ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN LUTH

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Chapter 7: Hunt, Extradition, and Plea: May 1968-March 10, 1969

WITH THE DEATH OF DR. KING, the media quite naturally turned their attention to the FBI-led search for the killer. The manhunt officially started on April 17 with the Birmingham indictment. From that time, the FBI ("the bureau") purported to mount an all-out campaign to search for Dr. King's murderer.

During this time, the bureau selectively leaked information to the media. One such leak was noted very early on by Martin Waldron of the New York Times. In his article entitled "The Search" published on April 20, 1968, he stated:

"Earlier there had been information leaks from the FBI that the fingerprints found on the rifle dropped on the Memphis street had been tested and had been found to be those of Ray."

On May 1, the San Francisco Chronicle, quoting certain "unimpeachable sources" of the Los Angeles Times, said that the FBI had found or obtained a map of Atlanta with "the area of Dr. Martin Luther King's residence and church circled and ... linked to accused assassin James Earl Ray." The article went on to state that "the map tends to support a theory by some investigators that Ray stalked Dr. King for some time before fatally shooting him on April 4." (On May 22, the Scripps Howard newspaper chain carried the same story across the nation.) So, shortly after being identified, a leak, clearly from the bureau, portrayed Ray in the national media as a killer who consciously stalked his prey and left behind tangible evidence of his stalking.

Praise for the bureau manhunt also appeared in print. It was widespread and appears to have first been declared by nationally syndicated columnist and Hoover friend Drew Pearson in a column written with Jack Anderson that appeared on May 6, 1968:

We have checked into the operations of the FBI in this respect and are convinced that it is conducting perhaps the most painstaking, exhaustive manhunt ever before undertaken in the United States.

Its G-men have checked every bar ever patronized by James Earl Ray, every flop-house he ever stopped at, every cantina in Mexico he ever visited. It has collected an amazing array of evidence, all linking Ray with the murder.

In early May, as a matter of routine, the FBI asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to examine its files to assess whether anyone resembling the fugitive James Earl Ray might have applied for a passport recently. (A similar exercise under way in the United States had been unproductive.)

A task force of constables compared Ray's photograph with nearly a quarter of a million photographs submitted with passport applications from April 23, 1967 (the day of Ray's escape from prison).

On May 20, a young constable saw a photograph that looked like Ray. It was attached to the application of one Ramon George Sneyd, a thirty-five-year-old native of Toronto. The passport had been issued on April 24, 1968, and sent on that date to Sneyd care of the Kennedy Travel Bureau in Toronto.

Mr. Sneyd turned out to be a Toronto policeman who was clearly not the' man in the photograph accompanying the passport application. Sneyd said that around the first of May he had a call from someone who claimed to be with the passport division inquiring whether he had lost his passport. When he said he had never had a passport the caller apologized, saying that it must have been a mistake, and then hung up.

The RCMP forwarded the passport application to the FBI laboratory in Washington for a handwriting comparison with the Galt signature. They matched.

Backtracking Ray's movements, the RCMP discovered he had apparently arrived in Toronto on April 8 and explored using not one but two new identities: Sneyd and Paul Edward Bridgeman, a thirty-five-year-old man who had some resemblance to Ray. Bridgeman had also received a telephone call asking if he had lost his passport. (He had had one eight years earlier.)

The RCMP also discovered that there was a Toronto citizen named Eric St. Vincent Galt who was the only Eric Galt listed in the Canadian telephone directories in 1968. He worked for Union Carbide, the U.S. defense manufacturer.

The RCMP quickly learned from the Kennedy Travel Bureau that Ray, as Sneyd, had left for London on a BOAC flight on May 6. Scotland Yard was contacted and every port of entry into the United Kingdom was alerted. The official reason was that Ramon George Sneyd, traveling on a Canadian passport, had violated the Alien Immigration Act. If apprehended he was to be held for questioning.

On the same day he flew to London, Ray flew to Portugal, where he obtained a new passport from the Canadian embassy that corrected a misspelling in the last name from "Sneya" to "Sneyd." He flew back to London on the 17th of May.

***

MEANWHILE, the U.S. media continued their coverage of the case. In a May 20 Time article, "acquaintances" reportedly referred to Ray as "... an obsessive racial bigot, an abrasive patron, who belted screwdrivers, dozed on the bar stool and bickered with anyone around."

Time carried the FBI line on the death slug, stating that "the unjacketed slug had been too badly marked for a definite comparison to be made."

A May 20 Newsweek article cited the FBI's comments on an ad placed by Ray and another ad that he answered by sending a Polaroid photograph in which he looked fatter than usual. Newsweek reported that' 'bureau insiders said he was taking amphetamines off and on and his weight might well have fluctuated sharply as a result." The article noted that the bureau had released another photograph of Ray taken with a prostitute in Mexico, but she was "clipped out." The article continued:

Still, the fact of her presence -- plus Galt/Ray's pathetic try for mail-order romance-yielded telling insights, and thus helped fill out his emerging portrait as an ingrown, emotionally stunted loner. The more investigators find out about their man, in fact, the less they see him as the conspiratorial type. "You take five guys who don't know each other and put them in a room," said one. "Four of them would start talking small talk to each other. Ray would sit by himself." He picked up the suspect's mug shot. "This is our man," he said. "He killed King."

Hence, in this one leak to Newsweek the bureau conveyed to the American public, some two weeks before Ray's capture, that the man being sought for the killing of Dr. King was a vice-ridden loner and was certainly guilty.

Jeremiah O'Leary, a frequent mouthpiece for the bureau, in an article in the Washington Star quoted unnamed convicts interviewed by unnamed investigators (who could only have been FBI agents tracking Ray) as saying that "Ray was a racist and a habitual user of amphetamines while in prison." O'Leary also maintained that "some of his fellow prisoners described him as an anti-negro loner who spent much of his time in jail reading sex books and girlie magazines."

Other wire service syndicated pieces were equally damning. For example, one story under the leader "Ray Talked Of Bounty On King: Friend" put out by UPI quoted a convict named Raymond Curtis, allegedly a friend of Ray, as saying that Ray told him that if there was a bounty on Dr. King, he would collect it if he got out. Curtis also alleged that Ray used dope, bragged about picking up lots of women, and was a loner.

It is difficult to imagine more damaging depictions of an accused person who hadn't yet even been apprehended, much less given a chance to tell his story.

***

ON SATURDAY, June 8, Ray, wearing a beige raincoat and shell-rimmed glasses, presented his Canadian passport at the desk at Heathrow Airport at approximately 11:15 a.m. He had been scheduled to fly on a British European Airways flight to Brussels at 11:50. Immigration officer Kenneth Human noticed a second passport when Ray pulled the first from his jacket and asked to see that one as well. It was identical except that it had been issued in Ottawa on April 4, and the last name was "Sneya." Ray explained the misspelling and stated that he had had no time to get it corrected before leaving Canada, requiring him to take care of it in Lisbon.

Ray was approached by Detective Sgt. Philip Birch of Scot- land Yard, who asked to see the passports. He took Ray (as Sneyd) to a nearby room and telephoned Scotland Yard. Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Butler and Chief Inspector Kenneth Thompson were notified and headed toward Heathrow. Ray was searched by Sergeant Birch, and the officer extracted a .38 revolver from his back right pocket, the handle of which was wrapped in black electrical tape. The six-chamber gun was loaded with five rounds.

Ray explained that he was going to Rhodesia and thought the gun might be needed because of the unrest there. Birch informed him that he was committing an offense for which he could be arrested. Shortly after 1:00 p.m., Butler and Thompson arrived, when Ray was placed under arrest for possession of a gun without a permit and was taken to Cannon Row police station, fingerprinted, and placed in a cell. Later Butler and Thompson told him that they had reason to believe he was not in fact a Canadian citizen but an American wanted in the United States for various offenses including murder with a firearm.

Solicitor Michael Eugene was appointed to represent Ray. Extradition was routinely opposed. Ra)' wrote to U .S. attorneys F. Lee Bailey of Massachusetts and Arthur J. Hanes of Birmingham, indicating that he was interested in seeking legal services in the event of his return to Memphis to stand trial on a murder charge. Bailey, who had been friendly with Dr. King, wasn't willing to act, but Arthur Hanes and his son Arthur, Jr., were interested and went to England in an effort to visit their new client. During their first trip, in June 1968, they were denied access, but soon afterward they were allowed to see him.

The extradition requests from the states of Tennessee and Missouri were based largely on the affidavit of one Charles Quitman Stephens, a resident of the South Main Street rooming house, who had emerged as the state's chief witness. He had provided a tentative eyewitness identification of Ray as a person he allegedly saw in the hallway of the rooming house around the time of the killing.

Extradition was granted. Ray appealed. Subsequently, on the advice of his new lawyer, Arthur Hanes, Sr., he dropped the appeal. While the extradition proceedings were in process, an entire cell block in the Shelby County Jail in Memphis was prepared for Ray in consultation with the federal government. When Ray was formally extradited to the United States on July 19, 1968, he was placed in the specially arranged facilities.

The Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson column on July 22, 1968, stated that Ray was a lone gunman. It began:

"It now looks as if the FBI has exploded the generally prevalent theory that the murder of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King involved a conspiracy."

The column went on to confirm that the FBI had "found a robbery where Ray probably got his money." It continued, "The FBI has been checking very carefully, and one of the robbers answers the description of James Earl Ray. He had the same long hair, the same height and the same physical makeup."'

Thus surfaced -- for the first time -- the Alton, Illinois, bank robbery story. This claim enabled the bureau in 1968 to explain how James covered his living expenses during his period as a fugitive. If he had obtained funds from this source, it could be contended that he had no help from anyone else. (Years later we would learn that not only had Ray nothing to do with this robbery but that there were other prime suspects.)

From that date, the Hanes father-and-son team, aided by local private investigator Renfro Hays, began to prepare for trial. Then a surprising thing happened. On November 10, just two days before the trial and after a visit from Texas attorney Percy Foreman, Ray dismissed Hanes and retained Foreman. On November 12, Foreman obtained an extension based on his coming into the case so late.

On December 18, concerned by Foreman's irregular attendance, the court appointed public defenders Hugh Stanton, Sr., and Hugh Stanton, Jr., to assist Foreman and ordered them to be ready to try the case if Foreman wasn't available because of his poor health. On January 17, the next court date set after the appointment of the Stantons, Foreman was indeed absent because of illness. The judge said that if Foreman was unable to handle the case, the Stantons would have to try it. The date was confirmed for March 3.

The Stantons assigned two investigators, George King and George Getz, to interview witnesses and work on the case. Foreman was sick for part of January, and the Stantons were obviously concerned about whether he would be able to carry on. They advised the court that they weren't going to be ready to go to trial on March 3. The trial was put off for another month.

Ultimately, the case never came to trial because James Earl Ray entered a plea of guilty on Monday, March 10, 1969.

***

THE MATTER WAS HEARD BEFORE JUDGE PRESTON BATTLE. When Judge Battle asked Ray if he understood that the charge of murder in the first degree was being levied against him in this case "because you killed Dr. Martin Luther King under such circumstances that it would make you legally guilty of murder in the first degree under the law as explained to you by your lawyers," Ray responded, "Yes, legally yes." After Ray affirmed that the plea of guilty was made freely and voluntarily with full understanding of its meaning and consequences, twelve names were called from the jury pool.

After the seating of the jury, Phil M. Canale. Jr., the district attorney general of Shelby County, introduced himself, his executive assistant, Robert Dwyer, and his assistant attorney general, James Beasley. His presentation to the court recommended punishment of a term of ninety-nine years. Canale indicated that even though the defendant had consented to the plea, accepted the stipulations, and verified the free and voluntary nature of his undertaking in the voir dire, the state was still obligated to provide fundamental proof to the judge and jury.

He concluded by saying that the investigation had been conducted by local police, national police organizations, and inter- national law enforcement agents, and that his office had examined over three hundred items of physical evidence. His chief investigator had traveled thousands of miles throughout the United States and to foreign countries, and there was no evidence of any conspiracy involved in this killing, no proof that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed by anyone other than or in addition to James Earl Ray. Canale pledged that if any evidence was ever presented that showed there was a conspiracy, he would take "prompt and vigorous action in searching out and asking that an indictment be returned, if there were other people, or if it should ever develop that other people were involved."

Percy Foreman then addressed the jury and said it had taken him a month to convince himself that there was no conspiracy. He maintained that he talked with his client for more than fifty hours and estimated that most of that time was spent in cross-examination, "checking each hour and minute and each expenditure of money down to seventy-five cents."

After his presentation, Foreman then asked each juror whether he was willing to subscribe to the verdict of ninety- nine years. Each juror answered, "Yes, sir." At the end of the polling the jury was officially sworn and witnesses called. Testimony was then taken from Reverend Kyles, Dr. King's personal lawyer Chauncey Eskridge, Coroner Dr. Jerry Francisco, homicide chief N. E. Zachary, and FBI special agent in charge Robert G. Jensen.

After a recess, Assistant Attorney General Beasley set forth the agreed-upon stipulation of facts that the state would prove, in addition to the testimony previously heard. Beasley summarized the state's interpretation of the actual killing and the details of the flight of James Earl Ray, his trip overseas, his apprehension, and his return.

Judge Battle asked the jury to raise their hands if they accepted the compromise and settlement on a guilty plea and a punishment of ninety-nine years. The jury was unanimous, and the verdict was signed. Ray was sentenced to ninety-nine years in the state penitentiary.

On the face of it, it was difficult to imagine how Ray could have so clearly admitted guilt if in fact he didn't commit the crime. (Only many years later would I learn about the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the guilty plea.) At one point in the proceedings he appeared to object to what was being said and done. After both sides accepted the jury, he interrupted the proceedings by saying:

"Your Honor, I would like to say something. I don't want to change anything that I have said, but I just want to enter one other thing. The only thing that I have to say is that I can't agree with Mr. Clark."

"Mr. who?" asked the court.

"Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, I agree with all these stipulations, and I am not trying to change anything."

"You don't agree with whose theories?"

"Mr. Canale's, Mr. Clark's, and Mr. J. Edgar Hoover's about the conspiracy. I don't want to add something on that I haven't agreed to in the past."

Then Mr. Foreman said, "I think that what he said is that he doesn't agree that Ramsey Clark is right, or that J. Edgar Hoover is right. I didn't argue that as evidence in this case, I simply stated that underriding the statement of [Attorney] General Canale that they had made the same statement. You are not required to agree with it at all."

Though the general public was made well aware of the guilty plea, Ray's equivocation at the hearing went largely unnoticed.

It was all over by lunchtime. Within three days of arriving at the penitentiary, Ray had written to the court requesting that his plea of guilty be set aside and that he be given a trial.

Three days after Ray's letter to the court, on March 16, the Washington Post led off a front-page national news section with the heading "Ray Alone Still Talks of a Plot."

After quoting Memphis prosecutors who had "access to the massive investigative files of the FBI" and who see "Ray as a man who had a general hatred of Negroes and at best an unspecific and unstructured desire to harm King," the article went on to assert that Ray remained the only person associated with the case who believed that there was a conspiracy.

The fact that many others -- including Dr. King's widow, Ralph Abernathy, and other associates-believed in the existence of a conspiracy was ignored.

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PART III: THE INITIAL INVESTIGATION

Chapter 8: Reentry: Late 1977-October 15, 1978

During the next nine years I had virtually nothing to do with the civil rights or antiwar movements, having walked away after Dr. King's funeral. I had no hope that the nation could be reconstructed without Martin King's singular leadership. There quite simply was no one else. Ralph Abernathy and I had had only sporadic contact during those nine years. I had completed degree studies in education and law and written two books, and he had taken on and then been forced to give up, with some bitterness, the leadership of the SCLC.

***

IN LATE 1977, during a telephone conversation, Ralph told me he wasn't satisfied by the official explanation of Dr. King's murder and wanted to have a face-to-face meeting with the alleged assassin of his old friend. He said he would welcome an opportunity to hear Ray's story and assess it directly for himself. Would I arrange such a meeting and accompany him?

His interest in the case was clearly motivated by the activity of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). HSCA investigations into the murders of President Kennedy and Dr. King were in progress at the time.

The HSCA had been formed in 1976 in response to a growing public disbelief in the conclusions of the report of the Warren Commission on the assassination of President Kennedy. Public confidence in government had been shaken early on by the allegations of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, the Watergate scandal, and the 1973 Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee Report ( detailing the widespread surveillance of American civilians by army intelligence). This was followed by the Rockefeller Commission Report issued in June 1975 (detailing CIA domestic activities against American civilians) and the findings of the 1975 House Judiciary Committee (detailing the FBI's counterintelligence program [COINTELPRO]). Confidence in the government sank even farther, if possible, as a result of the 1976 Church Committee Report (which contained one hundred pages devoted to FBI and other government agency harassment and surveillance of Dr. King), and the 1976 House Intelligence Committee report (covering the domestic activities of the CIA).

Walter Fauntroy, a former colleague of Abernathy and King, was chairman of the HSCA subcommittee investigating King's assassination. Although I was skeptical of such committees, having experienced congressional investigations of the antiwar movement a decade earlier, there was a general air of expectation that perhaps, at last, some of the hitherto unanswered questions would be addressed. It occurs to me now that Abernathy may well have been looking for a way to make his presence felt in this process.

To properly assist Ralph, I knew I had to do a considerable amount of preparation. I agreed to help him as long as no meeting took place until I believed that we were ready. I wasn't going to become involved in any way that would embarrass King's memory or allow Ralph to be used by a clever lawyer of Ray's. I believed we were likely to have only one opportunity to put some serious questions to Ray and I wanted us to make the most of it. It was clear that Ralph would be interviewed by the press at the end of our session, and any position he took would have to be based on solid information. If this were not the case, his renewed interest in the case could well prove to be an embarrassment to him- self and a disservice to Ray's latest effort to obtain a trial. Ray had been trying to get a trial for nearly ten years. If the man was innocent, I certainly didn't want to hurt his chances for release. Ralph agreed to these ground rules, as did Mark Lane, Ray's lawyer at the time.

I read everything I could find about the killing, but there wasn't a great deal available. One of the earliest and most prominent works was Gerold Frank's An American Death, [8] which became, in effect, the official account of the case. Years later, I came across an internal FBI document dated March 11, 1969, the day after Ray's guilty plea hearing. This memo to Hoover's number two and closest confidant, Clyde Tolson, came from Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach. Specifically, he wrote:

Now that Ray has been convicted and is serving a 99-year sentence, I would like to suggest that the Director allow us to choose a friendly, capable author, or the Reader's Digest, and proceed with a book based on this case.

A carefully written factual book would do much to preserve the true history of this case. While it will not dispel or put down future rumors, it would certainly help to have a book of this nature on college and high school library shelves so that the future would be protected.

[Underneath this is handwritten the words "Whom do you suggest?"]

I would also like to suggest that consideration be given to advising a friendly newspaper contact, on a strictly confidential basis, that Coretta King and Reverend Abernathy are deliberately plotting to keep King's assassination in the news by pulling the ruse of maintaining that King's murder was definitely a conspiracy and not committed by one man. This, of course, is obviously a rank trick in order to keep the money coming in to Mrs. King, Abernathy, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We can do this without any attribution to the FBI and without anyone knowing that the information came from a wire tap.

Respectfully,
C. D. DeLoach [9]

On the very next day, DeLoach transmitted an addendum in which he stated the following:

If the Director approves, we have in mind considering cooperating in the preparation of a book with either the Reader's Digest or author Gerold Frank. ... Frank is a well known author whose most recent book is "The Boston Strangler." Frank is already working on a book on the Ray case and has asked the Bureau's cooperation in the preparation of the book on a number of occasions. We have nothing derogatory on him in our files, and our relationship with him has been excellent. [10]

At the bottom of this addendum is handwritten the word "O.K." and the initial "H."

Also at the bottom of DeLoach's letter to Tolson is a handwritten reference to George E. McMillan, which apparently refers to the bureau passing certain documentation to author George E. McMillan. McMillan, who had well-known intelligence connections, published a book on the case, The Making of an Assassin, which was allegedly a psychological profile of Ray and very much supported the bureau's lone assassin theory. [11]

Gerold Frank brought to light a few issues of interest. He revealed the presence of Memphis police detectives in the fire station across the street monitoring activity at the Lorraine, and the withdrawal on the afternoon of April 4 of one of them, Ed Redditt, ostensibly for his own safety after there had apparently been a threat on his life. He also mentioned the absence of an all points bulletin (a general alert describing the suspect) and a citizens band broadcast that drew police attention away from the downtown area where the shooting took place. He attributed the broadcast to a teenage hoaxer. Frank also disclosed a rumor that an eleven-year-old boy had seen the shooting and run into the fire station.

William Bradford Huie's book, He Slew the Dreamer, published in 1968, was compromised from the outset because the author had entered into contracts with two of Ray's lawyers, agreeing to pay them in exchange for information and leads that the defendant would provide in response to written questions carried to him by the lawyers. [12] Initially, Huie clearly accepted the existence of a conspiracy, even stating that the state's main witness, Charlie Stephens, was too drunk to be transported by cab driver James McCraw around the time of the shooting. Huie abruptly switched positions, however, to contend that Ray was a lone assassin.

During the early years after the killing, these books and the mass media gave prominent voice to significant aspects of the state's case. The prosecution's scenario was put out to the world as the final word.

The State's Case

The accused assassin was described as a racist whose motives for the crime were a hatred of blacks -- Dr. King in particular -- and a desire to achieve the recognition that responsibility for such a crime provided. The state rejected out of hand the existence of a shadowy figure named Raoul who Ray claimed set him up and directed his movements from the moment of their first meeting in August 1967 until the afternoon of the killing. (James never learned how the man spelled his name and spelled it differently at various times, eventually adopting the spelling "Raoul," although the more prevalent spelling of that Latin name is "Raul" which I have elected to use throughout.) The state claimed that Ray had allegedly stalked Dr. King for some time, beginning the weekend of March 17, 1968, when Dr. King arrived in Los Angeles.

Around March 22, Ray was in Selma, Alabama, near where Dr. King was scheduled to organize for his Poor People's Campaign. He was placed in Atlanta during the last week in March, leaving on March 30 to purchase the rifle. The state alleged that on March 31 he returned to Atlanta, where he left clothes at a local laundry on April 1. The Atlanta map discovered with Ray's belongings left behind in the Atlanta rooming house allegedly had markings around the locations of Dr. King's house, church, and office. Carrying the murder weapon with him, Ray arrived in Memphis on April 3, the same day on which Dr. King began his final visit to that city.

On April 4, Ray drove to the downtown area and rented a room under the alias John Willard in the seedy rooming house at 422 Y2 South Main Street. While being shown around by landlady Bessie Brewer, he would reject one "housekeeping room" in the south wing of the house for a smaller' 'sleeping room' , in the rear of the north wing. This room had a view of the Lorraine Motel, where, allegedly, Dr. King always stayed when he was in Memphis. The old rooming house had separate entrances for each wing. The room chosen by Ray, 5-B, which adjoined that of two long-term residents -- Charles Quitman Stephens and Grace Walden -- was at the end of a hall and near a rear-facing bathroom overlooking the motel balcony where Dr. King was standing when he was killed. (See chart 2, page 57.)

