A distinguished historian repeatedly lied about his location when Sirhan shot RFK
Is this the most dishonest book review ever written or what?
Above is a photograph of historian Godfrey Hodgson shaking hands with President Ronald Reagan.
NOTE: From August 23, 1990, to October 3, 1994, I was the plaintiff in Moldea v. New York Times, a hard-fought and well-publicized defamation case in which my attorney and I challenged a reckless and malicious review of my 1989 book, Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football (William Morrow).
In doing so, we attempted to hold book reviewers to the same standards of accuracy and fairness as news reporters. . . . To no one’s surprise, the critics didn’t share our enthusiasm.
In the end—after winning a major federal appellate court decision—we lost the case. But it took an unprecedented moment in American jurisprudence, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld, to defeat us.
In May 1995, W.W. Norton published my book about the 1968 murder of Senator Robert Kennedy, in which I confirmed that the convicted assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, did it and did it alone.
Showing an abundance of class and goodwill after our four years of bitter litigation, the New York Times gave me not one but two excellent reviews—one in the daily edition on May 25, 1995, by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt; and the second by Gerald Posner that appeared in the Sunday Times Book Review on June 18, 1995.
Reviews in other publications were equally laudatory and, of course, much appreciated.
Sadly, this past Wednesday, October 8, my friend and colleague, British historian Mel Ayton, died. He was a man of true honor and tremendous integrity, as well as the world’s top expert on the murder of Senator Kennedy.
But in 1995, the Washington Post selected another British historian to review my work. And, in my opinion, that critic was an accomplished fabulist.
British journalist Godfrey Hodgson, in his review for the Washington Post Book World, completely trashed my 1995 book about the RFK murder case, calling me, among other things, a liar.
Apparently, Hodgson could speak with authority about this horrible tragedy in which the confessed and convicted assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, whom I had interviewed three times, stepped out of a large crowd and opened fire in a kitchen pantry at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968
Hodgson boasted:
As it happens, I was in that crowd, a few feet away from the senator, on my way to a promised interview with Kennedy for the London Sunday Times. I have an indelible memory of the grief and confusion of that moment.[1]
The following day, while drafting my response to the Post, a former FBI agent who was also a friend called and said that he had seen Hodgson’s review.
As I started to recite my complaints, the FBI man interrupted, instructing me to hang up and turn on my fax machine. . . . He wanted to send me a gift.
A few minutes later, I received the official FBI-302 interview report, detailing a July 1968 meeting with Hodgson about the shooting.
Using this and other shocking documents, I sent the following response to Book World:
Dear Editor:
It is particularly disturbing to me that Godfrey Hodgson, in his June 25 review, implies that my book, The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy, is premised on 300 pages of “lying.” Then, he quickly retracts that charge, because he knows he cannot support it. Still, planting the idea, Hodgson writes: “We might even be tempted to say, in Moldea‑speak, ‘This [expletive] guy [Moldea] has been lying to us all along.’ That wouldn’t be quite fair: teasing us, maybe, to make the most of a losing hand, but not lying.”
Very cute.
Earlier in the review, Hodgson makes a statement about himself that brings this issue of “lying” into sharper focus.
Following Kennedy’s emotional speech after winning the June 1968 California Democratic primary, his aides pushed to get the senator out of the hotel’s jam‑packed Embassy Room and over to a press conference in the adjacent Colonial Room. To get there quickly, they decided to take a short‑cut.
Describing his proximity to Kennedy, Hodgson states in his review:
Instead, as he was hustled through a kitchen pantry in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after a victory rally with his campaign workers, Robert Kennedy encountered a young Palestinian Christian called Sirhan Bishara Sirhan and was shot to death.
As it happens, I was in that crowd, a few feet away from the senator, on my way to a promised interview with Kennedy for the London Sunday Times. I have an indelible memory of the grief and confusion of that moment.” [Emphasis added.]
Clearly, Hodgson includes this personal account in his review to establish his authority when writing about the Kennedy murder and to give greater weight to his opinion of my work. After all, he appears to have been an eyewitness.
But was he really?
According to the LAPD’s official list of the 77 known persons in the kitchen pantry at the moment of the shooting, Hodgson is not mentioned either as an eyewitness or as even being present in the room!
In fact, according to his own 1969 book, An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968, Hodgson detailed on pages 353‑354 that he was on the floor below the kitchen pantry, perhaps even outside the hotel, while Kennedy was upstairs being gunned down!
Remarkably, a third version of these events comes from Hodgson’s own statement to the FBI. According to the FBI’s official report of the Hodgson interview—dated July 8, 1968, just over a month after the murder—Hodgson “furnished the following information”:
As soon as KENNEDY finished his speech and before he began to move through the crowd, HODGSON [and two colleagues] left the Embassy Room by going down an iron staircase to the parking lot. They did this to avoid getting trapped in the crowd. They did not know which way the Senator would go after making his speech or what his exact plans were.
While outside HODGSON heard about the shooting and he went back inside the hotel. He went towards the kitchen area but was unable to enter the area because of the crowds. He did not see the Senator or SIRHAN at that time.
Hodgson’s now‑embellished claim that he was just “a few feet away from the senator” deceitfully gives the impression that he was an actual eyewitness to this terrible event. This gross exaggeration—debunked by LAPD and FBI records, as well as his own 1969 book—is as dishonest as his review of my work.[2]
Dan E. Moldea
Washington, D.C.
UPDATE: Even after his fraudulent review of my book in the Washington Post, Godfrey Hodgson, desperately trying to save face, could not stop lying about me. In his 2015 book—JFK and LBJ: The Last Two Great Presidents (page 258, endnote 83)—Hodgson wrote:
“Dan Moldea, the author of a book about Robert Kennedy’s murder that I reviewed unfavorably in the Washington Post maintained online that I had not been in the hotel that night: I was in fact accompanied there by a whole team of highly respected reporters who were my colleagues and who could and would vouch for my presence.”
Hodgson’s latest lie? . . . As my published letter to the Post clearly showed, I never questioned Hodgson’s presence at the Ambassador Hotel on the evening that Sirhan, acting alone, shot Senator Kennedy on June 5, 1968.
Instead, I questioned and fully documented Hodgson’s false and misleading claim that he was present at the crime scene at the actual moment of the shooting.
Notably—after years of spreading this latest lie to our colleagues in the world of journalism—Godfrey Hodgson died on January 27, 2021.
Once again, God bless Mel Ayton, the honest British historian who died last Wednesday, October 8, and was the world’s expert on the Robert Kennedy murder case.
Frontline Books published Mel’s final book—The Making of An Assassin: Why Sirhan Sirhan Murdered Robert Kennedy—shortly before the author’s death. On his dedication page, Mel wrote:
This book is dedicated to the investigative journalist Dan Moldea, whose work in seeking out the truth about the Robert Kennedy assassination is unsurpassed.
From Perplexity (10-12-2025):
ENDNOTES
[1] Godfrey Hodgson, Washington Post Book World, “Who Really Shot RFK?” June 25, 1995.
[2] Dan E. Moldea, Washington Post Book World, “The RFK File,” July 16, 1995. In his published reply to my letter, Hodgson continued to insist: “I was ‘in that crowd’ and ‘a few feet away from the senator.’ . . . I did not state or imply that I was an eyewitness or in the pantry when Kennedy was killed.”
The reader can judge what Hodgson really said on three different occasions—and what he was trying to get away with in his lying review of my book.
You are my hero. I know you will always speak/write the Truth, and seek justice in your pursuit of what used to be the "American" way. Keep fighting the good fight, Dan, we all need you now more than ever.