MEMORANDUM - ASSESSMENT OF SIRHAN

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: Records Related to the Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 07165464
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: June 6, 2025
• Document Release Date: June 12, 2025
• Publication Date: July 8, 1968

APPROVED FOR RELEASE 2025 UNDER EXECUTIVE ORDER 14176 TED STATEI..NM ENT FROM ADDP Cl/ TSD Assessment of Sirhan Dear Cord, DATE: 8 July 1968 I felt, after talking to you about the original assessment statement on Sirhan, that the essence of what the psychologists were trying to say could be said more succinctly. They have made another attempt at restating the way they see Sirhan, and I think have done better this time. Attached is the restated assessment, Sid PersonalityAssessrnentof Sirhan Sirhan We have been asked to react to Sirhan's handwritten "diary" and make some kind of personality interpretation from his handwriting, his doodles and his comments. Obviously, with the flood of other material on Sirhan appearing in the newspapers and national magazines, it is probable that we have been contaminated or influenced by material presented there. There is no cues person. On the basis picked up as due to the the responsibility have many honest there will be a se n our minds but that Sirhan is a his handwriting alone, he would have been We are convinced that , pro:essionals charged with of describing him to the courts and the public will disagreements. As a result, after the trial is over eral gnawing doubt about the true" Sirhan Sirhan. We doubt that we can describe his 'illness" really satisfactorily. Had we seen his handwriting before he assassinated Senator Kennedy, we would have described him as However, under no circumstances would we have predicted that he was "capable" of doing what he did. We do not see him as the kind of person who can be and systematically - We do see him as , On the basis of the way we see his illness what he did can only be explained by a tragic combination of . The odds against him being suc- cessful were tremendous. Obviously, we cannot see him as part of a conspiracy. He could be a tool of a conspiracy in the sense that the attempted assassin of Secretary of State Seward and the assigned assassin of Vice President Andrew Johnson (George Atzerodt) were tools of the Booth conspiracy. It is very unlikely however that he could have ef- fectively acted under precise instructions. In summary, he appears to be a person who , but who will appear conditions. Basically, he is an behind a usually normal expectedly and who He would be un- whenever he felt Most people this type attack their mother or their girlfriend. Occasionally they will lash out against an employer or colleagues (a case in point is the recent Pennsylvania case of the 'quiet' man who killed his car pool and them himself). Sometimes they will pick public figures and make abortive attempts to get at them. Essentially, we see Sirhan as being much more like the impulsive assassins of Garfield and McKinley than the calculating assassins of Lincoln and President Kennedy.