At one point during that fateful afternoon, Ray bought a pair of binoculars at the York Arms Store on South Main, allegedly driving there, and on his return parked his car in front of Canipe Amusement Company, just south of Jim's Grill. (See chart 3, page 58.) He then returned to his room, where he allegedly moved furniture around, placing a chair near the window so that he could better surveil the motel. Later on he allegedly entered the bathroom at the end of the hall and locked the door. He knocked a screen from the window down to the backyard area behind the rooming house. This overgrown yard ended at an eight-foot wall that rose up from Mulberry Street directly opposite the balcony. Standing in the bathtub (where scuff marks were left) and waiting for the right moment, he rested the rifle on the windowsill. At 6:01 p.m. he fired a single shot, the recoil from which dented the windowsill, and in his haste he neglected to eject the spent cartridge. The shot traveled just over two hundred feet, striking Dr. King in the lower right side of his face, the bullet traveling downward and breaking his jaw, damaging his upper spine, and coming to rest just under the skin below the left shoulder blade.


CHARTS 2 & 3: SOUTH MAIN STREET

Immediately after the shooting, Ray allegedly ran to his room, gathered his few belongings into a bundle, and ran down the front stairs, being viewed, as he ran, by Charles Stephens. (Another tenant, Willie Anschutz, also saw a man, whom he couldn't identify, run from room 5-B down the hall carrying some sort of package.) The state would say that, once on the street, Ray saw a police car parked facing the street near the sidewalk in the driveway of the fire station which caused him to panic and drop the bedspread-wrapped bundle in the recessed doorway of Canipe Amusement Company. He then jumped into his white Mustang just south of Canipe's and drove to Atlanta, where he abandoned the Mustang.

Ray then made his way to Canada and eventually to England as Ramon George Sneyd, in whose name he was able to obtain a passport, The state contended that in his determination to get as far away as possible, and in line with his racist inclinations, he explored the possibility of going to Rhodesia. When he was unable to arrange this during a trip to Portugal, he returned to England, where he robbed a bank. He was finally apprehended at Heathrow Airport while on his way to Brussels, where he had intended to explore other African emigration possibilities.

As to the funds he needed to live on during his fugitive period beginning April 23, 1967, the state contended that he committed various robberies, first in Canada and later in the United States. No evidence whatsoever existed of Ray receiving assistance from anybody, except perhaps members of his own family.

The picture of James Earl Ray that emerged then -- as put out by the authorities from the time he was first identified on April 19, 1968, until he entered a plea of guilty on March 10, 1969, and ever after -- was that of a dangerous career criminal who was also a bitter racist and a loner.

The Dissent

The only substantial dissenting voice in print in the early years after the assassination was that of investigative writer Harold Weisberg, who relied heavily on the findings of journalist Matt Herron (who was on the scene), news reports, articles, and telephone interviews.

Weisberg's book, Frame Up, [13] published in 1971, raised a number of new issues. They included the following:

• Eyewitness evidence of chauffeur Solomon Jones seeing some one in the brush immediately after the shot.
• A last-minute change of Dr. King's hotel from the Rivermont to the Lorraine and a change of his originally assigned room at the Lorraine.
• The presence of another white Mustang, parked in front of Jim's Grill, within one hundred feet of the Mustang parked in front of Canipe Amusement Company.
• The inability of the FBI laboratory to conclusively match the death slug to the alleged murder weapon.
• The absence of any fingerprints of Ray in the rooming house.
• The transfer of black firemen from the fire station near the scene the evening before the killing.
• The CB "hoax" broadcast that took place moments after the shooting, which Weisberg found indicative of the existence of a conspiracy.

He also briefly discussed a Louisiana state trooper named Raul Esquivel, whose Baton Rouge barracks contained a telephone whose number Ray had allegedly called. Weisberg obtained the number from Los Angeles Times reporter Jeff Cohen, who said he was given it by Charles Stein, whom Ray met in California and who rode with him from Los Angeles to New Orleans in December 1967. Stein allegedly had seen Ray dial the number and wrote it down.

Weisberg drew attention to the potential conflict of interest arising out of the literary contracts signed by Ray, his successive lawyers, and author William Bradford Huie. He also discussed at length the hostility of Hoover and the FBI toward Dr. King and the harassment he suffered at their hands. He developed early on a case for a conspiracy, with Ray as a pawn manipulated by a man named Raul.

Mark Lane 's book, Code Name Zorro, published in 1977, provided other new information pointing to leads and discrepancies in the state's case. [14] Lane referred to the fact that a "screen" of bushes behind the rooming house had been cut down some time after the shooting. He disputed the official reason given by the MPD that the order to remove detective Redditt from his post shortly before the shooting was a result of a threat on Redditt's life. Redditt also told him that the Invaders were infiltrated by a black undercover cop who was an agent provocateur for violence and illegal activity. Redditt met him years later when the agent, who was undercover, pleaded for his cover not to be blown, saying that he was currently working for the CIA.

Lane's account further disputed the official story by contending that Dr. King had never previously stayed at the Lorraine. He quoted Memphis reporter Kay Black, who had covered some of Dr. King's earlier visits. She said that she remembered him staying at the Claridge Hotel, and before his last visit she didn't even know where the Lorraine Motel was located. Lane also questioned what had happened to the rooming house's register, which had long since disappeared.

Clearly only the secondary press attempted to raise the issues of the case and generate discussion about Ray's guilt or innocence.

Quietly and behind the scenes, as other commitments allowed, I began to investigate. When I became aware that on September 10, 1976, the MPD burned all the files of its intelligence bureau, despite an effort by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to prevent their destruction, I realized that a reconstruction of the events leading up to the assassination was going to be that much more difficult.

***

I TURNED WITH NEW INTEREST TO THE ACTIVITY OF THE HSCA. The first year of its work had been turbulent. Its first chief counsel, former Pennsylvania prosecutor Richard Sprague, a tough, honest professional, had been summarily replaced by Cornell University law professor G. Robert Blakey in early 1977.

Following Sprague's removal in the wake of concerted personal attacks against him by the press, it was evident that the scope of the subcommittee inquiry on Dr. King's death had become restricted solely to James Earl Ray and his brothers, John and Jerry.

In an interview with Sprague shortly after his dismissal, he told me he had taken the job because he was promised a free hand by the Ninety-fifth Congress, yet hardly had the commit- tee been organized when House Speaker Tip O'Neill demanded, in order to justify additional funds, that it "prove" to the Congress there was a conspiracy. Sprague maintained that after he left, the committee's approach changed drastically. Whereas he had been committed to an open-ended, formal investigation for as long as it took and regardless of where it led, the new chief counsel clearly favored an approach that Sprague termed "evaluative" (as opposed to "investigative"), which focused on closing rather than opening doors. Articles, books, and stories were evaluated individually, without cross- referencing, so they couldn't be used as sources for new information. Sprague was cynically resigned to the fact that the public didn't care. He believed that Congress and the executive branch were at best never interested in a real investigation and at worst committed to covering up the truth. Chief deputy counsel Robert Lehner eventually resigned, disagreeing with Blakey's decision LO limit the investigation to the Ray brothers.

During the HSCA investigation, the media again turned their focus on Ray. Time set the tone in its January 26, 1976 issue with an article variously referring to him as a "narcotics addict" and a "narcotics peddler," based on George McMillan's book. [15] Missouri Corrections Department chief George M. Camp tried to contact McMillan for details about the allegation in his book that Ray financed the killing of Dr. King by selling drugs as an inmate. Camp stated publicly that McMillan's charges were "totally unsubstantiated" and that he wanted McMillan to "either put up or shut Up." [16] Aside from the St. Louis Post Dispatch's coverage, Camp's refutation was ignored around the country.

A UPI wire service release on January 25, 1978 -- at the beginning of the last year of the investigation -- also variously referred to Ray as having gone "insane" (1963-1964), sending an "obscene letter" to the post office (1967-1968), constantly reading "girlie magazines," harassing "two women with late night telephone calls" (1967- 968), being involved with "drug traffic" and even having "cheated fellow prisoners in crooked card games."

***

ROBERT BLAKEY WAS A PURPORTED EXPERT ON ORGANIZED CRIME who had taught at both Notre Dame and Cornell law schools. At Cornell he was the director of its Institute of Organized Crime, and previously he served as a special attorney with the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U.S. Department of Justice under Robert Kennedy.

As my investigation proceeded during these early days, I re- viewed a copy of a most unusual affidavit executed by Blakey on February 4, 1976.17 It was prepared and submitted to the court in a civil action brought by Cleveland- Las Vegas crime syndicate leader Morris Dalitz against Penthouse magazine as a result of an article that alleged the involvement of organized crime in the development of Rancho La Costa California resort. [18] The allegation of criminal involvement was tied to Dalitz's involvement with the project.

Blakey, as an expert witness, contended that Moe Dalitz had no connection with organized crime. [19] This was extraordinary because it was by then a well-established fact that Dalitz was a long-time major syndicate operator. Subsequently, on September 10, 1979, the Wall Street Journal noted that Dalitz had long been identified by federal authorities as an ongoing senior advisor to organized crime.

Because the murder of Dr. King could well have involved elements of organized crime, I was concerned that the counsel steering the investigation would take such a position only a short time before he took over control of the HSCA. (Blakey's expert opinion was ultimately not accepted and Penthouse's defense of the piece was successful.)

I was also very uneasy with the new chief counsel's apparently cozy relationship with the CIA and the FBI, which moved him to give the intelligence agencies influence over his staffs requests for files, documents, and records. Other factors were unsettling as well: the early removal of twenty-eight staffers, the insistence on secrecy (even the requirement that all staff sign nondisclosure agreements, with harsh penalties for violation), the instruction to staff members that they were to have no contact with critics without Blakey's personal authorization, and the absence of accountability of committee consultants to anyone beyond the immediate committee leadership. I was thus led to conclude early on that the reconstituted committee leadership had no intention of conducting an independent investigation.

My misgivings about the HSCA were reinforced when in the summer of 1978 I learned about a clandestine assignment given to previous FBI informer and HSCA undercover agent Oliver Patterson to establish a relationship with Ray's brother Jerry, and to provide as much information as possible from these contacts. He was instructed to obtain hair samples from Jerry and to go through his personal things from time to time, looking for anything that might be of interest, including correspondence.

In August 1978 Patterson was instructed to publicly discredit Mark Lane, who was James Earl Ray's lawyer at the time.

In a sworn statement dated August 14, 1978, Patterson stated that his HSCA handlers instructed him to give a private interview to New York Times reporter Anthony J. Marro on Monday, August 7, 1978, in which he was told to accuse Mark Lane of being gay, state that Lane had told him that he knew there was no person named Raul, and further allege that his [Patterson's] own undercover work had confirmed James Earl Ray's guilt.

When Lane (tipped off by Susan Wadsworth, a friend of Patterson's) uncovered the plot and confronted Patterson, Patterson agreed to cooperate with him. Consequently, when Marro arrived at noon at the designated St. Louis hotel he found himself walking into a room filled with news cameras and reporters. He ran from the room with Lane behind him asking whether he wanted the truth. Lane then addressed a press conference, and with Patterson and Wadsworth present revealed the history of the HSCA's illicit use of Oliver Patterson. Affidavits setting out details about this matter were executed by Wadsworth, and another friend of Patterson, Tina Denaro.

Chief counsel Blakey subsequently issued a statement in which he said that a complete investigation of Patterson's allegations would be made but that on the basis of a preliminary investigation, "the Committee categorically denies each and every allegation of wrongdoing. It states with assurance that no federal, state, or local law, or any rule of the House or of the Committee has been violated by the investigator or by any other member of the Committee staff."

Patterson never repudiated his allegations against the committee.

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Chapter 9: The Visit: October 17, 1978

By MID-OCTOBER 1978 I was ready to meet Ray at the Brushy Mountain prison in Tennessee. Mark Lane agreed to arrange for as long a session as we wished, which we could record in any way we chose. Our group was to include Ralph Abernathy, psychiatrist Howard Berens of Boston, who specialized in interpreting body lang1:1age, and two photographers.

I had learned as much as possible about our subject's life. James Earl Ray was born on March 10, 1928, in Alton, Illinois. He and his family, which included his two brothers, Jerry and John, moved some six years later to Ewing, Missouri, where his father gave the family the name of "Rayns" to avoid an association with some of James's uncle's petty criminal activities. Thus Ray's first alias was provided to him by his own father when he was six.

Ray finished elementary school (eighth grade) and promptly dropped out. He moved back to Alton, and at age sixteen he worked at the International Shoe Tannery in East Hartford, Illinois. He enlisted in the army in January 1946. Eventually, he was stationed in West Germany.

In December 1948, he received a general discharge, which cited his "inaptness and lack of adaptability to military service." He returned to Alton and soon began drifting from job to job.

In September 1949, he left Chicago for California, and in October he was arrested for a minor burglary, a charge he has always denied. He was sentenced to ninety days in prison. After returning to Illinois in 1950, he worked in supermarkets and factories and attempted to earn his high school diploma by going to night school. In May 1952, he robbed a cab driver of eleven dollars. He was sent to the state penitentiary at Joliet and later transferred to the state prison farm in Pontiac, where he remained until he was released on March 12, 1954.

Though he stayed out of trouble for a while, at a bar he met Walter Rife, who persuaded him to help sell U.S. postal money orders Rife had stolen. They were caught, and on July 1, 1955, Ray was sentenced to forty-five months at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. It is interesting to note that Rife, who apparently turned informer, received a lesser sentence even though he had actually stolen the money orders. In a subsequent interview (March 12, 1979) Ray would reflect philosophically on the issue of informing, saying that he didn't want to end up like Joe Valachi, the mob informant. He felt that if someone else wanted to inform that was their business, but he would neither inform nor assist in the prosecution of anyone. Over the years, I have become impressed with the strength of this commitment. For Ray, this is more than a way to stay alive in prison. He believes it is wrong and will not relent. In this respect Ray is an old-fashioned con, respected wherever he has done time.

He was paroled from Leavenworth in early 1959, only to be tried and convicted for a grocery store robbery in St. Louis in December 1959. In March of 1960 he began serving a twenty-year sentence at the Missouri State Penitentiary.

He was always on the lookout for ways to escape. After two unsuccessful attempts he succeeded on April 23, 1967, when he began the odyssey that was to end over a year later with his extradition from the United Kingdom. After being convicted and eventually incarcerated at Brushy Mountain, Ray again tried to escape. His second attempt there was successful. On June 10, 1977 he went over the wall but was caught and returned in just over two days. At that time it had become clear that the HSCA (the future of which had been in doubt) was going to continue. I was uneasy when I learned that a large number of FBI agents appeared extraordinarily quickly on the scene.

On October 16, the day before our meeting was to take place, the members of our small group gathered at a hotel on the outskirts of Knoxville. Late that evening we were joined by Mark Lane and one of his assistants, Barbara Rabbito. For several hours that evening Ralph and I went over questions I had drafted, preparing for the next day's interview.

The next morning, we were joined by Ray's wife, Anna. She had been an NBC courtroom artist sketching scenes at the trial following Ray's escape attempt in 1976, apparently was smitten with him, and began to visit him regularly. They eventually were married by Martin's old friend, Jim Lawson, who shared Mark Lane's belief that Ray was not the killer. (In March 1993, James and Anna divorced acrimoniously.)

Around 10:00 that morning we set out for Petros, the remote home of Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Mark Lane, Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Howard Berens and I visited with James in a small interview room outside the maximum security area. From what I had read about him I was' prepared to meet a racist, hardened criminal whose tendency for violence lay not far below the surface. I was very surprised. He seemed serious and shy, almost diffident, and shook hands weakly. He was trim but exceedingly pale, for he had been doing much of his time in solitary "for his own safety" as a result of an escape attempt. By that time he had been in prison for eight years and seven months. He sat down at the head of a small table, and after Dr. Berens and I arranged the tape recorders, Abernathy began the session with a prayer.

Ralph's prayer did little to ease the tension that had been building from the moment we passed through the prison gate. As a result of my research I leaned toward the belief that Ray had not killed Dr. King; I hoped that he would be able to convince us of his innocence. I suppose that this hope stemmed, at least in part, from an unwillingness to accept that such a singular life and work as Dr. King's could be snuffed out so unceremoniously by a "lone nut" who was by all appearances a nonentity. I knew, however, that if Ray's answers didn't measure up and we came to believe he was guilty, then Ralph would have to declare as much in his statement to the media. To do or say anything else would be like spitting on Martin's grave.

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Chapter 10: James Earl Ray's Story: October 17, 1978

THE STORY WE GOT FROM JAMES EARL RAY THAT DAY, confirmed by him over the years, is significantly different from the one that would be embodied in the conclusions of the HSCA.

When Ray escaped from Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson in 1967, he had escaped by concealing himself in a bread box, being taken out with the delivery to the prison farm. When he left he had approximately $1,250 in cash, a small transistor radio, and a social security number in the name of John L. Rayns that his brother John had given him.

He eventually made his way to Chicago, where he found a job working at the Indian Trail restaurant in Winnetka. Under the Rayns name he obtained some identification papers, bought an old car, and acquired a temporary driver's license. During this period he was in contact with his brother Jerry.

Concerned about staying too long in the area, Ray left the job after approximately six weeks and decided to go to Canada to get a false passport and then leave the country. He got a pistol from an ex-con he knew, sold his car, bought another, and drove to Montreal. Upon arriving in Canada, Ray began using the name Eric S. Galt (he wasn't clear as to how he came to choose the name).

In Montreal, he robbed a brothel of $1,700. Soon after, he called a travel agency to find out what documents were necessary to get a Canadian passport. He was told he had to have someone vouch for him who had known him for two years, which he later found not to be true. He intended to travel to a country in Africa or South America from which he could not be extradited. He also started hanging out around the docks and local bars, seeking passage out of Canada on a freighter, or perhaps hoping to find some drunken sailor from whom he might steal merchant marine documents.

One of these waterside taverns was the Neptune Bar at 121 West Commissioner's Street. Here in August 1967 he met the shadowy character Raul, who Ray insists was to coordinate and direct his activity from that day through April 4, 1968. The meeting at the Neptune was the first of eight or ten. Eventually, Ray told Raul that he needed identification and passage out of the country. Raul replied that he might be able to help if Ray would help with some smuggling schemes at the U.S. border. Ray had no way of contacting Raul at this time. They simply made arrangements to get together, usually at the Neptune. (Over the years, Ray's description of Raul has varied slightly, but he has basically described him as being of Latin extraction, weighing between 145 and 150 pounds, about 5'9" tall, and having dark hair with a reddish tint.)

Eventually discarding the idea of finding a guarantor, Ray resumed meeting with Raul and tentatively agreed to help smuggle some unspecified contraband across the border from Windsor to Detroit. Raul promised him travel papers and money for this service. Ray said he expected to receive only a small payment for the operation, but he never negotiated or even asked about his fee. This was typical of Ray's behavior throughout. He didn't believe he was in a position to ask questions -- he was being paid to follow instructions.

Ray was told by Raul that if he decided to become further involved he would have to move to Alabama, where Raul would buy him a car, pay his living expenses, and give him a fee. In return, Ray would be expected to help Raul in another smuggling operation, this time across the Mexican border.

Shortly afterward he met Raul at Windsor, and in two separate trips smuggled two sets of packages across the border to Detroit. He thought the first trip was a dry run to test him. On the second trip he was stopped at customs, but the inspector was interrupted by his superior and sent elsewhere. The second official discontinued the search and simply had him pay the $4.50 duty for a television set he had declared.

When he got to Detroit, Raul nervously asked why he had been delayed. Ray showed him the receipt from the customs officer. Raul gave him about $1,500 and a New Orleans telephone number where a message could be left. He told Ray that if he would continue to cooperate, he would eventually obtain not only travel documents but more money as well.

Raul told Ray to get rid of his old car and go to Mobile, Alabama, where they would meet at a place to be decided. Ray said that he convinced Raul to go to Birmingham instead because it was a larger city and Ray thought he'd be more anonymous there. Raul. said that he would send a general delivery letter to Birmingham with instructions on where and when to meet.

Some time after his arrival in Birmingham, Ray picked up a general delivery letter from Raul that instructed him to go to the Starlight Lounge the same evening. There Raul reminded Ray that he was going to need a reliable car. Ray saw an advertisement in the paper for a used Mustang, and Raul gave him $2,000 in cash to buy it.

After this, Raul asked him to buy some photography equipment. He also gave Ray a new number in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which he could call for instructions as a backup to the New Orleans number. Raul gave him $1,000 for the photography equipment and his living expenses, and at Raul's request Ray gave him a set of keys to the Mustang. He ordered the photography equipment by mail from a Chicago firm but didn't understand why Raul wanted it.

Ray had previously received his driver's license and a set of Alabama tags under the name of Eric S. Galt. He kept the old Rayns license in a rented safe deposit box at a local bank, along with some of the cash Raul had given him and a pistol he had bought through a classified ad two or three weeks after he arrived in Birmingham.

Some time in late September or early October, Ray received a general delivery letter from Raul asking him to call New Orleans, which he did. This would be the first of several such calls he would make. Raul himself never got on the phone, but Ray instead always talked with a man who knew where Raul was and who relayed instructions. Ray never met the man he spoke to on the phone and didn't think he could now identify his voice, but he had the impression that the contact kept tabs on persons other than Raul. Ray was told to drive to Baton Rouge and make another phone call to receive instructions for a rendezvous in Mexico.

When Ray got to Baton Rouge, Raul was gone, having left instructions for Ray to go directly to a motel in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just across the border. Ray checked in there on October 7. Raul joined him and they went back across the border to the United States carrying some kind of contraband inside the spare tire. Ray surmised that it was drugs or jewelry. Raul gave him $2,000 and assured him that he would get the travel documents next time, along with enough money for Ray to go into business in another country. Raul gave him a second New Orleans number to replace the first and told him that his next operation would involve transporting guns and accessories. Raul said he would contact him again, when the time came, through general delivery.

After traveling in Mexico for some time, Ray headed for the California border. Before crossing over, however, he went through the car to see if there was anything that might make customs agents suspicious. Down the left side of the front passenger seat he found a cigarette packet with a business card slipped into it. On the front of the card was printed a name that had been inked out, the name of a city (a two-word name that appeared to be New Orleans), and "L.E.A.A." Written on the back was the name Randy Rosen. There were some additional letters after Rosen that James couldn't identify (he later came to believe that the name was Rosenson) and an address, 1180 Northwest River Drive, Miami.

Ray wasn't certain how the card got in the car but believed that somehow it was connected to Raul -- perhaps the cigarette packet had slipped out of Raul's pocket. Ray only threw it away in Los Angeles after copying the information. Subsequently Ray's brother Jerry and others spent a fair amount of time and energy trying to find Rosenson.

Ray arrived in Los Angeles on or about November 19, believing he was through with Raul. He had given up hope that Raul would get him the travel documents, and he was determined to try to get merchant seaman's papers on his own. He lived for a while in an apartment on North Serrano Street. He began looking for papers and a job, and he even placed a classified in the Los Angeles Times advertising himself as available for "culinary help." He didn't have a social security card, and because seaman's papers required fingerprints he was worried that his efforts could result in his exposure as a fugitive. He enrolled in a bartending course, took dancing lessons, and had psychological, hypnotic counseling for a period of time, spending about $800 on these activities.

He also contacted a number of organizations he thought might help him to emigrate. He sent out photographs that weren't good likenesses (his face appeared fatter than it was), which later would be used by the media to accuse him of being on amphetamines. He also had plastic surgery on his nose to alter his appearance.

By early December he was short of cash. He called the New Orleans number and the contact suggested he go to New Orleans. Marie Martin, a barmaid at the Sultan Club in the St. Francis Hotel, hooked him up with her cousin, Charles Stein, who wanted a ride to New Orleans and back. Before leaving Los Angeles, Ray dropped Marie Martin and Charles and Rita Stein off at the local George Wallace independent presidential campaign headquarters so they could register to vote. Soon after, Ray and Stein set off. Ray described Stein as a sort of "hippie" type.

