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

"Science," the Greek word for knowledge, when appended to the word "political," creates what seems like an oxymoron. For who could claim to know politics? More complicated than any game, most people who play it become addicts and die without understanding what they were addicted to. The rest of us suffer under their malpractice as our "leaders." A truer case of the blind leading the blind could not be found. Plumb the depths of confusion here.

Re: ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN

Postby admin » Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:36 am

Chapter 27: Breakthroughs: January-April 15, 1994

IN AN INTERVIEW with the Tennessean on January 7, 1994, attorney general Pierotti said that he was going to tell the grand jury to go ahead and listen to what Chastain had to say. The foreman, Herbert Robinson, said that even though Chastain was "a pain" they would hear him sometime after January 18, when the new grand jury was formed. (At the time of this book going to press Wayne would still be waiting to be called.) I found this appalling in light of attorney general Canale's strong undertaking to the jury at James's March 10, 1969, guilty plea hearing. At that time he 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. ..."

Fortunately we had already decided not to wait for this to happen but to proceed with the filing of a petition for a trial.

On January 7, I flew to Nashville and met with James for about two hours before participating with him in a public television interview, which was to be aired on the following Sunday. He was in good spirits and was particularly interested in the possibility of using the imminent petition as a means of obtaining the declassification of relevant files, reports, and documents.

The interview went well. When the interviewer raised a question about James's ex-wife Anna's claim that he confessed to her over a prison telephone, James pointed out that these telephone calls were monitored and that there was a sign stating this by each phone, so that he was unlikely to discuss anything of a sensitive nature on the phone, much less confess guilt.

I also met again with former Commercial Appeal reporter Steve Tompkins. We had spoken several times by telephone during the intervening months, and he had decided to assist me in his spare time. He agreed to reach out to certain contacts of his in greatly varying positions in army intelligence, the Pentagon, and the Special Forces. He had no way of knowing what the response would be, and though he would try to put me in touch with the various people who might have answers to some of my questions, he doubted that they would meet with me face to face. First of all, he said, this was because I was a lawyer -- and these guys distrusted all lawyers. Secondly, I was James Earl Ray's attorney and this made their assistance even more risky.

Tompkins said that from his experience these people had always kept their word. Though they would not volunteer any information, they had always answered his questions truthfully.

A couple of the Special Forces "grunts" (noncommissioned officers) would likely cooperate. In addition to covert operations relating to domestic turbulence in 1967, they had been involved in gunrunning activities into New Orleans. The operations were coordinated by a master sergeant who was a part of their group. The sales were made to Carlos Marcello's operation and delivered to barges in a cove bordering property owned by Marcello. A man named Zippy or Zip Chimento handled these transactions for Marcello. The soldiers were given the name of Joe Coppola, who was connected with the Louisiana Highway Patrol, in case they had any trouble transporting the guns by truck. When I checked I learned that Zip Chimento was in fact a confidant and associate of Marcello and Joe Coppola was the commissioner of the Highway Patrol.

**

ON MONDAY, January 10, Wayne filed the petition for the trial along with five volumes of exhibits and two video exhibits. Wayne and I then drove out to Jim Lawson's old church, Centenary Methodist, where a press conference had been scheduled to call for an independent grand jury investigation. When we got there a number of participants, including Jim Lawson, who had flown in from Los Angeles, had already arrived. The Reverend William Sloane Coffin, the former chaplain of Yale University and pastor of Riverside Church in New York, whom I had not seen in sixteen years, came in shortly after with John Frohnmeyer, a lawyer who had resigned from his post as the Bush administration's appointee to the National Endowment for the Humanities and was in the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt. Rev. Coffin had just arrived to take up a post there on sabbatical. The group also included Rev. C. T. Vivian, Dr. King's former aide; Rev. Joseph Agne, director of racial justice for the National Council of Churches in New York; Rev. Ken Sehested of the Baptist Peace Fellowship in Memphis; Rev. Mark Matheny, chairman of the Asbury United Methodist District Council on Ministries in Memphis; Rev. Herbert Lester, pastor of Centenary United Methodist; and Rev. William Vaughan III, pastor of Good Samaritan United Methodist Church.

I briefed the group and answered questions for about two hours. The following two-hour press conference focused on the group's commitment that a grand jury should independently investigate the murder of Dr. King under the leadership of its own foreman and an independent prosecutor not associated in any way with the Shelby County district attorney general. All agreed that the Shelby County D.A. couldn't be regarded as an objective, impartial investigator.

Wayne and I left the meeting feeling uplifted. Later that day we learned that the petition had gone to the court of Judge Joe Brown, whom Wayne held in high regard, and a hearing had been scheduled for the following morning.

The next morning Wayne and I arrived at the Criminal Justice Center to find television cameras already ensconced in the courtroom. During the brief hearing, the judge raised the question of whether or not our petition could prevail because of prior decisions that had been reached on some of the issues, primarily related to overturning a plea of guilty. We argued that those prior decisions were made without the benefit of the new evidence we now sought to produce which proved James's actual innocence of the crime. The judge asked both sides to prepare memoranda of law on the issues, scheduling a hearing for April 4, the twenty-sixth anniversary of the assassination.

Early that afternoon John McFerren and a friend, Freddie Granberry, came down from Somenrille for a meeting in the restaurant at the Ramada hotel. McFerren promised that this time he would not "chicken out" and that he was ready to sing like a bird. He said that he recalled hearing from a local man, Tommy Wright, that on Saturday mornings Liberto would meet with a high-level Tennessee state official at his law office in Fayette County. Tommy said that they would meet regularly on Saturday mornings. Alarm bells went off. I recalled that Randy Rosenson had insisted that in 1978, around the time of his interviews by HSCA staff, he had been visited by the same high-level Tennessee state official, who tried to get him to say that he had been acquainted with James Earl Ray. If Rosenson had known James then he could have dropped the cigarette pack containing the card himself. If he didn't know James then someone else had to have left the pack and card behind. James had always stated that he believed the card was linked to Raul. Since the state and the HSCA had taken the position that Raul did not exist, any evidence to the contrary had to be a problem for them.

In retrospect this could explain why official pressure might have been put on Rosenson to say that he knew James. At the time I couldn't understand why this official would be at all interested in this matter. In light of the connection now being alleged between Liberto and the official, it made more sense. McFerren said that another source of information was his lawyer from Jackson, Tennessee, Mr. H. Ragan. Ragan had handled McFerren's divorce and had become quite friendly with him. He had told McFerren quietly, years ago, that the same state official "handled" matters and looked out for the interests of organized crime in Tennessee. McFerren thought that Ragan would confirm the relationship. Ragan repeatedly refused to speak with me. He appeared frightened and certainly did not want to continue the discussion he had previously had with John McFerren.

I had better luck with Tommy Wright. He remembered seeing "fat" Frank, the produce man, in 1968 at the law offices of the high-level Tennessee state official who had allegedly visited Randy Rosenson prior to one of his HSCA interviews.

At 2:30, I parted with McFerren and Granberry and met with retired MPD Captain Tommy Smith. In response to my question, Smith confided that various senior officers of the MPD were regularly on the take back in 1968, but he didn't know any details. He said that he was out of the loop because they knew that he wasn't interested.

He also said that the police officers who went to the FBI Academy -- N. E. Zachary, Robert Cochran, Glynn King and others -- formed a special clique.

Tommy Smith then surprised me by saying that Zachary had called him before he testified at the TV trial, apparently in an attempt to influence what he would say. Tommy said that was probably one of the reasons for his decision to testify. He said he told Zachary that he wasn't going to say what Zachary wanted him to confirm. My mind flashed back to Glynn King's testimony and his explicit statement that Charles Stephens was sober just after the assassination. In light of what so many other witnesses said, King's observations were inexplicable.

That evening, Wayne and I went to visit John McFerren's sister Sallie Boyd, who had arranged for us to interview Margaret Taler. As the assistant director of food services for St. Jude's hospital, Toler used to order food from M. E. Carter but, she said, the food was always delivered in Frank Liberto's trucks. The invoices were also sent by Liberto's company, and frequently some of them were for food and produce that was never delivered. She estimated that the hospital lost between $90,000 and $100,000 per year as a result of this scam. Jowers had maintained that the money for his operation was brought to Memphis in an M. E. Carter truck. Frank Holt had earlier described to me Frank Liberto's regular presence at M. E. Carter. Toler's recollections seemed to confirm the relationship between M. E. Carter and Liberto.

***

IN LATE JANUARY I WAS finally able to speak with Betty Spates. After reading the letter I sent to her, she had told Cliff Dates that she and Bobbi would only talk to me. She said that Jowers, Akins, and others said they were interested in doing a book or movie about the case, and wanted her to change her story to say that she saw a black man hand the rifle to Loyd in the doorway of the kitchen, seconds after the shooting. She refused.

Jowers himself had called her and asked her to tell this story, and Willie Akins came around with a tape recorder and a tape that she was supposed to listen to help her get the story straight. When she refused to go along with this farce, Akins told her that she had "blown it" for all of them. He said that they could have split $300,000 if she had cooperated.

Just before Jowers went on Prime Time Live, when Sam Donaldson was in Memphis filming interviews for the program, Akins brought Donaldson or someone from the program around to Spates's house. She wouldn't let them in though Akins began to bang on the windows. She even heard the ABC person say, "I don't want to bother this lady, if she doesn't want to talk to me." Eventually they left.

Betty totally refuted Jowers's claims about Frank Holt and strongly insisted, as before, that when she saw lowers running toward the back door there was no one with him. We agreed to meet the next time I was in Memphis.

In a telephone conversation in mid-January Betty told me that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) had called her and wanted to interview her. She wanted to know what I thought she should do. I advised her to see them and answer their questions truthfully.

Then, over the last weekend of January, John Billings told me that he learned that Pierotti had asked the TBI to conduct an investigation into the new lowers evidence. He said that they had already spoken to McCraw on two occasions and McCraw said he had stuck to his story. Billings called the Memphis TBI office and spoke with the investigator, who appeared to have very little knowledge about the case. When he offered to be interviewed and volunteered Ken Herman as well, Billings was told that the attorney general would have to approve such an interview. He would check. The impression Billings received was that they wouldn't be interviewed, and that by using the TBI Pierotti was distancing himself from direct responsibility for the investigation while still controlling the enquiry. As it turned out, they were never interviewed.

I wrote to Pierotti offering any reasonable assistance to the TBI investigation of the new evidence. I told him that James was interested in being released and not in solving the murder. I also advised Pierotti (hoping that the word would reach others) that if released, James intended to leave the country, but while he stayed inside the investigation aimed at establishing his innocence would, of course, continue.

When questioned by the Tennessean about the results of his investigation, Pierotti had claimed that the witnesses had retracted their stories. Following this comment I called Betty and asked her what had happened in her interview. She told me that they only asked her about statements Ken Herman had made about what she had said. Since she was angry with him, believing that he had betrayed her trust, I was concerned about what her responses might have been.

***

DURING THIS TIME STEVE TOMPKlNS called and left an urgent message. When I returned his call he said that to his surprise he had received a telegram from a Special Forces contact he had previously interviewed, whom I will call Warren, who now lived in Latin America. The message was simply that "... he now knew who Dr. William Pepper was" and that he was prepared to answer any questions I would put to him through Tompkins. Under no circumstances would he meet directly with me. The date he set for the meeting, outside of the U.S., was the last weekend in March. Steve Tompkins was willing to go as a consultant and put my questions to Warren, who he said had never lied to him, although, on occasion, he would refuse to discuss a matter or say that he did not know. Based on what Tompkins had told me about him, I knew that he and his partner, whom I will call Murphy, who lived in the same country but who had never met Tompkins, had vital information. He said that though I would have the names of and personal details about Warren, Murphy, and perhaps others, one of the conditions would be that I agree not to name them. Without that understanding there could be no cooperation. If I broke my word on this issue he thought it likely that both of us would be killed. I agreed to the condition but was unclear on whether I could name any participants who had since died. He said simply, "That's your call." Since he would be working for me, he had no problem with my using his name. He would provide detailed written reports.

Through James, I got another lead on the army's role. He had asked me to contact a private investigator named Alexander Taylor following a meeting he had had with him some while ago. The former intelligence officer told me he would do what he could to help our investigation and mentioned a telephone discussion he recently had had with the retired former Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence Major General William P. Yarborough. Taylor reported that Yarborough believed that it was time for the American people to be told how close America was to civil war during the late 1960s and how extensive was the military preparation. Taylor said he had heard independently in the autumn of last year that "someone new" (he assumed it was me) had come on the scene and was particularly thorough. As a result, he thought the whole picture of the role of the military might evolve. With respect to the King case, Taylor volunteered that the time could well be right for a deal to be made, as a result of which James might walk. Taylor offered to reach out for a meeting with Vice President Gore through his congressman. I was unclear about Taylor's motivation and pessimistic about the chance of success but not opposed to such an effort being made. In any event, nothing came of it.

***

THEN, on February 22, 1994, after nearly six years of my urging, Amnesty International entered the case and wrote to the attorney general. They specifically asked him what he was doing about the new evidence and expressed their wish that it be thoroughly aired in open court.

Pierotti wrote back on February 28 advising Amnesty that James was in prison not because he was a political prisoner but because he murdered Dr. King. He termed the new evidence "baseless fabrications." After a further exchange of letters, it became clear that he was not going to answer their specific questions. Amnesty decided not to pursue the matter further. There seemed to be no end to Pierotti's arrogance. I believed he knew that aspects of Jowers's story had been confirmed, and yet he continued to maintain that it was all a sham.

***

ON MARCH 7, 8, and 9 I spent a total of thirteen hours with Betty Spates. She agreed to tell me her story from the beginning, adding that she had been racking her brains, trying to remember each detail about what she observed on April 4, 1968. I met her in her darkened home and for the entirety of my visits we sat at her dining room table, interrupted from time to time by one or another of her adult children. She told the story of her involvement with Jowers and the grill as she had always told it, adding details. She said, for example, that after Loyd's wife divorced him, he bought a white Cadillac identical to the one that she had owned and driven when they were married. There were a few surprises, however, when she related the events of April 4, 1968.

Now Betty remembered going over to the grill just before noon on that day and noticing that Loyd was nowhere around. She went back to the kitchen at the rear to look for him. The door was slightly ajar. She was only in the kitchen for a short time when Loyd came through the back door carrying a rifle. The gun had a fairly light brown stock and handle and a barrel that appeared to be of normal length; she did not remember seeing a scope. She said that Loyd did not appear to be in a hurry, nor did he seem to be under stress. He was almost nonchalant.

She was startled and asked, "Loyd, what are you doing with that gun?" He replied, half jokingly, "I'm going to use it on you, if I catch you with a nigger." She said, "Loyd, you know I wouldn't do that," and he said he was only kidding, that she knew he'd never hurt her.

He put the gun down alongside a keg of beer and then, as though he had second thoughts, picked it up again and proceeded to break it down in front of her. He then carried the pieces through the grill, went out the front door, and turned left, walking several feet to where his old brown station wagon was parked. As she watched through the window he put the broken-down rifle into the back of the wagon, looking around afterward to see if anyone was watching. Then he came back inside.

She confirmed that during the course of that afternoon she was in and out of the grill, going back and forth to Seabrook. Although Jowers always discouraged her from being around on Thursdays when his wife would drop by, that Thursday he seemed especially ill at ease and kept chasing her out. That only made Betty more suspicious that he was cheating on her, and she was in the grill when Jowers's wife came in around 4:00 p.m. Mrs. Jowers walked straight up to her and called her a whore and told her to get out. Loyd intervened, telling his wife to get out herself and directing Betty to get behind the counter. Sullen and speechless, Loyd's wife stalked out.

After a while Betty went back across the street to Seabrook, returning to the grill to check on Loyd sometime before 6:00. She recalled Bobbi was still there. She often "hung on " to maximize her tips after her shift finished at 3:30. Rosetta and Rosie Lee had gone home. Loyd, however, was again nowhere in sight.

Eventually, she went back toward the kitchen, noticing that this time the door between the restaurant section and the kitchen was tightly closed. Thinking that this was unusual, she made her way into the kitchen where she noticed that the door leading to the backyard was ajar. Soon after, she recalled hearing what sounded like a loud firecracker, and then within seconds she looked out and saw Jowers rushing from the brush area through the door, carrying another rifle. When she first saw him he was about ten to fifteen feet from the door. He was out of breath, she said, and white as a ghost. His hair was in disarray, and the knees of his trousers were wet and muddy as though he had been kneeling in the soggy grass or brush area.

When he caught his breath he didn't appear angry, but plaintively said to her, "You wouldn't ever do anything to hurt me, would you?" She said, "Of course I wouldn't, Loyd." Without another word he moved quickly to the door leading into the grill, which opened right next to the counter on the left. In one quick step, with the rifle at his side, he was behind the counter and she saw him place the gun on a shelf under the counter and push it farther back.

She remembered that the rifle was distinctive. It had a dark mahogany-brown stock, a scope, and a short barrel that made the gun look like a toy gun. There was something screwed or fixed onto the barrel somehow, fitting over it and increasing its diameter.

In this statement, for the first time, Betty had spoken of two separate instances of seeing Loyd Jowers bringing a gun in from the brush area behind the kitchen. It was somewhat worrying that this was the first time she had mentioned a second gun. On the other hand, this account corroborated what McCraw had said all along about Jowers showing him the gun under the counter.

Betty went on to say that a few months after the killing in 1968, she was visited by three persons who she believed were government officials. One was black, another white, and the third appeared to be Spanish or Latino. They offered her and her sisters new identities, relocation, and money for, it was said, their own protection. They refused, supported by their mother, and the men left.

Two of the same men returned about five years later. (This would have been around the time that lames was being given an evidentiary hearing in federal court.) The offer was repeated and again refused.

In the early 1980s, in addition to the incident when Akins fired at her and her two sons, one evening he came in through the back door of her house when she had just returned, exhausted, from work. As she was seated on her sofa, he pulled out his pistol and fired three shots into the sofa, missing her by inches. As she thought about it, Betty believed that Akins was only trying to frighten and not to kill her.

Betty signed detailed affidavits in support of all of these events.

When we filed Betty's primary affidavit with the court the Tennessean published its contents. Shortly afterward attorney general Pierotti leaked a statement taken by the TBI on January 25 that we found distressing. It was purportedly under oath, handwritten by TBI special agent John Simmons and witnessed by one of Pierotti's investigators, Mark Glanker. In it Betty denied seeing Jowers with the rifle at 6:00 p.m. and further denied having any information supporting James's innocence.

When I asked Betty about it she did not recall giving the specific answers recorded. Once again she said they only asked her to respond to specific points in Ken Herman's statement.

It did appear, however, that she had signed the TBI statement. I realized that I would not get to the bottom of the discrepancies until I could obtain the statement and copies of the complete tape recordings of the TBI interview. This latter would not be possible unless we had an evidentiary hearing and we could obtain them in discovery. At the end of March, however, I was able to obtain a copy of the TBI interview statement of Betty Spates. On its face the handwritten statement dated January 25, 1994 appeared to contradict the affidavit she had given me on March 8, 1994. When I showed it to her and asked her how she could have signed it, she said she didn't read it because her glasses were broken. It was read to her , and the investigator wrote as he asked her questions, telling her not to volunteer information but to simply answer questions about Herman's statement. She said the men from the attorney general's office and the TBI made her afraid. Betty went out of her way to assure me that she now wanted to testify and to clear her name of any hint of her being a liar.

For some time I had known that Betty had a brain tumor that affected her memory from time to time, but until then I had not taken it seriously. The tumor also resulted in her having blinding headaches. She was afraid to undergo surgery because of what she believed was the risk of permanent brain damage.

***

SID CARTHEW LIVES IN ENGLAND. In 1967-1968 he was a merchant seaman sailing on both cargo and passenger ships destined for ports around the world. He frequently traveled to North America and spent time in the U.S. Gulf ports as well as in Montreal. In Montreal he would frequent the Neptune Tavern on West Commissioner's Street, because it was right down near the docks, and was a hangout for merchant seamen. It was in that bar on two occasions that he met a man named Raul.

Carthew came upon the TV trial by accident. Knowing nothing about the case before seeing the trial, Carthew became interested when he heard James Earl Ray testify about being in the Neptune in late July and August of 1967. His interest was heightened when James went on to describe his meetings in that bar with Raul. Then Carthew heard prosecutor Hickman Ewing ridicule James's contention not only that Raul could have manipulated James into being a patsy for the killing of Dr. King, but that he even existed.

Carthew tried desperately to contact me, getting nowhere until he contacted the General Council of the Bar in London which gave him my address. He assured me that Raul did indeed exist. Carthew said Raul approached him at the Neptune sometime in 1967. Raul had struck up a conversation about the sale of guns. Carthew had a passing interest, and Raul said he would sell him some Browning 9mm handguns. Carthew said he would take four, and Raul, apparently thinking he meant four boxes, entered into negotiations. He quickly turned off, however, when it became clear that Carthew was only talking about four weapons rather than boxes. Carthew said Raul muttered something about it being typical of the English, who never had enough money to pay for anything.

Sid Carthew described Raul as being about 5'8" tall and weighing approximately 145 pounds. He had a dark, Mediterranean-like complexion and dark brown hair. (This was consistent with James's description of Raul.) Carthew remembered him saying that the guns were stolen from a military base and that the price included the fee for the master sergeant who organized the supply and who, according to Raul, would deliver them himself to his ship in exchange for cash. This dovetailed with Tompkins's account of the New Orleans gunrunning activity of the Special Forces soldiers.

In addition Carthew remembered Raul asking him about the possibility of someone going to England on board a ship such as his. He told him that it would not be a problem, insisting that seamen tried to help out any person in trouble. He said that Raul seemed skeptical about the arrangements. It was as though he was looking for an assurance that it wouldn't work. In any event he did not pursue the matter.

I couldn't believe my good fortune. Carthew said that he believed that a shipmate and friend of his named Joe Sheehan, with whom Carthew had lost touch, was also present at the table in the bar when the discussion about the guns was going on. We eventually tracked down Sheehan, who said he wasn't at the Neptune that particular night but confirmed that Carthew had mentioned the incident to him sometime afterward at the annual general meeting of the National Union of seamen in May 1968.

***

THE HEARING ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FOR April 4 had been put off until April 15. Judge Joe Brown's courtroom was practically empty at 11 a.m. that morning except the jury box which was jammed with the media. The state's side of the table had the attorney general and two assistant attorneys general crammed together, with Wayne and me sitting on the defense side. The handful of spectators included Ken Herman, John Billings, Lewis Garrison, and, to my surprise, Willie Akins.

After the preliminaries, the state (through assistant attorney general William Campbell) argued on behalf of its motion to dismiss the petition. Their argument was that on a strict interpretation of Tennessee law the petition had to be denied. While admitting that James might claim relief under federal law, Campbell argued that after all the time that had elapsed he was technically precluded under state law, essentially because he had entered a plea of guilty.

This would mean that anyone who had pleaded guilty, whether that plea was coerced or not, would never be entitled to a trial, even in a case like this where new evidence of actual innocence came to light.

When my turn came, I reviewed the factual history of the case and argued for relief based upon the guarantees of rights contained in both the Tennessee and U.S. constitutions. I contended that the court should examine the new evidence pertaining to the actual innocence of James. I argued that it was now substantially clear that the guilty plea was coerced and that in any event the state should not be allowed to deny a trial in a case where the defendant is actually innocent. The state's blatant attempt to separate Tennessee law and procedure from the minimal obligations required under federal law was unconstitutional.

Though the hearing was to focus on the law, I argued the law by substantially elaborating upon and applying the facts. This enabled me to put a long list of suppressed factual evidence and factual discrepancies on the record and of course to be heard by the judge and the media.

Pierotti spoke for about 15 minutes as part of the state's rebuttal argument and clearly appeared to be agitated. He made the mistake of actually addressing me, asking whether or not I had represented one of the Ray brothers before the HSCA. This allowed me to rise and interrupt him to explain to the court (and put on the record) the circumstances that led to my representing Jerry Ray.

At the end of the argument the judge complimented both sides and then, referring to lengthy notes, stated that although the state might be technically correct, requiring him to deny the petition, nevertheless he was going to allow us to put forward evidence. This evidentiary record would be available to an appellate court, he said, as well as to history. In an impassioned reference to the importance of Dr. King, he said history compelled him to allow as much information as possible to be placed before the public under the auspices of his court.

The state was stunned. Campbell inquired what this meant. The judge said that he would not finalize or file any order until after the proffer (submission of evidence) was over. We were elated.

When asked by reporters outside of the courtroom what he was going to do, the attorney general responded that he was "... going to pull out the rest of my hair," and labeled our case "garbage."

It was an extraordinary result. If he had explicitly ruled in our favor and granted a trial or a full evidentiary hearing, the state would have appealed, and considering the inclination of the court of appeals and the Supreme Court, he would likely have been overturned. In any event we would have been off on the appellate trail. By not finalizing any ruling (effectively pocketing it), he kept the matter before him and could thus allow us to call witnesses and submit evidence. We intended, for example, to file a motion asking to test the rifle and the bullets in evidence. Whether or not the judge would go so far as to order a trial at the conclusion of our evidence remained to be seen, but following the hearing on April 15 I believed that there was a chance.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN

Postby admin » Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:38 am

Chapter 28: Setbacks and Surprises: April 16-October 30, 1994

YEARS EARLIER JOHN McFERREN HAD TOLD ME (as he had also told writer Bill Sartor in 1968) about an incident that occurred shortly after James's capture in 1968. He was produce shopping in Palazolla's market store when suddenly the manager saw him and began to cry. Startled, McFerren asked one of the black employees (Robert Tyus), whom he knew as Old Pal, what the problem was. Old Pal took him aside and explained that seeing him must have reminded Mr. Palazolla about the death of his teenage son. The boy had had a stall in Frank Liberto's LL&L wholesale produce store in the market at 815 Scott Street and might have learned too much about Liberto's involvement in the killing of Dr. King. Shortly after McFerren had given his statement setting out the conversation he overheard on April 4, in which Liberto told someone "to shoot the son of a bitch when he comes on the balcony," the Palazolla boy died, supposedly in an automobile accident. By making his statement McFerren had put Frank Liberto clearly in the frame with regard to the King killing. The tightly knit section of the Italian community involved in the produce business knew about McFerren's allegations. Old Pal implied that the death was arranged by Liberto to ensure his silence.

I had long been unable to corroborate this death. When I asked Ken Herman to check it out in 1992 he told me that there was no record of it. Over the years McFerren had become unable to remember the details of the incident. Then, when I asked him about the management of the Palazolla operation, McFerren spontaneously said that Mr. Bob Palazolla, who was running the business for his father, was the one who cried. McFerren said he remembered now that he was told that Mr. Palazolla broke down because the death of his son was somehow associated with him learning information about Liberto's role in the killing of Dr. King. Robert Chapman, a restaurateur who was a friend of Wayne's and a longtime large-volume customer of the Palazolla Produce Company, offered to ask Michael Palazolla, who currently runs the business, about the death of a youngster around that time. He was told that family patriarch Walter had a grandson who had died as a teenager. Walter's son, the boy's father, was Bob Palazolla. John agreed to try to locate 'Old Pal' and see what further information he could obtain.

***

ON APRlL 22, 1994 I left for Dallas to meet with oil man H. L. Hunt's former chief aide John Curington. We would meet again the following November 6, at which time he brought along Clyde Lovingood a former aide and close friend of Mr. Hunt. Months earlier I had instructed one of my investigators Jim Johnson, to raise certain preliminary questions with him when he was available to be interviewed. In meetings that lasted more than thirteen hours, he expanded considerably on the information he'd given my investigator and offered many new revelations on the billionaire oil man's close ties to several of the institutions and individuals that were emerging as having involvement in the conspiracy -- in particular the FBI and the Mafia.

