The only people who knew about this meeting were Faura, Fahey, and the girl. The FBI or LAPD didn't know. No other researchers have known this.
This memory lay in Faura's memory like an unexploded time bomb for many decades until he read a report by journalist Robert Parry about how Richard Nixon sabotaged the Paris Peace talks in 1968 in order to win the election. It was a very solid, well-documented report.
It startled Faura because a prominent name at the heart of this treasonous activity that caused 20,000 more American and millions of Vietnamese deaths as the war went on for years was Mrs. Claire Chennault, aka Anna Chennault, aka "The Dragon Lady." She was the Chinese wife of General Claire Chennault, the legendary founder of the Flying Tigers and Flying Tigers Airline, Civil Air Transport (CAT), "which later morphed into Air America, both of them CIA proprietaries." (The girl had mentioned these airlines as possible escape routes.)
Anna Chennault became an important figure in the Republican Party and was a member of the Republican National Committee. In 1968 she was candidate Nixon's contact with the South Vietnamese government through the South Vietnamese Ambassador to Washington, Bui Diem. President Johnson at the time "was adamant about ending the war" and wanted a peace settlement. It didn't happen.
On "Nov. 2, 1968, an FBI intercept recorded Anna Chennault calling Ambassador Diem to relay a message from 'the boss' asking Diem to 'hold on we are going to win'." Johnson discovered the treachery but was dissuaded by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, [National Security Adviser Walt] Rostow and Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford from making it public in the interest of "national security." Nixon won the election and the war went on. Faura documents all this in an appendix that presents a memorandum to LBJ and the document, The Chennault Affair.
Was the polka-dot girl's connection to Anna Chennault and Nixon the reason Life magazine had received a call from the White House that led to Life telling Faura's colleague Bonfante that the investigation into the RFK murder had to be shut down? Faura suggests as much.
He asks, "Lacking credible proof, how do you tell the American public of a link between the assassination of Senator Kennedy and the Nixon campaign?"
"All this was going on while Senator Kennedy was within sight of the White House in his campaign. He was a clear threat to Nixon's manipulations because of his declared opposition to the Vietnam War. He was the only real obstacle between Richard Nixon and the White House. Had he won the election, Richard Nixon and his cohorts might have been charged with treason."
Faura ends The Polka Dot File with some excellent questions about the Chennault/girl in the polka-dot dress connection. But he asserts this as well:
"Anna Chennault had suggested at one time that she 'eliminated' her opposition. With the stakes so high, it is not beyond credibility that the 'peace talks' conspiracy was the genesis of the Kennedy killing." While she later admitted her part in the treasonous 'peace talks' conspiracy, she said she had been acting "under orders."
We are left to wonder who might have given such orders, and who gave the orders to kill RFK?
But as Faura and others have proven, there was a conspiracy and a cover-up. That is a fact. It was intricate and well-executed conspiracy, just as the one in Dallas. Like Oswald, Sirhan was not the killer.
While fascinating and important in its detailed focus on the girl, The Polka Dot File suggests many intriguing connections between the JFK and RFK murders. It is a significant book and essential reading for anyone interested in the murder of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. That should include everyone.
Postscript: Two weeks before publication of the book and not included in the first printing, Faura, together with Shane O'Sullivan (Who Killed Bobby? -- Union Square Press), were granted an interview with Anna Chennault, now 91, at her Washington D.C. Watergate penthouse. Faura showed her the drawing of the girl in the polka-dot dress. She said she didn't recognize her; couldn't remember anyone by the name Gilda Dean Oppenheimer, one of the names the girl gave to Fahey. She said no one else in the Nixon administration knew of the efforts to scuttle the Paris Peace Talks. She said she was talking directly with the President of South Vietnam. But when asked if the CIA knew of the conspiracy, she very positively said, "Yes." (N.B. President Johnson learned of the conspiracy from the NSA, not the CIA.) Anna Chennault's daughter, Prof. Cynthia Chennault, was present at the meeting and said her mother was in Colorado giving a speech on June 2, 1968. O'Sullivan confirmed this through Anna Chennault's calendar at the LBJ Library where copies for that period are kept. Faura concludes that since the girl in the polka-dot dress said she came through NY and had only been in LA three days, the issue is unresolved.
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