In New Orleans, Ray checked into the Provincial Motel in the Latin Quarter at Stein's suggestion. He met Raul at Le Bunny Lounge. Raul told him that they would be running guns into Mexico and that Ray could end up in Cuba. There he could book himself passage to anywhere in the world. Raul gave him $500 and said that he would contact him in Los Angeles in a few months.

After returning to Los Angeles with Charlie Stein around the middle of January Ray moved into the St. Francis Hotel. On March 17, following instructions from Raul, he left for New Orleans, arriving a day late. He found that Raul had gone to Birmingham, leaving word that he would meet him at the Starlight Lounge the next day. Somehow Ray got lost on the way to Birmingham and wound up in Selma. Since it was dark by that time, he spent the night there.

Ray arrived in Birmingham on the following day, March 23, once again running somewhat behind schedule, and went straight to the Starlight, where he met Raul. Raul seemed to be in a hurry to go to Atlanta, though he didn't say why. They set out immediately.

On arriving in Atlanta they drove to the Peachtree and 14th Street area, where Ray rented a room from the very drunk landlord, James Garner. After a meal at a local diner Raul left, saying he'd be back in the morning.

The next morning, Ray took the room for a week. He was able to get his room free because he convinced Garner that he had paid him in advance the night before. Later, on the telephone, Raul told Ray not to get too far away in case he needed him quickly; he might be required to drive to Miami in a few days. Raul wanted to be able to come and go freely from his confederate's room without being seen by the landlord or anyone else. Ray was unable to duplicate a door key for him (though he had taken a locksmithing course), so he agreed to leave the side door open. This didn't work too well, however, because the landlord's sister kept locking it.

Raul apparently left town, telling Ray he'd be back in a couple of days. Some six days later he returned, saying he was now ready to put the gunrunning operation into full gear. He instructed Ray to get a large-bore deer rifle fitted with a scope, plus ammunition, and to ask about the price of cheap foreign rifles. Raul originally wanted the gun to be bought in Atlanta, but Ray suggested that he could buy a rifle in Alabama more easily, since he had an Alabama ID. Raul agreed.

With that part of the operation set, Ray packed up some of his belongings; he left other things behind at the rooming house: his pistol, some clothes, a television set, and a typewriter. He fully expected to return. Raul and Ray drove together to Birmingham, where Ray rented a room in the Travelodge motel. There Raul briefed him further on the gun purchase and gave him money: They went to a tavern, probably the Starlight Lounge, where Raul told him to go to Aeromarine Supply to buy the rifle.

At Aeromarine Supply, Ray told the clerk he was going hunting with his brother-in-law, looked at a number of rifles, and finally selected one and asked to have a scope mounted on it. He asked the salesman to "throw in" some ammunition. Ray purchased the gun under the alias Harvey Lowmeyer, the name of a former criminal associate in Quincy, Illinois. At the last minute he believed it would be safer to buy the gun under another alias. If the clerk requested identification, he would go elsewhere to purchase the rifle under his verifiable alias, Eric S. Galt.

He took the rifle back to the motel and showed it to Raul. To Ray's surprise Raul said it wouldn't do. Ray had picked up some brochures in the store, so Raul marked the rifle he wanted and told Ray to try to make an exchange. Ray called Aeromarine Supply, said that his brother-in-law didn't like the rifle, and asked if he might exchange it for another; the store said the rifle could be exchanged but he would have to wait until the next day.

The next morning, March 30, Ray picked up the new rifle (which we know was a Remington 760 Gamemaster. The salesman threw in some ammunition free of charge. Raul approved. (At the time of our interview, Ray appeared to be genuinely ignorant about the brand, type, and make of the gun bought on the 29th, as well as the one obtained in exchange on the 30th -- even now, long after the details have been publicly revealed, Ray seems not to recall these details). Before leaving the motel Raul instructed him to check into the New Rebel Motel on Lamar Avenue in Memphis on April 3 and to bring the gun with him.

Ray set out from Birmingham and proceeded as instructed toward Memphis at a leisurely pace, spending the night at a motel in Decatur. On the 31st he stayed at another motel in the Tuscumbia-Florence area. On April 1, he spent the night in a motel in Corinth, Mississippi (which he subsequently identified as the Southern Motel). He spent the night of April 2 in the DeSoto Motel in Mississippi, just south of Memphis. (Harold Weisberg told me some years later that in 1974, while working for attorneys Bud Fensterwald and James Lesar in preparation for an evidentiary hearing for Ray, he spoke to the manager and some cleaning staff, who confirmed that Ray was at the DeSoto Motel as he claimed. The manager claimed that the records had been turned over to FBI agents when they visited shortly after the assassination.)

On April 3, Ray drove across the Mississippi-Tennessee state line and checked into the New Rebel Motel in Memphis. Late in the evening, Raul appeared at the doorway wearing a raincoat, and Ray let him in. Ray didn't know where he came from or how he got there. Raul told him they were going to rent a room near the river. There they would work the first stage of the gunrunning deal.

At the time, Ray figured that Raul wanted the room in a rundown part of Memphis because they'd be less conspicuous. As usual, he didn't ask Raul any questions. Raul wanted Ray to rent the room using the Galt alias, but Ray was uncomfortable with this and suggested using an alias he had used previously -- John Willard.

Raul then wrote out the address of a tavern named Jim 's Grill and instructed Ray to meet him there at 3:00 the next afternoon.

Earlier in the day, Ray had brought the rifle in its box into the room wrapped in a sheet or bedspread. Just before Raul left, Ray gave him the gun, and Raul left with it under his coat. He had no idea why Raul wanted to take the gun. James Earl Ray has remained adamant that after turning the gun over to Raul at the New Rebel Motel on the evening of April 3 he never saw it again.

After checking out of the New Rebel Motel on April 4, Ray stalled for some time, did some shopping, changed a slowly leaking tire, and then drove downtown. He left the car in a parking lot and proceeded on foot to look for Jim's Grill. He first went into a tavern on Main Street called Jim's Club and noticed a fellow in the. tavern who looked at him "kind of funny," then eventually located Jim's Grill down the street, at 418 South Main Street. Not seeing Raul inside, he retrieved the car and parked it at the curb just outside the grill around 3:30 p.m. By then Raul had arrived. Ray remembers Raul asking him where the car was. Ray pointed to it.

Ray rented a room in the rooming house above the grill for a week, using the name John Willard. There Raul told him to get a pair of infrared binoculars; the people who were buying the guns wanted them too, he said. When Ray asked for them at the York Arms Store on South Main Street, he was told they could only be bought at an army surplus store, so instead he bought a pair of regular binoculars.

When he returned, he noticed that the man whom he had first seen at Jim's Club was inside the grill. He apparently didn't notice Ray, who didn't go inside but went up to the room where Raul was waiting.

Ray tried to tell Raul about the man downstairs, but Raul ignored him and told him he was going to meet a very important gunrunner and that they were going to the outskirts of town to try out the rifle. Raul told him to bring his stuff upstairs, so Ray got his bag out of the Mustang. He also brought a bedspread up in case he had to spend the night there, because he didn't want to sleep on the one in the room. Raul gave him $200 in cash and told him to go to the movies and come back in two or three hours. Ray was instructed to leave the Mustang where it was because Raul said he would probably use it.

Ray went downstairs for the last time around 5:20 p.m. He had talked to Raul for about forty-five minutes. Back in the street, he looked in at Jim's Grill and didn't see the man he suspected had been following him. He remembered that the Mustang had a flat spare tire and decided to have it fixed so that Raul wouldn't have any trouble if he used the car later.

Ray said he was uneasy about the man, who he thought had followed him, and concluded that he was either a federal narcotics agent or the "international gunrunner" Raul had mentioned. He drove to a gas station to have the tire repaired, arriving there sometime between 5:50 and 6:00 p.m. Since there were a lot of customers, he simply waited, because he was in no hurry. Finally an attendant came over and told him that he didn't have the time to change his tire. Ray remembered that an ambulance raced by with its siren blaring.

Driving back, he was confronted by a policeman who had blocked off the street about a block away from the rooming house. The policeman motioned to him to turn around. The policeman's presence told him that something was wrong, and his inclination, as always in such circumstances, was to get out, so he drove south toward Mississippi, intending at first to get to a telephone and call the New Orleans number. It wasn't until he had almost reached Grenada, Mississippi, that he heard on the radio that Martin Luther King had been killed.

When he heard that the police were looking for a white man in a white Mustang, he realized he might have been involved with a man or men who had conspired to kill King. He took back roads rather than the interstate highway because he was afraid he might be the object of a search. On his way he stopped and threw away the photography equipment and then drove straight to Atlanta, where he abandoned the car.

Ray made his way by bus out of the United States into Canada, reaching Toronto on April 6. He went to a local newspaper to check birth announcements of people who would have been slightly younger than him since he thought he looked younger than he was. He picked out some names, including Ramon George Sneyd and Paul E. Bridgeman. He called each to find out whether either had applied for a passport, pretending that it was an official inquiry. Sneyd hadn't applied for a passport, but Bridgeman had, so Ray decided not to use Bridgeman's name for the passport, only for local use.

On April 8 he registered as Paul Bridgeman at a rooming house on Ossington Street. He would leave the house every morning at 8:30, returning each evening around 5:30. (He subsequently stated that he took another room in a second rooming house on Dundas Street, where he would spend most of the day, pretending that he had a night job. He registered there under the Sneyd name).

Ray flew to England on May 8 and from there he made a quick trip to Portugal to try to get to one of the Portuguese overseas territories -- Angola or Mozambique. Unsuccessful, he returned to England, planning to go eventually to Belgium to explore the possibilities of taking another route. As we know, he was apprehended at Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968, and extradited to the United States on July 19, 1968.

We asked Ray why he had pleaded guilty. He insisted that he had been greatly pressured and coerced. I would later learn the details of the extent of the pressure on him and the history of his extraordinary legal representation. (This is discussed in chapter 17.) We finished our session with Ray around 4:00 p.m., some five hours after we began.

Dr. Berens and I agreed that during the interview Ray displayed a vagueness and apprehensive equivocation relating to any connection with persons or places in Louisiana. There was also a curious general change in tone and manner when we began to probe about why he went for psychological, hypnotic counseling. Only during this experience did he use his real name (for fear of it coming out during hypnosis). He has dismissed that experience as a kind of extracurricular preoccupation that he undertook while awaiting instructions from Raul. The possibility of Ray being subjected to mind control occurred to me.

As for Raul, the extensive details that Ray provided convinced us that such a person did indeed exist, despite the authorities' consistent public statements to the contrary. Though Ray did not mention it during our interview, I subsequently learned that in early 1978 he said that his brother Jerry had anonymously been sent a photograph of an individual whom Ray positively identified as Raul. This identification was reported by the local media at the time. On the back of the photograph was written the name Carlos Hernandez Rumbaut. James said that he sent the photograph to his brother John in St. Louis and asked him to check it against picture archives at the main library. In particular he asked him to compare it with photo- graphs of alleged drug dealers. John made a copy of the photo and sent the original back in a package with other materials. Ray said when he opened the package the photo was missing. A few days later federal marshals arrested John Rayon a parole violation; when he was released he found that his house had been rifled and numerous things taken, including the photograph. (years later I would learn that Rumbaut was an asset of the Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA] and that he had also been implicated in drug dealing. I obtained his photograph -- it was clear that Rumbaut was not the man whom James had identified in 1978 as Raul. With hindsight, it appeared possible that by putting his name on the back of the the real Raul's picture, someone could have been trying to set James up to wrongly identify Rumbaut as Raul.)

***

ABERNATHY AND I LATER AGREED with Dr. Berens's assessment that Ray was basically telling the truth. However, I believe that James Earl Ray has never revealed all that he knows. He has been the target of at least one murder attempt in prison and has probably decided that to say more is dangerous. We didn't know what, if any, role he had played but we thought he was an unlikely candidate for the assassin.

Ralph Abernathy felt that Ray didn't show any signs of the compulsive hatred of blacks common in the South. Ralph, like the rest of us, was, I believe, genuinely surprised at this. We had all heard and read the mass media's reports about Ray's alleged racism which was, after all, put forward as his primary motivation for the murder.

As we left the prison, a phalanx of television and print journalists was waiting. Ralph 's statement left no doubt as to his conclusions following the interrogation: "James Earl Ray's answers to my questions convinced me more than ever that it was a conspiracy that took the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and that James Earl Ray should get a new trial."

The session left me intrigued and troubled. The James Earl Ray I had read and heard about was not the man I saw in that tiny room. The man I saw was not a nut, nor was he a flaming racist. In fact, there was a gentleness about him that I didn't think could have been feigned. Could an innocent man have spent nearly nine years in prison with the truth never having been revealed? I decided to continue my investigation.

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Chapter 11: Pieces of the Puzzle: 1978-1979

BEGINNING IN 1978, as time and my legal practice allowed, I gradually became immersed in the case. In early 1978, as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Morton Halperin of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, I discovered the interest that the CIA's little-known Office of Security (OS) had in Dr. King during the 1960s. Some of the agency's most covert operations were mounted from the OS. Through an elaborate network of assets (independent contract agents whose acts may be officially denied), it coordinated a wide range of operations, including assassination efforts, the most infamous being the collaboration with organized crime through Sam Giancana and John Roselli in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro in the early 1960s.

I learned that some of the key personnel of the OS were former FBI agents, and that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI had a good working relationship with the OS. Incredibly, OS consultant Lee Pennington prepared Hoover's personal income tax returns. Also, the OS had run a little-known program called Project RESISTANCE, which, along with Operation CHAOS (mounted in 1967 at President Johnson's request), was responsible for domestic surveillance and intelligence-gathering against thousands of Americans who opposed the Vietnam War. [20] During this period, CIA agents were also infiltrating pro- test and antiwar groups, and provided training programs, ser- vices, and equipment to local police departments in exchange for surveillance and break-ins on the agency's behalf. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s the OS coordinated this activity, often in conjunction with the FBI and army intelligence, which had similar operations. [21]

Documents reflected the Agency's fear that Dr. King was influenced by a "Peking line" of communist thinking, and it was considering how derogatory information could be used to discredit him. Dr. King had been under Operation CHAOS, Project RESISTANCE, and other agency surveillance programs for a number of years. The agency had also recruited assets in the 1960s to infiltrate, spy on, and subvert civil rights groups.

One such infiltrator was informant A, mentioned often in memos issued by OS director Howard Osborn and OS Security Research Staff (SRS) chief Paul Gaynor. Informant A was subsequently identified as Jay Richard Kennedy, who referred to Dr. King as a "Maoist." In a memo dated October 5, 1967 (released to the public on March 13, 1978), Kennedy also referred to the New Politics. (NCNP) convention. In a gross misinterpretation of the events, he reported that the Black Caucus and the Communist Party "virtually wrecked the Convention" but failed to get support for a King-Spock presidential ticket. The government's reliance on such an out-of-touch informant is frightening.

In a memorandum for the SRS chief dated November 29, 1975, the following disclaimer was put on the record: "A thorough review of cited Office of Security files disclosed no evidence that the Office of Security has ever conducted any investigation, including wiretaps, surveillance, mail cover, or field investigation regarding listed subjects ( one of whom was Dr. King). No inquiry was made outside the Office of Security and no DOD records were reviewed or checked." (DOD [Domestic Operations Division] coordinates the agency's operations inside the United States.)

In fact, the OS intercepted King's mail and probably entered his hotel rooms illegally to obtain photocopies of credit card receipts, business cards, and telephone messages, which were included in the documents released. Even though Operation CHAOS was supposedly begun in 1967, many of the Freedom of Information Act documents on Dr. King were dated in the spring and summer of 1965, and purloined receipts and telephone messages dated from the spring of 1966.

Finally, from the memos that the OS sent the FBI, it's obvious that at least during the last year of Dr. King's life they worked jointly against him. An OS memo dated March 15, 1968, issued within three weeks of Dr. King's assassination, closed with the statement: ". ..FBI liaison has been most cooperative and effective in providing the office with timely information about the various domestic militants and protest groups." [22 ]

Throughout the 1960s and in particular for the two years following the appointment of Richard Helms as CIA director in June 30, 1966, the congressional and the executive branches of government, supported on national security grounds by the Supreme Court whenever necessary (following the 1959, 5-4 decision in the case of Barr v. Matteo), generally abdicated their responsibility to check the agency and effectively gave the green light for its conduct of covert special operations (SOG activity) inside the United States.

As a result of the agency's interest in and surveillance of Dr. King in the mid 1960s, I was interested in learning as much as possible about its domestic activity during that critical period leading up to the assassination. Much of the history was well known and fairly widely published, since there had been in previous years the occasional exposure of covert domestic activity.

The agency was established by the National Security Act, passed on September 18, 1947. In proposing the creation of the CIA, President Harry Truman emphasized the nation's un awareness leading up to the raid on Pearl Harbor, which he thought illustrated the need for a central intelligence entity capable of providing prompt and effective warning about any such enemy attack. Administration witnesses continually stressed the position that the CIA was to be strictly limited to overseas operations. To meet certain congressional apprehension the bill was amended to provide that "the agency shall have no police, subpoena, law-enforcement powers or internal security functions" (emphasis added).

Nevertheless, in the 1960s the agency became increasingly involved in domestic affairs. The list of distinguished persons and entities which came to be used in covert activities reads like a roster of the American establishment. More than one analyst has noted that the coalition of lawyers, businessmen, and financiers, which constituted the "establishment" during those years, consolidated silent control over the course of U.S. public policy. [23]

Though the nation was publicly assured, and it was commonly believed, that CIA activities were confined to international operations, by 1964 its domestic activity had become so extensive that a special section -- the Domestic Operations Division -- was secretly created to handle it. Its office at 1750 Pennsylvania Avenue was one block from the White House. The division's purpose, as reflected by its very name, belied the official line that the agency was not engaged in any domestic activity.

As this growth developed, former President Truman, who sponsored the original establishment of the agency, declared in 1963, "I never had any thought ... when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak-and-dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment that I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role ... I ... would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and whatever else it can properly perform in that special field-and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere. We have grown up as a nation respected for our free society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it." [24]

As happened with President Eisenhower's final warning about the danger to American democracy of the burgeoning "military industrial" complex, Harry Truman's words went unheeded.

On June 30, 1966, Richard McGarrah Helms, a career intelligence professional, was appointed director of the CIA by Lyndon Johnson. As director he succeeded Vice Admiral William P. "Red" Raborn who had previously been vice president for project management at the defense industry contractor Aerojet-General Corporation of California.

By 1967 the CIA had offices and installations all over America. It even publicly listed them in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Miami, Pittsburgh, Houston, St. Louis, New Orleans, Denver, and Minneapolis. Many others existed under front companies and names. Gradually, a number of domestic activities and operations began to surface, and American taxpayers became aware of the range of activities that they had been unwittingly financing.

In February 1967 (the month following my piece on Vietnam), Ramparts published an article by Mike Wood (who later became NCNP's on-site convention coordinator in Chicago), which revealed the extensive relationship between the CIA and the American academic community through a plethora of contracts and grant arrangements with American colleges, universities, and research institutes. Wood's article focused on the infiltration of the National Student Association, but that liaison was only the tip of the iceberg which extended to faculty members and departments in dozens of institutions. Peripheral to these revelations was the occasional reference to even more deeply covert army involvement in such activity.

After Wood's disclosures it gradually emerged that during this period the agency was involved in virtually every segment of U.S. domestic life-business; labor; local, state and national law enforcement and government; universities; charities; the print and press media; lawyers, teachers, artists, women's organizations, and cultural groups. The publicly known list alone was staggeringly extensive. [25] Grants were given, projects were funded, covers were provided, studies were commissioned, projects were mounted, training programs were run, and books were published. The arrangements were wide and varied. In its 1976 report the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities said that by 1967 the agency had sponsored, subsidized, or produced over 1,000 books, with 200 being turned out in 1967 alone. Analysts have noted the practice whereby one CIA operative or asset would write a book and others review it for selected newspapers and magazines. [26]

By 1967 the CIA was spending 1.5 billion dollars a year without any effective fiscal control over individual expenditures on operations. Covert domestic activities and operations were paid for by "unvouchered funds" (expenditures without purchase orders or receipts) .As a result of the 1949 Central Intelligence Act, Director Helms had the authority to spend money "without regard to the provisions of law and regulations relating to the expenditure of government funds." Helms's signature on any check, no matter how large, drawn on any CIA bank ac- count was deemed to be sufficient. Interagency cooperation, particularly with the army and/or the state department, was frequently necessary and this was accomplished through the establishment of Special Operations Groups (SOG) created for particular projects or missions. SOG operations conducted. inside Vietnam and across into Cambodia and Laos against "Charlie" -- the Viet Cong -- were frequent during the escalation of the war, and well-known. SOG activity inside the United States against "Willie" (blacks and dissidents) was not publicized or known.

***

ON OCTOBER 17, 1978, just before we had left Knoxville to interview Ray, Mark Lane had given me a copy of an affidavit issued by Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers and thus revealed to the American public some harsh truths about the war in Vietnam. The affidavit detailed a conversation Ellsberg had had four months earlier with Brady Tyson, then an aide to UN ambassador Andrew Young.

On June 16, 1978, while at the United Nations to talk with members and staff of the UN-Special Assembly on Disarmament, Ellsberg became quite friendly with Tyson. As they left Tyson's office one day, the subject of King's assassination came up.

In the affidavit Ellsberg stated, "I asked Tyson whether he thought there had been a conspiracy and who he thought might have done it. He said very flatly to me, 'We know there was a conspiracy and we know who did it.' ... I asked him who it was, if he would feel free to say, and he said again in a way that was very surprising to me in its lack of equivocation or reservation, 'It was a group of off-duty and retired FBI officers working under the personal direction of J. Edgar Hoover.' He said further that this was a group working secretly and known to almost no one else in the FBI. This group Tyson said included 'a sharpshooter,' who had actually done the shooting." Ellsberg was startled. He pressed Tyson to tell him his source. Reluctantly, Tyson said, "That has turned up in Walter Fauntroy's [HSCA] investigation and he's told us." "Us," Ellsberg emphasized, included Ambassador Young, another aide, Stoney Cooks, and Tyson himself.

The affidavit continued: "I got the impression from things he subsequently said that Ambassador Young and his associates had actually gone over a good deal of the evidence directly and had not simply been told this in general terms." He quoted Tyson as saying, "We are eighty percent sure that we know who they are. We're eighty percent sure that we know the names of all the people who were involved, and ... it's all circumstantial but very detailed."

Tyson said he didn't know what was going to be done because, "we don't have courtroom proof of this, of the names."

Ellsberg was struck by Tyson's lack of caution. "Tyson himself did not at any time caution me either to be silent about this or even so much as show discretion by what I did with it ... I even inferred to some degree that he might want me to pass it along, using discretion, to people who in my judgment ought to know it. His [Tyson's] actual position impressed me; his closeness to Young, to King, his concern for the subject, and the fact that he was an official of the U.S. government, the first friendly one I had seen in some seven years. A story that would have been a run-of-the-mill assertion in the mouths of the myriad of conspiracy theorists ... had enormous weight coming from him."

Tyson left Ellsberg with the impression that they all hoped it would come out in the hearings. Tyson also said that when the HSCA was being formed Fauntroy informed Carl Albert, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, that he wanted to be on a committee to investigate Dr. King's death or even, if possible, to head the committee. Albert said to him, "Walter, you don't want that job." To which Fauntroy replied, "But I do want it; why not?" Albert whispered, "Walter, they will kill you ..., the FBI."