Curington had worked for Hunt Oil for fifteen years and for nearly thirteen of these had worked for H. L. Hunt personally, occupying the office right next to him, only by a door, which usually stood open. As was not unusual with such an employer, he frequently worked eighteen-hour days and seven-day weeks and often traveled with him. In such a position few things should have escaped his notice.

As he explained it, he was basically Mr. Hunt's "follow-through" guy. He did whatever was necessary to get a job done. While not engaging in the dirty work himself, he made the arrangements at the old man's request. My investigator had said at one point that he had even referred to himself as Hunt's "bag man," saying that he carried and delivered cash, sometimes in very large amounts, to any number of places, organizations, and individuals in support of right-wing activities as well as to pay for specific operations. Curington insisted that no one knew all of the old man's business since he would frequently assign confidential tasks to particular individuals whom he trusted.

Though Curington was clearly concerned about his own legal position, since he had participated in many of the illegal activities he detailed, he was remarkably frank overall. While continually referring to documents in an old brown leather suitcase, the sixty-seven-year-old Texan confirmed that a closer relationship than had ever been publicly known existed between his ex-boss and FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover. Their association went back to the early 1950s. My investigator Jim Johnson had witnessed this relationship during his boyhood visit to Monroe Waldridge's east Texas ranch. Apparently they had been poker-playing friends for many years, and their compatible right-wing political views made them allies. Hoover had even seconded a trusted FBI agent, Paul Rothermel, to Hunt as his head of security. Rothem1elleft the bureau in late 1954 and joined Hunt in 1955.

Curington was present at various meetings between the two men when Martin Luther King was discussed. Usually Hoover came to the old man's hotel room. While the two men shared a dislike for Dr. King, Hoover's animosity was more passionate and obsessive, more personal. Hoover regularly provided Hunt with a considerable amount of documentation and material to be used as ammunition against Dr. King in the oil baron's extreme right-wing, daily nationally syndicated Life Line radio broadcasts. King was a favorite and a regular target of Life Line venom, and Hoover provided the poison. Curington recalled one meeting in Chicago between Hunt and Hoover, which to the best of his recollection was held around the time of the American Medical Association national convention in the year that Milford Rouse was elected president (upon checking I learned that that convention was held in June 1967. At that meeting in Hunt's hotel room, he recalled Hunt telling Hoover that he could finish King by constantly attacking him on his daily radio broadcasts. Hoover replied that it would not work. He said the only way to stop King would be to "completely silence" him. After King's murder, Hunt acknowledged to Curington that Hoover had won that argument.

He also said that the old man had a private telephone that he kept in his desk drawer. The phone was in the name of a dead man, John McKinley. It was on this phone that he would receive and occasionally place phone calls about sensitive matters. Very few people had the McKinley phone number. Hoover was one and he would call only on this phone.

In April 1968, Life Line produced a fifteen-minute daily program, six days a week, on 429 stations in 398 cities across America. Between 1967 and 1968 Hunt spent nearly $2,000,000 on this program alone. Curington revealed that the entire effort, as well as other shadowy, often deeply covert political activity, was funded by monies diverted by Hunt from H.L.H. Products Inc. Curington ran this company, which the "old man" had established as a front for funding such political activity. This is why Curington found charges of embezzlement made by Hunt's sons Bunker and Herbert and nephew Tom Hunt in 1969 against himself and Paul Rothermel hard to take: funds were routinely siphoned off, and kickbacks from purchasers were collected and diverted, on the old man's instructions. James's former lawyer, Percy Foreman, who also represented the Hunts, was ultimately indicted for charges connected with the wiretapping of Hunt aides Curington and Rothermel as a part of the effort to prove the embezzlement charges.

Curington also acknowledged that his boss and Hoover shared many of the same friends, including several kingpins of organized crime. Not only was Hunt close to gamblers Frank Erickson (to whom he once owed $400,000) and Ray Ryan (who at the same time owed him a large amount), but he associated with Frank Costello (the mob's liaison to Hoover) and Meyer Lansky. Clyde Lovingood, who handled other sensitive assignments for Hunt, confirmed that he was the direct liaison with Lansky. Hunt's top-level mob ties also included Carlos Marcello and Dallas boss Joe Civello.

Subsequently, in Curington's file I found a Dallas Morning News obituary for Civello, dated January 19, 1970, which indicated that one of H.L.H. Products' senior officers, John H. Brown, was a pallbearer at Civello's funeral. Other pallbearers included Civello's Baton Rouge relatives, the Polito family, long associated with Carlos Marcello. Brown lived across the street from Civello, and when the FBI wanted an informant on Civello, Curington arranged for Brown -- with Civello's permission -- to provide innocuous bits and pieces of information, so that the Hunt relationship with both the bureau and Civello was enhanced. According to Curington, it was not as though Hoover would ever do anything contrary to Civello's interests, but he realized that information was power and he liked to know as much as possible. Hunt also knew and closely relied upon certain Houston individuals who were very close to Marcello.

In politics, he noted that Sam Rayburn, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, and his protege Lyndon Johnson were both lifelong close political assets of Mr. Hunt.

Other political allies of Hunt, and the beneficiaries of his largesse, across the nation, included John Connally in Texas and Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, who headed the right-wing Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Curington aid that all these people received payoffs or unrecorded contributions from Hunt, delivered in a variety of ways. Connally or Eastland, for example, might sell cattle to Hunt, who would vastly overpay them. He said that a Louisiana state official was the conduit for cash payments to jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters Union, whose assistance was bought for the purpose of dealing with labor problems at any of the Hunt operations. In one instance, Hoffa actually pulled the union out of a Hunt operation in Muncie, Indiana. The Teamsters connections were often used to beat up or kill people who created problems at any of the Hunt operations.

Curington also said that H. L. Hunt's daily liaison with President Lyndon Johnson on political matters was former FBI agent Booth Mooney, who was personally close to the president. Mooney not only delivered communications back and forth between Johnson and Hunt but also wrote over half of the Life Line broadcast tracts, including many of those attacking Dr. King.

Turning to the killing of Dr. King, Curington said that on the evening of the assassination, shortly after the shooting, Hoover called Hunt and advised him to cancel his anti-King "Life Line" programs that were to be aired that evening and the morning of April 5. After that call Curington said he was called to Hunt's home and given the task of putting together a team of secretaries to call the radio stations. Then on April 5, the day after the assassination, Hunt told him to make arrangements for him (Hunt) and his wife to travel to a Holiday Inn resort hotel in El Paso, Texas. The tickets were in the names of Curington and his wife, and he took Curington's American Express card with him. They checked in at the Holiday Inn on April 5 in the names of john and Mary Ann Curington. Curington said the hotel was on 6655 Gateway East, El Paso. Providing a copy of the hotel bill, Curingtoll pointed out that before Hunt checked out of the Holiday Inn in El Paso, Texas on April 6 he engaged in a lengthy long-distance telephone call. Curington speculated that whoever was on the other end of that call must have given Hunt a grave message, which caused him to leave the hotel suddenly. He then disappeared for about ten day's. In my review of sections of the Hunt organization file provided to me by Curington, I found a memo that Curington stated had been prepared by Paul Rothermel dated April 9, 1968. It revealed that Martin Luther King was very much on his mind on the morning of April 6. It began, "At 6:50 a.m. April 6, Mr. Hunt called from El Paso, Texas and said that a book on Martin Luther King absolutely had to be written." He wanted the book to prove King "... to be practically a communist ..." The memo recorded a further call at 8:00 a.m. and even "several times" more leaving messages "... always to the effect that the book must be written ..." Hunt was noted as suggesting that the book be called "The Career of King or Martin Luther King."

Curington said he also spoke with Hunt that morning, and all he wanted to talk about was the book on King. Then after a full weekend of work on the project he called it off as abruptly as he began. Curington speculated that someone, perhaps Hoover, pointed out to him that he should distance himself from King at that time and not call attention to his animosity toward him. It is clear that H. L. Hunt was enormously preoccupied with Dr. King during that first weekend after his death.

By the end of our session, I concluded that John Curington, twenty-five years later, still appeared to be in awe of the man who he said moved on an entirely different level from "the rest of us."

***

THAT LAST WEEK IN APRIL I flew from Dallas to Miami and met Jim Johnson at the Hilton in Fort Lauderdale. He had spent the day talking with Harry, the American Indian with whom Rosenson had said he traveled to Mexico for various types of smuggling and gunrunning operations. In 1968 Harry lived in Miami and owned a white Mustang. Johnson told me that he was convinced that he was Raul. I thought it unlikely. The next morning I interviewed him for four hours. Though he had been involved in a wide range of covert activities for government agencies, Carlos Marcello, and even the Dixie Mafia (a loosely knit group of professional criminals- or-hire), he was clearly not Raul. Like many others, however, he may have come into contact with individuals who had some connection to the King killing.

Next I traveled to New Orleans to interview Randy Rosenson to see if he could identify the high-level Tennessee state official as the man who, just prior to him being interviewed by the HSCA in Richmond, Virginia, had urged him to admit knowing Ray. He was unable to do so.

***

A PAROLE HEARING FOR James was set for May 25. This would be the first time he had appeared before the board. Such hearings are confined to a review of conduct during time served and other factors related to an assessment of whether or not a person should be released. They are not concerned with any determination of guilt or innocence. I had no doubt that the decision would be made on purely political grounds and that the board would have made its decision before the hearing began. Consequently, we decided to use this hearing as a forum to focus on James's innocence.

I was struck by the extent of media coverage, which included Court TV broadcasting throughout and extensive newspaper coverage, particularly in light of the fact that Jowers's admissions on network television had been virtually ignored. Jim Lawson and Hosea Williams testified in favor of James being released. James's former wife Anna was her usual vitriolic self in opposition. Attorney general John Pierotti -- attending, so I was told, his first parole hearing -- read from a prepared text and waxed on about the terrible loss of Dr. King. He maintained that James could never even in a hundred years repay his debt to society. Being well aware of the politics represented by the attorney general, I was sickened.

I challenged the board to act independently of the governor who appointed them and who had publicly expressed his wish that they deny parole, and also to disavow the previous statements of the board's former executive director, who said James would not be paroled unless he admitted guilt. After three hours of the board focusing on James's past record, it became clear that the decision had indeed been made before the hearing began. In fact, this was confirmed by a slip of the tongue of one of the members near the end of the hearing. Parole was denied. James was told he could apply again in five years after he had served a full thirty years. James, understandably, reacted angrily.

At a post-hearing press conference, in response to a question about the testing of the rifle, Pierotti made the extraordinary statement that he didn't know if James was guilty and he didn't have to prove it. So much for the requirement that prosecutors shall be primarily concerned with justice.

I was more convinced than ever that our best hope lay in Judge Brown's courtroom. Judge Brown had been pressing us for some time to submit our draft order for the testing of the rifle and the bullets in evidence. I believed it likely that once the judge granted our request the state would appeal his order and seek a delay pending review. It had therefore seemed advisable to submit our motion after the parole hearing so that the parole board would rule prior to any setback in the appellate courts, which I thought was distinctly possible.

***

I RETURNED HOME TO ENGLAND only to turn around eight days later and fly back to Memphis to prepare for the test-firing of the rifle which we planned to attempt on Monday morning, June 6. The judge had ordered the rifle to be tested in Shelby County (preferably at the sheriffs department firing range), but there was no adequate facility there to accomplish this. After consulting with our ballistics expert, Chuck Morton, I decided to build one myself in a designated area at the sheriffs range. We acquired a 600-pound bale of cotton and seventeen 2' X 3' X 1.5' cardboard boxes, which I planned to pack with cotton and join together to form a cotton tunnel receptacle into which the experimental bullets would be fired by investigator Cliff Dates, who had agreed to be the shooter. I bought a box of 150-grain Remington soft points bullets and at Morton's suggestion another box of bronze tips, or military bullets. He advised firing the different bullets in alternate fashion, with each test-fire being retrieved and sealed in an evidence packet before the next one was fired.

Local teacher Wallace Milam, who was knowledgeable about trace element analysis in general and the process of neutron activation analysis in particular, agreed to coordinate the taking of lead samples from the evidence bullets, to weigh and seal them, and then deliver them to a designated laboratory. It would have been preferable, of course, to have the chemist performing the analysis collect the sample himself, and I would have preferred to have Chuck Morton present at all stages of the ballistics test activity, but there were simply no funds available for this.

***

AROUND 10:30 THAT SATURDAY evening (June 4) I received a call from Nathan Whitlock, who had known Frank Liberto in the 1970s, and who I heard had been told by Liberto himself that he had arranged to have King killed. Whitlock usually drove a cab at night; on that evening he was driving a limousine and I rode with him so we could talk. He told me about his conve sation with "Mr. Frank" (Frank C. Liberto) some sixteen years earlier. He said that his mother, Lavada, had owned a restaurant that lay on the route between Liberto's home and his LL&L produce company business in the Scott Street market. Nearly every day the produce man would stop in there for breakfast in the morning on his way to LL&L and for drinks in the afternoon on his way home. Nathan said that when he had had a few drinks, Liberto took to baring his soul to Lavada. She would often leave her post at the bar, sit down at a table, and talk with him. His conversation ranged from complaints about his wife (who he said was a compulsive gambler) and his girlfriend (who he said was only interested in his money) to his admission that he arranged for the killing of Martin Luther King. Nathan said that when his mother told him about this he became upset that Mr. Frank would involve his mother in this "gangster" talk. Nathan played guitar and used to travel, but in between trips he would help out in the restaurant, where he would often serve beer to Mr. Frank. Occasionally he would play the guitar for him -- Liberto, he said, liked to hear "Malaguena." Nathan would sometimes also drive Liberto's truck back to the market to pick up something Liberto had forgotten. For these favors Liberto would tip him ten or twenty dollars.

Nathan said Liberto wanted to appear to be a big shot around him. He showed off a thick roll of bills and a jade, diamond, and gold ring purportedly given to him by Elvis Presley. They became reasonably friendly. Liberto told Nathan that his relationship with his mother reminded him of Liberto's relationship with his own mother.

Another customer of the restaurant once quietly advised Nathan to be careful since Liberto was in the Mafia. Nathan, who was about eighteen at the time, once asked Liberto if indeed he was in the Mafia and what the Mafia was, anyhow. Liberto told him that the Mafia was a group of businessmen who "took care of business." He added that as a youngster he used to push a vegetable cart with Carlos Marcello in New Orleans. At the time this meant nothing to Nathan because he didn't know who Marcello was.

Because he was upset about Mr. Frank's conversation with his mother, he decided to confront him. One afternoon in 1978, just before Nathan was scheduled to go away on a trip, Liberto came in and ordered a beer and sat down at a table in front of his photograph, which hung on the wall along with those of other regular patrons. Nathan engaged the 300-pound produce dealer in conversation and then asked him directly if he had killed Dr. King. He said Mr. Frank looked as though he was going to be sick to his stomach. He immediately asked Nathan if he was wired. The boy thought Liberto wanted to know if he was on drugs, which he denied.

Then Liberto said, "You've been talking to your mother, haven't you?" Nathan admitted that he had, and Liberto then told him, "I didn't kill the nigger, but I had it done."

Nathan said, "Well, that S.O.B. is taking credit for it," (referring to James), to which Liberto responded, "Oh, he wasn't nothing but a troublemaker from Missouri." He added that James was a "front man," a "set-up man." Then Nathan said Mr. Frank turned on him, saying, "You don't need to know about this," and after jumping to his feet and drawing his right hand back as though to hit him, he said, "Don't you say nothin,' boy," and glared at him. He stomped around, thinking for a minute or so, and then said, "You're going to Canada, aren't you?" Nathan said he was. Liberto became quiet and Nathan went to the back of the restaurant to take care of something. When he returned, Liberto's beer was still on the table but Mr. Frank was gone.

He never saw Liberto again, but in early 1979 during his trip his mother sent him a letter stating that Frank Liberto had died. Nathan said he was somewhat sad because they had parted with some hostility between them.

On Monday Nathan gave me a written account of his encounter with Frank Liberto and also showed me photographs of Liberto sitting at a table in his mother's restaurant. (See photograph #18.)

Sometime later Nathan would tell this story directly to the attorney general, after which he was interrogated by members of Pierotti's staff. He said they tried to break down his account, but he stuck to his guns. (Later both Nathan and his mother told their stories under oath.)

***

ON JUNE 5, WAYNE CHASTAIN and I met for the first time with Willie Akins. In a three-hour session he discussed how he had come to know Loyd Jowers and how he gradually learned about Jowers's involvement in the killing. He basically confirmed the acts of violence against Betty but cast them in a different context. He said that he never took a contract on her life but admitted that he had fired shots into Betty's sofa late one afternoon -- but not because he was trying to kill her. He wouldn't have missed if he was really trying to kill her. He had been going with her at the time and found her with someone else on the sofa when he came in. He said that the cause of the later incident, in the early 1980s, was his anger with her for intruding when he was with another woman in a bus belonging to Jowers.

It appeared that Jowers had only fairly recently begun to open up to him regarding the King case. He said that on the evening John Edginton's documentary aired in the States (in which Earl Caldwell spoke about seeing a figure in the bushes), Jowers called him and said, "Big N [Jowers always called him that, he said it stood for Big Nigger], you know that figure in the bushes he talked about -- that was me."

Akins left me in no doubt that he had come to learn that Betty's story was true. Jowers was out in the bushes at the time of the shooting. He said that on one occasion Jowers told him that the person who could do him the most damage was the chauffeur. He was, of course, referring to the long-missing Solomon Jones. Akins also commented on the whereabouts of the actual murder weapon, contending that so far as he understood it, Jowers had kept control of it for a period of time. He said he believed that even today lowers knew where the gun was. I thought that was unlikely, considering the fact that Jowers was probably a low-level participant.

Akins continued to pay lip service to the story about being asked to get rid of Frank Holt. My sense was that Akins had pieced part of the story together but that Jowers certainly had not told him everything.

Although he was clearly lying about some things, Akins's in- formation only added more corroboration to Jowers's involvement. The question still remaining about the actual killing, however, was whether or not he had been out there alone and whether he himself had pulled the trigger. I increasingly believed that the answer to both questions was no. Someone, or some others, were there as well.

***

THAT MONDAY MORNING, June 6, after having breakfast with Nathan Whitlock, I went out to the sheriffs range with investigator Cliff Dates and began to build the bullet trap. Wayne went along to court with Wallace Milam and his associate.

Dates and I were in the process of hand-packing the boxes when a sheriffs deputy came out to tell us that there would be no firing of the rifle that day. The attorney general had requested that an FBI ballistics expert be present, and this would require time to arrange. Though this issue had never been raised before, the judge thought it was a reasonable request and granted it, not only with respect to the ballistics firing but also the taking of the lead sample for trace element analysis. Once again we were on hold. I returned to London.

While Dates and I had been at the rifle range, a man named Robert McCoy arrived at the courthouse looking for me. He had driven all the way from Milwaukee to tell me his story. Being unable to find me he returned home, leaving a message on Chastain 's answering machine. I spoke to him five days later on June 11. He said he believed that in 1967, as an eighteen-year-old black civil rights activist in Carthage, Mississippi, he had stumbled on the conspiracy to kill Dr. King. The local sheriff regarded him as a troublemaker and had picked him up on the evening of December 1 on a phoney charge. This allowed them to hold him until an FBI agent was brought in to interview him. McCoy said they threatened to put him away unless he agreed to go undercover and work for them. In order to get out of the tight spot he was in, he agreed. The agent pulled out a black book and asked him about a number of black leaders and their influence on local movements. Specifically, they wanted him to become involved with the SCLC and to keep them informed about Dr. King's movements and when he would be returning to Mississippi.

He said they were very interested in whether he had heard anything about Dr. King running for president or vice president with Robert Kennedy. After leaving the sheriff's office, McCoy fled the area. Eventually he went to Wisconsin. McCoy's experience only made it more evident how concerned the bureau and its allies were over the possible national political plans of Dr. King.

Early the following week the attorney general notified us that an FBI ballistics expert would be in Memphis on Thursday, June 16, in order to observe the test-firing of the rifle as well as the taking of lead scrapings from the evidence bullet and the death slug. At the same time, however, Pierotti indicated that he was going to appeal Judge Brown 's interlocutory order allowing ballistics testing and the proffer of evidence by the defense.

I left London on Wednesday to carry out the testing, but by the time I arrived, a stay had been granted by the Court of Criminal Appeals. There was little else to do but hold a press conference in order to object to the bad faith of the attorney general. He had obtained a delay on what appeared to be the pretext of getting an FBI expert to attend the testing, allowing him time to obtain a stay. We prepared a motion requesting that we be allowed to proceed.

Wayne and I met the local press corps. Two TBI agents sat off to one side taking notes during the entire press conference. I stated that the desperate action of the attorney general was a continuation of the historical cover-up of the truth and angrily challenged them to ask Pierotti why he was so afraid of allowing the weapon to be tested. In their session with the attorney general, the local reporters went no further than to ask him how he thought I could get this evidence out in the open. He replied tersely that I could always publish. It seemed to me that this might indeed be our best way forward now.

I also advised the media that I was going to ask the United States attorney general to enter the case, not by means of a Justice Department investigation but rather by empowering a federal grand jury to hear testimony. The following week this request was formalized.

Once again I had that old feeling -- the fix was in. My apprehension increased when Wayne gave me a set of the state's motion papers. In sworn affidavits Pierotti had stated that our testing would "irretrievably damage evidence" (categorically untrue), rendering it unavailable for "future proceedings." Would the court of appeals be naive enough to accept this rationale?

***

I WENT TO SEE Art Hanes, Sr., and Art Hanes, Jr. (now a judge). I hadn't seen them in sixteen years but they graciously received me on short notice. I thought it would be useful to obtain any remaining defense file materials that could assist James. I was out of luck. In 1977 their entire file containing all of their initial investigation interview statements was sent off to the HSCA and never returned. Subsequently, it was sealed with the rest of the HSCA investigative files. This meant that James's subsequent attorneys who were entitled to receive that file would be barred from having and using it. This was one more example of a violation of James's sixth amendment right to a full and fair defense.

***

WAYNE CHASTAIN AND I finalized the response to the attorney general's appeal against Judge Joe Brown 's decision to allow a proffer of evidence in support of James's actual innocence.

The Tennessee court of appeals had set August 16 for oral argument of the state's appeal. Since I had a conflict on that date we submitted a motion for a one-week continuance. It was denied because the court ruled that my admission on motion to appear before the lower court in this case was not binding on the appellate courts in the state. Thus, I would have to apply separately to each state appellate court, and there wasn't time. Wayne had never heard of this technicality being asserted before. Consequently, Wayne appeared alone and argued. As expected, the court was hostile. A ruling was promised in September.

I decided to open up another legal front and bring a civil action against Loyd Jowers on behalf of James. Jowers had, after all, actually admitted on national prime-time television that he played a key role in the case for which James had spent twenty-five years in prison. Jowers had also publicly admitted that James was a patsy and did not know what was going on. Thus Jowers's acts and his continued silence had resulted in the unjust imprisonment of James.

We filed the complaint for the civil suit against Loyd Jowers, Raul _____ and other unknown parties on Thursday, Au gust 25. We alleged that Jowers had participated in the tort of conspiracy as a result of which James had been deprived of his liberty and been wrongly imprisoned for twenty-five years. On top of that we added the newly developed ancillary tort of outrage, which was justified by the very nature and continuation of the wrongful acts. Damages sought were $6,500,000 actual and compensatory and $39,500,000 punitive.

***

BACK IN LONDON IN SEPTEMBER, we came across a photograph in the Commercial Appears pictorial history, I Am A Man. [2] It was a shot of MPD officer Louis McKay guarding the bundle in Canipe's doorway. At first glance I thought I had seen this photo dozens of times before. Then I noticed that unlike other photo graphs 1 had seen, this shot was taken looking south toward the fire station, and in the background in the upper right was a hedge running down to the sidewalk between the parking lot and the fire station. I was curious. Although there had been rumors of a hedge in that spot we had never seen any photographs of it. Upon checking the evidence photographs from the attorney general's office, this hedge did not appear standing in any of the evidence photos. Then I came across a photograph of the hedge having been cut down to its very roots. I was amazed, and wondered how I could have overlooked it before. From all of the other photographs one would never know that a hedge had ever been there. The significance, of course, is that the official investigators had contended that on leaving the rooming house James had seen a police car parked up near the sidewalk which caused him to panic and drop the bundle. As we have seen, there was no police car in this position (it being parked about sixty-feet back from the sidewalk) but even if there had been, the hedge would have obstructed the view and made the official story untenable.

It was clear as could be, At the time of the killing a hedge was there. Sometime shortly thereafter (probably the next morning when the bushes at the rear of the rooming house were cut) it was cut to the ground and all trace of its existence obliterated. The photograph which Ewing used for illustrative purposes at the television trial showed a police car in clear view pulled up to the sidewalk. That photograph and others like it must have been staged, taken after the scene had been physically altered. In fact, in the staged photographs where the billboards are visible the billboard advertisements are different from the ones in place on the day of the killing and the day after. The photographs of the cut hedge reveal the same billboard ads as those in place at the time of the killing. Further confirmation of the existence of the hedge is provided by the HSCA drawing of the crime scene (MLK Exhibit F- 9) [1] which actually depicts it in place. Later, former fireman William King also confirmed the existence of the hedge. So it was not only the rear brush area of the rooming house that had been changed to suit the state's case but the South Main Street side as well. (See photographs #20, 21, and 23.) It was scandalous, but par for the course.

BY A 2 TO 1 VOTE the court of appeals made permanent the temporary restraining stay that prevented us from testing the weapon, and also prevented Judge Brown from holding the evidentiary hearing that would have allowed us to present a wide range of evidence. Strangely enough, a vitriolic dissent was written by Judge Summers, who had signed the initial stay. In his dissent he said that it was outrageous that the appellate court should go so far as to actually overrule a trial court judge's historic right to control evidence in his court. The judge thought it was a dangerous and unconstitutional action and indicated that we (defense counsel) would be derelict in our duty if we did not appeal the matter to the Supreme Court. We filed an appeal requesting an emergency hearing.

CHASTAIN, I, AND LOCAL INTERMEDIARY Thurston Hill finally met with Willie Crawford in his living room, where we visited for over an hour. I wanted to ask him about the cutting down of the hedge as well as about who from the MPD actually oversaw the cutting of the brush.

During the course of this session, the retired former Memphis sanitation department supervisor alternately praised Dr. King and denied being anywhere near the brush area behind the rooming house at any time. There was, he said, no way that he was part of a two-man cleanup team dispatched to raze the area which backed on to Mulberry Street and overlooked the Lorraine. He admitted knowing Dutch Goodman, who Director Stiles had said was the other member of the team, but denied that he would be sent on such a duty. He kept insisting that their total focus was on picking up garbage and not cutting down weeds.

When I confronted him with Stiles's comments, he became aggravated and defensive in his denial. Anyway, he said, the right man was in jail and none of this mattered anyway. He also denied making any admission of being there to Ken Herman, who had reported such a statement to me prior to the trial. Crawford was obviously frightened and determined not to admit having been on the scene.

***

JIM LAWSON'S OLD FRIEND JOHN T. FISHER represents the old-time Memphis establishment and wealth. They had become friends at the time of the sanitation workers' strike. Lawson suggested that I speak with him to get a first-hand account of his conversation with Percy Foreman in January 1969 as they sat next to each other on a flight from Houston to Memphis.

