assassination seem all the more tragic. For not only was he murdered, cut down before his time; the setting was wrong. He never got a chance to run for Pre- sident, he was shot before he was ever nominated, a nomination he had sought because he was "con- vinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have strong feelings about what must be done that I am obliged to do Rosary in the evening with his family, Kennedy as a teenager once insisted on leaving a presti- gious preparatory school because the academy's rules required man- datory attendance at Protestant chapel services. Of the four Ken- nedy sons, only Robert received a major portion of his elementary and secondary education in Cath- olic schools. In 1946, when the late President John Fitzgerald Kennedy sought and woi his first Congressional seat, brother Robert-at the time a 20-year-old Harvard undergrad, not even legally old enough to drink, played a minor but illustra- tive role in the campaign. In an election in which the key to suc- cess was successful dickering for Irish and Italian slum votes, the young millionaire took to the streets in a whirlwind manner which would later become a Rob- ert Kennedy trademark. He sal- vaged half of the votes in a dis- trict which his brother had ex- pected to lose by a 5-1 margin. In 1960, immediately after an- nouncing Robert Kennedy's ap- pointment as Attorney General, the late President Kennedy said "I can't see that it's wrong to give him a little legal experience be- fore he goes out to practice law." Bobby never did establish the pri- vate practice he occasionally talk- ed of. Nevertheless, in the prev- ious ten years he had acquired le- gal experience which few men in America could match. guished to the noteworthy and controversial. Meanwhile, Robert Kennedy was deepening his knowledge of politi- cal tactics and strategy to prepare himself for a role as chief mentor and campaign manager for his older brother in his races for the Senate in 1952 and the Presidency in 1960. Undoubtedly, the younger Kennedy savored the position. But even had he loathed it, the fierce family loyalty-especially in mat- ters political-which Joseph Ken- nedy taught his children would have designated Bobby as the un- avoidable heir-apparent. Besides Robert,'Joseph and Rose Kennedy have lost three children -a daughter in a plane crash, and two, sons, both in the service of their country. What intensifies the tragedy of these losses is that they have seemed almost fated, rooted in the personality and char- acter not only of the individuals' but of the family. The death of Robert Kennedy carries this bur- den most heavily. For like his brother, the late President, Bobby cared little for security precautions, often push- ing forth into crowds with person- al guards left stranded and be- wildered in his wake. More funda- mentally, Bobby was the kind of man who engendered deep pas- sions. He would be lovingly mauled by shrieking crowds of middle- aged women, and raked bitterly over the editorial coals of news- papers and journals which hated Mayor Samuel W. Yorty says Sirhan apparently wrote in a 9- by-12 inch notebook about "the necessity to assassinate Sen. Ken- nedy before June 5, 1968." 'The record says Sirhan is 24 years old, 5-feet-5, weighs about 120 pounds, has a swarthy com- plexion and wiry hair. He has been an, exercise boy at a race track, wanted to be a jockey and work- ed in a health food store. He was under maximum secu'r- ity guard in a 'hospital ward at the Los Angeles County Central jail, charged with six counts of assault with intent to commit murder.! He is to appear at 8:30 a.m. Monday for a preliminary hearing before Municipal Judge Jean Klein. Sirhan's index finger was bro- ken' and his left ankle sprained in a tussle'that ended in his cap- ture, seconds after Kennedy was shot early Wednesday. Kennedy had just thanked his supporters for his victory over Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy in Cali- fornia's Democratic presidential election. Sirhan had talked to police, but not about Kennedy or the shoot- ing. Officers said he was advised of his rights, bsut didn't want an attorney. He refused to give offi- cers his name. He "may have been inflamed" by Kennedy's call for U.S. jets for Israel during a televised campaign debate Saturday night, said a New York committee on American- Arab relations. "Sen. Kennedy said the other day he wanted to help Israel," ,said Sirhan's recent employer, John H. Weidner, 57, operator of a Pasadena health food store chain. "So I was not surprised after he was shot that Sirhan's resentment had pushed him emotionally to do what he did." With permission from Sirhan's family, police recovered two note- books from his 'room. In a notation entered either May 17 or 18, the mayor 'said, Sir- han apparently wrote "a direct m TM an 77-~w , w , . j4