When the facts revealed to Ellsberg failed to come out in the 1978 summer hearings and the committee began to move in a different direction, Ellsberg decided to make his information known to James Earl Ray's lawyer; hence the affidavit.

After the Ray interview I spoke with Ellsberg, who confirmed the statement. Jim Lawson, who had a long- established relationship with Andy Young, Stoney Cooks, and Brady Tyson, agreed to seek confirmation from them. When he telephoned Stoney Cooks about the allegations, Cooks said, "Andy and I had hoped that the House Select Committee would release these matters and open them up."

"As I listened to him," Lawson told me, "I realized that he was confirming Ellsberg's affidavit. He clearly indicated that there were names not released, information related to the death that the public did not know and that was not consistent with the theory that James Earl Ray was the lone assassin." Lawson had no doubt that this information had privately been relayed to Andy Young and his staff aides by Walter Fauntroy.

When Jim Lawson subsequently asked Tyson about Ellsberg's statements, Tyson replied that he didn't remember all he had told Ellsberg but that he believed that he was an honest and significant witness. He even suggested that Ellsberg was "unimpeachable."

As we reviewed this series of events, Lawson also recalled that many many months earlier Dr. Joseph Lowery, Abernathy's successor as president of the SCLC, had described to him a discussion with Fauntroy that appeared to confirm the Ellsberg account. At a subsequent meeting in Los Angeles, Lowery repeated the story with both Lawson and Mark Lane present. Later that fall, in a telephone conversation primarily concerned with my upcoming address at SCLC's national convention, Lowery also confirmed to me that Lawson was telling the truth. He said that he still hoped that the HSCA would eventually uncover all the facts.

I became convinced that there was enough basic substantiation for the Ellsberg affidavit to warrant submitting it to the HSCA. In retrospect, I suppose we couldn't have expected the committee to confirm Ellsberg's allegations, but we were curious as to how they would explain them away. So on the morning of October 27, Abernathy, Reverend Lawson, activist/comedian Dick Gregory, and I, joined Mark Lane for a private session in Walter Fauntroy's office to present the new information to the committee leadership and senior staff. As we arrived, we saw to our surprise, an assemblage of reporters and photographers standing just outside the doorway of his office suite.

We were never sure how the media had found out about the meeting. It wouldn't serve the committee's purpose to publicize it in any way. It was also contrary to counsel Robert Blakey's style. He always preferred simply to disclose carefully prepared information. Although he never acknowledged it, we intuited that Mark Lane had tipped off the media. I felt this was unfortunate. The untimely public disclosure of information could close some doors that had partially opened for us.

We were ushered into Fauntroy's inner office. Chairman Stokes, Blakey, and two staff members were waiting for us. In his introductory statement Lane tore into the committee, its staff, and its leadership. He accused them of not following up leads and ignoring significant facts, and then he attacked Blakey personally and professionally. Blakey angrily objected and left the meeting, not returning until he was certain that Lane had finished.

As the Ellsberg revelations were set out for the committee, I noticed Fauntroy squirming in his chair. He denied ever having expressed any of the opinions attributed to him by any of the people mentioned. Fauntroy said he couldn't understand how Tyson and Cooks, nor surely Andy Young, could ever attribute the statements in question to him. He said that it was his job to investigate every fact and allegation brought before the committee, and that he was determined to do this to the best of his ability. He said that because of his admiration for Dr. King, and all the years they had served together in the struggle for civil rights, he could never participate in anything but a full and complete investigation.

Lawson was to note later, however, that Fauntroy equivocated considerably in the way he dismissed Ellsberg's contentions. He would glance sideways at Abernathy, only to look quickly away. He never once looked directly at Jim Lawson.

Throughout the rest of the meeting, the staff and chairman insisted that there was nothing worth considering in the Ellsberg allegations. They tried to put our group on the defensive by asserting that our promise of new information was a ruse to call the press. However, there was no effort to discredit Ellsberg's version of Tyson's remarks, nor was there any attempt to refute Jim Lawson's corroboration. Instead we simply met a stone wall.

After the meeting, an argument erupted between Blakey and Lane. I stepped between them as Blakey was telling Lane that if he kept it up there was no question that he'd be taken care of once and for all. I was shocked.

We left Fauntroy's offices and were met by a barrage of photographers and television journalists. Lane and Abernathy made brief statements. Abernathy, in his offhand manner, informed them that, yes, we had had a very productive meeting with the staff and leadership of the committee; we hoped that they would go on and complete their work; and we had given them certain information implicating the FBI in the killing of Dr. King. I was amazed that none of the press picked this up: there was virtually no response.

The next morning, I left a copy of the Ellsberg affidavit at former Attorney General Ramsey Clark's law office. Ramsey agreed to have a word with Brady Tyson. After he spoke to Tyson, it was evident that something had changed. He told me that Tyson hadn't repudiated Ellsberg's comments but indicated that he didn't recall saying the specific things alleged. I would learn more about this Fauntroy-Tyson story later.

***

FROM NEW YORK I went to Memphis to study the scene of the crime and talk with some of the people who were close to the tragic events.

There was no doubt that Dr. King was standing on the second-story balcony in front of room 306 when he was shot. Mark Lane was skeptical about the MPD and the FBI official conclusion that the shot had been fired from the bathroom window on the second floor of the rooming house. Author/investigator Harold Weisberg also disputed this finding, saying that the shot most likely came from the area of the parking lot that bordered the fire station on one side and the rear yard of the rooming house on the other (see Chart 1, page xxxiii).

At the time of the shooting, a row of brush trees, a larger tree, and apparently other bushes provided a type of screen between the rooming house, the parking lot and the motel on the other side of the street. This backyard area sloped upward about five or six feet from an eight-foot retaining wall on Mulberry Street, and was actually higher than the balcony on which Dr. King was standing at the time he was shot, though this fact appeared to have been largely overlooked.

I thought that an analysis of the trajectory of the shot might help, but at that time I couldn't carry this out. There was also the problem of Dr. King's posture at the time he was hit. just prior to the shot he was observed to be leaning slightly on the rail, but there was disagreement as to whether he had actually straightened up before being hit.

***

THE STATE'S CHIEF WITNESS in 1968 was Charlie Stephens. He and his common-law wife, Grace Walden, were both in their room (6-B, which adjoined the bathroom) at the time of the shooting. Stephens had provided the affidavit used for extradition, which had tentatively identified Ray's profile as being that of a man he saw going down the front stairs after the shooting. When I talked with Walden, she said Charlie didn't see anyone or anything. However, she said that when she was lying in bed around the time of the shot she herself saw a small man with "salt and pepper" hair wearing an open army jacket and a plaid sports shirt hurrying down the rear stairway leading to the back door. The description didn't fit Ray in any way. Her story would vary significantly from time to time over the years (on one occasion she described the man as being black) except regarding one fact -- that Charlie Stephens didn't see anything.

Wayne Chastain agreed. As a reporter for the Memphis Press Scimitar, Chastain had been one of the first people on the scene on April 4. He told me that minutes after the shooting he saw an excited Solomon Jones, who said the shot came from the bushes "over there," pointing across Mulberry Street to the thick brush behind the rooming house. "Catch me later at the hospital," Solomon said.

Chastain then went around the front of the building and had a brief word with Judson "Bud" Ghormley, the deputy sheriff who was in charge of TACT 10, the emergency unit on break at the fire station when the shooting happened, and who apparently found the bundle in front of Canipe's. He then entered the rooming house from the front and climbed to the second floor and went to the rear to try to get a view of the brush area below.

When he stuck his head in the door of room G-B, he saw Walden lying on a sofa off to the right and asked her if he could look out of her rear window. She asked what the commotion was all about, and he told her that Dr. King had been shot. She said, "Oh, that was what I heard, I thought it was a firecracker." She took him into the kitchen area of the rundown suite, where the rear windows overlooked the Lorraine and the brush below. As he entered this part of the room he saw Charlie Stephens sitting at the kitchen table fiddling with a radio. He said Charlie may have mumbled a word or two but basically he and Charlie -- who appeared to be in a stupor -- didn't speak.

When he looked out the window Chastain could see the Lorraine balcony, but the combination of brush and trees below was so thick that he didn't have a clear view of the motel parking area or driveway. As he turned to leave he noticed that Charlie had passed out with his head on the table.

After leaving the rooming house that evening Chastain went to St. Joseph's Hospital, where they had taken Dr. King. There, along with a battery of media people, he listened to Solomon Jones describe what he had seen. Jones maintained that he was standing by the car, having just told Dr. King that he would need a coat that evening, when the shot came. Jones ducked down and turned to look in the direction of the sound, and he saw a man in the bushes with a white sheet or hood over or around his face. Jones said at that time that this man rose up from the bushes, appeared to throw something to the side, walked to the wall, jumped down, and began to mingle with the crowd. He was wearing a jacket and plaid shirt and came within about twenty-five feet of Jones, who was shocked and frightened. As the man began to walk away, Jones got into his car and tried to follow him but was frustrated by the growing crowd of people and cars. In a short time the ambulance arrived.

Chastain returned to the rooming house the next morning between 7:30 and 8:00 to see Bessie Brewer, the manager. She said that the FBI told her not to talk to anyone. Chastain was approached by an old "codger" he knew only as Major, who was drunk even at that hour, but he asked Chastain to come back to his room. He told Chastain that he saw who had done it. He said, "It was a nigger," but that he would never testify against him. His room was in the southern section of the rooming house where the Brewers also lived and where the office was located. Stephens and Walden lived on the other side; a four-foot alleyway separated the two sections. Chastain didn't take Major very seriously because his window looked out into the alley (although it also allowed one to look directly into room 5-B on the other side-the room rented by Ray).

Around 11:00 a.m. Chastain's editor sent him back to the rooming house to interview Charlie Stephens. Charlie had sobered up, and as they were talking the Major came up to them and told Charlie that he had told Chastain it was a nigger who did it. "Yeah, it was a nigger," Charlie agreed. Chastain gave no credence to either man. Bessie Brewer said that they were both drunk and didn't see anything.

Some time later, Loyd lowers, the owner of Jim 's Grill, told Chastain that he had refused to serve Stephens in the grill after 4:00 on the day of the killing because he was too drunk. He did, however, sell him two quarts of beer to take upstairs to his room.

The day after the shooting, Grace Walden told Chastain the same story she told me ten years later about the small man with the salt-and-pepper hair whom she saw, from her bed, going down the back stairs. It was not clear to Chastain, however, that she could have seen anything from where her bed was located.

Chastain was astounded when in the following months Stephens emerged as the state's main witness against James Earl Ray. In light of Stephens's condition, which must have been apparent to any police investigation, he couldn't have testified to anything. Assistant District Attorney James Beasley's representation at the guilty plea hearing of what Charlie Stephens would have testified, had there been a trial, made no sense to Chastain. Beasley had told this to the court:

In the meantime, back upstairs at 422-1/2 South Main, Charles Quitman Stephens, who occupied these two rooms adjacent to a bathroom here [indicating], Mr. Stephens, who earlier in the afternoon had observed Mrs. Brewer as she talked to the Defendant ... heard movements over in the apartment 5-B rented to the Defendant .... At approximately 6:00 p.m., Mr. Stephens heard the shot corning apparently through this wall from the bathroom [indicating]. He then got up, went through this room out into the corridor in time to see the left profile of the Defendant as he turned down this passageway. ...

I would learn that Charlie Stephens was placed under close control by the MPD right after the murder; apparently he hoped to receive the reward being offered by the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper and the city of Memphis. After Ray was brought back to the United States, Stephens was held in protective custody by the MPD, and Grace Walden was placed in a mental hospital. Bessie Brewer was removed as manager of the rooming house and left the scene. The rooming house itself was put under lock and key.

Chastain also referred me to an interview of Stephens conducted by CBS correspondent Bill Stout shortly after the killing, which, curiously enough, didn't air until 1976. Stout showed Stephens a picture of James Earl Ray that the authorities were circulating:

BILL STOUT: Mr. Stephens, what do you think of that picture? Does that look like the man?

CHARLES STEPHENS: Well -- [clears throat] -- Excuse me -- from the glimpse that I -- that I got of his profile, it doesn't.

STOUT: It doesn't?

STEPHENS: Certainly No, sir, it certainly doesn't. For one thing, he's too heavy. His face is too full. He has too much hair, and his nose is too wide -- from the glimpse that, as I said, that I got of his profile. But that definitely, I would say, is not the -- the guy.

Neither Charlie Stephens nor Solomon Jones were available to me in 1978, both having dropped out of sight.

***

CHASTAIN RAISED THE QUESTION of Dr. King's last-minute room change at the Lorraine. He recounted a Saturday night conversation with the owner of the Lorraine, Walter Bailey. Bailey said that on April 2, the day before Dr. King was to arrive, his wife had been visited by an SCLC "advance man," who insisted that the ground- level, courtyard room wouldn't do, and that Dr. King had to have a second-floor balcony room overlooking the swimming pool (even though it was empty). Bailey said that his wife described the visitor as being about six feet tall, built like a football player, and "Indian" in appearance, with high cheekbones.

***

ANOTHER Press Scimitar reporter, Kay Black, told me in two interviews that early on the morning of April 5 she received a call from former mayor William Ingram, who told her that some trees or brush behind the rooming house from which Dr. King was supposed to have been shot were being cut down. He suggested that she go over and take a look. When she got to the rooming house later in the day she found that the brush had indeed been cut. An official at the Public Works Department told her it was a routine cleanup.

Reverend James Orange, who had been in the parking area of the Lorraine at the time of the shooting, told me that the memory of the brush area stuck in his mind because immediately after Dr. King was shot he saw smoke rise from "a row of bushes right by the fire station." (I thought he must have been mistaken about the exact location of the smoke, since the angle of the shot appeared to be wrong and the bushes extended all the way to the northern end of the rooming house rear yard.) "It could not have been more than five or ten seconds after the shot," he said. just prior to the shot he and Jim Bevel arrived back at the Lorraine, driven by Invader Marrell McCollough. Exiting McCollough's car, they began to "tussle" just below the balcony where Dr. King was standing when he was shot. The next morning Rev. Orange noticed that the bushes were gone.

Increasingly, I viewed the early morning alteration of this area as sinister. It was inexplicable to me that the MPD, the FBI, and the HSCA investigations didn't follow up on this lead begging for attention. James Orange told me that no one connected with any enforcement or investigative body had asked him about what he saw. When he tried to alert the police officers on the scene they told him to stay out of the way.

***

IN EARLY NOVEMBER 1978, shortly after our HSCA meeting in Walter Fauntroy's office, Dan Ellsberg told me that he had recently met Fauntroy at an ACLU affair. He said Fauntroy still denied mentioning the FBI to Tyson, Cooks, and Young, but when pressed, he expressed his opinion that the FBI "not only set the tone for Dr. King's assassination through their harassment but, in fact, played a role in carrying out the conspiracy," and that "it would not have been beyond J. Edgar Hoover to have personally approved, if not ultimately directed, the operation."

On Friday, November 17, 1978, Walter Fauntroy, Brady Tyson, Andy Young, and Stoney Cooks, all testifying before the HSCA, denied any knowledge of FBI involvement and refuted Daniel Ellsberg's statement. Their testimony was in response to a front-page article in the Knoxville New Sentinel on November 11, in which Mark Lane and Anna Ray released the contents of the Ellsberg affidavit, alleging that the Ellsberg-Lowery statements proved "without a doubt" that FBI director Hoover ordered the assassination. I felt that Lane had gone too far in his interpretation of the information.

Fauntroy categorically denied having received any evidence of FBI involvement, and Young denied receiving such information from Fauntroy. However, Young did at one point admit that, "there were strange connections that we were all concerned about, and it was one of the things we wanted this Committee to look into." He also acknowledged having a concern about official involvement in a conspiracy. Since no member followed up on those remarks, they were simply left hanging, and Young's testimony was summarized as being a denial of Ellsberg's allegations.

Brady Tyson testified that he and Ellsberg had at first spoken generally about assassinations and then, when the conversation turned to the King killing, he told Dan Ellsberg about his "pet theory" -- that a clandestine group within the FBI, though not an official or authorized operation, might have carried out the plot.

Following suit, Stoney Cooks also denied knowledge of any FBI involvement. In response to a question from Congressman Harold Ford about Tyson's reputation at the UN, Cooks stated that his colleague was kind of a "missionary," and in seeking to provide Dan Ellsberg with the warmest possible welcome he probably "was a bit overzealous in his conversations."

I believed that Brady Tyson had probably been loose-tongued but truthful in his remarks to Dan Ellsberg. Fauntroy had probably shared his information in-house with Young and his aides, without any expectation that an outsider would hear the story and repeat it. When it came out after Ellsberg became convinced that the HSCA wasn't going to act, the wheels were set in motion to deny it ever happened. Under pressure, Young and his aides denied hearing the story of Hoover's possible involvement and Fauntroy himself (since he was a senior member of the committee and had to maintain the appearance of loyalty) had no choice, unless he was willing to resign.

Dan Ellsberg's revelation constituted not only the first real indication of FBI involvement in Dr. King's murder but, even more ominous, it was an initial indication that the HSCA was not prepared to allow such evidence to become public or even to acknowledge what appeared to be its own information.

***

MORE DETERMINED THAN EVER TO EXAMINE THE OFFICIAL STORY, I went back to Memphis and turned my attention to Jim's Grill. In 1968, Loyd Jowers told Chastain about a mysterious stranger who was in the grill on the afternoon of April 4 and again the following morning, ordering eggs and sausage both times. Jow- ers described him as well-dressed and definitely out of place. Following police orders, when the man appeared on the 5th, Jowers called the police, who arrived and took the man in, only, apparently, to release him soon afterward.

Wayne Chastain maintained that many of the black people who had been in. the grill at the time of the shooting had never been identified. He had tried unsuccessfully to locate and interview each of the black waitresses on duty that afternoon, one of whom, Betty, he had heard had particular significance. Jowers seemed unable to assist him in finding Betty and one other waitress but arranged for him to interview a third waitress -- Rosie Lee Dabney -- who had waited on the stranger on the afternoon of April 4.

Chastain had become aware, as a result of the activities of writer William Sartor, a stringer for Time magazine, and investigator Renfro Hays, that both Jowers and Rosie Lee Dabney had identified the "eggs and sausage" man from photographs that Sartor had shown them. The photographs depicted a government intelligence asset with ties to army intelligence and the CIA; his name was Walter Alfred "Jack" Youngblood. Chastain told me, however, that some five years later, when he and reporter Jeff Cohen showed the same photographs to Jowers in a diner one night, Jowers changed his mind. He said that he didn't think that was the man after all. When reminded about his earlier identification he simply said he thought it wasn't the man.

Chastain said that MPD assistant chief Henry Lux denied taking Young blood in, but Frank Holloman acknowledged that a man was detained, as did FBI special agent in charge (SAC) Robert Jensen. Jensen insisted that the man was a gun collector and that his presence had nothing to do with the killing.

Chastain believed that this "eggs and sausage" man was jack Young blood, and was the same mysterious person who he heard had visited attorney Russell X. Thompson and local ministers James M. Latimer and john Baltensprager a week or so after the killing. Reverend Latimer identified Young blood as his mysterious visitor from a photograph Chastain showed him, and attorney Walter Buford (a college classmate and friend of Young blood) said that Young blood had called him while in town during that time. I resolved to pursue the story myself.

I located and interviewed Loyd Jowers, a thin, almost anemic man in his late sixties. Puffing on a cigarette, Jowers confirmed Chastain's account of the arrest. I showed him photographs of Jack Youngblood and he said, "Yup, that's him all right."

Attorney Russell Thompson told me that around 10:00 p.m. on April 10,1968, he received a call from a man with a Western accent. The caller said that he had just flown into Memphis from his home in Chicago, had heard of Thompson from some friends, and needed to talk to him immediately but that it was important to speak with him alone. They agreed to meet early the next morning.

He described his visitor as being about six feet tall, about thirty-five years old, with light hair and wearing a sombrero. He also had a tattoo of the letters "T" over "S" on his arm, which Thompson recalled he could make disappear. He didn't give his name (although he later used the alias Tony Benavites) and maintained that a Denver roommate of his, a professional gun (as was he) whom he called Pete, shot Dr. King. He said that only a fool would attempt to carry out the killing from a second-floor bathroom window at the end of a corridor, because the trees could so easily have deflected a bullet. He said that Pete fired from the bushes, broke the rifle down, putting the barrel down his back, jumped from the wall, and disappeared in the confusion. Thompson was struck by the precise description of the brush and the trees behind the rooming house. This led him to believe that the man knew the area well and could even have been there when it happened.

In an offhand way he asked Thompson to represent his friend should he be charged. Benavites said that he himself had been picked up "last Friday" (the day the stranger in Jim's Grill was arrested) and was turned loose after being taken up to the rooming house.

Thompson heard from this man only once more in a brief phone call in which he said it didn't appear that legal assistance would be required after all. Thompson gave a full report to MPD inspector N. E. Zachary and William Lawrence of the FBI.

Less than four hours after the mysterious stranger left Thompson's office on April 11, the Rev. James Latimer, pastor of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church at the time, received a telephone call just as he was heading off to lunch with his friend Rev. John Baltensprager. The caller said he needed some "spiritual guidance" or else he was going to "commit suicide."

The two ministers went to a steak house called Jim's Place and met a rather smartly dressed man wearing tinted sunglasses, a blue sports coat, dark trousers, and boots. He was described as having dark wavy hair, long sideburns, and a dark complexion. He was about six feet tall and had an athletic build. At Latimer's suggestion they went to Robilio's Cafeteria in South Memphis, where there was more privacy. The man identified himself as J. Christ Bonnevecche and said that on he afternoon that Dr. King was killed he was employed as a runner for the Mafia.

Latimer asked Bonnevecche whether he had killed Martin Luther King. The man said, "No, but I know who did." He seemed to be implying that there was an organized crime connection with the killing, but it didn't really make much sense to the ministers. He said that he was a drug addict and rolled up his sleeves to show the ministers a scar on the inside of his elbow. As he did so, they noticed an intertwined tattoo, "T" over "1," similar to the "T" over "S" that attorney Thompson had noticed. Bonnevecche reportedly also said that his friend "Nick" killed Dr. King. He said that Nick was very much like himself in personality and interests. He told them that Nick had entered and left town on a motorcycle and that when he exited he had the murder weapon strapped onto his back, having previously discarded the rifle stock.

Reverend Latimer indicated, however, that a good deal of the discussion focused on the Kennedy assassination, which he said Bonnevecche maintained was a Mafia hit. His mysterious visitor also said that Robert Kennedy was next, and that he would definitely be assassinated if he won the California primary.

This, of course, is exactly what happened. Reverend Latimer also reported this conversation to Inspector Zachary, who promised, as he had with Thompson, to "check it out."

I wouldn't be able to speak with Reverend Latimer for a number of years, but Russell Thompson talked with him about this incident. Thompson said he had no doubt that the man who visited him was the same person who spoke with the ministers. Thompson said he never received a satisfactory explanation or a report back from Inspector Zachary or the FBI, and when I showed him Jack Young blood's picture he seemed uncertain but thought that he could have been the man. Though his visitor was about the right age, Thompson had described him as being light-haired. All the photographs I had of Youngblood were of a dark-haired man. If Youngblood had been his visitor, he must have been in disguise.

Youngblood did appear to match the description of a man who appeared at the St. Francis Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after the assassination. This man was with a James Earl Ray look-alike who appeared to have a great deal of money to throw around and who openly spoke of a second killing that was soon to take place. (Remember that during his stay in Los Angeles in late 1967 to early 1968 Ray had lived for some time at the St. Francis Hotel and was known there.)