Fisher pulled no punches. He said that Foreman was very direct. He said that he had made a mistake agreeing to represent Ray. He did not, as a rule, represent white trash because they couldn't pay. He said that he was going to get rid of Ray for good by arranging for him to plead guilty. Then, because of the virtual impossibility of opening up the case again under Tennessee law, Ray would be inside and out of his hair for good. Foreman told him that it made no difference whether Ray was guilty or not -- he was going to finish him.

Fisher had been astounded and not a little uncomfortable about a lawyer talking that way about his client. He said it was deplorable and that he was willing to provide a sworn statement.

***

ON THE DAY OF OCTOBER 15, I drove out to the Shelby County Correctional Center -- the "Penal Farm" -- in order to meet with Arthur Wayne Baldwin. I had wanted to talk to Art Baldwin for a very long time, having first heard about him as a result of Tim Kirk 's first affidavit in 1978 concerning a contract on James's life. The timing had never been right. For a number of years Baldwin had been on top of the world, running a very lucrative topless club in Memphis. During those years he certainly was not approachable. Then, when he came under the control of the federal government in their effort to convict Governor Ray Blanton and members of his staff, he was, if anything, more unavailable. Not seeing a way through to him during all of this time, I just waited.

Now, sixteen years later, Art Baldwin appeared to be at his lowest point ever, having been locked up for a relatively minor theft. I thought that this would be as good a time as any to meet him face-to-face but I was prepared to be disappointed. I wasn't.

Sitting in the small attorney's-interview room, with several days' growth of beard, Baldwin was soft-spoken and alert. He said that he now sympathized with James. He volunteered having heard that James was assisted in escaping from Brushy Mountain Penitentiary in June 1977 and that he was not supposed to be brought back alive. I told him that I had also come to believe that this was the case. (I had been told by Steve Jacks, James's counselor at the time, that the tower nearest the escape route had been unmanned, and I was aware of the large FBI SWAT team which took up their positions immediately after the escape.) I told him that it seemed that some people feared what James might have testified to before the HSCA. At the time of the escape the committee's investigation was just getting underway. Baldwin nodded. Referring to the escape, he said, "They tried to get me that way too." He then went on to describe how during his sentence in Nashville, after he had finally turned down the "Ray contract" (believing that he was being set up), he was offered an opportunity to escape but refused because he learned that a team of shooters was waiting for him just outside the walls.

He then told me about two contracts on James's life with which he was involved. The first, he now clarified for me, came from the "Memphis Godfather" who in 1977 told him that the people in New Orleans wanted this matter cleared up once and for all. He quoted him as saying that the killing had been botched up. Ray was supposed to have been killed in Memphis. The Godfather reportedly said, "One, two, three, bam," slamming his fist on the table. "It was simple." Since it didn't get done as planned it had been an embarrassment ever since and he wanted it ended. It was like "a stone in his shoe which he wanted out," and he said that if Baldwin could accomplish it for him he would forever be in a good position.

Baldwin was not keen to get involved but did not want to offend the man. He had been present on other occasions when the Godfather talked to produce man Frank Liberto on other matters. He said that the Godfather treated Liberto like a "puppy dog," ordering him about in brutal fashion. Baldwin said he offered the contract to Tim Kirk in a face-to-face meeting in the autumn of 1977. Some months later he raised it again with him on the telephone. This was the approach reported by Kirk. Ultimately it went nowhere.

The approach from the bureau came some months later. Though it clearly came from Washington and had to come through both the Nashville and Memphis SAC's, it was broached by one of the agents who were controlling him in 1978 at the time he was their key witness during the prosecution of Governor Ray Blanton. He said that the agent raised it with him as they drove from Memphis to Nashville during this time. The scheme proposed was that he and a state official would go to Brushy Mountain prison with transfer papers for James who ostensibly was to be moved to Nashville. They would arrive around 3 a.m. and take him. Baldwin was expected to kill James en route. They would bury him. He would go out of the Brushy Mountain population count, and since Nashville was not expecting him he would not be missed for some time. The transfer papers at Brushy Mountain would then be pulled. Baldwin said he became uneasy when he could not get answers to questions concerning how long they expected the story to be kept quiet and what the ultimate explanation was to be. He began to believe that perhaps he and even the official were to be killed as well as James. He pulled back.

He said they offered him lifetime immunity from all prosecution. The second FBI control agent also knew about the scheme, he said, and he said he heard the two agents discussing the other efforts to get rid of James (the June 10, 1977 prison escape and the Godfather's plans). James's continued presence was a sore spot for all concerned. Both the mob and the government wanted him dead because they believed that it was only his continued presence that kept questions about Dr. King's assassination alive. In their view the doubts would largely die with James.

Eventually, after James testified and nothing startling came out, the idea of killing him seemed to go away. It was not raised again and it appeared to me that perhaps all concerned had come to realize that James was not going to reveal even the peripheral information he might have learned or pieced together after the fact.

Baldwin was willing to take a lie detector test. His candor surprised me. It was obvious that he was fed up with being used by the government. His disclosure was the first time that I had heard about the Memphis Godfather's involvement in the case.

***

I NEXT WENT TO ORLANDO for one of the most sensitive meetings to date. I met for three hours on October 16 with a man whom I will call Carson, who I believed had vital information that could confirm -- and provide independent verification of -- the military presence in Memphis around the time of the sanitation workers' strike.

Carson and I fenced for some time. He was one of those bright, initially idealistic and patriotic warriors who almost inevitably reach a point where they can no longer swallow the corruption, deceit, and sheer criminal activity that often characterizes official but deniable covert operations. Carson began slowly but then opened up. His story was more than I hoped for. Because of the compatibility of the details with those emerging from other sources, it swept away any lingering doubts I had about the picture of events that was developing. I asked him to check out some details and he reluctantly agreed, being very uneasy about becoming involved. Carson agreed to fax the information to me.

Just before we ended, Carson said, "This meeting never took place." I agreed. "You have to be very careful," he said. "They'll drop you where you stand."

***

NEW ORLEANS HADN'T CHANGED. It was a living testament to the consequences of the type of all-pervasive corruption that not only permeated every aspect of life but was accepted as inevitable by its citizens. There were potholes the size of which I had not seen outside of the Bronx or a third world city. Bridges were decaying, brownouts occurred regularly, and in 1994 Louisianans had the worst health in the nation. Carlos Marcello, who had treated New Orleans as his private fiefdom, had died, but the culture of crime, violence, greed, and official corruption that he institutionalized lived on.

The New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission had been forged into an active watchdog by its executive director in the 1960s, Aaron Kohn, who was now dead. Kohn was constantly critical of D.A. Jim Garrison's failure to go after organized crime or even to acknowledge its existence. In my meeting with commission investigator Tony Radosti (who, having become disgusted by the corruption, left the New Orleans police department to go to work for the commission), I learned that Kohn had also produced a highly sensitive investigatory report on the Kennedy assassination which, he said, "made a number of people in Texas very unhappy." Radosti had not seen the report, however, and did not know where it was. The commission had recently begun to restrict access to its anecdotal files as a result of lawsuits. With respect to my particular interest it was agreed that Tony would pull specific files I requested, examine them, and unless there was some reason for them to be withheld, allow me to read them. We found a very thin, basically uninformative file on the Libertos, but there was a good deal of information on the criminal activities of Marcello associate Joe "Zip" Chimento (who according to 20th SFG soldier Warren was the contact man in New Orleans for their gunrunning) and Randy Rosenson, who was often represented by Marcello's lawyer -- C. Wray Gill -- mostly concerning drug possession and dealing. I found it interesting that Carlos Marcello had yet another connection to a person who had surfaced in this case.

I found Charlie Stein in a rehabilitation hospital and inter- viewed him at length. A stroke had affected his memory but he was clear about certain things. James, whom he had known as Eric Galt, was no racist. He got along well with blacks, particularly with black women. On the trip from Los Angeles to New Orleans, James did make a telephone call to the people -- "contractors" or "engineers" -- he was to meet in New Orleans, but Stein did not observe the number he dialed. One evening in New Orleans James told him that while he (James) was in a meeting in a bar in lower Canal Street (Le Bunny Lounge), he saw Stein pass by and wanted to call to him but the person with him (presumably Raul) did not want to be seen and so he did not call out. Stein said he believed that James went to a meeting in a huge building at the end of Canal Street and that he also met with some people from Gentilly Road. (He believed that James told him about this activity but he really wasn't certain how he learned about it.)

I next spent some hours going through the New Orleans street directory in the public library and despite a brownout which interrupted the work, I learned that the big building Charlie Stein was talking about could only have been the International Trade Mart, which in 1967 was still run by none other than Clay Shaw, the long-time CIA asset prosecuted by Jim Garrison for conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. I noted the names and telephone numbers of a number of the tenant companies. Right around the corner from the Trade Mart were the offices of Buck Kreihs Machine Company, whose vice president and general manager was Salvatore J. Liberto.

As noted earlier, James had long thought that the back up Baton Rouge telephone number which Raul had given him belonged to a man named Herman Thompson who, at the time, was Baton Rogue Deputy Sheriff. Thompson was a close friend of Edward Grady Partin, the Baton Rouge Teamsters leader whose testimony for the government resulted in Jimmy Hoffa being put away on jury tampering charges. During the 1960s Ed Partin was clearly controlled by the government which had enough on him to put him away for a very long time. There had long been rumors about Partin's possible involvement in the killing.

In a telephone conversation and subsequent meeting, Doug Partin (who in 1994 was the business manager of the Baton Rouge Teamsters local number five, which had been run for years by his brother) was very candid. His brother Ed had engaged in a great deal of activity of which he disapproved and much that he knew nothing about. He surprised me by saying that it was not impossible that his brother might have had some role to play in the killing, though he had no indication of this. I asked him about Herman Thompson and he confirmed that Thompson had been a local deputy sheriff and at the time was close to his brother. He also confirmed that Ed had had a relationship with Carlos Marcello that he said was probably driven by the fact that nothing happened in Baton Rouge in those days without Ed's approval. After a local investigation, that included a discussion with a local investigative reporter who observed Partin clearly, I found no indication of any involvement of Thompson or Partin in the conspiracy.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN

Postby admin » Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:39 am

Part 1 of 2

Chapter 29: Raul: October 31, 1994-July 5, 1995

ON OCTOBER 31, 1994, as a part of our discovery in the civil suit against Loyd Jowers, Raul ____ and others, I prepared to take the deposition (examination under oath) of a woman who allegedly had known a person named Raul in Houston, Texas, in the 1960s and who had come to learn that he was involved in the killing of Dr. King. In the autumn of 1993 she had contacted Lewis Garrison, whose name she had seen in the newspaper in conjunction with Loyd Jowers's request for immunity. For some reason, Garrison had brought Ken Herman into his first meeting with her in 1993 and she believed (as apparently did Lewis Garrison) that he was still working as my investigator. I only gradually learned about her existence and had been denied access to her. Lewis Garrison finally had agreed to facilitate the taking of her deposition.

The next morning, November 1, the woman had apparently become ill and had returned home with her husband. Garrison, embarrassed and upset, gave Chastain and me their names and telephone number. He said that Herman had told him categorically that the witnesses would not talk to us. In case they were trying to avoid us, Chastain and I immediately prepared a summons for the woman and her husband, whom I will call Cheryl and Bob, and set out for the town where they lived, which was a few hours from Memphis.

We arrived at their home as a school bus pulled up to drop off a youngster who we would learn was their grandson, and whom they looked after until his mother finished work.

As Bob greeted the boy on the sidewalk I approached and called his name. He didn't seem to be surprised in the slightest, indicating that he recognized me from television. I introduced Wayne and said that I believed that someone might have been feeding them misinformation. He said casually, "Come on in." We sat down in the living room and he introduced his wife to us.

They both insisted that she had not been well and on Monday had not felt up to the formal deposition. They appeared pleased to meet us and said that after that first meeting in Garrison's office they only met with Herman and former Thames Television producer lack Saltman, with meetings being held at Herman's home with no lawyers present. They said that they had wondered where the lawyers were, since they had come forward for the express purpose of trying to help free an innocent man.

In this and subsequent sessions I learned about Cheryl's experiences as a young woman. She almost always appeared to be nervous and frequently glanced at her husband for support as she recalled events.

She said that in 1962 when she was fourteen years old she met a man who went by the nickname of Dago. Years later she learned his real name which she told me. His first name was Raul but I will use the pseudonym Pereira for his family name. Each day she would walk from her home on Hanson Road to South Houston Junior High School, passing a small gas station on the corner of East Haven and College Boulevard. Dago didn't seem to work at that station but just sat around in front. Since he was friendly to her and she was having a difficult time living with her aunt and uncle, where a pattern of abuse had been established over a number of years, she was happy to know him. She recalled that he was about 5'9" tall, a bit wiry, and weighed 155-160 pounds. His hair was dark with a reddish tint and she thought that he would have been around thirty years old. (I recalled that this matched James's description of Raul, particularly with respect to hair color). In a year's time when she was fifteen she met and married Bob, who by his own admission drank continually and stayed out a good deal.

Soon after they were married Cheryl and Bob moved to a small house on East Haven, near the gas station. During this period she only saw Dago occasionally, and between 1966 and 1970 he disappeared from the area. She did not see him at all, but in 1969 or 1970 she did come to know a man whom she and Bob called Armando.

Armando began to hang around a good deal; and with Bob gone much of the time Cheryl was very lonely and began to spend more and more time with Armando and his friends and appears to have been exploited by them and some of their associates. Since Armando did not drive at all she frequently drove him places. One of the places they visited was the rented house of Felix Torrino [sic] on the corner of 74th Street and Avenue L. It was at Torrino's house sometime in 1970 that she recalled seeing Dago again for the first time following his absence. At that time Armando told her that Dago, who was much younger, was his cousin with the same family name and that Dago's real name was Raul Pereira. He said that they emigrated to the United States from Brazil or Portugal, though Raul came over many years after Armando. Cheryl said that Armando was quite proud of the fact that he once lived in Chicago and worked for Al Capone's organization.

After she had spent some time with them, Armando and Torrino independently told her that Raul had actually killed Martin Luther King. They even told her some details, mentioning some bushes and trees at the rear of the rooming house and saying that Raul had leaned on and broken a tree branch while carrying out the shooting. When she heard this she was shocked. Raul did not know that they had told her and they did not want him to know.

Cheryl became increasingly close to this group between 1970 and 1978 and knew that they were involved in different illegal activities which included gunrunning, forging passports, and even the making of pornographic films. She assisted in some of this activity, including the passport forging and gunrunning. When a shipment of guns was arriving from New Orleans she would drive down to the Houston ship's channel, go on to the docks, and allow the boxes to be loaded into the trunk of her car. Often making several trips as instructed, she would deliver the guns, which were either in cardboard boxes or crates, to Torrino's house where, she said, Raul Pereira, Torrino, and their associates would assemble them. She would only go to pick up the guns when particular customs agents were on duty so that she would just be waved through. Though she never asked questions, she heard the men comment that it was safer to ship the weapons around the coast by boat than to truck them in by road. (I recalled the information provided by Warren about the gun-running operation which was run for Marcello by Zip Chimento, as a result of which stolen military weapons were delivered by Warren and other 20th SFG officers to barges in a cove which bordered property owned by Marcello. Too, there was British merchant seaman Sid Carthew's account of being approached in the Neptune Bar in Montreal by a man who introduced himself as Raul, who offered to sell him new military-issue handguns. Carthew said Raul told him that the guns were stolen from a military base and that a master sergeant had to be paid off. The degree of independent corroboration of this activity appeared to be staggering.)

Cheryl said that during this period Raul Pereira lived or at least spent a good deal of time in a second-floor apartment in a house on Navigation near 75th Street, close to the docks.

Though Raul did drive, she frequently drove him and Armando wherever they wanted to go. She recalled dropping Raul off at the Alabama movie theater where he would often go in the morning to meet with Houston associates of Carlos Marcello. Included in this group were the theater manager, Ross Vallone, who seemed to be Marcello's main man in Houston, and another man, Joe Bacile, who at one point asked Cheryl to marry him. She refused, electing to stay with Bob. Bob said that Marcello owned a number of these movie theaters in Houston, and Cheryl thought there was some pornographic movie production activity going on at the Alabama. Cheryl actually saw Marcello in Houston on a couple of occasions with Armando, Raul, and their friends, at a fruit stand on Navigation and in a bar next door. She said that on another occasion it was arranged for her to spend time with Marcello at a house in the area.

One day in the early 1970s, around 1:00 p.m., she drove Armando over to Torrino's house where the usual group had gathered. Her car keys were on a ring which had a plastic viewfinder containing miniature photos of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. One of those seated around the table (she believed his name was Manuel) picked up the keys which she had put down on the table, looked into the viewfinder and then tossed it to Raul. Cheryl said when Raul saw it he became angrier than she had ever seen him.

She didn't recall everything he said but did remember him shouting, "I killed that black son of a bitch once and it looks like I'll have to do it again." He dropped the keys on the floor and stamped on the plastic viewfinder. Then he grabbed her, put a gun to her head, and forced her into a bedroom where he proceeded to rape her. She said she left Torrino's house that afternoon shattered by the experience. Bob pressed her to tell him what was wrong but she didn't because she feared he might do something which they would regret.

From that point on, although she still associated with the group, she tried to keep her distance from Raul who behaved as though nothing had happened.

She recalled that in 1978 and 1979 two of Bob's brothers got into trouble and were prosecuted. Bob and Cheryl asked Houston attorney Percy Foreman to defend them. Foreman became attracted to Cheryl and even offered her a job. She wanted to decorate houses which Foreman owned and rented out but he wanted her to work in his office. He was trying to impress her and even gave her an original sketch of himself which he personally signed on June 22, 1979 (see photograph #27).

After a while she learned that Foreman had been James Earl Ray's lawyer. He told her that one day white Americans would learn that Ray was a "sacrifice" or had to be "sacrificed" for their welfare. He even told her that he knew Ray was innocent, but that it didn't matter. Cheryl, who had been harboring the terrible secret about who she really believed killed Dr. King, decided finally to unburden herself. She told Foreman. Shortly afterward Foreman informed her that he had spoken with Raul Pereira. To her horror, he appeared to have known him for some time, Thereafter Foreman called her at home several times a week to talk to her about Raul and tell her to be careful. She had the impression that he spoke regularly with Raul, and was trying to take advantage of her plight to get her into bed. She was afraid of alienating him but wasn't interested and tried to keep her distance. Finally, at one point in 1979, Foreman told her in no uncertain terms that if she and Bob did not leave Houston, they would be dead within the year.

They prepared to leave and put their house up for sale. In a matter of weeks Cheryl was driving on the expressway and a wheel simply fell off her car, nearly causing her to be annihilated by an eighteen wheel tractor-trailer, She believed this was no accident because every one of the nuts came off, Since Bob regularly serviced the car and checked the wheels, the lug nuts must have been deliberately loosened.

They left, only returning to sell their house, and in 1981 resettled in their present home. They had no further contact with either Armando or Raul Pereira.

Cheryl and Bob also told me that they had seen the Edginton/BBC documentary and in it recognized a photograph of Jules "Ricco" Kimbel taken over twenty years ago, as being someone they had seen in Houston associating with Raul, Armando, and their crowd.

They said that they had told their story to Herman and Saltman when they first met them a year earlier, Recently they had been shown an old photograph by them which Cheryl recognized as being of Raul Pereira, It was obvious that Herman and Saltman wanted to develop a commercial production based upon Cheryl's story.

***

CHERYL APPEARED to have no reason to lie and she did not ask for money. Percy Foreman did dedicate the sketch of himself to her so there was obviously some relationship there, but the other details of her extraordinary story required checking to the extent possible.

I contacted Houston investigator Jim Carter and asked him to check out some leads. I authorized him to call Ross Vallone who still lived in Houston. Pretending to be an old friend of Raul Pereira's, Carter first established Vallone's connection with the Alabama theater and then told him that he was trying to locate their mutual friend. Vallone went silent for a moment and then said that he really didn't know where he was. Carter said there was no doubt that he knew him.

I located a telephone listing in Houston in the name of Amaro Pereira and when I raised it with Bob, he said, "Oh yeah, Armando's name was Amaro but we always called him 'Armando.'" When Carter checked it out he learned that an Amaro Pereira had lived at the address but had been gone for a number of years. The present residents had kept the phone in his name rather than changing it and having to put up a deposit.

Next I gave Carter the task of checking out a number of people in Houston with the name Pereira.

***

DURING THIS TIME WAYNE AND I drove to Corinth, Mississippi, for an unannounced visit to the home of James Latch, the former vice president of LL&L (Liberto, Liberto and Latch) Produce Company. Wayne was uneasy about doing so but I pressed for the visit, since Frank Liberto's old partner had avoiding me for some time. We found the house and knocked on the door. Eventually Mr. Latch appeared and, somewhat guardedly, invited us in. Wayne's uneasiness could only have increased when the phone rang as we entered and before we even sat down. We had given Mr. Latch our business cards and in response to the caller's questions he read out our details over the phone, After this conversation, while we were in the beginning stages of our interview, the phone rang again and he repeated the process. Finally we began an uninterrupted session.

Latch was clearly trying to distance himself from Frank Liberto by claiming ignorance of Liberto's activities and saying that Liberto had not dealt fairly with him on financial matters. He insisted that two heart attacks and a stroke had severely affected his memory. Consequently, he said he did not recall who was on the phone to his partner on the afternoon of April 4 when his partner received two telephone calls, or even if he had answered the phone as John McFerren insisted he had done. He did recall occasional visits by Liberto's brother, Tony, from New Orleans as well as from his mother. He also recalled that Liberto occasionally visited his father who, divorced from his mother, lived in Beaumont, Texas.

Gladys, Liberto's wife, also worked in the business, he said, and was an inveterate gambler. Liberto once told him that she gambled heavily in Las Vegas at the local dog track, sometimes losing substantial sums of money. One time she even pawned the valuable jade ring given to him by Elvis Presley. (This confirmed Nathan Whitlock's recollections.)

***

IN THEIR DEPOSITIONS IN THE CIVIL CASE (Ray v. Jowers et al.) Nathan Whitlock and his mother told their stories. Nathan confirmed his earlier account of Frank Liberto's admissions. Lavada Whitlock Addison said she ran a restaurant which Frank Liberto frequented in 1977-78. He would regularly stop in early in the morning on his way to work and have oatmeal prepared specially. He would also come in for a late afternoon beer or two on his way home from the market. Gradually, he developed a friendship of sorts with Mrs. Whitlock and he would occasionally be candid with her and her son Nathan. He complained, for example, about his wife -- who he said was a compulsive gambler -- and his mistress (whom he kept in a condo at the Lynton Square development on the corner of Macon and Graham) who he said was only interested in his money.

When serving him and other customers, Mrs. Whitlock would often sit down at the table with them to chat. On one occasion she recalled that something about the King assassination came on the television and Liberto calmly commented, partly to Mrs. Whitlock and partly to no one in particular, "I had Martin Luther King killed." Startled, she responded instantly, rising at the same time, saying, "Don't tell me such things," and "I don't believe it anyway."

***

CHASTAIN HAD PREVIOUSLY TOLD ME that at the October 1994 meeting in Garrison's office when he was given a copy of the request for immunity, Herman had made a point of telling Garrison that he had informed him about his client's -- Jowers's -- involvement in the killing as soon as he had learned about it. Herman told the attorney that he felt that he had an obligation to do so because he had done investigatory work for Garrison's law office. I wondered what had happened to his obligation to James Earl Ray. It was this foreknowledge that put Jowers on his guard and caused him to require Garrison to be present during his testimony at the television trial and also explained Herman's earlier statement in the aftermath of the television trial that somehow Garrison had found out about Jowers's involvement.

just prior to Jowers's deposition, attorney Garrison confirmed to me that Herman had told him about the existence of the waitresses who could implicate his client, as a result of which Jowers insisted that he be present as a condition of testifying.

Loyd Jowers was deposed over a nine and one-half-hour period. He had with him a typed clause asserting his Fifth Amendment rights ready for use. Nine hours would pass before he would use it. We began at a gentle pace as I took him from his childhood and early life in a large rural family to his days on the police force, which roughly lasted from 1946-1948. After that he formed his own "Veterans Cab Company" whose initial members Were all World War II veterans. It was during his brief career as a police officer that he met Memphis produce dealer Frank C. Liberto in 1946 or 1947. He denied knowing any other Frank Liberto. "When I asked him about the liquor man up the street he said he knew him and made purchases from him, sometimes daily, but that until my question he had not known that "Frank" (as he knew him) was a Liberto. He simply didn't know his last name.

He said that back in 1946 he knew both patrolman N. E. Zachary and Sam Evans. He also knew inspector Don Smith when he was a patrolman. He became particularly close to G. P. Tines, who years later became an inspector in charge of the intelligence bureau. The friendship developed because Tines's wife and Jowers's first wife went to school together. Jowers supplied details of his six marriages (three to the same woman).

He recalled Frank C. Liberto in the late 1940s as a prominent produce man whose business was located downtown in the market near central police headquarters. Later the market moved to Scott Street and Liberto moved his business there. Jowers believed that the Scott Street produce business LL&L was owned by Frank Liberto and his brother, but he didn't remember the brother's name. He denied knowing Frank Liberto well, although he believed that "Frank," as he called him, did help him get some taxi business from the market.

He said that he didn't see Frank Liberto again until 1965. He refused to acknowledge any business dealings with him. In 1966 he left Veterans Cab and went to work for the Yellow Cab Company, owned by Hamilton Smythe, as a dispatcher. The next year (1967) he opened a restaurant called the Check Off Inn on 1.53 East Calhoun Street, the site of the old Tremont Cafe, He maintained that when he eventually opened Jim's Grill in the summer of 1967 his wife ran the Check Off Inn, but it was not clear how she could have done this while working full-time for the Memphis Stone and Gravel Company. He also denied that there had been any gambling going on at the Check Off.

When he opened Jim's Grill he moved Lena, a cook from the Check Off, over to the grill. He also hired Betty Spates and her sisters Alda Mae Washington and Bobbi Smith. At the time a white woman also worked for him as a waitress, but he couldn't remember her name.

He described an Esso gas station on the corner of Vance and Second, and he remembered another station on Vance and Third which he thought was a Shell station. (I thought that either of these could have been where James went to try to have his spare tire repaired around the time of the shooting.)

He acknowledged driving both a white Cadillac and a brown Rambler station wagon and said that it was possible that the Cadillac was in his wife's name. He confirmed that his wife, Dorothy had her hair done every Thursday. (April 4, 1968, was a Thursday.)

Though he bought most of his supplies from Montesi's supermarket, he said that fresh vegetables came from M. E. Carter and that deliveries were made every day.

He said that the back door from the rooming house was boarded up, but he couldn't explain why it appeared to be open in police evidence photographs I showed to him taken shortly after the killing.

Jowers said that on April 4 he drove the white Cadillac to work and that Bobbi Smith worked on the morning of April 4 but left around 4:00 p.m. He said Betty Spates did not work at all that day because one of her children was sick. Also, he said that Big Lena and Rosie Lee had gone from his employ months earlier and that he himself had fixed breakfast for the "eggs and sausage" man. (Sometime prior to Jowers's deposition I had located Rosie Lee Dabney and she confirmed that she was waiting on tables in Jim's Grill on the afternoon of April 4. She said she served eggs and sausage to a stranger on the afternoon of the shooting and again the next morning. An MPD report dated April 6 stated that Dabney was on duty all day on April 4 and that she had served eggs and sausage to a stranger.) Jowers could not identify a photograph of Jack Youngblood as the "eggs and sausage man." At the time of the gunshot he said that he was drawing a pitcher of beer.

Jowers confirmed with certainty that the bushes in the backyard had been cut down. He actually drew a line surprisingly close to the building up to where he said the thick bushes came. He acknowledged that the waitresses probably did take food up to Grace Walden but denied telling Bobbi not to take food up to her on the morning of April 4.

