Praise for Mel Ayton's JFK and RFK Articles

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‘Mel Ayton’s research on this difficult question: “Who was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy?” is excellent.’ – Colonel Manuel Chavez, Former US Air Force Intelligence Officer assigned to the CIA’s office in Miami from 1960–4

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‘Mel Ayton has a well-deserved reputation for doing the near-impossible: writing about controversial history (including conspiracy theories) in a sober but imaginative way, combining reliable accounts with intellectually stimulating arguments. I highly recommend his work’ – Rick Shenkman, publisher, History News Network

 

‘[Mel Ayton] is doing a fabulous job of setting history right’ – David Aaronovitch, columnist for The Times and author of Voodoo Histories – The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History 

 

‘Mel Ayton [is] one of the few analysts who has fully grasped the crime’s Middle East connection. . . . Far from being a “maniacally absurd” crime, as Newsweek concluded, the Robert Kennedy assassination was in fact an eminently political act. It was the first “blowback” attack the United States suffered as a result of its Middle East policies’ – Stephen Kinzer, ‘Shot Heard Round the World’, The Guardian

 

‘The greatest riddle in any of these high-profile assassinations is motive. Thanks to Mel Ayton, the RFK killing can now be removed from that list of mysteries’ – Gus Russo, author of The Outfit and Supermob 

 

‘Mel Ayton has accomplished something that no one writing about the RFK assassination has ever achieved before. By combining a judicious review of the forensic and eyewitness evidence with a firm grasp of the historical context, Ayton has finally made sense of the 1968 killing’ – Max Holland, author of The Kennedy Assassination Tapes and publisher of Washington Decoded 

 

‘Mel Ayton presents a compelling examination of the convicted [RFK] assassin’s motivations, his state of mind, and the mountain of evidence used to denounce and imprison him’ – Craig Hendricks, The History Teacher, Vol. 41, No. 2 

 

‘I have read some of your . . . articles about Sirhan’s many conspiracy theories, which demonstrate the wealth of your research as to the RFK murder.’ – California Deputy Attorney General Jaime Fuster

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Mel Ayton [is] a writer I’ve found to be a valuable debunker of unwarranted conspiracy theorizing. He reminds us with copious quotations in [his articles] how repeatedly and explicitly Sirhan made clear why he targeted R.F.K.: because Sirhan hated the state of Israel and hated R.F.K.’s support for Israel.’ – Ron Rosenbaum, the New York Observer 

 

‘Important and extensively documented. . . . especially pertinent to understanding current lone wolf terrorists, as it discusses leading forensic psychology theories to explain Sirhan’s possible mental state and motivations.’ – Joshua Sinai, Perspectives on Terrorism 

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The 1968 assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan may well be one of the most transforming events of the last third of the 20th century. . . . Mel Ayton documents the elements that contributed to Sirhan’s hatred of anyone or anything associated positively with Israel or Jews.’ – Harvard Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz, Foreword to the 2019 edition of The Forgotten Terrorist