Months later I would meet jack Youngblood on two occasions. He said that he knew some people who had direct information about the killing. They were now living outside of the country and for a sum of money he might be able to get them to tell their story.

When pressed as to why these overseas contacts would be willing to sit down and reveal what they knew about this case, considering that there is no statute of limitations for murder, he said the main reason was because they were disenchanted after having provided long and effective service to their government. They now felt that they were being sold down the river, forgotten. He claimed that he had an oil-company plane at his disposal.

Because of his intelligence connections and activity it was possible that he knew people who were involved. At the end of the day I came to believe it was unlikely that he had any direct involvement in the case. It seemed that either he was acting on behalf of the government spreading false information ("disinformation") in order to confuse and divert the investigation away from the truth, or he was holding out the promise of information in an effort to hustle money. Though I arranged some funds for him, he never produced the mysterious expatriate government operatives.

***

OF ALL THE INDICATIONS of government involvement I encountered during my first investigatory period, none was more bizarre than the actions of William Bradford Huie. In 1978 Jerry Ray had told me that in 1976, as the HSCA was being formed, James Earl Ray's Nashville attorney Jack Kershaw was invited to attend a meeting in Nashville with author William Bradford Huie and two other persons.

Huie asked him to take an offer to his client: a payment of $220,000, a pardon from the governor of Tennessee, a waiver of the outstanding detainer (escape warrant) on him from the Missouri Department of Corrections, and a new identity, in exchange for his unequivocal admission of guilt in the murder of Dr. King. Kershaw delivered the offer to his client, who rejected it out of hand.

A short time later, when Mark Lane had replaced Kershaw, Huie repeated the offer to jerry Ray in the course of two telephone conversations which jerry tape recorded. Ray's response was the same.

Not long afterward I obtained copies of the transcript of the tape. In the October 29, 1977, 12:15 a.m. conversation, the following exchange took place:

Jerry Ray "... So when this deal came up with James and Kershaw said you'd pay so much money if he'd, you know, plead guilty and confess.

William Bradford Huie: "Yeah, that's right. But let me tell you one thing clearly. I'm not talking about just a statement. I'm talking about something that James has never done in his life before. I'm talking about a story that says how and why. And he explains ..."

Nine and a half hours later, a second conversation took place:

Huie: "You're talking about $200,000 here, Jerry. The only thing that will be of any value for both a book and film and put this right in your mind -- Why and How I killed Dr. King. I, by James Earl Ray. With the help of William Braford Huie."

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Chapter 12: Brother Jerry on the Stand: November 30, 1978

JERRY RAY TESTIFIED before the HSCA in open session on Thursday, November 30, 1978. Mark Lane was not permitted to represent Jerry because he already represented James and there might be a conflict of interest. Jerry had asked me to consider appearing with him. There were two problems. First of all, I was obviously concerned that my appearance on his behalf -- special appearance though it was -- not be construed as a commitment at that stage to the unequivocal innocence of his brother. Second, my family feared that this overt action would be unwise. Nevertheless I decided to represent Jerry for the specific purpose of protecting his rights.

I overrode family opposition by inviting New York lawyer, feminist, and civil rights activist Florynce Kennedy to be co-counsel. As one of the nation's most prominent black women lawyers, with considerable experience in opposing abuse of process, Flo added considerable strength to the witness table.

I believed that the question of James's and his brothers' alleged involvement in a 1967 bank robbery in Alton, Illinois (James's birthplace), was likely to be a key element of the committee's interrogation. In attempting to disprove the existence of Raul and thus the existence of a conspiracy, the committee would most likely claim that the money James received during his time on the run had been obtained from the $27,000 robbery of the Alton bank.

It was evident that after July 13, 1967, and during his stay in Canada, James Earl Ray had acquired money. The Alton bank robbery occurred on the day before some of his purchases began, and had thus been seized upon as the explanation for the source of his funds. James, however, said he initially obtained funds in Canada by robbing a Montreal brothel, and that Raul subsequently gave him money. The HSCA speculated that rather than James escaping from prison, spending two and a half months in the States, traveling to a strange city in Canada in a destitute condition, and committing an armed robbery, it would be more reasonable to assume that he escaped from prison, made contact with his brother John in St. Louis, got a job while they planned a crime, then, after committing the robbery in a familiar area, fled to Canada.

On November 17, 1978, the New York 11mes published a front-page article by Wendel Rawls, Jr., stating that the results of a Times investigation agreed with the conclusions of a separate investigation by the HSCA that the Ray brothers, including Jerry, were guilty of robbing the Alton bank.

On Wednesday, the 29th, the day before Jerry's appearance before the HSCA, I placed a call to East Alton police lieutenant Walter Conrad. I advised him that in an effort to put to rest the continuing allegations that my client had been a participant in that robbery, I had counseled him to return once again to East Alton and offer to be charged and stand trial (Jerry had previously surrendered himself on August 18, 1978, offered to waive the statute of limitations, take a lie detector test, and, if charged, stand trial for the robbery). I then told Lieutenant Conrad about the New York Times article.

Lt. Conrad said that he had told Jerry Ray during his August visit that neither he nor his brothers were suspects, nor had they ever been suspects in that crime. He told me explicitly that neither he nor any member of the Alton police department, nor, to the best of his knowledge, any employee or official of the Bank of Alton, had ever been questioned by the New York Times or any investigator of the HSCA. He said that he couldn't imagine what the basis was for the Times's claims or the committee's allegations.

Accordingly, he advised me that there would be no need for Jerry Ray or any of his brothers to return to Alton.

I later acquired an FBI "airtel" of July 19, 1968, sent to the SAC of Memphis from director Hoover, which gave a report of an analysis of all fingerprint impressions relating to unsolved bank robberies at that time. The report concluded that a comparison of the prints of James Earl Ray didn't match with any prints on the Alton bank robbery file.

A further FBI teletype of August 1, 1968, to the director from the Springfield SAC, recited details of an interview conducted in Madison County Jail in Edwardsville, Illinois, with a suspect in the Alton robbery. The report of this interview states that the individual being questioned "meets physical description ... in above bank robbery; has history of using automatic pistol similar to that used by op. sub. Number 1 and was employed part time for cab company which had stand directly across street from Bank ... and invested heavily in cabs shortly after Bank robbery."

In my view, there was no question that on August 1, 1968, the FBI was on the trail of the suspects for the Alton robbery, and that those suspects didn't include the Ray brothers. Yet in August 1978 the HSCA, through Counsel Blakey, contacted Philip Heymann, assistant attorney general of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, seeking the prosecution of John Ray for allegedly giving false testimony to the HSCA regarding the Alton bank robbery.

Before formally referring this matter to the Department of Justice, Mr. Blakey met with U.S. Attorney Earl Silberg and a representative of the Criminal Division on May 24, 1978. Blakey admitted that the primary reason he wanted John Ray charged with perjury was to convince James Earl Ray to testify before the committee concerning his knowledge of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Blakey tried to persuade the Justice Department that john Ray had, in fact, committed perjury in denying his participation with his brothers in the robbery.

In a letter reply to the HSCA (obtained through a Freedom of Information Act application years later), Assistant Attorney General Heymann and Alfred L. Brantman, chief of the General Crimes Section of the Criminal Division, forcefully declined to consider any prosecution, declaring that "there is no existing or anticipated or other evidence to link John Ray or James Earl Ray to that robbery."

He also stated that "returning an indictment against John Ray in order to pressure his brother James Earl Ray into cooperating could and should be viewed as an abuse of process. It is one thing to use the criminal laws to pressure an individual into cooperating with the government. It is another thing to use the criminal laws against someone to pressure another individual into cooperating with the Government. This is particularly true when the individuals involved are close family relatives such as brothers."

During Jerry Ray's appearance on November 30, HSCA Counsel Mark Speiser did indeed focus one aspect of his questioning on the Alton bank robbery. I informed Speiser that Jerry was not and had never been a suspect in that case and that this had been confirmed to me by the Alton authorities as late as the previous day. I also put on the record Jerry's willingness to waive the statute of limitations and stand trial for that crime if any authority was willing to try him.

Jerry explicitly denied any participation in the robbery, pointing out that at the time of the Alton robbery he was working at the Sportsman's Club in Northbrook, Illinois. His employment records would confirm that in the three years he worked there he never missed a day and that he frequently worked seven nights a week, making it impossible for him to have been in Alton at the time of the crime. Jerry's factual responses fell on deaf ears.

Throughout the hearing Flo and I frequently locked horns with the committee counsel. They continually attempted to tie Jerry and John to James during the time James was a fugitive. Any facts to the contrary would be ignored.

Though Flo and I believed as counsel that we had taken some of the bite out of the HSCA's persistent attack on the facts, we expected the HSCA report to confirm the committee's predetermined conclusions.

We were right.

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Chapter 13: The HSCA Report: January 1979

BY THE END of the final set of public hearings, I felt convinced that the HSCA had already formed its conclusions and was probably well advanced in writing its final report. In fact, a first draft was finished by December 13, 1978, about two weeks after the hearings.

Disinformation was produced at a high cost to the taxpayers (the total cost of the King and Kennedy investigations was $5.5 million). Clearly, the committee could have done a proper job. Counsel Blakey reported that in conducting both investigations staff completed 562 trips to 1,463 destinations -- including Mexico, Canada, Portugal, and Cuba -- during a total of 4, 758 days. Three hundred and thirty-five witnesses were heard in public or private sessions, and some 4,924 interviews were conducted.

The last official act of the committee, in December 1978, was to approve its findings and recommendations. The final report was published in January 1979. It is essential to distinguish between the report itself -- which was widely disseminated, even published commercially -- and the material contained in the accompanying thirteen volumes, which had a very limited print run and distribution. One frequently finds information buried in the volumes that conflicts with conclusions in the report itself.

Among the most valuable historical information was the account of the FBI's wide-ranging legal and illegal communist infiltration investigation (COMINFIL) and counterintelligence programs and activities (COINTELPRO) conducted before and after the assassination. These were designed to tie Dr. King and the SCLC to the influence of the Communist Party and to discredit Dr. King.

As early as 1957, at the time of the founding of the SCLC, FBI supervisor J. K. Kelly stated in a memo that the group was "a likely target for communist infiltration." [27] As the SCLC mounted an increasingly high-profile challenge to segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks across the South, the bureau began actively infiltrating meetings and conferences. [28]

On October 23, 1962, Hoover sent a memo authorizing the Atlanta and New York field offices to conduct a general COMINFIL investigation of the SCLC. The memo also inquired about whether the SCLC had any branches in New Orleans and asked the New Orleans office to explore COMINFIL possibilities in that city. [29]

As for the COINTELPRO activities specifically aimed at Dr. King which began in late October, 1962, the HSCA report noted that a 1976.1ustice Department report explicitly stated that the bureau's campaign embodied a number of felonies. The HSCA report only summarized these activities, with the full scope of the illegal activity only being revealed by the documents contained in Volume six.

In December 1963, less than a month after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, bureau officials attended a Washington conference to analyze the avenues of approach aimed at "neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader." [30] The conference focused on how to "produce the best results without embarrassment to the Bureau." [31] Those present discussed the possibility of using Dr. King's housekeeper, Mrs. King, or selective plants in the SCLC. From then on, agents in the field were challenged to come up with proposals for humiliating, discrediting, or even merely inconveniencing Dr. King and the SCLC.

Officials at the meeting agreed with domestic intelligence chief William C. Sullivan's suggestion that microphones be placed surreptitiously in Dr. King's hotel rooms as he traveled. These would complement the wiretaps already in place at his home and office in Atlanta. The bureau hoped to pick up information about extramarital sexual activity, which could then be used to tarnish his reputation or even blackmail him.

The bureau carried out this surveillance at numerous hotels nationwide from late 1963 through the end of 1965. Documents reveal that the wiretaps on the SCLC's Atlanta offices ran from October 24, 1963, to1une 21, 1966; [32] Dr. King's home was tapped from November 8, 1963, to April 30, 1965, when he moved. [33]

In 1966 FBI director Hoover, becoming fearful of a congressional inquiry into electronic surveillance, ordered this monitoring of Dr. King discontinued-but in such a way that it could be reinstalled at short notice. [34]

When in 1967 the SCLC and Dr. King turned their attention to Vietnam and the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, the bureau asked Attorney General Clark to approve renewed telephone surveillance. He refused.35 I was skeptical that electronic surveillance on King ceased, but thought it unlikely that evidence of such rogue activity would ever surface.

The bureau also engaged in surreptitious activities and burglaries directed against Dr. King and the SCLC. The HSCA estimated that twenty such events took place between 1959 and 1964.36 These illegal operations began at least three years prior to any security file being officially opened.

The bureau would maintain that Dr. King was not officially a COINTELPRO target until late 1967 or early 1968. In fact, a massive campaign was underway from 1964 with the purpose of destroying him and even, at one point, apparently trying to induce him to commit suicide. In its campaign the bureau left few areas untouched.

Bureau Contacts with Political Leaders

The FBI, often with direct personal contact of an agent or SAC in the relevant area, met with a number of political leaders to advise them about information it had obtained on Dr. King's allegedly indiscreet personal life and the communist influence on him. Those approached included, among others, the following:

• U.K. prime minister Harold Wilson (whom Dr. King was to visit on his return trip from Oslo, after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize )
• New York governor Nelson Rockefeller
• Former Florida governor LeRoy Collins, then director of the U.S. Justice Department's Community Relations Service
• Massachusetts governor John A. Volpe (Dr. King was to be honored in Massachusetts in 1965 )
• Speaker of the House of Representatives John McCormack (briefed on August 14, 1965)
• Director of the CIA; Secretary of State Dean Rusk; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Maj. Gen. Carl C. Turner, Provost Marshal, U.S. Army; and Gen. Leonard E. Chapman, Commandant, U .S. Marine Corps (all of these leaders received a bureau-prepared monograph on March 19, 1968, entitled "Martin Luther King Jr., A Current Analysis"; it contained carefully selected discrediting material on Dr. King that the bureau had compiled by that time, about two weeks before his death. [37]

Bureau Manipulation of the Media

By late 1964 the bureau began to put out the word to newspeople that Dr. King's personal life was unsavory. A whisper campaign was aimed at the media in general, and trusted reporters were offered an opportunity to read the transcripts of the surveillance or to listen to the allegedly damaging tape recordings. The HSCA confirmed a number of approaches Hoover made to the media through Crime Records Division head Cartha DeLoach.

U.S. News & World Report was one of the bureau's favorite media outlets. Like some select others, it was provided with the full text of an extraordinary three-hour meeting between Hoover and a group of women reporters, at which Hoover declared, "I consider King to be the most notorious liar in the country." A summary report of this comment also found its way to the first page of the New York Times, on November 19, 1964." [38]

In November 1966 the bureau also successfully used the media to cause Dr. King to cancel a meeting with Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa. (At this time Hoffa was in the final stages of appealing his conviction and sentence on a charge of jury tampering, stemming from his earlier trial in Nashville. His appeal was finally denied in January 1967, and he entered prison on March 7.) Any alliance between Dr. King and the powerful labor leader would have greatly concerned the bureau and the federal government because Hoffa had an enormous work force and a virtually unlimited treasury. His support of King would have greatly enhanced the SCLC's effectiveness. Consequently, the Crime Records Division prepared an article for public release and also recommended that "a Bureau official be designated now to alert friendly news media of the meeting once the meeting date is learned so that arrangements can be made for appropriate press coverage of the planned meeting to expose and disrupt it." [39] Hoover's "OK" appeared below that recommendation.

Upon learning of the imminent date of the meeting, the Crime Records Division notified a national columnist for the New York Daily News as well as selected news photographers and wire service reporters, to ensure maximum publicity. The Daily News broke the story, causing Dr. King to decide not to meet Hoffa. The bureau then tipped off a number of reporters that King was traveling to Washington. As he came off the plane, he was besieged by reporters asking about the proposed meeting. The Crime Records Division reported that it had been successful in thwarting the SCLC receiving any funds from the Teamsters. Hoover scribbled "Excellent" at the bottom of the memo. [40]

In March 1967, Hoover approved a recommendation by the Domestic Intelligence Division to furnish "friendly" reporters with questions designed to exploit King's growing opposition to the war in Vietnam. Reporters were also furnished with off-the-record embarrassing questions they might put to Dr. King at press conferences. [41]

Following the UN rally on April 15, 1967, newspapers began to speculate on the possibility of a third-party King- Spock presidential ticket. We had no doubt that this ticket would be a matter of serious concern to the sitting president, who would be concerned about the split liberal vote resulting in Nixon being elected. Such a ticket would also be a matter of concern to the FBI and the intelligence community because of the resulting debate about the war and their roles in support of it. (This was subsequently confirmed by Freedom of Information Act materials and other researchers.) [42] However, we never anticipated the degree of fear that Dr. King's activities and plans in 1967-1968 instilled in the intelligence, defense, and federal law enforcement apparatus.

The bureau's concern was heightened when it learned that we had scheduled a convention in Chicago for September. Its field office recommended that flyers, leaflets, cards, and bumper stickers be used in conjunction with the voices of a number of political columnists or reporters, to discredit the ticket. [43] The Chicago memo stressed that "this person ... [the journalist chosen] ... should be respected for his balance and fair mindedness. An article by an established conservative would not adequately serve our purposes." (We would later learn of the existence of a heavily deleted CIA memo dated October 5, 1967, which noted that the communists had been blocked in their efforts to obtain a King-Spock peace and freedom ticket. The deletions were justified on the grounds of protecting "intelligence activities, sources or methods." [44])

In October 1967, the FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division recommended that an editorial be placed in a "Negro magazine" to reveal King as "a traitor to his country and his race" and thus reduce his chances of gaining much income from a series of SCLC fund-raising shows scheduled around that time by Harry Belafonte. This recommendation was also approved by Hoover and marked "Handled 10/28/67." [45]

In early March 1968 the bureau began to disseminate information to the press aimed specifically at hurting the SCLC's fund-raising for the Poor People's Campaign. One such story the bureau circulated was "that King does not need contributions from the 70,000 people he solicited. Since the churches have offered support, no more money is needed and any contributed would only be used by King for other purposes." [46]

On March 28, 1968, the day the Memphis demonstration broke up in violence (which I have come to believe was caused by agents provocateur), a Domestic Intelligence Division memo detailed the outbreak of violence and had attached to it an unattributable memo that it was suggested could be made avail- able by the Crime Records Division to "cooperative media sources." It also carried Hoover's "OK" and the notation "handled on 3/28/68." This effort resulted in the widely published articles depicting Dr. King as a coward for fleeing the scene of the violence.

For example, five days before King's death, the Memphis Commercial Appeal (March 30, 1968) asserted in an editorial that "Dr. King is suffering from one of those awesome credibility gaps. Furthermore, he wrecked his reputation as a leader as he took off at high speed when violence occurred."

The next day (March 31) the paper stated in an article headed "Chicken a la King" that "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fled from the rioting and looting in the downtown area Thursday .... His efforts to climb aboard a meat truck were rebuffed but the motorist next in line picked him up."

On March 30 and 31 the Globe-Democrat, in an editorial supplied virtually verbatim by the FBI and headed "The Real Martin Luther King" stated that "King sprinted down a side street to an awaiting automobile and sped away." Dr. King was termed a deceiver who would no longer be able to "hoodwink intelligent Americans." It labeled him "one of the most menacing men in America." On the opposite page was a cartoon caricature of Dr. King shooting a gun, with the caption, "I'm not firing it -- I'm only pulling the trigger." In fact, King was reluctant to leave the scene of the violence on March 28. He virtually had to be forced to leave.

Then, as Dr. King prepared to go to Memphis for what would be his last visit, the Domestic Intelligence Division, in a memorandum issued on March 29, 1968, recommended that the following article be furnished to a "cooperative news source":

Martin Luther King, during the sanitation workers' strike in Memphis, Tennessee, has urged Negroes to boycott downtown white merchants to achieve Negro demands. On 3/29/68 King led a march for the sanitation workers. Like Judas leading lambs to slaughter King led the marchers to violence, and when the violence broke out, King disappeared.

The fine Hotel Lorraine in Memphis is owned and patronized exclusively by Negroes but King didn't go there for his hasty exit. Instead King decided the plush Holiday Inn Motel, white owned, operated and almost exclusively patronized, was the place to "cool it." There will be no boycott of white merchants for King, only for his followers.

Thus, five days before the assassination the bureau was looking to place an internally prepared article whose message was that Dr. King should stay at a black-owned hotel instead of a white establishment. In particular, "the fine Hotel Lorraine" was singled out.

In volume four of the HSCA report, [47] the committee stated that the "FBI did as a part of its propaganda campaign against Dr. King prepare a press release on March 29, taking him to task for staying at the Holiday Inn. In turn, this criticism was echoed in newspapers around the country, although the investigation was unable to determine concretely if the news stories were the direct result of the FBI release ...."

In its Saturday morning (March 30) edition the Commercial Appeal made a point of stating that Dr. King was "staying in a $29 a day room at the Holiday Inn Rivermont, also known as the Rivermont Hotel." This of course was the hotel to which he was rushed and registered by the police after the march broke up.

The HSCA accepted Ralph Abernathy's recollection that Dr. King's normal practice was to stay at the Lorraine, though reporter Kay Black's memory differed. The contention that Dr. King normally stayed at the Lorraine made no sense in light of the active campaign of criticism aimed at him for staying at white-owned hotels. Such criticism would have been hollow if in fact the Lorraine was his usual motel in Memphis. The committee didn't discuss or even refer to the changing of Dr. King's room at the Lorraine.

***

THE HSCA REPORTED that the bureau's media efforts to discredit Dr. King even continued after he was killed. In March 1969, when it was learned that Congress was considering declaring Dr. King's birthday a national holiday, the Crime Records Division recommended briefing the members of the House Committee on Internal Security, who had the power to keep the bill from being reported out of committee. A plan was developed, but Hoover was concerned that any efforts to discredit King posthumously be handled "very cautiously." [48]

Though not covered specifically by the HSCA report, one of the most blatant ways the bureau tried to tarnish Dr. King's image after his death was by spreading the story to the media that he might well have been shot on the orders of a husband of a former lover. Jack Anderson, one of the columnists who was fed the FBI information, revealed in 1975 how he had been contacted by Hoover in 1968, when he was, in his words, "on good terms with the old FBI curmodgeon [sic]":

The FBI vendetta against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't end with his murder. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had tried to blacken King's name while he was alive, also tried to tarnish it after his death.

Not long after King was gunned down on the balcony of his Memphis motel on April 4, 1968, Hoover sent word to me that the motive behind the murder was cuckoldry, that the assassin apparently had been hired by a jealous husband ... who had become enraged by the discovery that his wife had borne King's child. The intermediary identified the Los Angeles couple and showed me supporting data, including an FBI report describing a passionate interlude between the wife and Dr. King in a New York City hotel ....

I flew to Los Angeles and did my damnedest to confirm the FBI leads .... I could find absolutely no evidence that contradicted the couple's own explanation that Dr. King was an honored friend of the family, a frequent guest in their home and nothing more.

I also discovered with deepening apprehension that there were no FBI agents on this trail that was supposed to be so hot. I returned to Washington satisfied that the FBI story was erroneous and half convinced that it was a deliberate hoax. [49]

In 1968 Anderson was indeed on good terms with Hoover, receiving and publishing bureau information such as that appearing in his columns on May 6, 1968 (lauding the bureau's search for Ray and pronouncing his guilt), and March 25, 1969 (denying the existence of either a conspiracy or the handler named Raul).