He denied driving Bobbi to work on the morning of April 5 or going out to the back or even looking out there on the morning after the shooting. He said he drove the white Cadillac that day.

Incredibly, he categorically denied having any relationship with Betty Spates. He also denied knowing anything about the Oakview house and ever staying overnight there. He did, however, admit to speaking with Spates on December 13, 1993, the night the Prime Time Live program was filmed, to warn her, he said, that reporters were on the way to her house.

I showed Jowers a copy of the transcript of the ABC Prime Time Live program and he agreed it was an accurate statement. I then entered it into the record. When I began to question him on the statements he made on the program, he invoked the Fifth Amendment. I noted for the record that the transcript had already been agreed to and entered into evidence and that in my opinion the protection of the Fifth Amendment was not available to him. Garrison then agreed to stipulate "... that the questions were asked and Mr. Jowers gave these answers" (the answers being those responses given during the television program).

Jowers's testimony was extraordinary for the number of un truths he told, many of which were clearly contradicted by other evidence and testimony and some of which contradicted his earlier statements.

Jowers, for reasons best known to himself and his counsel, insisted on deposing Betty Spates. Lewis Garrison served a subpoena on her, and she came along in a hostile frame of mind. Before beginning, I took her aside and explained that Jowers, who had denied having any relationship with her, had insisted that she be called. Initially, she was inclined not to remember anything, but gradually she decided to cooperate. She confirmed the factual truthfulness of the affidavit she had given to me which I have discussed in detail earlier.

Willie Akins was also deposed and stated that years after the event Jowers admitted to him that he was involved in the killing. Jowers described his meeting with Raul, Raul having brought the gun to him at the grill, and Frank Liberto arranging for a delivery of a large sum of money in a produce box which was included in a regular delivery. The scene was striking. Jowers greeted Akins cordially and then Akins, under oath, proceeded to directly incriminate his old friend. Akins continued to maintain that years later he had been asked by Jowers to kill Frank Holt. At the end of the deposition Jowers and Akins went off together talking about old times.

Betty's sister Bobbi Smith was also subpoenaed and appeared as scheduled on December 22. Under oath she confirmed what she had told me in an informal interview on December 18, 1992, two years earlier. Jowers had told her not to take breakfast upstairs to Grace Walden on the morning of April 4. She usually did this about twice a week around 10-10:30 a.m., after the morning rush was over. I had always thought that this was significant because it meant that something was going on up there well before noon that day, some four or more hours before James arrived to rent the room. Bobbi also said that Jowers picked her up on the mornings of April 4 and 5, as usual, in his brown station wagon which on April 4 he parked just north of the grill in front of the U.S. fixtures store. (I remembered that during and after hypnosis Charles Hurley, who was picking up his wife Peggy on South Main Street that afternoon, recalled seeing a brown station wagon on that side of the street. ) On the way in on the morning of April 5, Jowers told Bobbi about the rifle being found in the backyard after the killing. She also confirmed that Jowers often spent the night at the Oakview house where she lived with her mother and Betty in 1969, and that he had a longstanding affair with Betty during all of this time. She also said that at the time of the killing Betty did have a job at the Seabrook Wallpaper company across the street from Jim's Grill.

Finally, she said that she had told the same story to the TBI investigators sent by Pierotti and she did not understand why they would say that she knew nothing or had retracted her story. They told her not to discuss the matter with anyone.

***

SOMETIME AFTER TELLING ME his story about Frank Liberto, Nathan Whitlock told me about a rumor of an earlier King murder contract put out to a member of a family named Nix who lived in Tipton County, Tennessee. Nathan said he understood that Red Nix had been given a new car and a rifle and was paid $500 a week to track and kill King. If he succeeded he was to get $50,000. Whitlock thought the offer came from Frank C. Liberto. Red had been killed not too long after Dr. King was shot. At Whitlock's suggestion I met with Red's brother, Norris, and Bobby Kizer, who jointly owned and ran the Neon Moon nightclub on Sycamore View in East Memphis. They confirmed that Red was given a new car and was put on a payroll for a job. "He was after someone all right," said Norris Nix, "but I don't know who." They believed that Tim Kirk, who was a friend of Red Nix, would know who hired him, and offered to ask him to tell me what he knew. He could, they said, free my client. Bobby Kizer even offered to go up to the prison with me to talk to Kirk.

I was surprised. I thought I knew everything Kirk had to say. Eventually I visited him again to ask him about the Red Nix murder contract. He said with certainty that the contract was put out by Carlos Marcello, not Frank C. Liberto. It was sometime in mid-1967. He said Nix knew Marcello and undertook various jobs for him. A car had indeed been provided. This was the first indication directly linking Marcello to a contract on Dr. King. Nathan Whitlock had been under the impression that Frank C. Liberto had also been behind the Nix contract. Kirk said there was no way. It came directly from New Orleans and Carlos Marcello.

Kirk said that Red Nix was set up and killed sometime after the assassination and that it could well have been related to his knowledge about the contract. He promised to try to check out what was behind Red's murder. Try as he did, he was un- able to learn anything.

Information about the Marcello/Red Nix contract reminded my assistant lean about something that Memphis investigator Jim Kellum had included in one of his reports in 1992 before he asked to be released. It concerned an informant who had allegedly mentioned a similar contract which was put out at a meeting in Jackson, Tennessee. Kellum agreed to arrange a meeting. On the morning of December 20, 1994, Kellum brought to breakfast "Jerry," a longtime trusted informant of his. Jerry told of attending a meeting in Jackson, Mississippi, in mid-1967 at the Blue Note Lounge. There, a wheelchair paraplegic named Joe "Buck" Buchanan, who was into a variety of illegal activities and well connected in New Orleans, put out a $50,000 contract on Dr. King, which Jerry believed had come from that city. Jerry also said that Tim Kirk was at that meeting, as was one of the Tiller brothers from Memphis (who we knew had some association with Kirk) .When I raised the meeting with Kirk he said he had a vague recollection of the event. It seemed that this contract was later picked up by Red Nix, possibly directly from Marcello.

Jerry said that Joe Buchanan was killed some years later, shot sitting in his wheelchair in his front yard, after being set up by a woman he knew well. Jerry said that she was probably still alive and would likely know why Buchanan was killed and who ordered him to be shot. Jerry agreed to try to locate her and find out. He ultimately became unable or unwilling to do so.

More than ever the trail of the Memphis contract that actually resulted in Dr. King's death led to New Orleans and pointed toward the involvement of the Mafia organization of Carlos Mar- cello. Marcelo had not just given his approval but had taken on the job and had attempted to subcontract it on more than one occasion -- the last time being through his Memphis associates which included Frank C. Liberto and the Memphis Godfather.

***

FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS THERE had been rumors about a Yellow Cab taxi driver having seen someone going down over the wall just after the shooting, As part of the investigation for the television trial, I had asked two of my investigators, Herman and Billings, to get the names of Yellow Cab drivers working on April 4. They were not forthcoming.

Finally, in autumn of 1994 a driver came forward of his own volition. At first, he tried to tell his story to the attorney general but he encountered total disinterest. Then, after spotting Lewis Garrison's name in the local paper in an article about the case, he telephoned him and left his name. Garrison duly passed it on to me and I spoke to him on November 5, 1994.

Louie Ward told me a story he had held back, out of fear, for twenty-six years. He had been driving on the night of April 4 and around 6:00 p.m. he was parked near the corner of Perkins and Quince. Suddenly he heard the dispatcher come on the radio, obviously responding to a driver's call about an emergency (the drivers could only hear the dispatcher's side of conversations with the other drivers). He heard the dispatcher say that he would send an ambulance and then, in response to something else the driver said, the dispatcher said he would send one anyway and call the police. From what he had heard Ward learned that the emergency was the shooting of Martin Luther King, He also realized that the driver was taking a fare to the airport. Ward went straight to the airport and met up with the driver who told him his story. Ward said that the driver, whose name he could not recall and who probably was in his early sixties, was driving car 58. The driver said that he had gone to the Lorraine shortly before 6:00 p.m. to pick up a passenger with an enormous amount of luggage. As they finished loading up his taxi in the Lorraine parking lot, the driver turned to look at the area of dense brush and trees opposite the motel. His passenger quickly punched him on the arm in order to get his attention and (so the driver later thought) distract him from looking at the brush, saying, "Look up there -- Dr. King's standing alone on the balcony. Everybody's always saying how difficult it would be to shoot him since he is always in a crowd. Now look at him." At that precise moment the shot rang out and the driver saw Dr. King get struck in the jaw and fall. The driver said he grabbed his microphone and told his dispatcher that Dr. King had been shot. The dispatcher said he would call an ambulance, and the driver said that considering the wound he didn't think it would do much good. Then Ward said the driver told him that he saw a man come down over the wall empty-handed, run north on Mulberry Street, and get into a black and white MPD traffic police car which was parked across the middle of the intersection of Mulberry and Huling. At that point the driver told the dispatcher to tell the police that one of their units had the man. Meanwhile, the passenger was becoming irritable, saying that they had to leave immediately because otherwise the ambulance and other cars would box them in and he had to make his plane. They left.

Ward heard the driver repeat the story to three MPD officers at the airport, and observed a second interview being conducted later that evening in the Yellow Cab office by other policemen. After that evening Ward said he never even saw the driver of car 58 again. Ward was working full-time at the Memphis army depot and was on the job round the clock the next two or three days. It was only after this period that he was able to return to his part-time taxi driving. When he went back to the South Second Street Yellow Cab office for the first time after the killing he asked after the car 58 driver. Three or four of the drivers in the office told him that he had fallen or had been pushed from a speeding car onto the Memphis-Arkansas bridge late on the evening of April 4. Ward also said that at that time there was speculation by some of the drivers that since the man seen fleeing the area wasn't carrying a gun that perhaps it was hidden in the back of Loyd Jowers's cafe because all of this activity took place behind that building.

Ward agreed to undergo hypnosis in order to see if he could recollect the names of the driver of car 58 and the dispatcher. Subsequently, under hypnosis, he recalled that the driver's name was Paul, and that after the fleeing man got into the passenger side of the MPD traffic car, the car headed north at top speed. Louie Ward agreed to try to help us locate the dispatcher on duty.

I did manage to locate and depose a former Yellow Cab dispatcher named Prentice Purdy. Under oath in May 1995 Purdy stated that he nearly always worked the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift and that was his schedule on the day of the assassination. He did recall a full-time driver named Paul and said that he believed that he almost exclusively did airport runs. He said that he could not specifically recall ever seeing Paul after April 4, but he did not know if or when he had died. He said he was unable to remember Paul's last name, though he did agree to continue to think about it. I telephoned him a few days later and he still was unable to recall the name but within the week he had left a message on Chastain's answerphone and I called him back. He said Paul's last name was Butler.

Telephone records indicated that a Paul Butler who was a driver for the Yellow Cab company was listed in the 1967 Memphis residential telephone directory. His wife, Betty, continued to be listed in 1968 as his widow. According to social security death listings Paul Butler died in August 1967. He obviously could not have been the driver of car 58 on April 4, 1968. We were back to square one.

The story was consistent with Solomon Jones's observations, but I wondered why Ernestine Campbell or William Ross would not have seen this person. When asked, Ernestine said that at that time she had focused her entire attention on the balcony and then on Jesse Jackson's actions at the foot of the stairs. I also recalled that immediately after the shot William Ross had turned and run back to the driveway, so within seconds of the shooting as he stared at the balcony his back would have been to the wall on the opposite side of the street. The fleeing man could well have been missed by Ross though seen by Jones, who had stared at the area of the origin of the shot for a brief while after it was fired.

I recalled the curious photograph shown to Ed Redditt during the course of the investigation by the Justice Department, which showed the evidence bundle on the corner of Mulberry and Huling. The chain of events recounted by Ward might explain why at some time there could have been a plan to drop the incriminating evidence bundle on this street corner which now appeared to be on the actual escape route of the assassin.

* * *

ON THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER 9, I met with Steve Tompkins in his G-10 office in the Tennessee State Capitol Building. He had prepared a chronology of events for me, which I was eager to analyze and discuss. He had printed it out before he left the office the previous night. He looked everywhere but couldn't find it. When he thought about it he remembered placing it on a desk in the office with his secretary's resume on top of a manila legal size folder. Both were gone. He was convinced that his office had been entered and the file taken.

I had recently had a similar experience. On one visit to Birmingham my address/appointment book had disappeared. I had come to make it a habit to carry with me at all times the most sensitive working files. After completing a number of telephone calls I left the room, taking the file bag with me, but leaving the address book behind, lying on the unmade bed.

When I returned I needed a phone number and looked for the book. It was nowhere to be found.

I located the housekeeper who had, in my absence, cleaned the room and made the bed. She remembered seeing the book and moving it before changing the sheets. She returned to the room with me and showed me the end table against the wall where she had placed the book on top of a sweater which I had also left lying on the bed. The sweater was there exactly where she had placed it, but the book was missing. She and I looked behind and under the table and the bed and all over the room. It remained missing and has never turned up.

Reluctantly, I had to conclude that it had been surreptitiously removed. For some time I had followed the practice of registering in an assumed name. On this occasion, since I was only in Birmingham for one night and only a couple of people knew I was in the city and no one knew where I was staying, I had not taken this precaution. Even though the book contained little relevant or indispensable information, and my writing was often illegible anyway, it was an ominous indication that a closer look was being taken at my activity.

In addition, one day later a Memphis friend who was holding material from a source for me, told me that the "eyes only" file was missing. These incidents were worrying. Steve Tompkins was concerned but could do nothing except print out another copy. Security would now have to be a more important concern than ever before.

***
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN

Postby admin » Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:40 am

Part 2 of 2

JUST BEFORE THE COURTS CLOSED for Christmas, attorney Garrison filed a motion in the civil suit on behalf of defendant Jowers asking for the right to test the rifle in evidence. His rationale was that if in fact this was the murder weapon, then he could have no liability since it was the rifle purchased by James. Since we had been trying to have the weapon tested for some time, we did not object. The court said it would consider the motion but at the time of this book going to press no ruling had been made.

***

SOME MONTHS BEFORE, Richard Bakst, a Maryland taxi cab driver, had told me about one of his passengers who claimed he knew a Memphis policeman who was on duty in the area of the Lorraine Motel on the day of the killing. The passenger had said that the officer, who was a family friend, had seen, just after the shooting, a man running in the brush area toward South Main Street. He was carrying a rifle. When, shortly afterward, the officer told his superior on the scene about the incident, he was told to forget about it, because they already knew who did it. Bakst had consistently refused to name his passenger, who he said did not want to discuss the matter further.

On December 17, Bakst finally disclosed the identity of his passenger, Michael. Eventually I spoke with Michael and he agreed to talk to the former MPD officer. In 1968, the policeman was a motorcycle officer and was, Michael believed, assigned to Dr. King's escort unit. Michael basically confirmed Bakst's account, including the order from a superior officer to say nothing about seeing a man with a rifle in the bushes. According to Michael, the policeman was willing to talk to me. I left Chastain's phone number and my own but again as this book goes to press we have not heard from him.

* * *

JIM KELLUM, WHO HAD WORKED with the MPD intelligence bureau, confirmed to me for the first time on December 20, 1994, that he had learned that Reverend Billy Kyles had been an informant during 1967-1968. His source, who had been an administrative aide and secretary in the intelligence bureau, confirmed to me that Kyles had indeed supplied them with information on a regular basis but was unclear as to the precise dates of this service and appeared too nervous about going into detail.

***

I NEXT RETURNED TO THE STORY about a rifle having been stored, for a time, in the premises of another Liberto family member's business where Ezell Smith had worked. We finally learned that Ezell had died. One of his friends (who was also a friend of John McFerren) was O. D. Hester, whose street name was "Slim." Slim now lived in Illinois, outside of Chicago. John McFerren called him. Slim said he knew all about the rifle kept in this building. "Tango," who ran a store in the produce-market area, disclosed to John McFerren that he also knew all about the gun being kept in the Liberto business premises. When I met with Tango late one evening in February 1995, he told me that a man named Columbus Jones had told him about a rifle being carried to those premises around the time of the killing, although he did not know any details about the weapon. Jones said his source was Ezell. He said that it was rumored that this was the gun that had killed Martin Luther King. Columbus Jones died in early 1995 before I could speak to him. I did speak with Slim. Ezell had told him that the murder weapon was kept and assembled at the Liberto premises where he worked. He promised to speak with another man who had worked for that business to try to obtain details about the rifle, but he was unable to locate him.

***

ON SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 1995, attorney Lewis Garrison, with Loyd Jowers present, began to depose James in a small conference room at the Riverbend Penitentiary. The deposition continued until noon the following day. Throughout the session Jowers listened intently as James gave the usual answers to the questions he had heard a thousand times before. As he left the prison that Sunday afternoon for what was described as a 500 mile drive to his current home, Loyd Jowers seemed to be more amenable than ever before to revealing details which I believed would ultimately establish James's innocence.

Jowers agreed to answer some questions about the killing through his lawyer. There would be no recordings of his statement and the attorney Lewis Garrison would take the follow-up questions to him for his response. On March 14, 1995, the process began in Garrison's 400 North Main Street office. While he provided some new details of the conspiracy, much of what he said confirmed information obtained previously from Betty Spates, Betty's sister Bobbi Smith, and taxi driver James McCraw.

At the outset Garrison stressed that the Holt story did not originate with Jowers. He was uncertain whose brainstorm it was, but believed it originated with Willie Akins and Ken Herman. Though he emphasized that it was not concocted by Jowers he had to acknowledge that his client did go along with it for awhile.

Jowers contended that in March 1968 he was first approached by a local businessman who dealt in securities and bonds and whom he had come to know from his gambling activity with Frank Liberto.

This man told him that because of the location of Jim's Grill he was going to be asked to provide certain assistance in the carrying out of a contract to assassinate Martin Luther King. In exchange for this assistance he would be paid handsomely.

On March 15, soon after this conversation, Jowers was approached by produce man Frank C. Liberto to whom he owed a very large gambling debt. This debt would be forgiven, Liberto told him, and he would receive a large amount of money if he would provide the assistance initially mentioned by the messenger. Specifically Liberto said:

1. $100,000 would be delivered to him in cash in the bottom of an M. E. Carter vegetable produce box. The money came from New Orleans, as did the contract on King's life.
2. He would be visited by a man who would bring the murder weapon -- a rifle -- and leave it with him for pickup at the right time.
3. There would be a patsy or decoy to distract attention.
4. The police -- some of whom were involved -- would be no where in sight.


Jowers agreed. As Liberto said, a man did come to see him. In fact he met with this man on two occasions before April 4. Jowers thought that he introduced himself as "Raul" or "Royal." Jowers said he appeared to have a Latin/Indian appearance. He was about 5'9" in height and weighed approximately 145-155 pounds. He had dark hair and appeared to be between thirty-five and forty years old. (This description matched that provided by Cheryl and James.)

They discussed the plans for the killing. Raul told Jowers that his role would be to receive and hold the murder weapon on the day of the killing until Raul picked it up. After the shooting Jowers would have to take charge of it again and keep it concealed until Raul came to take it away. Jowers was also expected to keep his staff out of the way at all times. He confirmed Bobbi's story that he instructed her not to follow her usual practice of taking food to Grace Walden.

On the morning of April 4, sometime around 11:00 a.m. after the rush was over, Raul, according to plan, came into Jim's Grill, bringing with him a rifle concealed in a box which he turned over to Jowers to hold. Jowers said that Raul told him that he would be back later that afternoon to pick it up. Jowers put the gun under the counter and carried on with his work. He next admitted that he took his nap in the back room sometime around or after 1:00 p.m. when the lunch crowd had gone. He woke and began to work again around 4:00 p.m. Sometime later, Raul returned briefly and took the gun from him and went back into the kitchen area with it. Jowers claimed to be uncertain as to whether he remained in the rear of the grill, or went upstairs by the back stairway. (According to James's recollections, Raul was upstairs off and on during the afternoon. It therefore seems more likely that Raul took the gun upstairs to room 5-B and concealed it there).

Jowers said that sometime before 6:00 p.m. he went out into the brush where he joined another person.

He did not provide any more details except to admit that immediately after the shot he picked up the rifle which had been placed on the ground and carried it on the run in through the back door of Jim's Grill. As he ran into the back of the grill he was confronted by Betty who, as she had said, stood near him as he broke the gun down, wrapped it in a cloth and quickly put it under the counter in the grill itself. Jowers finally confirmed that her recollection of the events was basically correct.

He also admitted that the next morning between 10 and 11 a.m. he showed the rifle, which was in a box under the counter, to taxi driver James McCraw, thus confirming McCraw's recollection. Sometime later that morning but before noon, Raul reappeared in the grill, picked up the gun and took it away. He said he never saw the rifle again and had no idea where it was taken or where it is today. (When McCraw was deposed in mid June 1995 Jowers in front of Chastain and Garrison explicitly threatened McCraw just prior to the deposition beginning. He said to McCraw, who was rising to greet him, something like, "You'd better stand up while you can, 'cause if you continue to run your mouth, you won't be able to stand up again.")

The version of events just laid out was completely at odds with the answers Jowers gave in his deposition. Though his most recent statements were consistent with information and accounts of other less self-interested persons it had to be borne in mind that Jowers was aware of many of the other statements.

***

ON APRIL 15, 1995, THE United States Attorney General's office finally replied to my earlier letter requesting a federal grand jury. Basically, the letter said that the federal government could do nothing and that it was well known that a state investigation was in process and a post conviction relief petition pending. I was urged to provide my evidence to the state authorities. I really expected nothing else from the administration which had just taken former Tennessee Governor Ned McWerter to Washington as a special consultant to the president.

On May 8, 1995, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied our application for Extraordinary Appeal. The Court of Criminal Appeals's injunction remained in effect, prohibiting trial court judge Joe Brown from issuing any order concerning evidence before his court. The judge was also ordered to issue a final order on our petition. The action of the appellate courts appeared to me to be an unprecedented draconian stripping away of a trial court's authority. Because the judge's decision to allow the petitioner an opportunity to put on (proffer) evidence had been reversed by the appellate courts, it was generally assumed that the judge would now have no alternative but to dismiss the petition. I believed that the judge could still order an evidentiary hearing or even a trial. I planned to request a hearing so that full oral argument could take place.

***

ON THURSDAY JUNE 1, 1995, a former client of Lewis Garrison whom I will call "Chuck" walked into Garrison's law offices in Memphis. Some years ago Chuck had injured his leg while working and Garrison had obtained disability benefits for him. He was looking for some additional legal assistance on this matter. In the course of their meeting the subject of the King assassination came up, apparently prompted by a telephone call to Garrison from Loyd Jowers. Chuck told Garrison about something he observed related to the killing. Garrison urged Chuck to talk to me. He was very afraid. Garrison and Chuck's common-law wife told me that a number of people had told him that he would be killed if he told what he saw. Eventually, under threat of subpoena, he called me and we spoke for nearly an hour.

He said that in 1968 he was six years old. On April 4 of that year he rode from Tunica, Mississippi, to Memphis with his father who made the journey in order to meet with Dr. King. He did not know why his father was meeting with Dr. King on that day but remembers being excited about the trip. Chuck, now about thirty-five years old, said at that time his hair was in plaits, which were cut off soon after that day. His father drove up to Memphis, eventually reaching Mulberry Street and going south toward the Lorraine. He parked opposite but just south of room 306 in the shade of the trees and bushes just above and behind the wall. (I realized that at that time in the afternoon the sun would have been in the west behind the brush and trees on the wall which would have provided shade in the spot he described). Chuck said his father told him to wait in the car. He said his father went onto the motel property through a southern entrance near the corner of Butler and Mulberry and ascended the southernmost staircase leading to the balcony. He walked north along the balcony to Dr. King's room 306. Chuck said that after he saw his father enter the room he lay down on the front seat and took a nap. He believed that it was around 4 p.m. He didn't know how long he slept. When he woke up he sat up on the open window frame of the front passenger door and with a child's curiosity began to look all around. In a short while his attention was drawn to a man in the brush and trees area above the wall about five or six feet in front (south) of him. He said the man stood looking directly across at the motel. He was a few feet back from the edge of the wall and partially obscured by the trees and bushes. He was of medium build, had dark hair and a black moustache and appeared to be Arab or Mexican. He was dressed in khaki trousers and a short-sleeved shirt and wore an army officer's style (Garrison) peaked hat. Holding a rifle close in up against his stomach, he stood there for a while looking across at the Lorraine and then disappeared, going back into the bushes and trees. Chuck thought that he was hunting birds. He came from a rural area and was used to seeing people with rifles hunting birds or rabbits, so this did not seem unusual to him. Chuck thought that a long time passed before the man reappeared. He thought it must have been about an hour, but it is obviously difficult for him twenty-seven years later to assess his sense of time when he was six years old.

He recalled seeing a photographer/reporter walk down Mulberry Street from Butler. The reporter looked at him as he walked right past him. He urged me to find this reporter who he thought would at least be able to establish his presence. I was unable to do so.

At one point he saw his daddy leave Dr. King's room and begin to walk toward the same southernmost stairway at the far end of the balcony he had climbed earlier. He also saw Dr. King come out onto the balcony and stand at the railing just at this time the man reappeared, clearly visible just a few feet back from the wall, though partially obscured by the bushes. Chuck's attention was drawn at this time because at that moment birds flew up from the trees, apparently disturbed by the man. The man raised the rifle and took aim and as he did so Chuck said even today he can vividly recall his fear that the man (who he thought was going to shoot at a bird) might hit his daddy because he was pointing his gun in the direction of the Lorraine balcony. The man seemed to take his time. He was facing Chuck who was staring at him from a sloping distance of about twelve to fifteen feet. The man's right hand held the stock of the gun and his left-hand trigger finger was on the rifle trigger. He fired and Chuck saw two puffs of smoke come from the barrel of the gun and linger even after the man was gone. Strangely, Chuck did not recall hearing the shot. The man moved instantly back into the bushes and disappeared.

Chuck said that he lost sight of the man but then no more than two to three minutes later, he saw the man run up to a white car parked on the far (south) side of Butler Street, opposite the fire station. (To get there, if the alleged shooter was in front of the fence he would have had to either run along the wall under cover of the bushes, jump down at the back of the fire station and continue running north to Butler, or scale the fence at its lowest point in the corner at the rear of Canipe's, cut through the parking lot and round the front of the fire station to Butler. If he was behind the fence he would already be in the parking lot and follow the latter route. Either route would have put him and the rifle he carried in clear view of any passers-by for a period of time. Chuck specifically stated he did not see him running along Mulberry Street.) Chuck said that having reached the car the man opened the driver's side front door and threw the rifle across into the passenger's side of the front seat, then jumped in and drove away heading east on Butler. Glancing behind him he said he saw a white man with a white tee shirt and a big belly standing in the brush area some distance in front of Jim's Grill. About this time his father, who was running, bent over up Mulberry Street, reached the car and got in, yelling at Chuck to get down on the floor of the car, which he did. His father drove away at high speed.

Chuck raised the fact that in the famous Joseph Louw photograph showing people on the balcony pointing in the direction of the shot, one person, the young woman Mary Hunt, though pointing straight ahead was looking off to the left -- in the direction of Butler Street and the white car. I had tried many years earlier to find Mary Hunt but was unable to do so and eventually learned that she had died of cancer. In any event, since the photograph was not shot immediately after Dr. King was hit, it was likely that the man would have already departed the scene.

Chuck said that he had told Reverend Kyles about what he saw and Kyles advised him to keep his silence. Kyles told him that the government had Dr. King killed and the elimination of one more black man wouldn't be a problem for them. Chuck said that a number of people had told him to say nothing if he wanted to remain alive. His daddy had him tell what he saw to several people. Because his father believed that the boy's life was in danger as a result of his observations, those told were sworn to secrecy. One of those he said he told very many years ago was Ralph Abernathy. If this was true, I wondered why Abernathy had never mentioned or even hinted at the story to me.

