NEW YORK TIMES: Senator Kennedy once wrote to the Los Angeles district attorney, asking him not to seek the death penalty for Sirhan B. Sirhan, who assassinated his brother, Robert F. Kennedy. One F.B.I. file suggests that the feeling was not mutual. It recounts the unsubstantiated claims of an inmate who served prison time with Mr. Sirhan, and who said that Mr. Sirhan tried to hire him to kill Senator Kennedy. “He advised during this time subject offered him one million dollars and a car in exchange for killing Senator Kennedy,” according to the file. Another file dealt with character assassination. A “nebulous and vague” report from an informant suggested that associates of Frank Sinatra wanted to attack “the character of Edward and Robert Kennedy and their brother-in-law Peter Lawford” by putting them in compromising positions with women. “The F.B.I. did not consider the rumor solid,” the bureau wrote in a summary of its files, “and no other mention of it appears in the file, suggesting that the informant did not supply any corroboration to the story.” MORE