Bureau Influence with Religious Leaders

In his testimony before the HSCA in open hearing, bureau assistant director C. D. Brennan confirmed that the FBI also strove to discredit Dr. King in the eyes of prominent religious leaders. A number of confidential bureau memos substantiated this assertion.

The bureau was particularly incensed over the possibility of Dr. King meeting with the Pope in late September 1964. In an effort to prevent this audience, Assistant Director John Malone provided an extensive briefing to one of the bureau's most reliable friends -- Francis Cardinal Spellman of the New York diocese. His Eminence was long known to be one of the Roman Catholic Church's most virulent anticommunists and a long-term supporter of U.S. intervention in Vietnam. He reportedly "immediately advised" the Vatican secretary of state that no audience be given to Dr. King in light of "very serious, but highly confidential information which had come to his attention but which he could not discuss in detail over the telephone." [50] For whatever reason, the effort failed, and Dr. King did meet with the Pope on September 18, 1964.

The bureau had more luck in its contact with the Baptist World Alliance, which had scheduled Dr. King to speak at its congress in Miami Beach, Florida, in June 1965. After the alliance was presented with certain "facts" about Dr. King, his speech was canceled.

The FBI mounted similar campaigns in late 1964 and early 1965 designed to damage Dr. King's relations with the National Council of Churches and Archbishop Cody of the archdiocese of Chicago.

***

Campaign to Prevent the Award of Honorary Degrees to Dr. King

Every time the bureau learned that a university was planning to award Dr. King an honorary degree, it strove to dissuade senior officials from making the award. Usually these efforts failed. One notable success apparently involved Marquette University in 1964. Hoover had himself received an honorary award from Marquette in 1950 and considered the prospect of King getting the same award a personal insult. The bureau pulled out all stops, and the award was canceled.

***

Attempts to Neutralize Dr. King's Leadership and Replace Him

In 1964 the bureau undertook a plan to promote an alternative figure as a black leader. A moderate, acceptable replacement was to emerge after the discrediting and destruction of Dr. King was complete. A memo dated December 1, 1964, proposed that Cartha DeLoach organize a meeting of a number of the more amenable civil rights leaders. These leaders would be positively informed about the bureau's civil rights activity as well as about the negative aspects of Dr. King. In effect, the so-called potential replacements would treat King like a pariah.

The "Suicide Project"

One of the bureau's most venal actions against King took place in October 1964 after it was announced that he was going to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. U.S. ambassadors in London, Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen were briefed about his personal life and communist associations, in case any of them contemplated receiving him. In addition, the FBI made a tape that allegedly contained ribald remarks made by Dr. King, and sounds of people apparently engaging in sexual activity. An agent flew the tape to Tampa, Florida, and mailed it anonymously to the SCLC from that city, along with a letter threatening to expose the alleged sexual indiscretions.

The letter, mailed in late November, was designed to drive King to despair:

King look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a greater liability to all of us Negroes. ... You are no clergyman and you know it. I repeat you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that .... You, even at an early age have turned out to be not a leader but a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile. We will now have to depend on our older leaders like Wilkins[,] a man of character[,] and thank God we have others like him. But you are done. Your "honorary" degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce) and other awards will not save you. King, I repeat you are done ....

The HSCA concluded that the final paragraph "clearly implied that suicide would be a suitable course of action for Dr. King": [51]

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is .... There is but one way out for you. You had better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation. [52]

As a result of this action by the bureau, Dr. King and his colleagues became aware for the first time of the extensive surveillance of them. From then on, they had no doubt about the lengths to which Hoover would go to silence King.

SCLC Infiltration

Former agent Arthur Murtagh testified before the HSCA that he himself had many informants whom he used to gather information about the SCLC. They were part of the "black probe" operation. He noted that the field office's primary informant was a member of the SCLC's executive staff controlled by agent Al Sentinella, who sat directly across from him in the Atlanta field office. In addition to the monthly bureau payment, this informant further supplemented his income by embezzling organization funds. Sentinella warned him about this but took no other action. The informant informed on the SCLC and Dr. King, sometimes daily, right up to the day of the assassination. Among other information, details of Dr. King's itinerary and travel plans were provided.

The official abuses, though orchestrated by Hoover, were supported and carried out by bureau and field office personnel in every section of the country. Murtagh said that in Atlanta 90 percent of their time was spent on investigating and attempting to denigrate Dr. King. This focus reflected a hatred that seemed to permeate the bureau from top to bottom.

Murtagh's HSCA testimony revealed that on April 4, 1968, as he left the Atlanta field office around 6:30 p.m. with Special Agent Jim Rose, his fellow agent virtually "jumped for joy," exclaiming, "We [or "They" -- Murtagh's recollection here is hazy] finally got the son of a bitch !"

(In his testimony before the HSCA, Rose couldn't recall any words that he uttered at the time. When asked whether it was possible that he made the statement alleged by Murtagh, he said, "It is possible.") [53]

As horrendous as this campaign was in the HSCA's view, the committee didn't view it as indicative of the bureau 's involvement in the assassination itself, but as appearing to create an atmosphere in which the assassination could take place. Summarizing the HSCA conclusions, Counsel Blakey declared that, ''as it turned out, the House Select Committee found no evidence of complicity of the CIA, FBI or any government agency in either assassination." (emphasis added.)

Just as chilling as the HSCA's efforts to deflect attention from government involvement in King's death were its efforts to side-step questions about a conspiracy by putting forward a highly questionable theory of its own. The HSCA firmly rejected the FBI's conclusion that Ray was a racist and that his racism was the motive for the assassination. It would be difficult to construct a more convoluted scenario than the one the HSCA advanced: Two alleged conspirators, St. Louis racists named John Sutherland and John Kauffmann -- both dead by the time the HSCA was formed, and whose supposed involvement was raised for the first time in the final report -- were alleged to have offered a bounty on Dr. King, which Ray somehow heard about, taking it upon himself to earn it. It was acknowledged, however, that Ray had never met the two men. No explanation was provided as to why he never collected nor tried to collect his payment, nor even how he imagined he would be paid.

The HSCA suggested possible ways James Earl Ray could have learned about the alleged offer. They tried, for example, to show that he could have heard about it from another prisoner or even a medical officer with whom he had had contact during his Missouri incarceration. Finally the committee admitted that its investigation failed to confirm any such connection. In fact, both the prisoner, john Paul Spica, and the doctor, Hugh Maxey, denied ever having heard of the alleged Sutherland- Kauffmann offer.

The committee then attempted to establish that John Ray, at his Grapevine Tavern in St. Louis, passed information to James about the contract. Since John Ray had in late 1967 and early 1968 allegedly been a supporter of the presidential campaign of Alabama governor George Wallace and his American Independence Party, and both Sutherland and Kauffmann also supported the party, the HSCA believed there was a link. The Grapevine, according to the committee, was a source of Wallace literature. The committee also claimed that brothers John and jerry were quite active in Wallace campaign activity. John Ray denied under oath knowing either Sutherland or Kauffmann and further denied ever hearing or participating in conversations at the Grapevine about the offer.

Though the committee admitted that its extensive investigation of the St. Louis conspiracy proved frustrating and that it could produce no direct evidence that Ray had ever even heard of the money offer to kill Dr. King, or even that such an offer existed, it alleged that through his participation in the Alton bank robbery Ray was physically present in the St. Louis area around July 1967.

The HSCA concluded that Ray was a lone gunman, acting with full knowledge of what he was doing, probably stalking Dr. King for a period immediately preceding the assassination. Raul, as described by Ray, didn't exist, so Ray couldn't have been a fall guy manipulated by others. However, if there was a Raul he was likely either or both of Ray's brothers, with whom he had ongoing contact and assistance. The HSCA stated that strong circumstantial evidence existed about the consultative role of one of the brothers in the purchase of the weapon itself. (The only scintilla of evidence provided was Aeromarine store manager Donald Wood's comment that when he bought the rifle Ray said he was going hunting with his brother. In fact Ray has said that his cover story for the purchase was that he was going hunting with his brother-in-law.)

To shore up the committee's conclusions about the involvement of the Ray brothers, Counsel Blakey continued to press for a prosecution of John Ray for perjury for denying that he participated in the Alton bank robbery. As noted earlier, the U.S. attorney general's office summarily refused, citing a lack of evidence.

The HSCA then sealed, for fifty years, all the investigative files and information it elected not to publish. This included all field investigative reports, interviews, documents, and data. Counsel Blakey also invited the CIA, the FBI, and the MPD intelligence division to place their files on the case under Congressional cover so that they would be protected from any Freedom of Information Act requests. This they did.

With all of its speciousness and shortcomings, the HSCA re- port raised a number of questions and identified a number of witnesses who had varying types of involvement and stories to tell. In most cases the committee prepared brief explanations and summaries to implement its door-closing objective.

The committee accepted the MPD's official explanation for the removal of Detective Redditt from his surveillance post at the fire station. Under cross-examination, however, Redditt admitted that his role was not to provide security for Dr. King, as he had previously maintained, but rather to surveil him and provide intelligence reports. The report noted that upon being removed from his post Redditt was personally brought by MPD intelligence officer Lt. E. H. Arkin to a meeting in police headquarters where he was informed by Director Holloman of a threat on his life. However, the report also revealed, without explanation, the presence at that meeting of one Phillip Manuel, an investigator for the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Arkansas senator John McClellan. Supposedly, Manuel had told Redditt's superiors about the threat on Redditt's life.

The HSCA discussed the removal of the two black firemen, which early investigators had found curious, but passed it off as being motivated by the MPD's concern with the security of their surveillance posts and having nothing to do with the existence of a conspiracy.

The report also dealt with rumors surrounding the removal of a personal security detail assigned to Dr. King and accepted Inspector Don Smith's explanation that since the SCLC party wasn't willing to cooperate with the detail it was disbanded late in the afternoon of April 3.

As to Solomon Jones's insistence that he saw someone in the bushes right after the shooting, the HSCA concluded that it was unlikely that what Solomon saw was a person but that if it were a man it was likely to have been a quick-responding MPD policeman, already on the scene. [54] (This appears incredible considering Solomon had described the man as wearing a jacket and plaid shirt.)

The HSCA further noted the MPD's failure after the shooting to issue an all points bulletin (general alert describing the suspect) as well as a "Signal Y" alert (instructing cars to block off city exit routes). Pages were devoted to discrediting Grace Walden and hence her denial that a man she saw exiting the bathroom around the time of the shooting was James Earl Ray. In so doing the committee gave credibility to Charlie Stephens's account of seeing someone running down the hallway after the shot. The committee maintained that it didn't rely on him for an identification. The HSCA attacked Wayne Chastain's report of his interview with Walden and his observations of a drunken Stephens as "improbable, if not an outright fabrication" [55] (despite including in the volumes MPD detective lieu tenant Tommy Smith's affidavit stating that Stephen was indeed drunk).

The report also raised the names of three individuals with intriguing possible connections to the case. One was Herman Thompson, a former East Baton Rouge, deputy sheriff. Ray had told the committee that Thompson was the owner of the Baton Rouge telephone number given to him by Raul. (Ray had discovered this by comparing the number he had with the phone numbers in the Baton Rouge telephone directory, beginning with the last digit. Eventually he matched the number he had with that listed for a Herman Thompson.) The second individual was Randy Rosenson, whose name was on the business card Ray said he had found in the Mustang before crossing the border from Mexico into California. The third person was Raul Esquivel, the Louisiana state trooper whose Baton Rouge state police barracks had allegedly been called by Ray in December 1967 on his trip with Charlie Stein from Los Angeles to New Orleans.

The HSCA reported that all three people denied knowing Ray and concluded that none of them had any connection with a conspiracy to kill Dr. King. They noted that Esquivel's work records made it impossible for him to have been Ray's Raul.

The information contained in the ancillary volumes published by the HSC.A was much more valuable than the report itself. Though carefully edited, the ancillary volumes included sworn statements and documents that provided a useful place for me to start to analyze issues. For example, the HSCA staff interview of Aeromarine Supply Store manager Donald Wood on March 10, 1977, revealed Wood's account of the conversation he had with Ray when the latter requested the change of rifle. He said that he remembered the man said "that he had, and I'm pretty sure these were his exact words, he had been talking to someone and that's not the gun he wanted." Wood then recalled that the man said what he really wanted was a Remington Model 760 Gamemaster pump-action rifle. He said he had the impression that the caller was probably reading it from something, since very few people ever referred to the gun as a "Gamemaster." (This was compatible with Ray's recollection of Raul pointing out the rifle from a brochure Ray gave him).

The HSCA ballistics panel reported that they test-fired the evidence rifle and examined the markings on the test-fired bullets. They found that the markings on most of the test fired bullets varied from one to another. They concluded that no meaningful comparison could be made between the test-fired bullets and the death slug.

The FBI laboratory had conducted neutron activation analysis tests on the evidence bullets and the death slug (such tests analyze the composition of lead in a bullet). The HSCA panel stated that the bureau's April 29, 1968 report stated that the elemental composition of the bullets varied and therefore no meaningful comparison with the death slug could be made. The panel didn't conduct its own neutron activation analysis.

The panel noted that somehow the rifle and the scope were misaligned, resulting in the weapon not firing straight. It also noted that the death slug was originally delivered to the FBI in one piece but was received by the panel in three fragments produced as a result (so the panel believed) of the bureau's laboratory testing procedures.

The fingerprints report showed that Ray's prints were found on the following items in the discarded bundle: the rifle, the scope, the binoculars, a beer can and the Commercial Appeal newspaper. There were none of Ray's prints in the bathroom, the room he rented, nor elsewhere in the rooming house. The report also conceded that there were many unidentified fingerprints in the relevant areas of the rooming house and on Ray's Mustang.

A Memphis City Engineers analysis of the bullet's trajectory couldn't conclude whether it came from the bathroom window of the rooming house or the elevated brush area behind the rooming house. This uncertainty was due not only to confusion over Dr. King's posture but also to the fact that the medical examiner, Dr. Francisco, hadn't traced the path of the bullet in Dr. King's body. When asked about this departure from normal procedure, Francisco took the curious position that he was loathe to cause further mutilation for no good reason.

The HSCA discussed the possibility that the shot had been fired from the brush and also the contention that the brush had been cut down the next morning. It concluded that the bullet had been fired from the bathroom, discounting (as noted earlier) Solomon Jones's statement. Also, after supposedly reviewing the work records of the Memphis Sanitation Department and the Department of Parks it concluded that no cutting had taken place. The committee didn't interview Kay Black or James Orange.

Occasionally, some testimony before the committee appeared to contradict Ray's story. For example, Estelle Peters, an employee of the Piedmont Laundry in Atlanta, contended that her records indicated that Ray left laundry with her on April 1. If this was the case, it could be alleged that Ray was in Atlanta with the alleged murder weapon at the same time as Dr. King, and could have been stalking him. Ray maintained that he had put in the laundry earlier and that he was nowhere near Atlanta on April 1, having been well along on his trip to Memphis and spending that evening at a motel in Corinth, Mississippi.

Often, more questions were raised than answered.

The MPD agent whom Redditt had told Mark Lane had infiltrated the Invaders was revealed to be Marrell McCollough. Under oath, McCollough admitted that he furnished regular reports on the Invaders' activity to Lieutenant Arkin, his MPD intelligence bureau control officer. One of the first people to reach Dr. King after the shooting, McCollough had been in the parking area of the Lorraine, having just dropped off SCLC staffers Orange and Bevel. He immediately raced up the stairs after the shot. During his HSCA testimony, McCollough acknowledged that he was the mysterious figure kneeling over the fallen Dr. King on the balcony, apparently checking him for life signs. He also admitted to subsequently being involved as an agent provocateur in a number of illegal activities for which various Invaders were convicted and sentenced. He explicitly denied being connected, at the time of the assassination, to any federal agency. When I tried to locate McCollough later, I learned he had disappeared from Memphis; it was rumored that he had gone to work for the CIA.

The HSCA raised the issue of the withdrawal of some MPD TACT units from the area of the Lorraine. This had been confirmed in an affidavit provided to the HSCA by MPD chief William O. Crumby, who attributed the withdrawal to a request made by a person in Dr. King's group. This withdrawal contributed to the reduced police presence in the immediate area of the assassination.

Several conspiracy scenarios, some implicating the Mafia, were covered and dismissed in the HSCA report. I was interested in some of the scenarios, if only for the leads provided and resolved to follow them up.

***

THE HSCA's REPORT had only strengthened my growing conviction that Dr. King's murder had not been solved.

[admin]

Chapter 14: Following the Footprints of Conspiracy: January-September 1979

IN THE EARLY MONTHS OF 1979 I commuted to Memphis to follow up on some issues only summarily covered by the HSCA.

First was a meeting with John McFerren, the owner of a gas station/grocery store in Somerville, Tennessee. I had been trying to meet with him for over four months, ever since Jim Lawson had told me about his story. Lawson said that McFerren had been a courageous and reliable black civil rights leader in Fayette County, whose activities had put his life under constant threat and caused his insurance to be canceled and his store to be periodically blacklisted by white suppliers. On the afternoon of February 8, 1979, I traveled with two associates of Mark Lane -- April Ferguson, a lawyer, and Barbara Rabbito, a stenographer -- to the small town of Somerville, about forty miles outside of Memphis.

When we reached McFerren's store around 6:15 p.m., I was immediately struck by the impression of a place under siege. The huge plate glass window in front of his store was cracked from top to bottom and taped together, the result, McFerren said, of a drive-by shooting, one of many he had experienced since 1968. Not long ago, he told us, he shot and wounded a man contracted by the Mafia to kill him. He said that he was tipped off three weeks before the attempt and was waiting for the hit man -- a black who was not from the area. Unshaven and dressed in working clothes with an old baseball cap, McFerren stood about 5'8". Solidly built and very alert, he peered cautiously over his glasses at us.

Although he knew we were coming and led us to a back room furnished with only a crude table and a couple of chairs, he seemed increasingly uneasy. He had closed the store and shut off the lights, but there was still a steady stream of traffic in and around the gas station. As it grew dark, his nervousness increased. Though his old friend Jim Lawson had arranged the meeting, it was obvious that McFerren didn't completely trust the three white strangers in front of him. We would accomplish little on that visit, and we left with the understanding that Law- son would be back in touch to arrange for a more secure meeting. Three more weeks of sporadic contact followed. He refused to talk on any local phones, being convinced that they were tapped.

Finally, I got McFerren's story after another face-to-face meeting was arranged. McFerren maintained that on the afternoon of April 4, 1968, while he was shopping at the Liberto, Liberto and Latch (LL&L) Produce Company in Memphis, he saw the company's president, Frank Liberto, talking on the telephone, having been handed the phone by one of the bosses who had answered it. As McFerren went to the back of the store, where there was an office on the other side of the wall, he heard Liberto's conversation through the open door. He insisted that he heard Liberto say, "I told you not to call me here. Shoot the son of a bitch when he comes on the balcony." Liberto told the caller that he should collect his money from Liberto's brother in New Orleans after he had finished. The sum of $5,000 was mentioned.

McFerren had heard rumors that Frank Liberto had some underworld connections; this was none of McFerren's business, he thought, and so he just put the conversation out of his mind. He was jolted, however, when just an hour later, after he arrived back in Somerville, he heard of Martin Luther King's assassination.

After agonizing for two days, McFerren called Baxton Bryant, the executive director of the Tennessee Council on Human Rights, at his home in Nashville. Bryant, a Methodist minister, had been involved behind the scenes trying to mediate the garbage strike. McFerren asked Bryant to come to Somerville.

When Bryant got to Somerville and heard McFerren's story, Bryant insisted that he tell it to the FBI. McFerren was reluctant until Bryant promised him that either his name would be kept secret or he and his family would receive protection.

That night Bryant drove to Memphis, where he telephoned Frank Holloman at home and insisted on seeing him immediately. Around midnight they met in Holloman's office at police headquarters; soon after, homicide chief N. E. Zachary and FBI agent O. B. Johnson arrived. The three listened to Bryant's story and asked to see McFerren at once.

Bryant, knowing that McFerren wouldn't talk on the telephone, drove back the forty miles to Somerville and managed to convince his friend to get out of bed and go to Memphis. On Monday, April 8, at 3:00 a.m., Zachary and Johnson began interrogating McFerren in Bryant's room at the Peabody. Also present was David Caywood, an ACLU attorney.

They finished around 5:00 a.m. Zachary and Johnson taped McFerren's account and had him sketch the office in which he had seen Liberto and another one of the bosses, down to its furnishings, the position of the men, and where he himself had stood in the corridor, listening. They promised to check it out thoroughly.

Three days later, Bryant was told that the FBI believed that if McFerren overheard the telephone call at all, it wasn't related to the assassination. McFerren told me that as a result of the way he was treated he was most uncomfortable. He felt he was looked on as a criminal himself.

The HSCA had uncovered another independent reference to the possible involvement of a Frank Liberto (the story told by Morris Davis, summarized below), noted Liberto's well-known racial bias, and even ascertained that his brother, Salvatore, who lived in Louisiana, was indirectly connected to organized crime leader Carlos Marcello (a fact that was unknown to McFerren) .Nevertheless the HSCA elected to dismiss McFerren's story, just as the MPD and the FBI had. Shortly after the assassination, Time magazine stringer William Sartor had investigated McFerren's story. He concluded that organized crime was responsible for the killing, having connected to his own satisfaction Memphis produce dealer Frank C. Liberto with Carlos Marcello, the New Orleans Mafia leader. The HSCA concluded, after what it termed an extensive investigation, that no evidence existed to tie either Liberto or Marcello to the assassination.

I had previously obtained an affidavit dated February 21, 1977, sworn by Morris Davis of Birmingham, Alabama. I would have dismissed Davis's account out of hand had I not heard about McFerren's allegations. His independent reference to the involvement of a Frank Liberto was troubling. Davis maintained that in early 1968 he became aware of a plot to kill Dr. King which involved a local Birmingham doctor/gunrunner named Gus Prosch, a Mafia- connected man named Frank Liberto from Memphis and also, incredibly, King's close friend Ralph Abernathy and Birmingham SCLC leader Fred Shuttlesworth. Davis said he observed Abernathy and Shuttlesworth meeting with Prosch and Liberto on two occasions in the parking lot of the Gulas Lounge in Birmingham, and that late on the afternoon of April 3 Prosch actually showed him the gun that he said was to be used in the killing.

***

DURING ONE OF MY trips to Memphis in early 1979 I learned about Arthur Baldwin, a Memphis topless club owner who had become a very useful asset of the federal government. Previously in trouble with the law, he had received leniency in exchange for being the government's chief witness against high-ranking officials in Governor Ray Blanton's administration, exposing a "pay for pardon" operation and other corrupt practices. Baldwin came to my attention in connection with the assassination, or rather its cover-up. On February 16, 1979, Mark Lane's associates Ferguson and Rabbito executed affidavits resulting from a visit conducted a few days before with William "Tim" Kirk, an inmate of the Shelby County Jail. Ac- cording to the affidavits, Kirk had called their office several times to request that Mark Lane visit him at the jail. He said he had some information that might be of value. Since Lane was unavailable, Ferguson and Rabbito went out to see him the next day. He declined to let them tape the conversation or use his name, but he permitted them to take notes. Kirk stated that he had been in and out of the Shelby County Jail since 1972 on robbery and extortion charges. Between October 15, 1977, and February 1978, while in jail, he befriended Arthur Baldwin, another prisoner. He kept in occasional contact with Baldwin after Baldwin was released.

In June or July of 1978 Baldwin mentioned a murder contract for $5,000. The target was James Earl Ray. Kirk, who was in jail at the time, believed that he wasn't necessarily being asked to do the job himself but that the $5,000 was for putting out the contract and making the appropriate connections for Baldwin so that it could be carried out.