Chuck was very apprehensive about being seen with me but he consented to go with me to the scene. We parked in what he thought was the exact spot on Mulberry Street where his father had parked. Dr. King's room would have been slightly behind him or north of where he would have been sitting in the front seat (see chart 6). From this position he would have been able to see a car parked in the spot where he said he saw the white car.

Image
CHART 6: THE SCENE OF THE ASSASSINATION

It was obvious to me that in 1995, twenty-seven years later, Chuck was somewhat disoriented with respect to the physical scene. He thought that there was a second driveway into the Lorraine off Mulberry Street. There wasn't, although there was an entrance from Butler near the southern stairway. More importantly, he didn't initially appreciate the fact that the fire station backed right down onto Mulberry Street, neither did he realize how large it was. On the Mulberry Street side the parking lot was closed in by a tall chain-link fence which was set back a short distance (around four feet) from the wall. Though the fence was mostly covered by brush and weeds it was bare and clearly visible near the north corner bordering the rooming house rear yard. Chuck said that he never noticed the fence and that the man he saw simply went back into the brush away from the wall.

I recalled that the area where Reverend James Orange had always insisted that he saw the smoke appeared to be very close to the spot where Chuck said he had seen the shooter. I had always assumed that Orange had been mistaken and that he must have meant the bushes behind Jim's Grill and the north wing of the rooming house, because the trajectory of the bullet and observations of other witnesses pointed to the shot having been fired from further north. I couldn't conceive how a shot fired from a point that far south, which would have been to his left, could have struck Dr. King in the right cheek, exited below the right jawbone and reentered the right side of his neck. For this to happen he would have had to turn considerably to his left just before being hit and there is no eyewitness indication of this.

I was also unable to find anyone who remembered seeing Chuck's father's car parked on the west side of Mulberry.

When I interviewed Carthel Weeden, who was in charge of fire station 2 in 1968, he said that immediately after the shooting he ran across to the Lorraine and helped Benny Thornton put Dr. King on the stretcher for transportation to the hospital. At one point he was confronted by a hysterical, somewhat heavy-set black woman dressed in black. He learned that her name was Catherine. She was screaming that, "he was shot in a white car." Weeden thought she meant that the shot came from below from a passing white car. I thought this must have been the young woman referred to in a note in 1968 defense co-counsel Hugh Stanton's file, who was identified as a LeMoyne college student and described as screaming at the police to go after a man she saw getting away. As discussed earlier, I had tried unsuccessfully to locate her. It was possible that she meant that the shooter was leaving in a white car.

I had never heard any report about Chuck's father participating in any meeting with Dr. King on that day. For at least some of the time that Chuck said his father was meeting with Dr. King there was an SCLC executive staff meeting in progress. Reverend Hosea Williams did not recall any outsiders being present during the meeting but believed that some people from Mississippi had been called to Memphis. Reverend Lawson was not at the meeting but said that people often drove long distances to see Dr. King about any number of things. Such a visit would not have been unusual at that time since the southern leg of the Poor People's march was starting in Mississippi. I spoke with some black leaders in Tunica who knew Chuck's family. No one said that they had heard about his father ever meeting with Dr. King. One community leader even said that the family left the area in the early 1960s, moving to Memphis. One of Chuck's brothers, who was three years older than Chuck, said that they were tenant farmers in Tunica in 1968 but that it was very unlikely that his father would leave the farm to go to Memphis in April. He said that he certainly did not remember it happening.

Chuck's elderly mother, on the other hand, did recall her husband saying that he had met with Dr. King. She said he mentioned it more than once but she was not certain when the meeting or meetings took place. She also vaguely remembered hearing about something that Chuck saw that was kept secret, but she could not, or would not, recall any details. She did say that during this time she was ill and away from the family and she believed that her husband and the younger children did live in Memphis for a while. She also remembered that six-year-old Chuck did have plaited hair for a while.

I discussed these conversations with Chuck on Sunday, July 2. He told me that he had gone to a funeral the day before at which his brother and one or more of the community leaders with whom I had spoken told him that if he continued to talk he would get himself killed. Chuck had the impression that their concern was centered round secrets other than the King assassination that he might have heard when he was around his father. They also invited him to join the local Masonic lodge where previously he had been excluded from membership. His brother pressed him to join. As a "brother" in the lodge he would be bound to secrecy.

When I spoke with Chuck's common-law wife she confirmed that Chuck had told her this story many years ago. She had known him since about 1979 and she believed that he first unburdened himself about what he saw in 1987 or 1988. She also said that at the time of the television trial she went with Chuck to visit his family and during that visit he brought up the experience. The family members did not want it raised and advised Chuck for his own good to keep quiet. She had always found Chuck to be truthful. Whatever his faults, lying was not one of them. His attorney, Lewis Garrison, basically confirmed his reliability but noted that he had had a minor drug problem and had recently served a short jail term.

Chuck seemed sincere but corroboration was virtually nonexistent and his story implausible. On the face of it, the degree of specificity seemed impressive but even if he was telling the truth he could easily have been mistaken as to the details, particularly since he was only six years old at the time. He had no apparent reason to lie but it was possible that the entire story was a fabrication. In light of all the available conflicting information, and absent additional corroboration, I had to discount Chuck's story.

***

By MAY 1995 THE INVESTIGATION in Houston had not borne fruit. In the interim Garrison said he had been told by Herman that the man they believed to be Raul who they were looking at lived in Detroit, was using the name Diablo, and was in the import/ export business specializing in a particular product. A search of those businesses led nowhere and I assumed that Herman was putting out disinformation. Too, James had told me that Herman and Saltman had shown him an old photograph which he said was the same picture he had seen in 1979 and which he had recognized as being of Raul. He could not however recognize a 1994 photograph they showed him of a man they claimed was the same person.

At the time of Loyd Jowers's deposition on November 2, 1994, Garrison showed Jowers the 1994 photograph which was provided to him by Herman and returned to him. Jowers said that he could not make a positive identification. Garrison also showed me the photograph which was of a relatively slim man dressed in a blue jacket, white shirt and tie, with graying brown hair.

Sometime later attorney Garrison informed me that Jowers was later shown the earlier photograph of the man alleged to be the younger Raul Pereira and he tentatively said that he was the man named "Raul" or "Royal" who he knew was involved with the crime.

Cheryl told me that she too had been shown the more recent photograph. At first she said she couldn't be certain because the greying hair confused her. She likened it to someone wearing a wig. Subsequently, she told me that the similarity of the facial structure convinced her that it was the Raul Pereira she knew.

I decided to go to Houston myself with Cheryl and Bob. We retraced Cheryl's movements from the time she first moved to Houston at age fourteen. A Waffle House restaurant now stood on the spot where the gas station had been located. We spent time in the area of the docks and Navigation Avenue observing an old house which was one of the places where she said Raul stayed during the time she saw him in Houston. We also drove past the house rented by Torrino where Cheryl said Raul allegedly admitted the killing and she was raped. It was now painted a grayish blue color (see photograph #26). The places Raul Pereira used in Houston appeared to be temporary accommodations. I had the impression that he might have had a permanent base elsewhere. Cheryl and Bob were nervous being in the obviously rough and hostile area, where strangers, particularly those with cameras, were regarded as the enemy and often subjected to drive-by shootings. The scene, they said, was very much as it was back then, incredibly poor and dilapidated. The Alabama Theatre was now a bookstore but Cheryl was able to point out Ross Vallone's old office where he held court, always seated in a recliner chair.

Bob tried to talk to some of the people who had been around during the 1960s and 1970s. The few he located were reluctant to talk, with the exception of one person who did talk and even gave him a photograph of Amaro which he gave to me.

Before parting company Cheryl executed an affidavit which set out her story in detail and said that she knew James Earl Ray was innocent and that she was prepared to testify in court on his behalf and tell what she knew.

Upon my return to England, a Houston area lawyer confirmed in a lengthy telephone conversation that Percy Foreman had become in the 1960s and 1970s the foremost lawyer for organized crime figures. Former mob lawyer Frank Ragano, who had represented Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante, had previously told me about Foreman's role as a lawyer for prominent mob figures. (He also revealed their extensive dissatisfaction with his services.)

I heard a rumor that the man I was looking for lived in the Northeast. I began a computerized state-by-state, name and residence check and cross-referenced search, using the name of Raul Pereira provided by Cheryl. It was a long shot that the man might be using his real name but there was always a chance. A small number of people named Raul Pereira surfaced. I instituted credit and other checks on these persons. By a process of elimination based primarily on age, ethnic origin (I had decided to focus only on white male immigrants between fifty-five and sixty-eight years of age with Portuguese or Brazilian origins), the list gradually reduced. The search was completed in early June and one person remained who satisfied the basic criteria. He appeared to be a relatively successful businessman, nearly sixty-one years old. He jointly owned his home, which was in a middle to upper middle class neighborhood in a city in the Northeast, with his wife. He had two grown children, one a twenty-five-year-old daughter and a son who appeared to be thirty-three. I then did a yellow pages search of import/export companies specializing in a particular product in that man's county. One possibility came up. When I called the business number an answer machine referred me to the home telephone number of the man I was focusing on.

I turned my attention to gathering more information about his personal life as well as his business. He owned another property on the same street where his import/ export business was located in one of the city's poorest areas. He was reportedly a member of the local Portuguese American society and had no criminal record. From immigration records I learned that he had entered the United States from Portugal through New York City. His social security number had been issued in New York between 1961 and 1963 and he first appeared in his city telephone directory in 1965. (I recalled that Cheryl had said she first met this man she knew as Raul Pereira in Houston in 1962.) If this was James's Raul then for at least twenty years he had clearly led a double life.

A letter arrived from James in which he said that he had received a letter from Saltman stating that he and Herman had confronted Raul. He had apparently been hostile, taken photographs of them, and had his Spanish-speaking wife ask them to leave.

I wanted to obtain a current photograph of the Raul Pereira I was looking at in order to show it to Cheryl and also to determine whether this was the same man whom Herman and Saltman were considering, whose photograph I had seen at Jowers's deposition. So, in June 1995 I instructed a surveillance team to take photographs of him. When the photographs arrived at my office in London, I anxiously opened the courier pack. I was virtually certain it was the same man whose photograph I saw at the time of Jowers's deposition. The man I had begun to focus on earlier that spring clearly appeared to be the same person Herman and Saltman were looking at.

I decided to call Herman. He put Saltman on and they confirmed the visit and the hostile reception. Raul would not come to the door. His daughter spoke to them, lying in response to even the most simple and apparently nonthreatening questions. Giving no indication of where the man was or the man's identity, they both assured me that the man that they had found was Cheryl's Raul. When I expressed skepticism designed to draw out information, they jointly confirmed to me that the birth date and social security number of the man in the older photograph were identical to the birth date and the social security number of the man they had recently visited and who was the man in the more recent photographs. Herman later said that a C.I.A. contact of his told him that there was an active C.I.A. file on this person. The file reportedly indicated that Raul had worked for the Portuguese Government's national munitions company with some coordinating responsibility for weapons sales and distribution between October 1957 and December 1961.

Immediately thereafter I spoke with Cheryl. She told me that prior to Herman and Saltman's visit to Raul, they arranged for her to participate in a telephone conversation which was put through to Raul Pereira's home. She believed various members of his family, including himself, his wife, his daughter and son-in-law, were on various extensions and participated at different times. Cheryl said when Raul came on the phone she knew it was the Raul Pereira she had known in Houston, because of the way he pronounced her name. He never could pronounce it correctly. Despite what became hysterical denials of knowing her and ever being in Houston, she said she had no doubt this was the man.

It was obvious that Raul Pereira had been well and truly alerted and I was concerned that he might flee. This, of course, would allow the state to continue to contend that he was not the right man and that James's Raul never existed. In addition, since Herman and Saltman said they did not have enough to satisfy their television producers I was apprehensive about what further action they might take which could induce him to flee.

There therefore appeared to be little choice but to promptly join Raul Pereira as a party in the civil action against Jowers. We prepared a summons to go along with the original complaint in which he had been named, and a notice of deposition. The complaint against Raul alleged that:

1. He entered into a conspiracy with others to kill Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2. In furtherance of his participation in this conspiracy he instructed, controlled, and orchestrated the movements of James Earl Ray in such manner as to arrange for a rifle with Ray's fingerprints on it to be found near the scene of the crime and for Ray to be charged with said crime.
3. In collusion with other codefendants he participated in pro- viding and taking away a second rifle which may have been the actual murder weapon.


There was, however, always the possibility that he was not the right man and we had to acknowledge it. A mistake could greatly destroy our credibility, yet inaction could lose for us one of the most, if not the most, significant on- the-scene player whose very existence had been denied by the MPD, the FBI, and the HSCA.

I decided upon a middle ground. At the time he was being served he would be handed a letter informing him that if he was not the man we sought and was willing to talk to us and confirm the fact that we were in error, then we would withdraw the action against him. In the meantime we would request an order from the court sealing the file so that the fact that a summons and complaint and a notice of deposition had been issued and served upon him would not be made public.

Accordingly, Chastain and Garrison went into the judge's chambers on Friday, June 23, and secured an order sealing the file until further order of the court.

Around this time private investigator Bob Cruz told me that a source of his inside the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had informed him that Raul Pereira had come into the United States on December 11, 1961. His source also said that Raul's INS file had been transferred in October 1994 to Memphis, Tennessee. He commented that there was no apparent reason for sending the file to Memphis and that the file would only be transferred at the request of another federal agency.

With time of the essence, I arranged a meeting with Cheryl and Bob in Memphis on the weekend of June 24. I showed Cheryl the photographs I had obtained of Raul Pereira. I was virtually certain that they were of the same man Herman and Saltman had photographed but she would not confirm that this was the Raul she knew. She did say once again that the man she talked to on the telephone call was the Raul she knew, and stated that the phone call was actually made from her home. This meant that the number would have been on a recent month's bill. She and Bob promised to give us the number so that we could compare it with the number we had for the Raul Pereira we had located.

Cheryl executed an affidavit in which she stated she recognized Raul from a 1960s photograph and also recognized the facial features of the man in a 1994 photograph she had been shown by Ken Herman. She further stated that she participated in a telephone conversation with Raul Pereira and that she was positive that this was the Raul she knew in Houston because of his inability to correctly pronounce her name, and that based upon her identification she understood we were preparing to bring him into the lawsuit against Loyd Jowers and others.

The following Sunday evening I called for the phone number but Bob said he could not find the bill.

On Monday at 7:45 a.m. we met Bob Cruz, who had organized the surveillance detail. He reported that the mother and daughter had already gone out, apparently leaving Raul at home alone. Before approving the final arrangements for service I needed to be absolutely certain that this was the same man being looked at by Saltman and Herman. I decided to call Raul myself and talk to him on the telephone. I did so and adopted a sympathetic tone, saying that I believed that he may have been harassed unjustly and I wanted him to know that though these people had once been associated with me as a lawyer in the case they were no longer working with me and were off on their own. He ponderously took down Chastain's and my details. He spoke with a fairly heavy accent and did not appear to be flustered. It was difficult to tell how much, if any, of Raul Pereira's language problem was feigned. (The surveillance team had told me that he demonstrated a high degree of street smarts when they tried to tail him. They said he knew exactly which moves to make to shake them off.) He seemed puzzled that I knew about his "problem" and confirmed that he had been bothered by some people and that this was upsetting him and his family. He expressed surprise that things thirty years old were being raised now and denied ever being in Houston. I asked him to meet with Chastain and me privately in order to try to clear up any question of his involvement and he asked me to call him back that evening after 7 p.m. when he would have had a chance to talk to his "kids" and his wife. I agreed and we held off any attempt at service that day. At 7:15 p.m. his daughter answered and said, in effect, that her father did not have to prove anything and his word denying any knowledge of the events would be good enough. She confirmed that a man named Saltman had appeared at their front door wanting to question her father and she said that she told him that if he published or released any information about her father they would sue him.

My impression was that she was well trained and intelligent Mr. Pereira knew what he was doing by putting her forward. Toward the end of the conversation she said that they might ask their lawyer about talking to me, though she would not give me his name. At that point I concluded that we would have to serve Raul Pereira.

I left the papers with P. I. Cruz to formally serve.

The man I have called Raul Pereira was served on July 5 and made a party defendant in the Ray v. Jowers et at. lawsuit.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN

Postby admin » Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:42 am

Part 1 of 2

Chapter 30: Orders to Kill

OVER A PERIOD OF TWENTY-FOUR months from June, 1993, while all of the other investigative activity was proceeding, information was obtained from a number of sources inside the army. These sources included the two former Special Forces members living in Latin America, whom I have called Warren and Murphy, who answered questions I put to them through Steve Tompkins. Their responses and some corresponding documentation (supplied by Warren) revealed not only the extent of their covert activity in various parts of the U.S. in 1967-68 but also detailed their involvement in the events surrounding Dr. King's assassination.

First hinted at by the Memphis Commercial Appeal in 1993, the role of the army and the other cooperating government agencies in the assassination of Dr. King has been one of our nation's deepest, darkest secrets. I have only been able to uncover it by piecing together the accounts of Warren and Murphy with those of other participants and persons who were in strategic positions with access to information, and analyzing relevant army intelligence documents, files and other official records which have never been made public. Wherever possible I have used independent corroboration. I have adopted the policy of not disclosing the names of the most sensitive team members who are still living, but I have named those who are dead in the belief that historical truth requires no less.

***

BEFORE SETTING OUT THE DETAILS, however, I believe that it will be useful to layout the organizational structure which drove the events.

During the 1960s a highly secret federal organizational structure, with army intelligence in the forefront, carried out officially approved tasks which ranged from conventional intelligence activity -- "eye-to-eye" surveillance and information gathering and analysis -- to blatantly illegal covert operations. I have been surprised to discover the degree of official cooperation that existed during the time between what have often been publicly portrayed as exclusively competing agencies and officials.

***

Military Organization

In October 1961 Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, with a view to eventually consolidating all intelligence functions of the individual armed services under one joint service organization, established the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). By 1965, however, the DIA had only taken over the U.S. Army's Strategic Intelligence School and the administration of the military attache system. The individual armed services, particularly the army, strove to retain their own intelligence apparatus. The army established its own intelligence and security branch on July 1, 1962. Following the Oxford, Mississippi, racial riots of 1963 when the 101st Airborne was deployed, Major General Creighton v. Abrams, the on-scene commander, wrote a highly critical assessment of the state and performance of army intelligence at Oxford. In part he stated:

"We in the Army should launch a major intelligence project, without delay, to identify personalities, both black and white, and develop analyses of the various civil rights situations in which they become involved."


His report received serious attention that resulted in the army intelligence machine that was in place in 1967-68. The intelligence and security branch was a group of professional intelligence officers who were fulfilling the role of the Military Intelligence Division created by its World War I chief lieutenant Colonel Ralph Van Deman. Van Deman, the father of army intelligence, began sixty years earlier to work closely with city police departments. In 1967 it was renamed the Military Intelligence Branch, and it formed part of the U .S. Army Intelligence Command (USAINTC) based at Fort Holabird, Maryland. Fort Holabird is a ninety-six-acre military compound where by 1968 in a huge steel two-story room, one city block in length, was housed the Investigative Records Repository (IRR). The IRR then contained more than seven million brownjacketed dossiers on American citizens and organizations, including subversive files on individuals who -- according to army intelligence -- were "persons considered to constitute a threat to the security and defense of the United States." There were files on the entire King family in the IRR.

At that time USAINTC took over control of seven of the eight existing counterintelligence or U.S. army military intelligence groups (MIGs) in the Continental United States (CONUS) and Germany (the 66th MIG). The eighth MIG -- the 902nd -- was under the command of the army's Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) who from December 1966 until July 1968 was Major General William P. Yarborough. He had run the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, between 1961 and 1965 and was the founder of those units known as the Green Berets. By 1967 the MIGs employed 798 army officers, 1,573 enlisted men, and 1,532 civilians, including sixty-seven black undercover agents. Of this total force, 1,576 were directly involved in domestic intelligence gathering activities, and of these "spies" some 260 were civilians. I was provided with a copy of the ACSI command structure and table of organization as it existed in 1967.

The MIG officers were responsible for "eye-to-eye" surveillance operations, which included audio and visual recording of people and events designated as targets. Dr. King was a target, and throughout the last year of his life he was under the surveillance of one or another MIG team. Thus, in New York he was surveilled by the 108th MIG; in Los Angeles the I15th; Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and the South, the 111th; in Chicago the 113th; in Washington, D.C., the 116th; in Newark, New Jersey, the 109th; and in Germany the 66th which was based in Stuttgart, Germany. I set out in Chart 7 (see Appendix) a map showing the territorial areas and headquarter bases of the MIGs inside the CONUS and in Charts 8, 9, and 10 in the Appendix the USAINTC Table of Organization in 1967, the USAINTC Field Offices and the USAINTC communications network.

Closely related to the USAINTC structure at the time was the separate intelligence office of the army chief of staff commanded by ACSI Yarborough. In addition to his control of the 902nd MIG, he supervised the Counterintelligence Analysis Board (CIAB), both of which were based in Falls Church, Virginia, though the CIAB was also secretly housed in a red brick warehouse at 1430 S. Eads Street in Arlington, Virginia. The CIAB analyzed a wide range of MIG-produced intelligence and forwarded reports usually directly to the ACSI. The 902nd MIG was a highly secretive operation, which I have learned carried out some of the most sensitive assignments.

Intelligence gathering was also done in 1967 (at least from June 12, when formally assigned the task) by the 20th Special Forces Group (20th SFG) headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. As we will see, this function was in addition to the provision by the 20th SFG of small specialized teams for other "behind the fence" (covert) operations. This group was made up of reservists from Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana. The Alabama reservists were part of the third largest state National Guard unit in the country (20,016 members -- surpassed only by New York and California). (From the early 1960s in Southeast Asia the Special Forces (Green Berets) began to be used for specialized intelligence-gathering functions in addition to their covert mission activity.)

The Klan had a special arrangement with the 20th SFG. The 20th SFG actually trained klansmen in the use of firearms and other military skills at a secret camp near Cullman, Alabama, in return for intelligence on local black leaders. The earliest of such training exercises began on November 12, 1966. Some members of the 20th SFG also used these sessions for illegal weapons sales.

The U.S. Strike Command (CINCSTRIKE) was the overall coordinating command (which could call upon all military forces on U.S. soil) for the purpose of responding to urban riots in 1967-1968. At that time it included liaison officers from the CIA, FBI, and other nonmilitary state and federal agencies. It was headquartered at MacDill air force base in Tampa, Florida, and the ACSI and USAINTC commanders were primary leaders in developing CINCSTRIKE strategy for the mobilization of forces as required for defensive action inside CONUS.

The United States Army Security Agency (ASA) headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, which in 1964 became a major command field operating agency under the control of the army chief of Staff, carried out all "non eye-to- eye" or ELINT (electronic intelligence surveillance). The ASA employed expert wiretappers, eavesdroppers, and safecrackers. The surveillance included wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping such as that carried out against Dr. King on March 18 and March 28, 1967, when he stayed at the Rivermont Hotel in Memphis (and, as we shall see, on April 3 and 4 at the Lorraine Motel). Thus, the "federal" agents with whom MPD special services/intelligence officer Jim Smith was working on March 18, whom we had initially believed to be FBI agents, were almost certainly ASA agents though probably assigned to work with the 111th MIG. In the field, the members of the ASA were also housed, though always in a distinctly separate working area, with the MIG operations. At Fort McPherson in Atlanta, for example, they were in the same building as the headquarters of the 111th MIG but worked clandestinely and were entirely separated by a floor-to-ceiling chain-link fence.

Finally, in terms of this story, there was the Psychological Operations (Psy Ops) section. This group was primarily used for highly sensitive and technical photographic surveillance and reports. Psy Ops teams were used by MIGs or for other special missions, including those run out of the ACSI's office.

Interagency Structure

Alongside this multifaceted army structure were the National Security Agency (NSA), the CIA, the FBI, and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). The NSA monitored and analyzed all targeted international cable, telephone, telex, teletype, and telefax communications as well as, on occasion, specified, sensitive domestic telecommunications traffic. As discussed earlier (see chapter 11) the CIA, through its clandestine Office of Security and the Domestic Operations Division, carried on extensive domestic operations interfacing on domestic activity (as did each of the army operating commands) with the FBI and ONI. These operations were carried out on a project-by-project basis, usually through specially created SOGs (Special Operations Groups). The interagency umbrella or coordinating intelligence body was the United States Intelligence Board (USIB). Represented on the USIB were the CIA (whose Director Richard Helms was its chairman), the NSA Director, the National Security Adviser to the president, the ACSI, the FBI, the ASA, USAINTC, the DIA and ONI.

This overall military/law enforcement and intelligence agency structure determined and controlled the planning and implementation of the range of military operations in Memphis, including the use of the Tennessee National Guard. Riot control in Memphis was accomplished through the use of the Tennessee National Guard.

The Principal Senior Officials

Mayor General Yarborough took over in December 1966, as ACSI, coming from command of the 66th MIG in Stuttgart, where his primary duty' was to catch communist spies and run agents in East Germany. A limited number of key officers served under him. The commanding officer of USAINTC, the overall army intelligence organization, was Brigadier General William Blakefield, who was not a trained or experienced intelligence officer and who seemed to have been chosen for that position by army chief of staff Harold Johnson precisely because he was an outsider. The impression I have formed is that General Blakefield was uncomfortable with this command area and that he followed the ACSI General Yarborough on most issues.

The director of the CIA at the time was Richard Helms, and J. Edgar Hoover, of course, led the FBI. Though a closely guarded secret, FBI director Hoover seconded a trusted agent, Patrick D. Putnam, to Yarborough's ACSI staff in the Pentagon in order to ensure the closest working relationship. Putnam began this assignment in December 1966 with Yarborough's arrival and continued until his departure in July 1968.

The commanding officer of the 111th MIG (the group which covered all of the Deep South and so was most often engaged in surveilling Martin King) was Colonel Robert McBride.

From 1959 to 1971, the commander of the 20th SFG was Colonel Henry H. Cobb, Jr. (service number 0000514383) of Montgomery, Alabama, who retired as a Major General. His second in command was Major Bert E. Wride (service number 0002267592). The Alabama Army National Guard, which contained the 20th SFG, was per capita the nation' s largest in 1968. Alabama also had the largest number of armories (140) of any state in America. In 1968 the Alabama Guard operated on a $150 million budget.

In 1979, after his retirement, Cobb became Alabama Adjutant General -- the highest ranking member of the Alabama Army National Guard, appointed by Governor Fob James.

The 20th SFG Professionals

Warren and Murphy, the two members of the Special Forces team deployed to Memphis on April 4 who had agreed to discuss the mission, had been active in covert Special Operation Group (SOG) missions in Vietnam. They were hardened, highly skilled veterans; Warren was a sniper. Both were from the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam, and part of a Mobile Strike Force Team involved in cross-border covert operations in 1965-66. They were reassigned in 1967 as reservists to the 20th SFG, with Camp Shelby, Mississippi, as their training base, although they also secretly trained, according to Warren, at Mississippi Senator James Eastland's plantation near Rosedale in Sunflower County. I obtained a copy of the 20th SFG roster of Alabama soldiers around the time and their names appeared.

Other Domestic Missions

Warren and Murphy stated that throughout 1967 they were deployed in 902nd covert operations as members of small specialized "alpha team " units in a number of cities where violence was breaking out. They were issued photographs of black militants in each city they entered, and in some instances particular individuals were designated as targets to be taken out (killed) if an opportunity arose in the course of a disruption or riot. During this time, army intelligence published green and white books ("mug bugs") on black radicals, which contained photographs, family history, political philosophy, personal finances, and updated surveillance information in order to facilitate their identification by army commanders and intelligence personnel.

An example given by Warren was his mission in Los Angeles in February 1968, when there was a major black conference at the L.A. Sports Arena. SNCC leaders Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown were there. The 20th SFG had the arena staked out in case of trouble. Surveillance pictures of a militant black group called the Brown Berets were passed out to the members of the team. The group's borrowing of the Green Beret symbol "pissed all of us off," Warren said. One target was a man named Karenga (Ron Karenga) whose organization's headquarters were down on South Broadway near some strip joints. The 20th SFG had a team across the street waiting for him, but he never showed up. Warren said that on that occasion they also had a secondary mission, which was to do recon. (reconnaissance) of a home up in the western hills near the UCLA campus. The recon was to determine the feasibility for a future "wet insert ops determined" operation ("wet insert ops deter- mined" means that the unit carries out a surreptitious entry at night into the targeted residence, kills everyone there, and leaves without a trace) .He said their recon confirmed the feasibility of such an operation. Warren subsequently learned that the house was used by Senator Robert Kennedy when he was in Los Angeles in 1967-68. (Shortly after the recon Kennedy would declare for the Presidency.)

Warren said that in 1967 he was also similarly deployed on other sensitive operations in:

Tampa, Florida (June 12-15, 1967-riots)
Detroit, Michigan (July 23, 1967-riot)
Washington, D.C. (October, 1967-riot)
Chicago, I11inois (December, 1967-recon)


The Memphis Mission

In successive sessions, Warren, eventually joined by Murphy, set out the details they' personally knew about the Memphis deployment. They were part of an eight-man "Operation Detachment Alpha 184 team." This was a Special Forces field training team in specialized civilian disguise. The unit consisted of: a captain (as CO); a second lieutenant; two staff sergeants; two buck sergeants, and two corporals. (From a source inside the ACSI's office whom I will call "Herbert," I learned that a key aide of the 902nd MIG [whom I will call "Gardner"] had personally selected the team from the roster of the 20th SFG, which was provided at the request of the ACSI's office and sent to him at 6:15 p.m., October 23, 1967, by an AUTOVON dispatch from 20th SFG headquarters in Birmingham [an AUTOVON is a first-generation fax machine, which was state of the art at the time]).

A two-man recon unit of the Alpha 184 recon team consisting, they believed, of the second in command (who I was to learn from Herbert was the now deceased Second Lt. Robert Worley) and one other entered Memphis on February 25 through the Trailways Bus Terminal, completed recon on the downtown hotel area, and mapped egress routes to the north of the city. (It will be remembered that the "hoax" automobile chase took place in the northern section of Memphis and concentrated attention on this area of the city.) The team leader (who I learned from Herbert was Captain Billy R. Eidson -- service number 0002282683), who is also now dead, was apparently given the final orders for the deployment at 7:30 a.m. on March 29, and Warren and Murphy stated that the team was specifically briefed before departing from Camp Shelby for Memphis at 4:30 a.m. on the morning of April 4, 1968.

During the approximately thirty-minute session the team was left in no doubt as to its mission. On the order they were to shoot to kill -- "body mass" (center, chest cavity) -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and, to my surprise, the Reverend Andrew Young, who was to be Warren's target. They were shown "target acquisition photos" of the two men and the Lorraine Motel. Eidson's pep talk stressed how they were enemies of the United States who were determined to bring down the government. Warren said that no one on the team had any hesitancy about killing the two "sacks of shit." Warren and Murphy stated that immediately after the briefing the team left by car from Camp Shelby for Memphis, carrying the following weapons in suitcases: standard .45 caliber firearms, M-16 sniper rifles with 8-power scopes (the closest civilian equivalent would be the Remington 30.06 700 series -- remember that James was instructed to buy a Remington 760); K-bars (military knives); "frags" (fragmentation grenades); and one or two LAWS (light anti-tank weapon rockets). It appeared they were prepared for all contingencies. They were dressed as working "stiffs," similar to those day laborers who worked on the barges or in the warehouses down by the river near President's Island.

Warren remembered having a late breakfast at a Howard Johnson's restaurant when they arrived in the city. Captain Eidson arranged for Warren and Murphy to meet with a senior MPD officer who they believed was attached to the MPD's intelligence bureau and who told them that their presence was essential to save the city from burning down in the riot which Dr. King's forces were preparing. Warren later identified Lieutenant E. H. Arkin from a photograph as being the officer they met. (Arkin was also the MPD's chief liaison with special agent William Lawrence, the local FBI field office's intelligence specialist. When I interviewed Arkin he did not acknowledge any such meeting.)

Sometime after noon Warren and Murphy met their contact down near the railroad tracks. Warren named the man, whom he called a "spook" (army slang for CIA). He said he remembered this person because he closely resembled one of his best friends. The contact took them to the roof of a tall building that dominated that downtown area and loomed over the Lorraine. Their guide provided them with a detailed area-of-operations map, pictures of cars used by the King group, and the Memphis police TAC radio frequencies.

He didn't know the building's name, but I realized that it could only have been the Illinois Central Railroad Building, a structure with eight stories on top of a mezzanine, which lay diagonally southwest of the Lorraine (see photograph #34). Murphy agreed that they were in position by 1:00 p.m. and remained on their rooftop perch for over five hours. In their two-man sniper unit Warren was the shooter and Murphy the "spotter" and radio man. Murphy's job was to relay orders to Warren from the coordinating central radio man as well as to pick out or "spot" the target through binoculars. The central radio man, a corporal, is living in Canada in an intelligence officers protection program. I know his name and service number but have been unable to locate him.

Also during the course of that afternoon Warren had spoken over the radio with an MPD officer whose first name he believed was "Sam" who was the head of the city TAC. (This had to be Sam Evans, head of the MPD tactical units). Warren said that Sam provided details about the physical structure and layout of the Lorraine. He also told Warren that "friendlies were not wearing ties." Warren took this to mean that there was an informant or informants inside the King group.

For the balance of the afternoon, he and Murphy waited. (I learned from other sources inside the 111th MIG that ASA agents monitored the discussions going on in Dr. King's room [306], which was one of three rooms in the Lorraine they had bugged. I learned that the telephones in each of the three rooms were also tapped and that the agents kept a separate folder for the transcripts of the conversations for each room. Presumably these discussions and telephone conversations were being passed on to Captain Eidson through his central radio man. Though I cannot be certain of this, the two civilians parked in the Butler /Mulberry Street area that afternoon who were noticed by Robert Hagerty may well have been ASA agents, since Hagerty also saw them with walkie-talkies. Simi- larly, the man seen loitering near his parked car on Huling Street at the same time by telephone repairman Hasel Huckaby may well have been a member of the 111th MIG team in the area.)

Subsequently, my private investigator Jim Kellum reported that former members of the MPD intelligence bureau, including senior officer Lieutenant Eli Arkin, confirmed to him that all during this time agents of the 111th were in their offices working with them. Arkin later confirmed their presence to me and said that he had requested that they be moved to another office in the central headquarters because they were interfering with the work of his staff. I learned that "Intelligence Emergency Operation Centers" (IEOCs) were set up within a MIG when a crisis was anticipated in that MIG area city. All intelligence information-in and out-was routed through the IEOC and troop deployment communications passed through this operations center as well. From what Lieutenant Arkin told me, it appears that in Memphis, true to the Van Deman tradition, the IEOC was located in the MPD central headquarters, initially in the intelligence bureau office.

Finally, near what Warren termed the "TTH" (top of the hour -- 6.p.m.) the King group emerged from a lengthy meeting.

Warren recognized his target, Andrew Young, and took aim, holding him in his sights. Radio man Murphy waited for the order to fire, which he was expecting Captain Billy Eidson to give and which he was prepared to relay. It didn't come, and as usual in such circumstances the seconds seemed like hours. Warren kept Andy Young in the crosshairs of his scope, and then he said, just after TTH, a shot rang out. It sounded like a military weapon, and Warren assumed that the other sniper unit had jumped the gun and fired too soon because the plan was always for a simultaneous shooting. He said he never knew where the other sniper unit had been placed, but they would also have been above the target and at least 300 yards from it. A less well-trained soldier hearing that shot might have fired, but Warren said he had to have the direct order before he would pull the trigger. Murphy asked for instructions, and there was a long silence. Then Eidson came on and ordered the team to disengage in an orderly fashion and follow the egress routes assigned to them out of South Memphis where they were located. Warren and Murphy packed up and went down the same stairs they had climbed more than five hours earlier. They went across Riverside Drive and down to the river, where a boat was waiting. Eidson joined them and they quickly went some distance downstream to a prearranged point where cars were waiting. Eidson ordered complete silence for the return trip. No one was allowed to speak. Only some of the team went out this way. Warren said the rest obviously went out another way, but he had no idea how they returned. He said that his immediate impression that the other team had "screwed up" continued until later that evening when he heard that some "wacko civilian" had apparently done the shooting.

When asked, he said he believed that it was entirely possible that the Alpha 184 team mission could have been a backup operation to an officially deniable, though jointly coordinated, civilian scenario. Warren said that he had seen Captain Eidson on only two other occasions after April 4, and he refused to talk to him about what had happened.

As noncommissioned officers, staff sergeants Warren and Murphy were "grunts." They would only have been told what they needed to know in order to carry out their particular task on the day. Warren stressed that April 4 was the first time he had been in Memphis, and that he had not participated in any recon activity. He said that though their operation was a military one, so far as he knew there was some interservice cooperation since they were coordinating with Tennessee National Guard units and NAS-the Millington Naval Air Station.

Warren provided a copy of the orders for the April 4 mission in Memphis, which I include as photograph #33. They confirm the following statements he made:

1. A team was in Memphis.

2. Reference was made to a 4:30 a.m. briefing.

3. The brief at 4:30 was controlling unless so ordered otherwise.

4. NAS support (Millington Naval Air Station support was on line).

5. Support services were provided at the "Riversite."

6. Local intelligence was needed.

7. Recon on the site was required " ... prior to King, Martin L. Arrival."

8. Termination of mission was available on radio notice channel 012.


I was advised that "chopped" referred to the availability upon request of removal by NAS helicopter.

The orders appeared to come from the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were issued under the umbrella of the anti-black terrorist operation "Garden Plot" which was a part of the overall U.S. Command antiriot operation CINCSTRIKE which was activated with the outbreak of any major riot. The document has been checked by a Pentagon source in intelligence who confirmed its authenticity.

The orders were clearly well circulated, reaching the highest levels of government. They were even sent to the White House. The Pentagon source provided a decoding of the initials used to indicate where the orders were sent and confirmed the following: CJCS stood for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; DJS meant the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; SJCS meant the Secretary of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; SAC SA was the FBI's Special Agent in Charge of Security Mfairs; NMCC referred to the National Military Command Center; SECDEF indi- cated the Secretary of Defense; ASD/ISA was the designation for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, and WHouse referred to the White House.

The origin of the orders LANTCOMN/CINCSPECOPS revealed knowledge and involvement of the Atlantic Command as well as a special operations section of CINCSTRIKE. The critical reference is to the 4:30 a.m. briefing at which time sources said the deadly nature of the operation was explicitly laid out and "target acquisition photos" of the two targets and their location were shown.

***

WARREN HAD HEARD ABOUT one other time when a 20th SFG unit had almost "taken out" Dr. King. This was during the Selma march in 1965. Warren said the sniper, who was also a member of the Memphis Alpha 184 team, claimed that on that occasion he actually had the SCLC leader "center mass" (the center of his chest in the crosshairs of his scope) in his sights awaiting the order to fire, which never came because Dr. King turned sharply away at the opportune moment and was closely surrounded thereafter on the march. Warren would not name this soldier or any other member of the team except his expatriate buddy Murphy, who consented and also provided information. Though he was unaware of it, the names of all eight, including his own, had been independently provided by Herbert (the officer in the ACSI office), who corroborated their active duty presence in Memphis on April 4 as members of the Alpha 184 team which had been selected and coordinated by Gardner of the 902nd MIG. Herbert's further check of the files revealed that the 20th SFG did indeed have a sniper team deployed to the Selma area for the beginning of the march from Selma to Montgomery. Two of the members of that Selma team confirmed that King was being targeted until he turned left, at one point, and crossed a bridge.

There was one soldier on both that Selma 20th SFG team and the April 4, Alpha 184 team in Memphis. His name was John D. Hill (J. D.), a buck sergeant who was murdered in 1979. As mentioned earlier, on October 16, 1994, I made con- tact with a man whom I will call Carson who knew J. D. well. More importantly, J. D. had shared with him what he personally knew about the King assassination plan.

When I raised the subject of J. D.'s involvement in the killing of Dr. King and asked him whether J. D. had ever discussed the operation with him, he sighed, and was silent for a while. He said the subject had come up, but he was reluctant to open up this can of worms since it could lead to the two of us being killed. He uttered the familiar phrase, "You don't know who you're dealing with." I told him that by now I was getting the idea. The problem was that my client was innocent of this crime and had served nearly twenty-six years in prison and that even though his innocence was becoming ever more obvious the state had spurned every face-saving opportunity to free him which I had put forward. Consequently, I had little choice and certain risks were necessary. I believed that the only way to free him would be to solve the case conclusively and that we had progressed very far toward this goal.

Carson gradually came around. He said that in the mid-70s, J. D. appeared to want to shed some baggage about his past. He told Carson about an assassination mission he had trained for over a period of many months, to be carried out on a moment's notice. He was in training with a small unit selected for the mission because they were all members of the 20th SFG.

He said that J. D. was a member of the 20th SFG which, Carson came to learn, though officially a Special Forces Reserve unit, actually was used for a wide range of covert special or "behind the fence" operations inside and outside of the U.S. J. D. told him that on April 4 the main body of the Alpha 184 team arrived in cars from Camp Shelby, which was their staging base and the training home for the 20th SFG reservists. Each year the 20th SFG traveled to Camp Shelby for two weeks of field training with other units. Shelby was used because of the size of the facility which allowed for the live firing of long-range weapons within the compound.

With respect to the Memphis mission, he said that all weapons, material, and immediate orders were generated from the base, although the actual preparation for a triangulation shooting had been previously practiced at a site near Pocatello, Idaho. At an early stage the scenario called for a triangular shot at a moving vehicle in an urban setting. At the time no official details were provided about the mission and the men believed it was to be directed at an Arab target. J. D. said that, though he soon learned that the mission was to be executed in Memphis, Tennessee, the target still remained a mystery. He believed that some of the team had gone to the city earlier. Carson had the impression that the team consisted of seven, not eight, persons and that there were three shooters, a communications specialist, logistical and transportation officers, and a unit commander. Since each of the soldiers was trained in at least three MOS's (military skills), some members would have doubled up as spotters, as this function was always required.

He said that J. D. identified the sites as a rooftop, a water tower, and a third-story window, with the team expecting to have to fire upon and hit their targets (there was more than one) when they were in a moving car entering or leaving the motel parking lot. The team knew that the King party was going to dinner that evening, and they didn't believe for a minute that Dr. King would appear on the balcony in such an exposed position. They were convinced that it was a kill for which they were going to have to work.

The weapons that Carson said J. D. told him were carried by the team were in line with the list provided by Warren, down to and including the LAWS (light antitank weapon rockets). Carson said it was obvious from the way J. D. spoke that something went wrong and that they had to leave unexpectedly and quickly. They (or some members of the team) were flown out from West Memphis.

Carson agreed to fax the information to me and to include the name and address of J.D.'s unit partner, who he said was very different from J.D. Conditioned by his experiences in Vietnam, he was apparently a stone killer; a "psycho," said Carson.

Carson said he had always had reservations about J.D.'s death. He said the official account made no sense to him. J. D. was allegedly shot to death at point-blank range by his wife, sometime after midnight on January 12, 1979. She apparently fired five bullets from his .357 Magnum into a closely confined area of his chest. He was dead before he hit the floor. Carson said it had all the signs of a professional killing. He had known J. D.'s wife and did not believe that she had the strength or the capability to handle the large firearm with the precision described. He recalled that she left or was taken out of town shortly afterward and that she was never indicted for the crime. Carson believed that J. D., a heavy drinker, might have begun to talk to others about the Memphis operation and that this could have been the reason he was killed. I remembered that Warren had said that he had left the country because he believed a cleanup process had begun within a year of the assassination and that if he returned to the United States he would be "immediately killed." Though he wouldn't name the team member who he said was shot in the back of the head in New Orleans, I noted that Eidson and Worley were also both dead. My investigator Buck Buchanan spoke with the first officer on the scene after the shooting of J. D., Donald Freshaur, who arrived only minutes after. He said that Janice Hill told him that she "couldn't take it any more." Her husband J.D. had a history of heavy drinking and abusive behavior. I obtained a copy of the court records relating to the death and confirmed that there was no indictment. She was released and lives today in another town in Mississippi.

As mentioned earlier, just before we ended Carson said, "This meeting never took place. You have to be very careful," he said. "They'll drop you where you stand."

When Carson's faxed note came through on plain paper a couple of weeks later it confirmed what he told me and provided further information. J.D.'s team was positioned on a Tayloe Paper Company water tower.

J. D. thought that the other two teams were on a rooftop and a third-story window. (I knew that there was a cluster of water towers on top of the various Tayloe Paper Company buildings which stretched westward, back toward Front Street and the river.) Carson wrote that J.D. confirmed that something had gone wrong and the mission was aborted. They disengaged, were picked up and driven out of South Memphis to West Memphis Arkansas airport where they were placed on a small aircraft and flown to Amory, Mississippi, after releasing their weapons and other gear to the logistics officer who remained behind. They apparently dispersed at that point, J. D. returning to his home in Columbus. J. D. told Carson that everything that had transpired during the training phase up to and including the mission was classified as Top Secret. J. D. learned upon his arrival in Columbus that Dr. King had been assassinated.

I had no information about the inclusion on the Alpha 184 team of a third shooter, and Warren had always firmly believed that there were only two shooters. Two of the locations described to Carson by J.D. were credible, since we know that Warren and Murphy were on the roof of the Central Illinois Railroad building, and the main Tayloe Paper Company Water Tower also met the criteria for a perch.

It was remarkable that J.D.'s account, coming to me twenty years after Carson had heard it, independently confirmed the presence of a Camp Shelby-based 20th SFG Alpha 184 shooting team in Memphis on April 4, 1968, which had been drawn from crack reserves of the 20th with Martin King as a target. Further, J. D. had said that a team had been training for that mission for a period of several months. (This time frame is in line with the date [October 23, 1967] when Gardner of the 902nd MIG got the 20th SFG roster and began to handpick the team.) When subsequently asked, Warren confirmed that Pocatello, Idaho, was a training area.

Warren and Murphy never knew that I had access to J.D.'s story, neither did they or Carson know that the names of each member of the Alpha 184 team had been provided to me by Herbert. One of the names on that list also matched the name of the person independently named by Carson as J.D.'s unit partner.

***

IN RESPONSE TO A QUESTION about whether or not he knew or had known Jack Young blood, the onetime government operative and mercenary who had long been on the periphery of the King case, Warren said he remembered him well from the time they served together in Vietnam when Young blood was assigned to a highly classified covert Special Operations Group based in Can Tho (1st SOG), which was financed and controlled by the CIA and involved in dirty work-sabotage, assassinations, and special operations-throughout Southeast Asia. Warren also flew several missions with Young blood when the latter was with the "Air Studies Group" based at Nha Trang. He said that he had last seen Young blood in the summer or early fall of 1967 on one of his gunrunning deliveries to New Orleans. He saw Young blood with Zippy Chimento, the coordinator of Carlos Marcello's gunrunning operations in which Warren and (from what Sid Carthew and Cheryl independently said), apparently, Raul Pereira, were also involved. He recalled that Youngblood had flown in with "Ken Burns or something." [I came to believe that he was referring to Ken Burnstein, who was involved both in gunrunning and drug smuggling. Burnstein hired Young blood as a pilot for his Ft. Lauderdale airplane taxi company -- Florida Atlanta Airlines -- but Youngblood also worked for an Alabama arms dealer by the name of Stuart F. Graydon. Burnstein, who was convicted of drug smuggling in 1974, died in a plane crash in 1976. He was also the main illegal weapons procurer for Mitchel Livingston WerBell III, who was a key freelance asset of the CIA and who built and supplied weapons through Central America and eventually Southeast Asia for the agency in the 1960s.]

Now, sixteen years after I first met and interviewed him in 1978, it appeared clear that though apparently not himself involved, Jack Youngblood did know at least one of the people on the scene at the time of the killing. It occurred to me that the people he talked about my obtaining information from in 1978 could very well have been these former Vietnam war buddies Warren and Murphy since Young blood had said that the people he wanted me to meet believed they had been sold down the river by their government after many years of faithful service and now lived outside of the country. Warren and Murphy certainly had a grievance against the government, having left the country because they believed that they were to be killed. It was ironic that sixteen years later, I would independently obtain their story.

Warren also said that he had heard "scuttlebutt" (rumors) that the 111th Military Intelligence Group (MIG) had a black agent inside Dr. King's group. Using an intelligence source with access to different personnel data banks, I asked for a check to be completed on Marrell McCollough who I had previously confirmed from two independent sources had gone to work for the CIA in the 1970s. The report bore fruit. McCollough was not who he appeared to be. He had been in the regular army between February 1964 and December 1966 and was a military policeman (an MP). Then on June 16, 1967, he was reactivated and hired as an army intelligence informant and attached to the 111th MIG headquartered at Camp McPherson, Georgia.

Thus McCollough had ultimate reporting responsibility to the 111th MIG, though he was deployed to the MPD as an undercover agent, and officially reported to MPD lieutenant E. H. Arkin. He was apparently shocked and surprised when the shooting occurred. It is unlikely that he was aware as he knelt over Dr. King (see photograph #36) that the 20th SFG sniper teams were in the wings with the prone body of Martin King and the erect form of Andrew Young center mass in their scopes.

I forwarded a photograph to Warren to see if he could identify either of two persons coming down over the wall, quite obviously shortly after the killing since uniformed police were shown in the photograph running up Mulberry Street. The two figures were hatless and wearing some kind of uniform. One of them appeared to be wearing a small military issue sidearm. (See photograph #39) Warren was quick to respond. He didn't recognize the figure farthest away, but the man closest to the camera, bending over as he prepared to jump down from the wall, he knew from his days in Vietnam as someone who had been assigned to the 1st SOG in Can Tho. He named him and said he believed that in Vietnam he was associated with either the CIA or the NSA, and that in 1968 he was working for the NSA. I thought it possible that he might have been seconded to another agency for this operation. Interagency sharing or secondment of such personnel was a regular practice.

Warren, who I had come to believe was credible and reliable, also said that a photograph of the actual shooting from the brush area existed and that sometime after the event he had seen it. He said the shooter was not James Earl Ray. I recalled that Doug Valentine had reported in his book The Phoenix Program that there was a rumor that such a photograph had been taken.68 Warren provided the name and address of the now retired officer who supposedly had a copy, and agreed to approach him.

The former Psy Ops officer whom I will call "Reynolds" agreed to have contact, but initially he insisted on the same procedure that had been used with his Latin American buddies. My questions would be carried to him by a former intelligence officer whom we both trusted. The meeting was set for early December 1994 in the coffee shop of the Hyatt Regency Hotel near Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

***

REYNOLDS WAS ABOUT 5'10" TALL, 160-170 pounds, with grey, short-cropped hair. He said that in Vietnam he had been assigned to the 1st SOG (Special Operations Group) based in Can Tho and that he worked for the 525th Psychological Operations Battalion.

Reynolds said that he and his partner (whom I will call "Norton") were deployed to Memphis on April 3 as a part of a wider mission they believed was under the overall command of Gardner of the 902nd MIG whom Reynolds knew and for whom he had worked on a number of assignments. They carried the necessary camera equipment and were armed with standard issue .45 caliber automatics. Norton also carried a small revolver in a holster in the small of his back. They arrived before noon on that day and went directly to fire station 2 where the captain, Carthel Weeden, whose name had never surfaced in any official report or file that I have seen, facilitated their access to the flat roof. They took up their positions on the east side of the roof. From that vantage point they overlooked the Lorraine and were well placed to carry out their mission, which was to visually and photographically surveil the King group at the Lorraine Motel and pick out any individuals in photos who might be identified as a communist or national security threat. (In the spring of 1995 I went up onto the roof. I was impressed with the completely unobstructed view of the balcony in front of Dr. King's room 306 [see photograph #37]) From 1:00 p.m. they began forwarding reports to the local IEOC office from which they were sent on to the headquarters of the 111th MIG in Fort McPherson and then to Gardner of the 902nd MIG. Sources inside the 111th MIG confirmed that regular reports were received on April 3 and 4.

This surveillance continued throughout the afternoon and resumed again the next morning, April 4. It was in place throughout the day and the same process of transmitting information was followed. Because of Jim Kellum's information and Eli Arkin's admission to me that agents of the 111th had been inside the offices of the MPD intelligence bureau, I have come to believe it likely that in the first instance the reports were called in to them at MPD headquarters from the fire station and then transmitted onward. This process would conform to the chain of communications for such activity described in the 1973 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Report on Constitutional Rights. There would have been no reason for Captain Weeden to have been told or know about the assassination plot, and I have no reason to believe that he did know. When I visited Weeden in June 1995 he indicated his awareness of the photographers on the roof except that when the discussion turned to how they got up there he talked in terms of how it "could" or "would" have happened. He said they would not have gone up on the roof using the inside vertical ladder in the garage but would have been given a "short" ladder in order to climb up from the side of the building.

From what Reynolds said, at the very moment that we now know the 20th SFG Alpha 184 snipers had Dr. King and Andrew Young center mass in the crosshairs of their M-16 scopes, his camera was trained on Dr. King as he stood on the balcony, while Norton was watching and shooting any arriving cars. At 6:01 p.m., the fatal moment when the shot rang out, Reynolds said he was surprised and in rapid succession quickly snapped four or five photos following Dr. King as he fell to the balcony floor. Reynolds said Norton almost instinctively swung his cam- era from its parking lot focus to the left and, focusing on the brush area, caught the assassin (a white man) on film as he was lowering his rifle. He then took several shots of him as he was leaving the scene. Reynolds said that though Norton had caught the assassin clearly in his camera he personally only saw the back of the shooter as he left the scene. He said that they hand delivered the pictures to Gardner but Norton kept the negatives and made another set of prints which Reynolds said he had seen (I recalled that Warren had also said that he had viewed them). Reynolds categorically stated, as had Warren earlier, that the sniper in the photograph was not James Earl Ray.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN

Postby admin » Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:44 am

Part 2 of 2

Eric S. Galt

At one point during my investigation of the involvement of the army, a source placed a photograph in front of me, and asked, "Do you know who this is?" It was a full frontal head shot of Eric St. Vincent Galt -- the man whose name James had assumed and used for most of the time between July 18, 1967, and April 4, 1968 (see photograph #3. I was told not to ask any questions because it had come from and was part of an NSA file. I learned that Galt, who as we know was the executive warehouse operator at Union Carbide's factory in Toronto, had top secret security clearance. The warehouse he ran housed an extremely top secret munitions project funded by the CIA, the U.S. Naval Surface Weapons Center, and the Army Electronics Research and Development Command. The work involved the production and storage of "proximity' fuses" used in surface- to-air missiles, artillery shells, and LAWS. Galt had worked for Union Carbide of Canada Ltd, which was 75% owned by Union Carbide Inc. of the U.S. since the early 19S0s. The company was engaged in high-security research projects controlled by the U.S. parent. Galt's top secret security clearance was actually conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and his last security check had been in 1961. Union Carbide's nuclear division ran the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

I learned that in August 1967 (shortly after the time when James assumed the Galt identity) the real Eric Galt met with Gardner's aide and that they met again in September. At that time Galt was cooperating with another 902nd MIG operation that involved the theft of some of these proximity fuses and their covert delivery to Israel. (I have obtained a confidential memorandum issued by the 902nd MIG on 17 October 1967 which confirms and discusses this operation, Project MEXPO, which was defined as a "military material exploitation project of the Scientific and Technical Division (S&T) ... in Israel." The file and project number was 10518S-MAIN. The memo indicated that pursuant to a conference held on July 12, 1967, it was agreed that the 902nd would provide administrative support services to the project.)