Kirk remembered being puzzled as to why Baldwin who had a comfortable home on Balboa Circle, occasionally took rooms at the Executive Plaza Inn near the airport for business meetings. Baldwin's wife had told Kirk to call her husband at that hotel; it was at that number that he had the conversation about the contract on Ray. Kirk did some checking. From talking to other inmates who had worked for Art Baldwin, Kirk concluded that Baldwin, who he believed had soon after been officially removed from the Tennessee area and placed with a new identity in a new location, was a member of the federal government's Witness Protection Program as a result of his participation in an operation being mounted against certain state officials. He further concluded that the offer against Ray put out by Baldwin could have originated only with the government, because someone in Baldwin's position, being a significant government informant, would be completely under their control. He said that he had heard from contacts at Brushy Mountain prison that James Earl Ray was "good people." He therefore decided to get the word to Ray's attorney at the time, Mark Lane.

It was evident to both Ferguson and Rabbito that Kirk was in a state of considerable anxiety. He didn't stand to benefit; in fact, it was a statement against his own interest. He didn't ask for anything in exchange for the information, only emphasizing that his name should not be used.

***

I MET WITH ARTHUR HANES, SR., Ray's first lawyer, in February 1979 in his Birmingham law offices. He was cordial and cooperative. He said that he first viewed the balcony at the Lorraine from the bathroom in early September 1968. He said that even then it would have been extremely difficult to sight and shoot accurately through the remaining tree branches and tall bushes. Hanes noted that in September the foliage would have been fuller than it was in April, but nevertheless the tree branches themselves would have been an obstacle to challenge even the most competent marksman, which he said Ray certainly was not.

Arthur Hanes said, "We were ready. We thought we had a terrific chance to win the case and we were very disappointed when we were released. We felt like the state's case was largely circumstantial. In fact, I have not heard one new piece of evidence since we left the case. I believe I can fairly say we developed every piece of evidence that is available to this good day. As we neared trial time, of course, don't forget the burden was not on us to prove or disprove anything. We were trying to use the holes in the state's case to create the doubt it merited. ... There was really no good testimony available to the state that the shot came from anywhere except those bushes .... And then you have the natural inconsistencies of the state's case. The ballistics, the state couldn't match this gun that Jimmy purportedly bought with a slug that was found in King's body .... Then there was the package in Guy Canipe's doorway. Mr. Canipe would say the package was thrown down there some two to five minutes before the shot was fired."

This extraordinary statement, if true, meant that Ray was well and truly set up. Hanes told me that Canipe would have been a highly important witness for the defense.

Hanes went on to tell me that when he had worked for the FBI, he had taken training in ballistics evidence. He said that he had examined the slug removed from Dr. King and that "there was certainly enough rifling left on the bullet to link it with a particular gun if the gun could have been found."

Under oath, in his attempt to set aside the guilty plea in Ray's 1974 habeas corpus proceeding, Hanes testified that there was no question "that was a perfect evidence slug. If it had matched the rifle that was found in Canipe's amusement shop, the FBI testimony -- and of course we have seen dozens of times -- the FBI testimony would have been in my judgment, that the gun, to the exclusion of all others, fired this shot. What the testimony was going to boil down to was that this was a 30.06 rifle, and this was a 30.06 slug, and we were prepared to prove how many other 30.06's there were in the United States at the time, and in Memphis at the time, and in effect, completely investigate the firearms business."

Ray, of course, didn't go to trial on November 12, 1968, but instead two days earlier dismissed Arthur Hanes and retained Percy Foreman. To this day, Ray maintains that that was a mistake.

***

IN THE SUMMER OF 1979, Anna Ray insisted that I visit Knoxville lawyer Gene Stanley, a former assistant U.S. attorney for eastern Tennessee, who she learned had been attorney for Randy Rosenson, the man whose name was written on the government (L.E.A.A.) business card Ray had found. The L.E.A.A. stood for the Law Enforcement Administration, which at the time was sponsoring a number of pilot projects in selected cities. Anna had been tipped off by the manager of the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville. The manager had been approached by the HSCA, which was looking for Rosenson, who had previously stayed there while recovering from a car accident. The manager also told her that Stanley had previously represented Rosenson. Ray had always believed that there must be some connection between Raul and Rosenson, and in his search over the years for Raul, he tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to locate Rosenson, even having his brother jerry and a Tennessee lawyer go to New Orleans to pursue leads.

In July 1979, Anna, Mark Lane, and I met with Stanley in his Knoxville offices. Stanley appeared nervous, although he had voluntarily agreed to see us. He had represented Rosenson when the latter was involved in a car accident in 1977, and later on a drug charge. He next heard from Rosenson in October 1977, when he was arrested and detained in Richmond, Virginia, on an Ohio warrant connected to a drug charge filed in the congressional district of the HSCA chairman, Louis Stokes.

At that time, Stanley said, HSCA attorney Robert Lehner and staff investigators flew to Richmond to interview Rosenson. Stanley represented him during the interrogation and during a further two days of questioning by HSCA investigators in Atlanta. Stanley told us that Rosenson was connected to organized crime and had formed his associations in Miami and New Orleans as a result of drug use. He was employed in smuggling drugs and, while ostensibly in the import-export business, brought in a variety of wild animals to sell. He owned a pet shop and was involved in other types of contraband smuggling. When Rosenson was questioned about specific organized crime figures, he indicated that he knew them well.

The HSCA continued its interrogation in Atlanta on October 26. According to Stanley, this time Lehner wasn't present and Chief Investigator Edward Evans and two other staff investigators conducted the extensive interrogation. Stanley maintained that the main line of questioning focused on Raul. He said he came away from the sessions with no doubt that the HSCA knew that there was a Raul, knew his identity, and believed that his operation was identical to the one Ray described.

In informal conversations, the investigators told Stanley they had traced the man whom Ray referred to as Raul to Monterey, Mexico, claiming that he used the alias of "Raul de (or da) Gasso". They said that he smuggled contraband, particularly heroin, along a Mexico-Montreal-New Orleans triangle. Rosenson was able, said Stanley, to corroborate names, dates, and places of his contacts with this person, even to the point of identifying him from a portfolio of photographs the investigators showed him, although he didn't know him by the name they used.

Stanley said he was mystified and greatly disappointed when the HSCA reported that, although it had found evidence that Randy Rosenson was in many of the same cities as James Earl Ray, it found no evidence that his former client had contact with Raul. He was disturbed that the committee even explicitly quoted Rosenson as saying that he knew nothing about' 'a Raul."

I was excited about the confirmation of Raul's existence, but Anna Ray was upset. She said that Stanley had previously told her that the HSCA investigators had told him they believed Raul had been killed in a car accident in Mexico in or around 1972.

***

DURING THIS TIME I acquired what might have been a hot tip or a piece of disinformation: a photocopy of a photograph of a building. I tried unsuccessfully to locate the source of this photocopy. In the top margin there was a handwritten note indicating that the building, which was within blocks of the scene of the crime, was owned by a relative of an organized crime figure and was where the rifle purchased by Ray was stored until April 4, 1968.

***

IN THE DEFENSE FILE I came across the statements of two wit- nesses who seemed to provide Ray with an alibi and was astounded that no mention had ever been made of them. These statements were made by Ray Alvis Hendrix, a member of the Corps of Engineers working on a barge on the river; and William Zenie Reed, a photographic supplies salesman. The two men had been drinking together in Jim's Grill on the afternoon of April 4. Hendrix and Reed were staying at the nearby Clark's Hotel on Second Avenue. They left the bar sometime between 5:30 and 5:45. Hendrix realized that he left his jacket in the bar and went back in to retrieve it. Meanwhile, Reed, waiting outside, examined a Mustang parked in front of Jim's Grill. Since he was considering buying a car and was interested in the model, he gave it a fairly close look. When Hendrix emerged, the two men walked north on South Main, reaching Vance Avenue a couple of blocks away. They were about to cross the street when a white Mustang, also going north on South Main, caught up with them and made a right turn on to Vance. If they hadn't stopped, they could have been struck, though the car wasn't moving very fast. Reed observed that it was being driven by a young dark-haired man. Just a short time later, after they had reached their hotel, they heard sirens. Reed stated that while he couldn't be certain, the car turning on to Vance seemed to be the same car that he had been inspecting. Hendrix recalled that Reed had commented to that effect.

The statements of Reed and Hendrix appear to corroborate Ray's story that he parked his Mustang in front of the grill and that he drove it away prior to the shooting to see about having a tire repaired.

***

IN THE AUTUMN OF 1979, I was able to meet with the Louisville, Kentucky, police officer, Clifton Baird, whose story I had come across in the HSCA report. His allegations were so credible that their dismissal by the HSCA was on its face incomprehensible. Everyone who had worked with Baird or had known him agreed that he was an honest, diligent cop who played strictly by the rules. The HSCA agreed.

On September 18, 1965, Louisville police officer Arlie Blair accepted Baird's offer to drive him home at the end of the 3-11 p.m. shift. As they had done on previous occasions, the two rode to Blair's house, parked for a while in the driveway around midnight, and talked. Arlie Blair was unaware that, on some of these occasions, Baird had taped their conversations with a recorder that he placed in a rear speaker with the micro- phone under his seat. Baird had come to distrust Arlie. Fearful of any kind of setup, for some time he had regarded his growing collection of tapes as a kind of insurance.

Blair said he belonged to an organization that wanted Martin Luther King dead and was willing to pay $500,000 to accomplish this. He wanted to know whether Baird would participate in such a conspiracy. Baird told him he wanted no part of it and advised his fellow patrolman to stay away from such activity. At the time he was approached, Baird was himself under intense investigation by the FBI and police officials in his home town of Owensboro, Kentucky, in connection with the operation of a "dynamite ring" in western Kentucky. Consequently, he believed that the FBI and certain fellow police officials might have been preparing to compel him to take part in the King assassination plot by holding the investigation over him. He was also concerned that they might be trying to set him up. The investigation of Baird was completed long before the HSCA was formed, having concluded that he had no involvement whatsoever in the "bombing conspiracy." Sources close to the committee were quoted in a Scripps-Howard syndicated article published on March 28, 1977, as saying that Baird's claims of attempted blackmail' 'would explain why a veteran but low ranking policeman would have been approached by the alleged King conspirators."

At afternoon roll call the day after he recorded Blair's offer, he saw Blair talking to a group of men, some of whom he recognized as Louisville police officers and others as FBI agents who, over a period of some sixteen years or more, had developed a close relationship with members of the force. He identified the FBI agents he knew as special agents William Duncan (the FBI liaison with the Louisville Police Department) and Robert Peters. The HSCA has also reported that the Louisville special agent in charge, Bernard Brown, was present. Baird told me that was possible because he didn't know Brown; there were other "men in suits" he didn't recognize. As he watched, one of the agents was introduced to Blair, and the entire group went into a room and closed the door. Listening in from out side the room, Baird heard the offer discussed in heated tones. He also heard himself referred to as a "nigger lover."

Determined to get more information, Baird drove Arlie home the next evening, September 20, 1965. Once again, he tape recorded Blair's account and the reference to the $500,000. The tape that was made on September 18 has somehow disappeared, so the recording of September 20 is the only account in existence. Baird told me that he kept a copy and provided the original to the HSCA.

He testified before the HSCA in executive session on November 30, 1977. Special agent Duncan admitted that the discussion took place but maintained that it was a joke inspired by Louisville police sergeant William Baker, deceased at the time of the hearings, and that agents Peters and Brown would con- firm his account. Contrary to Duncan's prediction, Peters and Brown denied any knowledge of the offer, as did Blair, who, however, admitted that the voice on the Baird tape recording was his own. Blair attributed his failing memory to physical and mental deterioration due to alcoholism.

The committee completed a thorough background check of Clifton Baird, concluding that he was highly credible. A technical evaluation of the tape verified that it was of a type used in 1965. Nevertheless, the HSCA refused to connect in any way the subject of Baird's testimony -- the offer made on September 18, 1965 -- with the assassination of Dr. King in 1968. The committee dismissed it as a joke or, in any event, unrelated to later events.

In a three-hour interview with me at the Louisville airport on September 5, 1979, Baird said he has never doubted that those agents were coordinating an offer to kill Dr. King, who was a frequent visitor to Louisville (King's brother A. D. lived there) .He said they clearly used Arlie Blair in an attempt to involve him in what he called a "serious business." Baird didn't believe they wanted him to be the gunman -- as he said, "they have access to professionals for that" -- but possibly they wanted him to be a "patsy ... like James Earl Ray probably was."

As for Sergeant Baker's alleged joke, Baird said that it was incredible. Baker was assigned to Juvenile at that time and would have had little or no contact with those involved. He said he believed that Baker was named because "dead men make sorry witnesses." He also wondered why, if it was just a joke, ranking officers of the Louisville police department and the local FBI office would be involved; and why Peters and Brown would deny it ever happened?

During our interview, Baird recounted numerous incidents from the summer of 1965 through spring of 1968 when at odd times and places -- the hospital, the police parking lot, and elsewhere -- he would be confronted by four FBI agents he knew who would block his path just staring impassively at him, as though trying to "spook" him. He also found indications that his mail was being opened. He believed that he was being watched and warned to keep quiet. Then, after Dr. King was killed, the harassment stopped; the pressure was off.

Baird also told me that there was an unprecedented whole sale transfer of all the Louisville FBI agents to other field offices just before the assassination. He remembers the move coming as a real surprise because the staff had remained unchanged for such a long time. He believed that when the assassination plans had been formulated Hoover found it desirable to move the agents who had been involved in the previous attempt out of Louisville. (It was bureau policy that no agent be transferred without Hoover's personal approval.)

Clifton Baird's account of his experience left me with little doubt that there was a serious effort made in September 1965 to organize an assassination attempt on Dr. King in Louisville. Although it wasn't clear who the sponsors were, federal agents were involved and they sought the assistance of their friends on the Louisville police force.

The timing of this effort made sense. In 1965 Dr. King's prestige was considerable. Despite the efforts of the bureau and its allies within the previous year, and to the manifest outrage of bureau chief J. Edgar Hoover, King had received the Nobel Prize and had successfully fought off every subversive effort to discredit him.

As I left the Louisville airport that day, I couldn't help but wonder when the decision to eliminate King was initially made and how many other scenarios had preceded the one carried out in Memphis on April 4, 1968. It occurred to me later that Clifton Baird's story may have been the basis for the information received and provided by Daniel Ellsberg, since Brady Tyson had referred to "a group of off duty FBI agents" as- signed the task of organizing the assassination of Dr. King.

As this initial stage of my research drew to a close, sadly it was becoming ever more clear to me that the HSCA's failure to look closely at a number of leads guaranteed that the major questions surrounding Dr. King's murder had not been considered much less answered.

[admin]

Chapter 15: Disruption, Relocation and Continuation: 1978-1988

IN 1975-1977 CONSULTING PROJECTS I undertook in a large New England city resulted in a massive reorganization of a school system rife with corruption and the closing of the largest residential juvenile justice facility in the area. Many of those who lost their jobs as a result were connected to, or had a relative who was connected to, the organization of Raymond Patriarca, the undisputed Mafia leader in New England. Consequently, I became a marked man. I received threatening phone calls and strange men dressed in business suits paraded up and down outside my rural home. All my consulting contracts were either canceled or not renewed. Fabricated charges appeared from nowhere, and investigations of me and the various consulting services being run down were mounted. When it came down to hard facts, however, there were none. The allegations eventually disappeared in to thin air.

Since I was increasingly engaged in the practice of international law, which frequently took me to Europe, my family and I moved to England in June of 1981. Except for telephone discussions and the gathering and consideration of documents, my work on the King case stalled for a time. Not until 1988 did I again begin to focus on the case more fully.

In the spring of 1988 I was finally able to follow up a story summarized and dismissed by the HSCA in its final report as not being credible. Using the services of a reporter with law enforcement contacts (T. J.), I was able to trace Sam Giancana's driver Myron "Paul Bucilli" Billet to a small apartment in Columbus, Ohio. Accompanied by my assistant, Jean Obray, I was greeted by an old man in his pajamas who suffered from emphysema so badly that he was hooked up to an oxygen tank.

Entering a gloomy sitting room/bedroom and following Myron as he shuffled along into the kitchen, we noticed a teddy bear propped up on a pillow on his bed.

He said that he had been a "gofer" for the Chicago mob in the fifties and sixties. Sam Giancana, the Chicago boss, had taken a liking to him and given him the name Paul Bucilli. (Elsewhere, in personal notes and letters written eleven years earlier which he provided to me, he said the name was given to him by Ben "Bugsy" Siegel, whom he met in Los Angeles.) He would drive Sam to different places and accompany him on various trips, being available if needed as another pair of hands.

In January 1968 Billet was working at the Whitemarsh country club outside of Chicago when Sam asked him to take off a few days and drive him to Apalachin, New York, for a meeting. (This town had been the site of a major meeting of organized crime leaders in 1957. It was accidentally discovered by a New York state policeman, conclusively establishing that there was a national organized crime syndicate despite J. Edgar Hoover's previous vociferous denials of its existence.) Billet described in some detail the restaurant in town where they had driven after arriving, and the layout and location of their motel. According to Billet, those present were himself, Sam Giancana, Carlo Gambino, John Roselli, and three federal agents who he believed were from the FBI and CIA. The agents were known to the mob leaders since they had worked with them on previous gunrunning and other Cuban operations. The meeting was convened to review the working relationship between the criminal families and government agencies represented there. At one point one of the "feds" announced there was a contract on offer for the murder of Martin Luther King with a price of one million dollars. Giancana immediately responded, "No way." He made it clear that so far as he was concerned his bunch wasn't going to become involved with that assignment. The agents said it was no big issue, that other arrangements would be made. After that brief exchange, the meeting continued with other business, and the subject wasn't broached again.

It isn't clear from Billet's account whether the federal agents were simply communicating the availability of the contract or principally involved in ensuring that the job was done. Myron remembered the names of two of the agents -- Lee Leland and Martin Bishop. In his earlier writings Billet also put a name to the third agent (Hunt), whom he had seen before. (It occurred to me that he could have been referring to CIA agent E. Howard Hunt.)

When I showed Myron some photographs, including those of Giancana, Gambino, and Roselli, without naming them, he recognized and named each of the mobsters. When he looked at Giancana's photograph he smiled affectionately. "Yeah, that's Sam."

My subsequent documentary research revealed that during' much of late 1967 and early 1968 Sam Giancana was in Mexico. The meeting Billet referred to could have taken place only during one of his trips back to the United States, of which there were a number. Billet was in prison at the time he told his story to the HSCA, charged with concealing a body he had accidentally discovered. He remembered that the HSCA chairman himself, Louis Stokes, was with the group that interviewed him. The committee ultimately dismissed his allegations, but when he was released from prison and took up residence in Columbus some strange things began to happen.

First, a man would appear regularly in the small shop on the ground floor of his building to ask about him. This man's demeanor was such that Billet was sure he wanted him to know he was being watched.

Second, at one time Billet had a heart attack. Sometime later a hospital administrator said that an official of the U.S. government had appeared at the hospital with instructions to remain outside Billet's door until he was out of danger. Billet took this to mean that someone was concerned about preventing any death-bed revelations.

Though suffering from some memory lapses which interfered with a detailed recollection of the twenty-year-old events, I believed Myron Billet to be sincere and his description of the working relationship between the mob and the federal government to be accurate.

After leaving Billet, we went to visit Ray at Brushy Mountain Penitentiary. During the nearly ten years that had passed since I had last seen him, he had written a book, Tennessee Waltz, telling his side of the story. His account pulled together many of his previous recollections of his activity after his escape from prison on April 23, 1967.

Ray had recently been denied an evidentiary hearing by the Memphis federal district court magistrate, but he was convinced he would have a chance with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was desperately looking for someone to represent him on the appeal. Mark Lane had long ago ceased to represent him. I offered to approach Russell Thompson, the Memphis attorney who had been involved in some peripheral legal and investigatory work when Art Hanes was Ray's defense lawyer. Thompson said he would consider getting involved if I would assist and if April Ferguson, now a federal public defender, would help. I began to review a copy of Ray's petition to the court.

While in Memphis, I met for the first time with Art Hanes's local investigator, Renfro Hays. Since he was also an investigator for Memphis attorney Walter Buford, who knew Jack Youngblood, he had come to learn about the government operative and mercenary. He maintained that Young blood had been in Memphis a few days before the killing. Hays considered him to be very dangerous. He recalled that Young blood owned a pickup truck and that the day before the killing he stood on it to cut down a tree branch at the rear of the rooming house that was obscuring a clear view from the bathroom window to the balcony of the Lorraine. It was not at all clear to me how Renfro knew this and I was skeptical, having become aware of earlier stories of his which mixed fact and fiction.

Hays also went on about Raul Esquivel, the Louisiana state policeman stationed in Baton Rouge, who he thought was the salt-and-pepper-haired man Grace Walden allegedly saw in the rooming house. He believed that Esquivel, who he told me had once been a bodyguard for Louisiana governor Huey Long, was the shooter. Although it is of questionable reliability, Grace Walden identified a photograph of Raul Esquivel as the salt-and-pepper-haired man in front of Hays, Wayne Chastain, and her attorney at the time, Charles Murphy.

I was intrigued. Hays seemed to be both sincere and fearful. He also mentioned the Baton Rouge telephone number he said had been given to Ray by Raul, which was the number of the state police barracks in Baton Rouge where Esquivel was assigned. As discussed earlier, this number had been referred to as early as 1969 by Jeff Cohen and Harold Weisberg. Later I obtained a credit report on Esquivel that showed a fairly large deposit in 1968. I found no verification that he had ever been a bodyguard for Huey Long.

Hays also contended that a twelve-year-old black boy had seen the shooter and run up Mulberry to Butler and into the fire station, where he told his story to one of the firemen, who later informed the police. The police came and took the boy away; he wasn't heard from again. Hays said that the fireman was having an affair with a local married woman and that he had told her his story. (I later tried to confirm Hay's story by speaking to the woman he mentioned. Now remarried to a local lawyer, she denied even having known a fireman, much less having had an affair with one. I dropped that line of inquiry. Although I later spoke to most of the firemen on duty at the time, none of them recalled the incident.)

Hays also mentioned Harvey "Ace" Locke, a sometimes shoe repairman and safecracker of no fixed address who would often stop by the South Main Street rooming houses looking for a room where he could "squat" for the night. A day or so before the killing he had been told about 5-B being vacant, and on April 4, not knowing it had just been rented, he opened the door in the late afternoon to see three or four persons already there, none of them resembling James Earl Ray. He quickly closed the door and went away. Though I searched hard for Locke, I was unable to find him, and eventually came to believe that he had died. As we parted company, Hays said to me, "You're a nice young man. Why do you want to get involved with these people-they're really dangerous. You'll get yourself killed."

I interviewed Floyd Newsom, one of the black firemen removed from the fire station diagonally across from the Lorraine the evening before the killing. He told me he received a phone call the night of April 3 ordering him to report not to his home fire station 2 but to a firehouse in the northern, all-white section of the city, making him an extra man while leaving his home station a man short. He said he never got a proper explanation, even when he later left the department and it was revealed to him that this transfer was at the request of the police. It made no more sense than the similar transfer from fire station 2 of black fireman Norvell Wallace, who also left the station a man short and made an extra man where he was sent.

***

BACK IN ENGLAND I learned that Russell Thompson had decided against handling Ray's appeal. My primary interest continued to be learning the truth about the murder, but there were some important constitutional issues that cried out to be raised. I reluctantly agreed to take the appeal on myself. (This appeal is discussed in a later chapter.)