The real Eric Galt was listed in the Toronto telephone directory in 1967-68 as "Eric Galt" with no middle name or initial, and in 1967 he had begun to use the initial S., dropping his middle name, St. Vincent, entirely. When James in July 1967 assumed the alias Eric S. Galt, he was signing the name in the same way as the real Galt had recently adopted.

The coincidence was impressive. James had somehow acquired the name of a highly placed Canadian operative of U.S. army intelligence. Further, he began using the name on July 18, 1967, around the time the real Eric Galt was meeting with Gardner's aide.

I had to finally conclude that though James likely obtained the other aliases by himself, there was little likelihood that he, on his own, had accidentally chosen the Galt identity. He was, however, as was his right, apparently determined to protect someone or some persons who he believed had tried to help him (though he almost certainly did not know who ultimately provided the alias to him). By protecting his supplier he would also avoid the potential hell of protective custody. This was the status given prisoners who appeared to be informants. Once in this situation the correctional authorities can exert total control over the prisoner for his own "protection," even requiring him to be housed in the most austere conditions with his movements totally restricted. It can be a living hell. Those of us not familiar with this reality cannot appreciate it. Aside from the fact that James has strong views about never being a "snitch," he has also been determined never to provide any reason for protective custody to be imposed upon him. It has only been fairly recently that I have come to appreciate this position.

Previously I had no doubt that James was used and manipulated, but now it was apparent that his manipulation involved not only elements of organized crime but also a specific, senior level, highly covert military intelligence group, the involvement of which could be traced back at least to July 18, 1967, when he began to use the Galt identity.

Suddenly Galt appeared to be a critical link, facilitating the use of James Earl Ray as a patsy by a covert part of army intelligence and involving the 20th SFG, the FBI, and the other associated and collaborating members of the government and intelligence community involved with the assassination of Martin Luther King.

I raised the connection with deep cover source Herbert. He nodded and said, "James Earl Ray was a dead man." The identity was not to have mattered. He was to have been blown away either in Memphis or in Africa, if he made it that far.

But why was Eric St. Vincent Galt's identity chosen for the patsy? It finally made sense when I realized that the use of an identity with top secret clearance was a means of securing and protecting the patsy from any mistakes or problems he would encounter before he was needed. Any routine police check would come up against a protected file, and the result would be that the government agency (in this instance the NSA and the army through the ACSI's office) could control the situation and instruct any law enforcement authorities to let the patsy go. Galt, a Canadian citizen with some physical resemblance to James, would have no need to know about the use of his name, and it was therefore unlikely that he would be told. James would also most likely not have known anything about Eric S. Galt.

The fact that the NSA had a file on Eric Galt reminded me that James Bamford, in his research for his book, The Puzzle Palace, [69] had stumbled upon a very well-kept, highly classified secret -- the surreptitious involvement of the NSA in the effort to locate James after the assassination.

As early as 1962 the NSA had systematically begun to include in a "watch list" the names of persons and organizations who were engaged in dissent against America's Vietnam policy. In 1967 this list and its focus increased sharply. On October 20 of that year General Yarborough sent a "TOP SECRET COMINT CHANNELS ONLY" message to NSA director Marshal Carter requesting that the NSA provide any available information about possible foreign communications to and influence on individuals associated with civil disturbances in the United States. [70]

This request was apparently unprecedented. The army began to send over page after page of the names of protestors gathered by army intelligence units from all over the country whom they wanted surveilled. The CIA, the Secret Service, the FBI, and the DIA followed suit. The result was that this "watch list" grew enormously and went far beyond its original purpose. The NSA had a vacuum cleaner approach to intelligence gathering, sucking up all telecommunications of targeted individuals into the system. The use of a targeted person's or organization's name triggered the interception and recording of the conversation which was then subsequently analyzed. Thus, if an organization or a person was targeted, the communications of everyone in contact with them would be subject to this process. Thousands upon thousands of private communications were scooped up and scrutinized by the big ear of the government.

The NSA became involved in the search for James Earl Ray in May 1968. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and a number of Supreme Court decisions had frustrated the FBI's efforts to institute microphone and electronic surveillance of James's brothers and sisters. Eventually an FBI internal memorandum conceded that such a measure would likely be unconstitutional, and it was dropped.

Then, however, Frank Raven, the NSA's officer who received the watch lists from the rest of the law enforcement and intelligence community and acted upon them, received a direct order to place Ray's name, along with several aliases, on the watch list. What '''as unusual about this occurrence was that it was not a request from the FBI or the Justice Department but an order directly from the office of the Secretary of Defense, Clark M. Clifford, who has no recollection of issuing it.71 Raven said that he tried to object to the order on constitutional grounds but was told that "... you couldn't argue with it-it came from the highest level." [72]

The NSA's involvement in the investigation of James Earl Ray has never been revealed in any official investigation. What was emerging, then, was the involvement of army intelligence (more precisely the 902nd MIG) -- which was under the direct control of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (Mayor General William P. Yarborough) -- with James from at least July 1967, through his use of the identity of one of the 902nd's assets who had top secret security clearance. This led to the subsequent unconstitutional involvement of the NSA to use the watch list to locate him. It appears likely that the order which was routed through the Defense Secretary's office found its way there from the office of the ACSI.

The scope and complexity of this operation was literally mind-boggling. I needed to understand how it had all developed during that last year.

Chronology of Relevant Events

From the time that the eyewitness accounts of the Alpha 184 team members and related personnel began to become available to me, I set about the task of acquiring from other sources information and documentation (some of which is still classified 28 years later) which revealed what was happening in 1967-68 at senior levels of the government and the intelligence community.

As noted earlier, at the same time that General Yarborough took over as ACSI in December 1966, director Hoover seconded to Yarborough's staff a trusted and, until now, virtually unknown agent named Patrick D. Putnam. (It should be remembered that Hoover had had a close working relationship with the army since the late 1920s, when his number one, Clyde Tolson, came over from army intelligence to join the bureau and established the tie for his boss, who was gratuitously given and maintained the rank of Lieutenant colonel in army Intelligence until after the Second World War.) Putnam was to remain as the daily liaison between Hoover and Yarborough until the latter left the office of ACSI in July 1968, at which time he wrote to Hoover lavishly praising agent Putnam. A copy of this letter dated 2 July, 1968, was among the documents provided to me.

The senior staff of the 111th MIG met on January 17, 1967, at their Fort McPherson headquarters to look at photographs that were part of a surveillance summary report of Martin Luther King's arrival in Jamaica. The 111th had been on his trail as he left, and then continued surveillance in the Caribbean.

The next day at FBI Headquarters, starting at 11:00 a.m., General Yarborough met in his new capacity for the first time with director Hoover. Also present was CIAB head Colonel F. E. Van Tassell. The discussion focused on the army and the bureau working together to counter the growing antiwar movement, which Yarborough and Hoover agreed was the result of a communist conspiracy. They were kindred spirits. The importance of this strong anticommunist, anti-civil rights, pro-war attitude, which dominated Hoover's FBI and the army's intelligence staff in 1967, should not be underestimated.

They agreed that information produced by the massive army intelligence surveillance operation of Dr. King was to be routinely and regularly shared with the bureau. (Walter Fauntroy had told me during my preparation for the television trial that in the documents obtained as a part of the HSCA investigation -- though mentioned nowhere in the committee's report -- he had seen examples of such army intelligence reports which were sent to Hoover).

In February, wiretapping and ELINT (covert electronic surveillance) were carried out by the ASA. The tapes and transcripts were reviewed at Fort Meade, though often passed through the MIG in which area the activity took place. For example, a telephone conversation between Dr. King and his friend New York lawyer Stanley Levison on February 18 was recorded by the ASA and passed through the 10Sth MIG. In this particular conversation army intelligence, the FBI, and other intelligence agencies in the loop learned about Dr. King's emerging awareness that many blacks considered the war to be a form of genocide and of his determination to participate in the April 15 antiwar demonstration at the United Nations where I would float his and Ben Spock's names on a third party ticket.

The various components of the intelligence community seemed to be in nonstop meetings concerning the antiwar movement at this time.

On February 23 at 10:30 a.m. the umbrella organization, the USIB, held its weekly meeting with both the CIA's Richard Helms and ACSI Yarborough attending.

The 115th MIG photographed and recorded a speech of Dr. King's in Los Angeles on February 25 when he shared the platform with antiwar senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. The photos and transcript sent to the Pentagon for analysis revealed King's contention that the war was a manifestation of "white colonialism," and reported his statement that "We must demonstrate, teach, and preach until the very foundations of our nation are shaken."

The analysis of these remarks, completed two days later at CIAB headquarters at Bailey's Crossroads, Virginia, concluded that Dr. King's speech was "a call to armed aggression by negroes against the American people." At 10:30 a.m. this report and analysis was sent over to ACSI Yarborough. At 2:30 p.m. that day, the 111th MIG out of Fort McPherson sent a report identifying two black agents who were available to infiltrate the SCLC.

***

IN EARLY 1967, though the American people were regularly given optimistic forecasts regarding the war, army intelligence was very much aware of how badly it was actually going. On March 18 Vietnam Commander General William Westmoreland sent a request to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for 201,250 more troops (4.5 additional divisions). At the same time antiwar pressures were also steadily building at home.

In Chicago six days later on March 24, members of the 113th MIG (headquartered at Fort Sheridan, Illinois) photographed and recorded Drs. King and Spock addressing the rally of 5,000, during which Dr. King called for the fervor of the civil rights movement to now be applied to the antiwar movement. Surveillance continued on the 25th of March and then, as we have seen, on April 4 at Riverside Church in New York Dr. King delivered his formal and most powerful denunciation of the war up to that time, personally committing himself to the effort to end it. The speech was photographed and recorded by agents of the 108th MIG.

Since the devastating effects of the war on Vietnamese civilians were being highlighted by Dr. King's speeches everywhere he went, at 10:30 a.m. on April 7 Colonel Van Tassell and his staff at the CIAB reviewed the massive photographic evidence of the effects of the bombing on women and children in Vietnam, which were now, more and more, becoming available for the masses to see. Napalm-burned children (such as that set out in photograph 1) figured prominently. (I had helped to form a nationwide Committee of Responsibility, backed by prominent Americans, which began to bring badly burned and injured children to hospitals all over the United States. Consequently, horrifically injured children became increasingly visible in America's towns and cities.) A strategy was obviously needed to counter the growing sympathy of American public opinion for the plight of Vietnamese civilians. One week later, on April 14 at 4:00 p.m., Colonel Van Tassell's CIAB staff met with General Yarborough and staff from the DIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Intelligence Unit. The focus of this meeting was to discuss ways and means of infiltrating the antiwar movement for purposes of intelligence gathering and subversion.

***

ALL OF THE ACTIVITY surrounding the massive April 15 antiwar march and rally in front of the United Nations was recorded and photographed by the 108th MIG. The 108th MIG photos and transcripts routinely went off for CIAB analysis, which when they landed on Yarborough's desk, contained the analysis that Martin Luther King was continuing to work with subversive groups which were planning "war in the streets of our towns and cities." The analysis also tied together Dr. King and SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael, calling them "allies in a role of subversion and revolution."

Five days before the launching at Harvard of "Vietnam Summer" (the student-driven series of antiwar educational activities) Hoover sent a memo on King to the White House, with a shortened version being delivered by Putnam to Yarborough. In it Hoover contended that King "is an instrument in the hands of subversive forces seeking to undermine our nation."

On April 30 Dr. King's sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church was recorded by ASA microphones and sent from the 111th MIG at Fort McPherson to the CIAB. In that session, with Stokely Carmichael in the congregation, Dr. King called America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

On May 16 Hoover declared before the House Appropriations Committee that Stokely Carmichael, whom he labeled as Dr. King's ally, was secretly recruiting a black army to wage a revolution against white America.

The 66th MIG in Stuttgart, West Germany, recorded Dr. King's antiwar speech in Germany on May 29.

On June 6 in a 2:00 p.m. meeting General Yarborough formally approved an ambitious plan to plant HUMINTS (informers) inside major black nationalist groups. Half an hour later he met with his close ally and confidant USAINTC Commander Blakefield.

***

AS THINGS BEGAN TO HEAT UP in the cities, all sectors of the administration feared that riots would break out that summer. The president, looking for preemptive answers, convened a high level meeting on June 12. In attendance were Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Earle Wheeler, the director of the CIA Richard Helms, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. Out of this session, which focused on ever-growing combined antiwar and civil rights movements, decisions were made to mobilize the 20th SFG for special duty assignments in urban areas and for the 111th MIG to provide a new analysis of the intentions of Dr. King and his organization. This order was given on that day to his staff by the commanding officer of the 111th, Colonel Robert McBride.

The first report by a 20th SFG unit from the area of a racial disturbance in Prattville, Alabama, arrived at the 111th MIG Headquarters on June 13 and stated that blacks involved in rioting were quoting Dr. King's comments against the war. Between June 12 and June 15 the 20th SFG also deployed two alpha sniper teams to Tampa during riots in that city. Warren was on one of those teams, which I learned from an independent intelligence source in that city were under the control of the 902nd MIG.

Three days later, on June 16, former Military Policeman Marrell McCollough, who had been discharged in December 1966, was brought back to active duty and assigned to the 111th MIG and onward to the Memphis Police Department.

Newark exploded on July 12, and no end of meetings took place at the headquarters of the 109th MIG in that city, at the Pentagon, and elsewhere in Washington. The primary issues were how to keep the lid on the situation, how to preempt the outbreaks, and how to efficiently suppress them.

On July 18, 1967, after arriving in Canada, James Earl Ray began to use the name Eric S. Galt. In August 1967 and again in September, the real Eric S. Galt (who had top secret security clearance and a classified NSA personnel file) met with Gardner's aide.

Detroit exploded on July 23, and the 82nd Airborne under Lieutenant General John L. Throckmorton was sent in. The 20th SFG was sent there as well, and in that team was staff sergeant Warren. The 113th MIG began to interrogate apprehended rioters, preparing extensive transcripts and reports for transmission to Washington. At midnight on July 23 Yarborough entered the army's Operations Center in the Pentagon and declared that a revolution was underway by blacks. That night Yarborough ordered all MIGs to be put on full alert and all potential guerilla targets-armories, power stations, gun shops, radio and television stations, and other vital installations -- to be put under surveillance.

During this week Dr. King, along with civil rights leaders Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, and Roy Wilkins, issued a joint appeal for the riots to stop, terming them dangerous to the civil rights movement and to the nation. At the same time SNCC leaders Carmichael (in Havana on July 25) and H. Rap Brown (in Washington, D.C., on July 27) spoke of a guerilla force and black revolution. On July 25 rioting also broke out in Cleveland, Phoenix, and in both Flint and Saginaw, Michigan. On July 26 violence erupted in South Bend, Indiana.

***

ON JULY 28 MEMPHIS was added to the 111th MIG's "watch city" list, and at 8:00 a.m. General Yarborough convened a meeting of his senior staff to consider the Detroit crisis. Feedback from the 113th MIG clearly indicated that no foreign or domestic enemy of the United States was behind the riots, which the agents saw as being entirely homegrown and a result of deteriorating living conditions and hostility over the war. CIAB analyses of the June 21, 1943, Detroit riot and the Watts riots in 1965 produced the same conclusions. Yarborough was advised that there was no credible evidence that these uprisings were planned or premeditated by subversive elements, but rather that they spontaneously flowed from isolated incidents.

Yarborough rejected this analysis and insisted to the group that either Havana or Peking would ultimately be found to have been behind an urban conspiracy. He went on to state that "there are indications weapons have been stolen from a number of military ports including Dugway Proving Grounds where there are some pretty sophisticated weapons." (Ironically, much of the theft was the result of operations carried out from inside the army itself by a number of people including the army's own Provost marshall, who was eventually charged and convicted for armaments thefts and sales.)

During all of this period, the uniformity of the positions taken by ACSI Yarborough, Hoover, and even the CIA is striking. (Remember the Jay Richard Kennedy information to the agency's Office of Security which alleged that Dr. King was controlled by Peking line communists.) Throughout the turmoil, and in spite of the availability of intelligence reports to the contrary, it seemed necessary for these leaders to blame all the troubles on a foreign enemy.

Because of the official mindset that was conveniently determined to treat King, Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown as one and the same, Stokely Carmichael's meetings with North Vietnamese Premier Phan Van Dong and Dong's July 31 broadcasts, which were relayed by the NSA and which associated his government with the "anti- imperialist" struggle of black people in America, were taken as also representing Dr. King's position. Animosity was further heightened by alleged threats by Carmichael in Havana against President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

On August 8 the CIAB reported on the survey of 496 men arrested in Detroit at the time of the riots. The revelation that King, not Carmichael or Brown, was the black leader most admired by the rioters, was greeted with shock.

Two days later, in the course of the weekly USIB meeting chaired by CIA director Helms, the discussion focused on the CIA setting up a special group to work with army intelligence in order to infiltrate antiwar groups and also identify subversive radicals and groups. Five days later, on August 15, Helms ordered one of his agents, Thomas Karamessines, to set up a Special Operations Group (SOG) to penetrate the domestic movement. I was advised that the operation was housed at 1770 I Street in N. W. Washington. Under its umbrella, among others, came: Operation CHAOS, devoted to mail opening and developing files on U.S. citizens, and Project MERRIMAC, whose goal was to infiltrate and spy on ten major peace and civil rights groups. It appears that at some time between the beginning of the riots in Newark on July 12, and the middle of August [after Detroit had exploded and been analyzed] the decision was made to establish the domestic SOG. The purpose of this joint effort was to counter what was regarded as revolutionary activity in CONUS. The SOG combined intelligence operations and resources of the CIA, the army and the FBI, as well as those of other agencies which though in the informational loop were on the periphery of actual operations.

On August 31, unknown to us, the 113th were present at the NCNP convention opening meeting and they photographed and recorded Dr. King's keynote address. Earlier that day, ACSI General Yarborough met with NSA representatives and urged them to monitor international cable traffic to support the army's counterintelligence operations and pinpoint the foreign governments that were helping black radicals and the antiwar movement (this became known as Operation MINARET).

***

ON SEPTEMBER 5 ACSI Yarborough first began to seriously consider the major upcoming antiwar demonstration developed by the umbrella antiwar organization, the National Mobilization Committee, and planned to take place at the Pentagon on October 21. He immediately called a staff meeting. On September 13 Yarborough, Lt. General L. J. Lincoln -- commanding general of the fourth army -- and their staffs journeyed to Mexico, where they stayed for five days.

Upon his return, General Yarborough arranged (through army vice chief of staff General Ralph E. Haines, Jr.) for the stockpiling of tear gas and riot-control equipment at twelve strategic locations around the U .S.

On October 3 at 6:10 the president met with Secretary of Defense McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and National Security Advisor Walt Rostow. He reported that the congressional leadership had told him that they will "not tolerate the large demonstration which is planned for late October." He wanted contingency plans developed to protect the White House, the Pentagon, and the Capitol.

That day there was a rebellion inside the 198th Light Infantry Brigade at Fort Hood, Texas, with many men saying that they would rather go to the stockade than leave for Vietnam the next day. A riot broke out, with shooting and firebombs being used.

Between the Fort Hood riots and October 14, numerous meetings took place between members of the president's cabinet and staff and at many levels of ACSI staff and USAINTC personnel. In every instance the focus was on the upcoming Washington demonstration and the growing antiwar movement in the cities and-at the beginning of a new academic year-on the campuses. On October 14, to some extent in collaboration with USAINTC, Yarborough dispatched forty-five undercover agents to principal U.S. cities where demonstrators were getting ready to depart for Washington. The agents were ordered to infiltrate the antiwar group, and travel with them. They were given counterfeit draft cards and IDs. Another group of agents of the 116th MIG began preparation for march infiltration.

The very next day, October 15,1967, saw Frank C. Holloman take over as city Fire and Police Commissioner in Memphis. Though an FBI agent for twenty-five years, for seven of those he had been attached to J. Edgar Hoover's office in Washington and had by all accounts continued to be loyal to Hoover and trusted by the director.

On October 19 at 2:30 a.m. DEFCON 2 status was declared with respect to the preparations for the demonstration. (DEFCON designations indicate the degree of seriousness attached to a perceived threat to national security. Ascending DEFCON designations [which then went from 1 to 5] indicate a heightened threat.) On that day two C-130 aircraft carrying 89 persons took off from Pope Air Force Base, landing at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington.

DEFCON 3 orders were received by the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on October 20. The unit's commander, Lt. General Throckmorton (the on-scene commander during the Detroit riots), left the headquarters of the 111th MIG at Fort McPherson and flew directly to Fort Myers, where the army Command Center had been established. He was met by Army Chief of Staff Harold Johnson, and they began a tour of the capitol area. At 5:02 p.m. that day General Throckmorton arrived at the White House for a visit with the president.

On October 21 at 10:00 a.m. the demonstrations got under way. Army leaders began watching on closed-circuit television (cameras were mounted on helicopter gunbags and the roof of the Pentagon). Eventually, Secretary of Defense McNamara, army Chief of Staff Johnson, ACSI Yarborough, and aides went onto the roof of the Pentagon to observe. The massive demonstration clearly shook those leaders. The mere presence of such an outpouring of citizens publicly condemning the government, its policies and leaders emphasized official impotence. Yarborough was subsequently quoted in the Commercial Appeal, describing the scene as follows:

It looked like a castle where the Huns had gathered around; as far as the eye could reach, there they were, shaking their bony fists. There were American Nazis. There were communists. There were hippies ... I can assure you it was a sight to make you stop to think. As we looked at this great horde below us, waving their battering rams, so to speak ... the Secretary of Defense [McNamara] turned to the Chief of Staff of the Army [General Johnson] and said, "Johnny, what are we going to do about this?" Johnny said, "I'm damned if I know."


According to an inside source, the chief of staff promptly turned to his ACSI and said, "Bill, what are you going to do about this?"

***

DR. KING'S PRESS CONFERENCE on October 23, which followed his testimony before the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders, only added to the anxiety of both the military and civilian leadership. In the press conference Martin unequivocally said that he would lead prolonged massive demonstrations in Washington with the purpose of shutting down the government. He was determined that if the government would not shut down the war, then the government itself would be shut down.

At 1:04 p.m. on that October 23, in the wake of the press conference, President Johnson met in emergency session with the CIA's Richard Helms, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Earle Wheeler, and National Security Advisor Walt Rostow and various aides. At that meeting Johnson said, "We've almost lost the war in the last two months in the court of public opinion. These demonstrators and others are trying to show that we need somebody else to take over the country ... We've got to do something about public opinion."

At 3:30 on that same day a call went from the ACSI's office to the office of the 20th SFG in Birmingham, requesting that the roster of 20th SFG be sent to Gardner at the 902nd MIG's offices at the Pentagon. At 6:15 p.m. an AUTOVON dispatch went off with the roster. (I learned that the process of selection of the supersecret 20th SFG Alpha 184 team began with the arrival of that roster and that the team was handpicked by Gardner.)

The next morning, at about 10:30 a.m., Yarborough arrived at CIA headquarters in Langley for a special meeting with director Helms to discuss the backing of the marchers by communists. Upon his return to his office Yarborough openly declared, "We have the means to stop these bastards, all I need is the word go."

Two mornings later (Thursday, October 26) the ACSI was back at Langley for the weekly USIB meeting with Helms in the chair. At 4:00 p.m. on that day he met with Gardner of the 902nd MIG.

Yarborough went to Vietnam on November 8 for a firsthand observation of the conflict. He was confronted with low morale everywhere. Then on November 11, the Vietnamese, rubbing salt in his wounds, released three prisoners of war, including two blacks, following negotiations in which Dr. King had participated. The National Liberation Front (NLF) said the blacks were released because of the "courageous struggle" of blacks in the U.S.

On November 17 at 5:10 p.m., in response to a report that armed blacks were preparing to target key public facilities, Special Forces teams were deployed to conduct reconnaissance in cities that it was believed could explode that spring and summer. They were ordered to make precise maps, take aerial photos, set up communication nets, command points, sniper sites, and formulate operational plans. This was exactly the activity that MPD special services/intelligence officer Jim Smith described "Coop" as doing around this time and later. They also stockpiled weapons and antiriot gear. The Special Forces teams used were the 20th from Birmingham, the 10th at Fort Devins, Massachusetts, and the 5th at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. By early 1968 this information had been compiled on 124 cities throughout the country.

Later that day, the ACSI's office received a report that the regular army units left in CONUS (parts of the 82nd Airborne, the 1st and 2nd Armored Divisions and the 5th mechanized Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colorado) were understrength and underequipped.

***

ON THE HOME FRONT, so far as the army was concerned, the prognosis worsened. On November 30, Senator Eugene McCarthy announced that he was going to run against Lyndon Johnson in the Democratic primaries as an antiwar candidate, and on December 4 in Atlanta, Martin Luther King announced the plan to hold massive demonstrations in the capitol during the spring of 1968.

On December 5 the CIA issued a report stating that $300 million worth of damage had been imposed on Hanoi as a result of 800 tons of bombs and missiles dropped each day on North Vietnam since March 1965. The cost to the U.S., however, had been the loss of 700 aircraft worth $900 million. The exercise had thus resulted in a net loss of $600 million. The aircraft industry was hardly lamenting the nation 's losses.

On December 10 Martin King kept up the pressure in speeches at his old Dexter Avenue Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama (recorded and photographed by the 111th MIG) and at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago (surveilled by the 113th MIG).

On December 12, the army, in a major reassessment of its domestic intelligence operation, went on a CONUS war footing. Updating of all recon information was ordered, as was the classification of cities and groups for subversive potential on December 28, as 1967 was drawing to a close, Yarborough and Gardner met at 2:00 p.m.

On January 2 Patrick Putnam delivered a bureau memorandum to Yarborough, which stated that King "will create massive civil disobedience in the nation's capitol and in ten to fifteen major cities through the U .S. in the spring of 1968 if certain commitments are not forthcoming from Congress in the civil rights field."

That day, after General Westmoreland's year-end report stating that the U.S. was winning, the National Liberation Front (NLF) attacked in regimental strength within fifty miles of Saigon. The ensuing battle in a rubber plantation resulted in twenty-six American soldiers being killed and 111 wounded.

***

ON JANUARY 10 PRESIDENT JOHNSON ORDERED army Chief of Staff Harold Johnson to "use every resource" to diffuse the civil disturbances planned and projected by Dr. King for the spring. Some of those in the loop have confirmed that there was no longer any doubt that at the highest levels it was understood that the gloves were off-no holds were barred in the effort to stop Dr. King's "invasion" of the capitol.

On the next day the ACSI Yarborough attended the regular weekly USIB meeting at Langley and later that same day under the surveilling eyes, microphones, and cameras of the 115th MIG and oblivious to the storm gathering around him, Dr. King spoke at the Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York City, calling for the war to end or the government to be shut down.