***

ON MY NEXT VISIT TO MEMPHIS, Renfro Hays introduced me to Ken Herman, another local investigator, whose services I engaged. Herman and some of his contacts introduced me to a number of current and retired MPD officers. Until the end of October 1988, when I formally filed Ray's appeal with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, I was introduced as an overseas writer doing some historical research on the assassination.

It was in this context that I interviewed retired inspector Sam Evans. My interest in Evans centered on the pull back of the MPD TACT units on the afternoon of April 4. In particular I was interested in TACT 10 which was originally based at the Lorraine Motel and pulled back to fire station 2 on South Main Street. At our first session he acknowledged that these emergency units were under his direct command, but was reluctant to admit he had given any orders that they be pull back. He tried to change the subject at one point, recounting how he had slaughtered a big brown bear that had escaped from the zoo; with nothing less than boastful glee he described how he killed the animal with a machine gun. Returning to the TACT issue, I reminded him of Chief Crumby's affidavit provided to the HSCA in 1978, which confirmed that the units were pulled back. He finally remembered that they had probably been pulled back, but only as a result of the request of someone in Dr. King's group. He said he couldn't remember who had made the request. He said he was personally familiar with local colleagues of Dr. King, and that he used to chair the regular morning meetings with Reverend Lawson and the others during the strike. He said that he had a number of close contacts in that group who were leaders in the black community and who regularly provided him with information. It was clear that he was talking about valuable local informants. In this context he spoke of Solomon Jones and Walter Bailey, the owner of the Lorraine. In a subsequent session, Evans boasted that he knew Rev. Billy Kyles very well and that they spoke frequently, leading me to believe that Kyles was one of his sources of information in the black community. According to writer Philip Melanson, in 1985 Evans had admitted to him that the request to move the TACT units came from Kyles, although Kyles had emphatically denied making any such request. [3]

Chief Crumby later confirmed that the request to pull back the TACT units had come the "day before" from someone in Dr. King's group, and that the units were under the direct command of Sam Evans.

Considering that Reverend Kyles had no role in Dr. King's organization, it is unlikely that he would have been authorized to make such a request. It is also unlikely that the MPD would have acceded to any such suggestion because the TACT units were primarily antiriot forces and the city was expecting the worst.

Some MPD officers who had worked with Marrell McCollough, the undercover officer attached to the Invaders, told me they had found him very much an outsider. He was originally from Mississippi and joined the police force after serving with the military in Vietnam. It was rumored that he went to work for the CIA some time in the early 1970s and was last heard of being in Central or South America.

***

TO FIND OUT MORE about the so-called hoax broadcast, Ken Her- man took me to interview the people who were principal MPD dispatchers during the time of the assassination. The most in- formative was Billy Tucker, who said that he had handled the entire broadcast. In our noon meeting on October 29, 1988, he set out his recollections quite clearly.

It was officer Rufus Bradshaw, Tucker said, who relayed the details of a chase in the northeast side of the city involving a blue Pontiac in pursuit of a white Mustang. At first Bradshaw said he was in pursuit himself, but later it became clear that he was relaying information from a CB operator -- William Austein -- who was parked alongside him. Austein was supposedly taking the details of the chase directly from the driver of the blue Pontiac, narrating over his CB. Soon it became obvious to Tucker that there was neither a chase nor a blue Pontiac but that the broadcast was designed to divert police attention toward the northeast area of Memphis. Tucker also confirmed that no all points bulletin, (general alert describing the suspect) or Signal Y alert (instructing cars to block off city exit routes) were issued.

Many of the other MPD interviews led nowhere. Officers whom one would have thought to be in a position to know details of what had happened were often graciously unhelpful.

***

IN A RUN-DOWN ROOMING HOUSE on Peabody we found former taxi driver James McCraw, the driver who shortly before the killing had refused to transport the heavily intoxicated State's chief witness Charlie Stephens. In his mid-to-late sixties McCraw spoke through a voice box that he held to his throat. He said that he was driving a taxi on the afternoon of April 4 and was dispatched to the rooming house to pick up Charlie Stephens in room 6-B on the second floor. He said that he arrived shortly before 6:00 p.m. and double-parked in front of the rooming house opposite the northernmost door. As he left his cab to go inside he noticed a delivery van parked outside and two white Mustangs parked within one hundred feet of each other, one in front of Jim's Grill and the other just south of Canipe Amusement Company.

He entered Stephens's room and saw "old Charlie" passed out on his bed. He left, saying that he wasn't going to "haul him." He remembered seeing that the hall bathroom door was open and that the bathroom was apparently empty, both as he approached and as he left Stephens's room. He said he got into his cab and went to pick up another fare. He hadn't gone very far when an announcement came over his radio from the dispatcher about the shooting of Dr. King with an instruction for all drivers to stay away from the downtown area. McCraw insisted that he couldn't have been gone from the rooming house more than a few minutes when he heard the announcement.

This was an exciting discovery. If true, as the degree of detail indicated was likely, then the MPD, FBI, and HSCA's conclusion about the shot coming from the bathroom made no sense at all. McCraw had been telling this story for a number of years and said he had told each and every investigator who asked him about the empty bathroom. His confirmation of Charlie Stephens's drunken state within minutes of the shooting was further evidence which both supported Ray's contentions and contradicted the official scenario.

***

VERNON DOLLAHITE, stuffed into his desk chair in full deputy sheriffs uniform with gun belt and holster, said he found the bundle in front of Canipe's after the shooting. He said he was with TACT 10 on break at the fire station and when he heard about the shooting ran out the northeast door and jumped over the fence and onto the sidewalk on Mulberry Street. He raced to the motel parking lot, dropped his gun, picked it up, and continued north on Mulberry to Ruling, where he proceeded west to South Main, leaving a fellow officer to stay in the vicinity of Huling and Mulberry. He stopped briefly at Jim's Grill and told everyone to remain there until he returned. He then continued south past Canipe's, returning to find the bundle. He was joined shortly by Lt. "Bud" Ghormley, the TACT 10 unit leader. Ghormley took charge of the bundle and Dollahite retreated to the other side of the street.

Dollahite said his entire run took him less than two minutes, and he was certain he didn't see the bundle before he entered Jim's Grill when he was coming up South Main. He also didn't see anyone or any car leaving the scene.

Herman and I looked at each other. Dollahite had to have missed the bundle and must have been mistaken about the time it took him to complete his run. From what he said it would have been impossible for an assassin fleeing the rooming house to drop the bundle after shooting Dr. King, then get into the Mustang parked in front of Canipe's and drive off without being seen by him. Something was wrong. Either Dollahite was off in his timing or he had spent more time than he realized in Jim's Grill. I had read the statement given by Ghormley (who was dead by 1988); he maintained that he found the bundle after first heading in the same direction as Dollahite, deciding against jumping the wall, and went back out to South Main, going north to Canipe's. Ghormley too estimated it took him around two minutes to arrive at the scene of the discarded evidence. He also didn't see anyone or any car leaving. The two stories conflicted, but on balance it appeared to me more

I had also read the statements of Guy Canipe and two customers -- Bernell Finley and Julius Graham. Individually and together they told a story of hearing a thud when the bundle was dropped and seeing a white male walking briskly by in a southerly direction. Very soon after, they said a white Mustang pulled away from the curb heading north. Julius Graham remembered hearing what he thought was a shot before all this happened.

I remembered Art Hanes telling me Canipe would testify that the bundle was dropped minutes before the shot, but I was unable to speak with Canipe, who has since died. I was, however, able to locate an account of an interview with him by George Bryan, which appeared in the April 11, 1968, Commercial Appeal. Bryan wrote that Canipe said he saw a man drop a bundle in the doorway of his store and then continue walking. Canipe left his two customers, who were in the rear, and walked to the door, looked out, and saw the back of the man walking away. Within a minute his customers, apparently hearing some noise outside which could have been the shot, ran to the front of the store as the man was driving away in a white Mustang that was parked about twenty feet south of the store.

If the state's contentions were to be believed, then the timing of this escape was incredibly fine. Apparently it had to have taken place within a minute of the actual shot.

The MPD investigation concluded that there was only one Mustang, as by implication did that of the HSCA. I was about to gain firsthand further evidence that this conclusion was wrong.

Ray has pretty consistently maintained that he didn't move the Mustang he parked in front of Jim's Grill until he finally left the area before 6:00 p.m. He said that he walked to the York Arms, a few blocks north of the grill, when he was sent by Raul to buy binoculars. The Mustang was also there, according to McCraw, when he entered the rooming house shortly before 6:00.

I located and interviewed Peggy and Charles Hurley. Back in 1968 Peggy Hurley worked for the Seabrook Wallpaper Company, directly across the street from the rooming house. Each day her husband, Charles, would arrive to pick her up when she finished work around 5:00. He would park virtually in front of Canipe's until she came out. On that Thursday afternoon, a fellow worker told Peggy that her husband had arrived around 4:45, earlier than usual. When she looked out the window she saw that the car that had just pulled up wasn't their white Falcon but a white Mustang-and the young, dark-haired man sitting in it certainly was not Charles.

Mr. Hurley told me that he remembered arriving that afternoon and having to park just behind a white Mustang. He also noticed a young man wearing a dark blue windbreaker sitting inside it and that it had Arkansas plates. Ray's car, of course, had Alabama plates with white letters on a red background and Ray was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie on that afternoon. This Mustang, Charles Hurley said, had red letters on a white background. He recalled noting this because someone at work also had a Mustang with Arkansas plates. When Peggy Hurley came out a few minutes later, and they left, the young man was still sitting in the Mustang.

***

AT THE SUGGESTION of both Kay Black and Wayne Chastain, I met former Memphis Press Scimitar photographer/reporter Jim Reid. He told me that about three days before the assassination he'd seen a tree branch that could have obstructed a clear shot from the rooming house bathroom window being cut and had taken a photograph of it. He said he even mentioned it to a friend who was with the CIA and who exclaimed, "How the
hell did you know about that?" I asked him to look for the photograph.

Shortly after the killing, Reid interviewed Willie Green, who was working at an Esso station in the area of Linden and Third. In a front-page article that included Green's photograph, Jim had described how the man reacted excitedly when he was shown a photo of Ray and asked if he remembered seeing him around 6:00 p.m. that evening. Green positively identified Ra as a man who had come into the gas station at that time. The gas station no longer existed by 1988.

***

IT HAD BEEN TEN YEARS since I had last seen Loyd Jowers, the owner of Jim's Grill in 1968. I visited him at his latest business, a slot-and-pinball machine arcade on Union Street. He talked to me while keeping an eye on business and also with a long barreled pistol not too far from his hand and ready for use, as he said was occasionally necessary.

Jowers went over some familiar ground. He remembered the Mustang in front of the grill when he came to work around 4:00 that afternoon. He also remembered selling beer to Charlie and insisting that he take it to his room because he was so drunk. At the time of the shooting Jowers said he was in the front of the grill and when he heard the shot he thought that a pot had fallen in his kitchen. He said he went back there and peered in but saw nothing unusual, so he came back out to the front. A short time later a sheriff's deputy came through the door and ordered everyone to stay inside.

Jowers acknowledged that waitresses were on duty on the afternoon of April 4. I had long wanted to interview them, particularly Betty, having learned about her from Wayne Chastain back in 1978. lowers said that she had had a number of husbands and used various names. He told me generally where he thought she lived, and Ken Herman and I set out to find her. I quickly became convinced that Loyd had deliberately led us astray.

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Chapter 16: More Leads, More Loose Ends: Spring-Summer 1989

IN THE SPRING OF 1989 I changed the focus of my investigation, heading for Atlanta to visit with Ralph Abernathy and Hosea Williams, neither of whom I'd seen in several years. Hosea was pleased to hear that I was representing James Earl Rayon an appeal and looking again into some unanswered questions surrounding the case. He had never been satisfied with the result of the official investigations.

We also discussed a particularly sensitive matter. I had learned from David Garrow's research that the FBI's paid informant on the SCLC's executive staff was its comptroller, James Harrison, who had joined the organization in October 1964, working directly under Ralph Abernathy's supervision. [4] Harrison reported to agent Al Sentinella in the Atlanta field office from autumn of 1965, and was still doing so on the day of Dr. King's killing. It was a bitter shock to Hosea when the story broke about Harrison, because they had been college fraternity brothers and were roommates in 1967-1968. He was also embarrassed and worried that others might believe that he was in league with Harrison and the government against Dr. King. He was chagrined that Harrison had managed to con him into tape recording some SCLC staff meetings, ostensibly so that Hosea could protect his job, which Harrison convinced him was in danger. In fact, Hosea had no idea about Harrison's informant activities; he didn't know, for example, that when Harrison traveled with them to Memphis on April 3, 1968, he had dutifully checked in with Memphis FBI SAC Jensen and then spent the rest of the day with the SCLC group before returning to Atlanta.

Reviewing the events of April 4, Hosea confirmed what I already knew -- that Martin spent most of the afternoon in an executive staff meeting at the Lorraine. The meeting lasted until about ten to fifteen minutes before the shot. It was briefly interrupted between 4:00 and 4:30 when Andy Young returned from court to tell them about the judge's ruling in favor of the march. He also remembered a brief "tussle" between Martin and Andy, before they resumed. Billy Kyles, who wasn't at the meeting, knocked on the door sometime shortly before 6:00 P.M. and reminded them that they were already forty-five minutes late for supper at his home. Martin then told everybody to go to their rooms and quickly get ready to go. Hosea left, made one quick stop, and then went to his room on the ground level under Dr. King's room. He remembers being right next to Solomon Jones's limousine and hearing Solomon, who was standing by the driver's side of the car with one foot inside and one foot outside, telling Dr. King to wear his coat since it was a cool evening.

Hosea said that as he was putting the key in the lock of the door to his room he heard Dr. King say, "You're right, Jonesey, I'll get my coat." Then he heard the shot and saw Martin's leg dangling from the balcony.

I then raised Kyles's claim that he had been in Martin's room for the better part of an hour before the shooting. Hosea said that was impossible because the executive staff meeting broke up only minutes before the shot. Kyles wasn't a member of SCLC staff and wouldn't have been present at such a meeting. The next day, following the Wednesday Holy Week service at West Hunter Street Baptist Church where Ralph Abernathy had been pastor for as long as I'd known him, Ralph and I discussed the last trip he and Martin made to Memphis.

Ralph's description of King's last hour was virtually identical to Hosea's. He and Martin began to get ready for dinner sometime around 5:30-5:45, after the staff meeting broke up. Martin was ready first and went outside. Ralph remembers hearing Solomon Jones tell Martin, just before the shot, that he might want his coat because it was cool that evening.

Regarding Billy Kyles's testimony Ralph said angrily, "If Billy Kyles said that, then Billy Kyles is a liar." Ralph said Kyles had at no time been in the room with them. Ralph had just slapped some cologne on his face when he heard the shot and ran outside to cradle his friend in his arms. Kyles was on the balcony. Ralph told him to go inside and phone for an ambulance. He recalled that in the rush of events Andy Young knelt beside him and said, "Ralph, it's all over, it's all over." He told Andy, "It's not all over, Andy, don't you say that." Moments later he entered the room to find Kyles lying on the bed sobbing. Ralph told him this was no time for hysterics and to call an ambulance. Kyles said, "Ralph, the lines are all busy."

A few years later I gained access to the surveillance report of Memphis patrolman Willie Richmond, who was assigned to watch King's party at the Lorraine. His report confirmed what Ralph and Hosea had told me.

Why had Kyles lied? Was he simply trying to boost his stock as a civil rights leader by establishing himself as important enough to have been close to King just before his death? I had previously obtained a copy of the register of the Lorraine for the week through April 5, 1968, and found it curious that though he lived locally, Kyles had taken room 312 on April 3 and 4.

Ralph died in 1992. That meeting was the last time I saw him.

***

IN EARLY SUMMER 1989 I became involved in assisting the production of a BBC documentary on the assassination, Inside Story: Who Killed Martin Luther King? At Ray's suggestion, English television producer John Edginton of Otmoor Productions had approached me earlier that year. He was horrified by the HSCA revelations of the COINTELPRO activity against Dr. King. I believed that such activity, including electronic surveillance, continued right up to his death but that we would probably never uncover any hard evidence of it. I shared with Edginton the results of my work to date and suggested that he might want to interview Myron Billet and John McFerren.

I took Edginton and his team to see Billet. He found his story credible and set out to see if he could corroborate the details. He traveled to Apalachin, New York, and found the motel and the restaurant where Billet said they had dinner the night before the meeting. Both were just as Myron describe them. Edginton was impressed, as was I. Billet was a dying old man who had embraced religion and become concerned with the afterlife -- he had no reason to lie.

Billet died of a heart attack soon after the BBC program aired. His closest friend, Rev. Maurice McCracken of Cincinnati, insisted that he had died a happy man. At last he was able to get someone to listen to his story.

At John McFerren's general store/gas station one afternoon, Edginton's production unit waited for three hours while I tried unsuccessfully to persuade McFerren to talk. His fear was still strong enough to prevent him from coming forward again.

After the documentary aired, McFerren told me that even though he didn't participate, an official of one of the major petroleum companies who supplied products to him called him aside one day and said that he had better be careful because "Old Pepper is stirring things up."

***

IN JUNE 1989, I received a report from T.J., my Southern reporter contact, on Raul Esquivel, Sr. and Raul Esquivel, Jr. T.J.'s New Orleans source told him that in 1968 Esquivel Sr. was a Louisiana state trooper based at the Troop B Barracks in Baton Rouge who was allegedly associated with Jules "Ricco" Kimbel and Sal Liberto. Kimbel's name has frequently appeared on the periphery of both the John Kennedy and the King cases. His possible involvement had been discussed and dismissed by the HSCA, which became convinced that Kimbel wasn't in Canada at the same time as Ray. The HSCA also noted his lack of cooperation with the committee. Sal Liberto was a relative of the Memphis produce company owner Frank Liberto whom McFerren had mentioned in his statement. Esquivel was of Spanish descent -- originally from Belize -- 5'9", 175 lbs, and in 1968 he was forty-two years old. He also had served in both the army and the navy during World War II.

Though he appeared to have some potentially relevant connections in New Orleans, there was no hard evidence of his involvement. Indeed when I eventually spoke with Charlie Stein in the autumn of 1994, he categorically denied seeing the telephone number James dialed in the course of their trip to New Orleans in December 1967.

The Edginton team also made contact with Kimbel. Former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison told Edginton that everything Kimbel had told him about the Kennedy assassination turned out to be true. The BBC team visited Kimbel in the Three Rivers federal penitentiary in Texas.

He told an extraordinary story. He had worked for the government as an FBI/CIA asset and for organized crime. His FBI handler was an agent named Clement Hood Sr. in New Orleans. He said that the mob and the agency worked together like one organization. The mob would handle contract work for the Agency, which could then plausibly deny any connection or knowledge of events should they become public. He was always paid in cash for his work, which he implied was strong-arm activity, including murder. He told the BBC team that Dr. King was hated by powerful wealthy individuals in the South, specifically Louisiana right-wing leader Leander Perez and Texas oil-man H. L. Hunt. In this, he said, they were on common ground with the CIA and the FBI.

Though he would later say he was mistaken, he originally stated that in the summer of 1967, on the instructions of Clement Hood, Sr., he flew James to Canada where he helped get James false identification. A former CIA agent told the BBC that the Agency did have an identities specialist based in Toronto who could have operated throughout Canada during this period. His name was Raul Maori.

In subsequent interviews with the BBC team in December 1989, however, Kimbel told of a considerably greater involvement in the King case. He maintained that he flew two shooters from Montreal to Memphis and flew them back after the killing. He alluded to "dry runs" in the South Main Street area and an operational base just over the line in Mississippi, and even admitted to picking up sniper rifles for the assassins. James Earl Ray was not the killer, he maintained, but only a decoy. He said that Frank Liberto played a minor role in the assassination and that his brother Sal was more prominently involved. It would obviously take considerable effort to investigate Kimbel's story.

The BBC documentary also included an interview with New York Daily News columnist Earl Caldwell, who as a young reporter covering Dr. King for the New York Times in 1968 had been in room 215 of the Lorraine Motel on April 4. He said that immediately after the shot he came out of his room and saw the figure of a white man crouching in the bushes behind the grill and the rooming house. No one from the FBI, MPD, or HSCA had ever tried to talk to Caldwell, and his observations contradicted the official position of the state that the shot came from the bathroom window. The Edginton production also provided expert testimony further rebutting that possibility, including the discrediting of the theory that a dent in the bathroom windowsill could have been made by a rifle barrel (the HSCA had also discounted the windowsill evidence).

In his BBC interview, Inspector Sam Evans -- in direct contradiction of his admission to me and apparent admission to writer Philip Melanson -- denied that TACT units had been withdrawn or pulled back. He said they could have been removed only if he gave the order, which he never did. I marveled.

My investigation in Memphis continued sporadically. In the summer of 1989 Herman and I eventually found Betty (whose last name we learned was Spates), the former waitress in Jim's Grill whom I had especially wanted to see. Betty was an attrac tive black woman in her late thirties, with fearful eyes and a soft voice. Coming out of her house to meet with us, she appeared nervous. She admitted being at work in the grill on the day of the assassination but didn't want to talk about it. When I told her I was Ray's lawyer she declared, "There is no doubt that man [Ray] did not kill Dr. King. I know that for a fact." She refused to discuss how she knew. She told me that every time she changed her job, she was visited by a man who "just came by to let me know that he knew where I was." Once she said she was offered money and a new identity if she would agree to leave the area. She refused because all her family and her children were in Memphis. She could not be persuaded to talk more, so we left, saying we would keep in touch.

Had Loyd Jowers been unhelpful in our effort to find Betty in order to protect her? That seemed out of character for Jowers who appeared coldhearted. When we discussed the case he always appeared to be on edge. The word was that he had become a very heavy drinker over the last ten years. By his own admission he had not seen Betty for a long time, and he pretended to have no interest in or knowledge about her. Why, then, would he be protective?

My concern about Jowers deepened when I discovered that he had told the Edginton team that no waitresses were on duty on the afternoon of April 4 -- that he was all alone in the grill. He had previously acknowledged to me, as he had to Chastain on various occasions, that, in fact, there were waitresses working that afternoon. However, at other times he had insisted to Chastain that he was alone. There was also his change of position back and forth over the years as to whether or not Jack Youngblood was the "eggs and sausage man." The man was not senile. He had all of his faculties. I became more convinced than ever that this wasn't a memory problem, and he hadn't been drinking when he admitted to me, a short while before the BBC interview, that waitresses had been working on the day of the assassination. What was going on?

In a conversation with one of Edginton's researchers, James McCraw had offhandedly referred to a gun being in Jim's Grill around the time of the murder. I visited with McCraw and he told me that late in the morning the day after the shooting Jowers showed him a rifle that was in a box on a shelf under the counter in the grill. Jowers told him that he had found it "out back" after the killing. He said he was going to turn it over to the police and later Jowers confirmed to McCraw that he had done so.

I found this new disclosure startling. Was this second gun in fact the murder weapon? If Jowers had been telling him the truth, it was clear that the shot came from the brush area behind the rooming house and not from inside. But the police were all over the area within minutes of the shooting. Why had they not found the gun or mentioned it? Why had Jowers never raised it in any of our numerous conversations, and why was there no indication of it in the HSCA report? What had happened to it? Had Jowers in fact turned it over?

Could this be why Betty Spates was frightened? Had she also seen the gun, or did she know something about it?