On January 12 at 2:00 p.m. Yarborough met with and briefed army Chief of Staff Johnson. Then, a new crisis arose. The number of "fragging" incidents (black enlisted men shooting/killing their white officers) was climbing dramatically, and ACSI senior staff met to discuss this problem. Yarborough was particularly incensed that the army's own newspaper, Stars and Stripes, was printing stories about black unrest at home.

On January 15 the International Association of Police Chiefs held a four-day conference on the prevention and control of civil disorders at Warrenton, Virginia. In attendance were Memphis Police Chief J. C. MacDonald and Frank C. Holloman. With the conference in its first morning Mrs. Martin Luther King led a march on the Capitol of five thousand women all clad in black to protest against the war in Vietnam.

On January 26 at 4:45 Yarborough briefed his staff on his CIAB's new intelligence assessment of Dr. King. The assessment noted Martin King's increasing emphasis on the theme of "genocide," since 22% of the total American soldiers killed were black, more than double the proportion of black soldiers. A copy was sent to Westmoreland 's J-2 (intelligence chief).

Patrick Putnam and Yarborough met at 3:00 p.m. on January 29 to discuss FBI/army-coordinated action to counter the expected urban civil disturbances.

On January 31, word of the NLF's Tet (new year) Offensive shook the army and Washington. Five of South Vietnam's largest cities were attacked along with thirty-six of forty-four provincial capitals and 25% of its 242 district capitals. The offensive involved 70,000 NLF troops which overran U.S. and South Vietnam forces. Westmoreland's continued positive reports and claims of imminent victory were dramatically shown to be blatantly false.

***

IN FEBRUARY, ACSI Yarborough and his staff began to spend an increasing amount of time on CINCSTRIKE preparation for the anticipated riots. As noted earlier, CINCSTRIKE operations were the overall CONUS armed forces coordinated response to the domestic rebellions. Based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, all domestic forces were deployed according to the plans developed there. During this period Yarborough spent on average about three hours a day on the planning and specifically on February 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 he was locked into these sessions. Most meetings were in the Pentagon but on February 7, at 4:15 p.m., Yarborough flew to Tampa for on-site meetings on February 8.

On the evening of February 7, the 116th MIG surveilled Martin King as he spoke at the Vermont Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., strongly challenging the government. An hour before his speech he met with SNCC leader H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael in Brown's room at the Pitts Motor Hotel in northeast Washington. In the conversation the difference in philosophy and strategy between Martin King, Brown and Carmichael was clearly revealed. From a transcript of that session:

BROWN: "We stop the fuckers here. Right here ..."

CARMICHAEL (came in, saying): "No more Uncle Tom dammit. This let them shit on you shit ... ain't working. You know it and so does everybody ..."

KING: (cut in): "Is killing and burning (unintelligible) in your own people's streets, your answer?"

CARMICHAEL: "It's time. We can't wait any more."

KING: "Nobody is as tired of waiting as me."

CARMICHAEL: "Then let's shut the honkies down. They bring the army, we fight the fuckers with ours. We got guns. Marching for peace -- shit, you seen it. What's it got us?"

MARTIN'S APPROACH NEVER WAVERED. He wanted to include the more violent of the dissident leaders and work with them to maximize the impact of the Washington demonstration planned for the spring, but not on their terms. This was clear from the ASA and MIG surveillance of him, yet ACSI Yarborough and his colleagues on the USIB continued to lump him together with Brown, Carmichael, and others who advocated a violent strategy. It suited all of their interests and preconceptions: Hoover's, Yarborough's, Helms's, and Lyndon Johnson's as well.

Also on that day the ACSI's office received an internal report that in 1967 the army suffered a record 40,227 desertions and 155,536 soldiers absent without leave.

On February 9, the quagmire deepened. At 11:02 a.m. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Wheeler delivered to President Johnson Westmoreland's request for the 82nd Airborne and the 69th Marine division (fifteen battalions, 40,000 more troops) to save the situation. Wheeler advised against the deployment and told Johnson if he sent these troops "you will have no readily deployable strategic reserves" for use in CONUS. The new Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford was also critical of the request.

Three days later, on February 12, 1968, 1,300 sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, went out on strike. At its Fort McPherson, Atlanta, headquarters the 111th MIG established a "special security detachment" under the direct control of ACSI Yarborough for immediate deployment and use in emergencies.

On February 15, 111th MIG agents followed and surveilled Martin King as he spoke at St. Thomas AME Church in Birmingham and Maggie Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Then on February 19 the 111th picked up the surveillance of him as he addressed a gathering of 150 black ministers in Miami. The next day ACSI Yarborough received the latest FBI study of King, which basically called him a communist and a sex fiend.

**

INTELLIGENCE FILES noted information as of February 22, without naming the source, that Dr. King would be coming to Memphis to lend support to the sanitation workers' strike.

Then, as recounted by Warren, quietly, on February 25, a 20th SFG recon team entered the city of Memphis through the Trailways bus terminal. They conducted reconnaissance of the downtown hotel area and mapped egress routes north.

Three days later, on February 28, President Johnson was confronted with Westmoreland's request for 200,000 more men, which he was advised by Wheeler meant a call-up of 250,000 and an additional $2.5 billion to the budget and possibly even the call-up of the Korean War veterans.

Also on that day at 10:30 a.m. Gardner met with CIAB chief Colonel Van Tassell and FBI liaison Patrick Putnam to discuss the latest progress on the plans to abort the planned Washington demonstration later that spring.

On March 1, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford called the army's Vietnam policy bankrupt. (It appears that during this time he was studiously kept outside of the loop of information and bypassed within the department.) Meanwhile in Cullman, Alabama, six members of the 20th SFG met with the Tuscumbia-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in highly secret and covert "Klan Special Forces" exercises in which the SFG soldiers provided two days of firearms and explosives training for the klan members present.

On March 4 at 2:30 p.m. Yarborough met with Gardner, and four days later he hosted a luncheon party beginning at 12:30 p.m. with the FBI's William Sullivan (domestic intelligence chief) , Patrick Putnam, and Merrill Kelly of his staff. On March 11, Chairman William Fulbright of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opened hearings on the war. In his opening statement Fulbright stated, "The signs of rebellion are all around us, not just in the hippie movement and in the emergence of an angry New Left, but in the sharp decline of applications to the Peace Corps, in the turning away of promising students from careers in government, in letters of protest against the war and troubled consciences about the draft."

The next day Senator McCarthy got a shocking 42% of the vote in the New Hampshire presidential primary.

On March 14 at 8:00 a.m. a CIAB report was delivered to ACSI Yarborough stating that thirty people were arrested after a breakout of violence in the Memphis sanitation workers' strike. No early settlement was in sight and the report suggested the deployment of additional personnel from the 111th MIG to work with the MPD and the FBI to keep the city under control.

The next day, March 15, FBI Director Hoover met one-on- one with Gardner of the 902nd MIG.

On the morning of March 16 the massacre of the village of My Lai began. (Though known virtually immediately by army intelligence, it was initially covered up and would only be brought to public attention when journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story on November 13, 1969.) That day in Washington Senator Robert Kennedy announced that he was running for president and in Anaheim, California, Dr. King spoke to the powerful California Democratic State Council while agents of the 115th MIG watched and recorded.

On March 17, Reverend James Lawson in Memphis telephoned Martin King in Los Angeles to give him an update on the strike. King had agreed to address the strikers and their supporters in Memphis at a rally on March 18. The conversation was recorded by ASA agents on Dr. King's end. Then the 115th MIG photographed and recorded King's speech at Los Angeles' Second Baptist Church.

On March 18 King arrived in Memphis at 7 p.m. under the surveillance of the 111th MIG and spoke at a rally of 15,000 people at the Mason Temple Church. In the audience was the 111th MIG's undercover agent Marrell McCollough. Martin pledged to return and lead a march four days later. After the speech he went to the Lorraine Motel to meet with community leaders. Then he went to the Rivermont Holiday Inn where he stayed that night under electronic and wiretap surveillance conducted by ASA agents assisted by MPD special services/intel- ligence bureau officer Jim Smith.

The next morning at 10:00 a.m. ACSI Yarborough hosted a two-hour meeting on the growing domestic turbulence held in Pentagon Conference Room 2E687 (office of Major W. M. Vickers, Chief, Consolidated Intelligence Support Facility). At 2:30 p.m. on that day, there was a fifteen-minute telephone conversation between the office of the 20th SFG and the Pentagon's National Defense Center regarding deployment plans.

On March 20 former Marine Corps commandant and Medal of Honor winner David M. Shoup virtually pronounced the Vietnam War incapable of being won. His comments deepened public depression and army frustration over the seemingly end- less quagmire of Vietnam.

On March 21 the president replaced Westmoreland as commander, kicking him upstairs, making him chief of staff. Also on that day at 3:30 p.m. senior 20th SFG staff met for two hours to discuss the Memphis situation. Simultaneously, at Camp Ravenswood, Illinois, according to a report by a black undercover agent of the 113th MIG, 175 white and fifty black community leaders met secretly to plan protest activity for the Democratic National Convention. Dr. King had two representatives in attendance.

Four days later on March 25, President Johnson appeared to be a beaten man as he met in the White House dining room at 10:30 a.m. with Joint Chiefs Chairman Wheeler and new Vietnam Commander General Creighton Abrams. He said, "Our strategic reserves ... are down to nothing. Our fiscal situation is abominable ... the country is demoralized. You must know about it. ... The [New York] Times and the [Washington] Post are all against us. Most of the press is against us."

That evening, in an upbeat mood, Dr. King spoke at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church in New York City. Recorded by the 108th MIG, he announced that his nonviolent, civil disobedience campaign had targeted Washington, D.C., as well as both major party political conventions.

***

ON MARCH 28 KING ARRIVED in Memphis at 10:30 a.m. to lead the march, which had been rearranged because of snow, beginning at Clayborn Temple at 11:06 a.m. Violence instigated by provocateurs broke out, and he was taken to the Rivermont Holiday Inn, where his suite and phones were bugged by ASA agents. On that day, 68 G-130 and G-5 troop transports were placed on alert to move army troops to Memphis, and FBI Division 5 Section Chief George C. Moore sent Yarborough a report on the riot. Yarborough also obtained a report that day that the army's strategic U .S. reserves were down to 60,000 men and these troops were not front-line quality. They were in need of training and up-to-date weapons. The report questioned whether the army had enough regular forces left in CONUS to be able to put down major simultaneous riots in American cities.

Finally, on March 28 at 6:45 p.m. Gardner of the 902nd MIG met with the FBI's Division Five Chief George C. Moore and Special Agent Steve Lancaster to discuss the final arrangements for the 902nd's Memphis deployment.

At 7:30 a.m. March 29 at the Camp Shelby, Mississippi, training base for the 20th SFG, Captain Billy R. Eidson was given his orders on the Memphis deployment and mission of the Alpha 184 unit he was to lead. Later that morning at 9:45 a.m. at the Falls Church, Virginia, headquarters of the 902nd MIG, Gardner received a current briefing report on the plans for the 20th SFG Alpha 184 team deployment in Memphis.

At 10:00 a.m. in his suite at the Rivermont Hotel, while being electronically surveilled by ASA agents, King met with Charles Cabbage, Calvin Taylor, and Charles "Izzy" Harrington, and committed himself to return to Memphis to lead another march on April 5. Transcripts of this meeting were cabled to the Pentagon.

Also that day at the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa CINCSTRIKE went on a DEFCON 1 alert and at SCLC headquarters in Atlanta a letter arrived from Vice President Hubert Humphrey to Dr. King, urging him to postpone his Poor People's Campaign.

On Sunday morning, March 31, Dr. King preached at the National Episcopal Cathedral in Washington, D.C, That evening Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. The Reverends Andrew Young, James Orange, and Jim Bevel flew to Memphis and on arrival were placed under surveillance by the 111th MIG agents who followed and watched them check into the Lorraine Motel. (In anticipation of their arrival, ASA agents, with local MPD assistance, had installed hidden microphones in three rooms of the Lorraine Motel, one of which was Room 306, where Dr. King was to be placed upon his arrival on April 3.)

The next morning ASA agents electronically surveilled the SCLC staff members meeting with the Invaders as they began preparations for the march. At the same time tensions in Washington and around the country were heightened by black Congressman Adam Clayton Powell's speech, at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, in which he called for the "total revolution of young people black and white against the sick society of America." Agents of the 111th MIG in attendance recorded his remarks.

***

On APRIL 3 AT 9:30 A.M. CINCSTRlKE met in Tampa on the mobilization plans for an anticipated riot in Memphis. Two hours later Dr. King and his SCLC party arrived in Memphis from Atlanta. Under the watchful eye of agents of the 111th MIG, he held a brief press conference and then went to the Lorraine Motel where he was checked into balcony room 306 (though, as we know, initially he had been scheduled to occupy the more cloistered and protected ground level room 202). Throughout the day he attended various planning meetings. Those at the Lorraine as well as telephone conversations were recorded and monitored by ASA agents from a vehicle parked in the area.

Around noon, Carthel Weeden, the captain at fire station 2 (which backed onto Mulberry Street and overlooked the Lorraine Motel) discreetly showed Reynolds and Norton, the two Psy Ops officers under Gardner's command, to the roof on the east side of the station from which vantage point they would begin to conduct visual and photographic surveillance of activity at the Lorraine Motel. (To appreciate their vantage point, see photograph #37.) Beginning at 1:00 p.m. there began the transmission of the Psy Ops surveillance reports to the 111th MIG headquarters at Fort McPherson via 111th MIG officers in the IEOC office located in the MPD's headquarters.

Also during the day SCLC controller and FBI paid informant Jim Harrison, after arriving with Dr. King, checked in with Memphis FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Jensen.

***

ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 4, at 4:30 a.m. at Camp Shelby, Captain Billy Eidson briefed his seven other Alpha 184 team members on their mission. The team left by cars for Memphis around 5:00 a.m. They would be met by on-site handlers and taken to their perches. Also that morning all of the surveillance teams and activities were back in place.

At 3 p.m. Phillip R. Manuel, a former army intelligence officer and in 1968 chief investigator for the McClellan (Senate Permanent Investigations) Committee who had been in Memphis for two days, met with MPD intelligence bureau Lieutenant E. H. Arkin.

Martin King and most of the SCLC executive staff remained in meetings, in room 306 during that afternoon, electronically surveilled by the ASA agents and visually observed by the MPD officers in the fire station, the Psy Ops agents on the roof of the fire station and the Alpha 184 sniper teams on their perches on the roof of the Illinois Central Railroad building, and the Tayloe Paper Company water tower.

At 5:50 p.m. the Rev. Billy Kyles, an MPD intelligence bureau informant, was observed by the various surveillance personnel knocking on the door of room 306 with Dr. King answering and then going back inside. Shortly afterward the SCLC staff meeting broke up and the various participants left to go to their rooms.

***

AT 6:01 P.M. A SNIPER FIRED a single shot which struck Dr. King at the same time the Alpha 184 snipers had King and Young in the crosshairs of their scopes. Reynolds's camera instantly photographed the falling King, taking four or five photographs, as Norton panned the brush area, catching the sniper as he lowered his rifle and left the scene.

Also immediately after the shot 111th MIG/undercover MPD agent Marrell McCollough raced up the stairs and knelt over the prone body of Dr. King.

Around 6:04 p.m., after a pause following the shot, Captain Eidson ordered his men to disengage, pack up, and withdraw according to their egress plans. Part of the team met at the river and went on the water by boat to waiting cars. The other group went by road to West Memphis airport, where they were flown to Amory, Mississippi.

Around 6:30 p.m. a police broadcast described a false chase of a suspect in the northern section of the city, diverting attention from the downtown area (these egress routes had previously been surveyed by' the 20th SFG recon. team).

At 7:05 p.m. the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital.

The "invasion" of the nation's capitol greatly feared by its military and intelligence leaders became a nonevent without the leadership of Dr. King. The fires, the anger, and the rebellions of the 1960s faded away after his death. Calm slowly returned to the nation, and the rights of people at home and in Vietnam, once in the forefront of public attention, disappeared once again from view.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN

Postby admin » Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:45 am

Part 1 of 2

Chapter 31: Chronology

1995 WOULD HAVE BEEN DR. KING'S sixty-sixth year. Now, nearly eighteen years after I began this journey, I set out in chronological order the details of how and why I believe he was assassinated.

***

As EARLY AS 1957 the FBI identified the SCLC as a potential target for communist infiltration. In 1962 the bureau established a COMINFIL file on the organization and Dr. King, and in 1963 it increased its attention. A wide range of COINTELPRO activities was used in an effort to harass, discredit, and demoralize Dr. King.

Through 1964 the focus of the government's activity was aimed at discrediting and removing him from any position of prominence or leadership in the civil rights movement. By early 1965, however, they were no longer dealing with just a black Baptist preacher, for on December 10, 1964, Dr. King was a Nobel Peace Prize winner with international stature. The strategy became redirected toward his elimination.

It is now clear that two attempts to kill Martin Luther King took place in 1965. There may have been others. The 20th SFG was present during the early stage of the Selma-to-Montgomery march which began on March 21, 1965. One of the members of a sniper team in that unit, J. D., briefly had Dr. King center mass before he turned away.

The second attempt was in September 1965, when an effort was made to involve Louisville police officer Clifton Baird. It was only because Baird tape-recorded and disclosed the actual approach, which emanated from named Louisville police officers who were collaborating with FBI agents from the Louisville field office, that it became known.

***

ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE CONTINUED on Dr. King. In the fall of 1966 Acting U .S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark refused to grant the bureau permission to bug and wiretap Dr. King. However, J. Edgar Hoover had access to army intelligence and ASA surveillance which had vastly more resources. In addition, the CIA's Office of Security was developing its own file.

From the beginning of 1967 until his assassination on April 4, 1968, King was subjected to a massive blanket of surveillance through the army MIG network and the ASA. The often daily reports were shared with FBI director Hoover (who had also seconded a trusted agent, Patrick Putnam, to Yarborough's staff) and with CIA director and USIB chairman Richard Helms. ACSI Yarborough appeared to be the bridge not only between Hoover and Helms but also between army intelligence and each of the other national intelligence entities.

From early 1967, King tied civil rights, peace, and economic justice together. While H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael and others advocated a more violent response, they were seen as fringe figures with relatively small followings. Dr. King spoke to and bridged the poor and the middle classes, blacks, whites and Hispanics, the young generally and students in particular. His base was broad and his credibility as a moral leader (despite the FBI's dirty tricks and smear campaigns) was unequalled.

During this time every record of every meeting involving government intelligence officials reflects the conclusion that he was the enemy -- a dangerous revolutionary controlled by communists. At the top, against all reason, there were no doubts, no second thoughts, and only minimal dissent in the ranks. His antiwar speech in Los Angeles on February 25 -- which focused on the Vietnamese casualties -- advocated teaching, preaching, and demonstrating, yet the ACSI's counterintelligence analysis incredibly called it' 'a call to armed aggression by negroes against the American people." Four hours later, the 111th MIG at Fort McPherson, in Atlanta, had two black agents ready to infiltrate the SCLC. Jim Harrison, the SCLC controller, had already become a deep cover FBI informant under the control of special agent Al Sentinella. Other informants were run by special agent Art Murtagh of the Atlanta field office.

ACSI Yarborough, CIA director Helms, and the FBI's Hoover became increasingly alarmed as Dr. King increased the pressure on the administration during 1967, even considering running as a potential presidential candidate.

When in June, during the AMA national convention in Chicago, Director Hoover met with fellow gambler, friend, and political ally Texas oil billionaire H. L. Hunt (whose daily syndicated Life Line radio programs frequently attacked King) , Hoover said he thought a final solution was necessary. Only that action would stop King.

Other attempts to assassinate Dr. King originated during this period, apparently involving elements of organized crime for the first time. A meeting was held at the Blue Note Lounge in Jackson, Mississippi. Joe "Buck" Buchanan, a paraplegic involved in various Dixie Mafia criminal activities throughout the South, including New Orleans, offered a $50,000 murder contract. Present at the meeting were Tim Kirk and one of the Tiller brothers. The contract came out of New Orleans directly from Carlos Marcello and was eventually picked up by Red Nix of Tipton County, Tennessee, who was given a car and a gun to enable him to stalk and shoot Dr. King.

***

IN RESPONSE TO HEIGHTENED tensions throughout the country, the 20th SFG was mobilized on June 12 with a unit being sent to Tampa. Warren, a sniper, was a member of one of the 20th SFG alpha teams run by the 902nd MIG and sent to that city (the 902nd MIG was attached directly to the ACSI's office). Riots continued in Tampa from June 12-June 16.

On June 15, Raul Pereira became a naturalized American citizen.

On June 16, in the midst of the escalating turbulence, Marrell McCollough, a discharged black soldier, was brought back on active duty. Assigned to the 111th MIG, he was deployed to the Memphis Police Department to engage in undercover work.

In July and August 1967, Gardner's aide of the 902nd MIG met with Eric S. GaIt, an employee of U.S. defense contractor Union Carbide with top secret security clearance. Also sometime in mid July, James Earl Ray, who following his escape in April had worked his way to Montreal, somehow obtained and began to use the name Eric S. Gait as an alias.

In 1967, Warren participated in the delivery of weapons to New Orleans. The equipment was stolen from his 20th SFG Camp Shelby training base and the theft was organized by a master sergeant. The deliveries were made to Marcello's associate Zippy Chimento on property owned by the New Orleans Mafia leader. Army intelligence/CIA operative Jack Youngblood was also present on occasion.

During this time Raul Pereira and his cousin Amaro were receiving some of these weapons at the Port of Houston which were shipped by water from New Orleans. Raul and Amaro also met during this time with Carlos Marcello in Houston.

***

RIOTS BROKE OUT ACROSS the country that summer, with the most serious explosions taking place in Newark and Detroit (where Warren was also deployed). Despite contrary intelligence reports, Martin Luther King was branded as the source of the disruptions and as being under the control of foreign communist elements.

In response, Generals Yarborough (ACSI) and Blakefield (USAINTC), and CIA director Helms pushed a new domestic Special Operations Group (SOG) into high gear. Projects CHAOS and MERRIMAC focused on spying upon dissenting citizens and infiltrating the ten major peace and civil rights organizations, including NCNP whose preparations for a national convention scheduled for the Labor Day weekend were well under way.

In August, James Earl Ray, who was now using the alias Eric S. Galt, had meetings with Raul in the Neptune Bar on West Commissioners Street in Montreal. He entered into discussions with Raul, who said he could provide him with money and travel documents in exchange for James's assistance in certain smuggling activity. Desperate for money and a way to Europe, James agreed, and finally left Montreal around the end of August to travel to Birmingham where he was to meet up with Raul. Raul gave James a New Orleans telephone contact number.

On August 31, Dr. King delivered a forceful keynote address opening the NCNP convention at the Palmer House in Chicago. A "Black Caucus" which appeared to come out of nowhere was formed, and arriving black delegates were forcibly brought under its control. The group, which appeared to be dominated by urban blacks (the provocateurs were later identified as Chicago Blackstone Ranger gang members and other inner-city thugs) was led by an unknown political cadre and immediately took on a disruptive policy. I received word of their intention to kidnap Dr. King and hold him until a range of their demands was met. King's exit was quickly organized immediately after he spoke. In retrospect, this was exactly what the provocateurs wanted. King was a bridge, he had the ability to bring people together. His presence was therefore contrary to the interests of the government provocateurs who only wanted to break up the convention and defeat its purpose. They succeeded.

On that last day of August the National Security Agency (NSA) was formally brought into the recently formed SOG loop of the combined intelligence agency effort to counter the ever-growing antiwar/economic justice forces. Following a meeting with Yarborough, the NSA launched Operation MINARET to monitor international cable traffic and assist the efforts of the ACSI counterintelligence section to identify foreign governments helping "black radicals" and antiwar groups.

***

IN EARLY SEPTEMBER Yarborough learned about the plans for a massive antiwar demonstration to be addressed by Dr. King on October 21 at the Pentagon. He began to prepare for the confrontation by increasing surveillance and developing a program of infiltration of antiwar groups.

The government's worst fears were realized in the October 21 demonstration. The sight of masses of people attacking the citadel of American power not only appalled but, because of their impotence, humiliated the senior government and military officials who observed them. They believed that there was every possibility that what they viewed as a revolutionary force might not be consistently contained, particularly in light of the depletion of available trained forces in CONUS due to the war. Secretary McNamara asked Chief of Staff Harold Johnson what he was going to do about the rising emergency. Johnson turned and asked the same question to his ACSI -- Yarborough.

The shock of the demonstration reverberated throughout official Washington, and at a senior level the decision to form and use a specialized 20th SFG alpha team was clearly made. On October 23, Gardner, following a request from the ACSI's office, received the roster of the 20th SFG and selected the eight-man Memphis team which was to become Alpha 184.

***

MEANWHILE, in Birmingham Raul gave James money to buy the Mustang and asked James (who was puzzled by the request) to buy some photographic equipment which he ordered by mail from a Chicago company. Since Raul may have been involved in pornography in Houston, this could explain why he wanted the equipment, or it may have been simply to make it appear that James was involved in stalking activity.

James was keeping in touch occasionally with Raul. Following his instructions he went to Mexico, arriving on October 7. He remained there until he went to Los Angeles on November 19. As he cleaned out his car before crossing the border, he discovered the L.E.A.A. business card with the name and address of Randy Rosen(son) written on it.

As James made his way to California, units of the 20th SFG containing specialized sniper teams were deployed to recon cities that the army contended might "explode" next spring and summer. The teams were ordered to make street maps, take aerial photos, establish communications nets, command posts, sniper sites, and operational plans.

In autumn and early winter of 1967 some of the members of the 902nd MIG's Alpha 184 team were practicing daily for their mission at a site near Pocatello, Idaho. The "shoot" was from a triangular formation, and during these sessions at least, though this seems to have ultimately changed, three shooters were practicing.

In autumn 1967, James's relationship and activities with Raul were on hold. Raul, however, knew how to contact him (through L.A. general delivery) and James had the New Orleans telephone contact number.

In early December James was instructed by Raul to travel to New Orleans. This he did, sharing the driving with Charlie Stein, a briefly known acquaintance. During that visit to New Orleans, James met with Raul. Raul told him that he would be needed for another gunrunning job into Mexico and that he would contact him in a few months' time.

***

ON DECEMBER 4, in Atlanta, as President Johnson was meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Luther King announced the formation of SCLC's Poor People's Campaign with demonstrations planned for Washington, D.C., in the spring.

On January 10, an increasingly nervous president ordered Chief of Staff Harold Johnson to "use every resource" under his command to defuse the anticipated spring civil disturbances.

Around this time another approach to the mob was made. A contract was offered to kill Dr. King, previous efforts having been unsuccessful. Minor gangster Myron Billet attended a meeting in the small town of Apalachin, New York, a favorite mob meeting place. Though most of the time was spent on other matters, three government agents (from the CIA and FBI) offered one million dollars to Carlo Gambino and Sam Giancana to arrange for the killing of Dr. King. The offer was not accepted. The agents indicated that it would be placed elsewhere.

Presumably Marcello, whose operative Red Nix had failed to carry out the earlier contract, was approached, since he eventually came back into the frame and turned to members of his organization in Memphis to finally complete this contract.

***

ON FEBRUARY 12, the day the Memphis sanitation workers went out on strike, the 111th established a' 'special security detachment" to be under the direct control of the ACSI, General Yarborough, for "immediate deployment" in emergencies.

Ten days later on February 22, an informant of the 111th MIG reportedly indicated that Martin Luther King would become involved in supporting the strikers. This was almost a month before he actually came to Memphis.

Three days later, a 20th SFG recon team entered Memphis, coming in through the Trailways bus terminal. One of their tasks was to map egress routes in the northern section of the city.

On February 28 Hoover's seconded FBI agent Patrick Putnam met with the 902nd MIG's Gardner and CIAB director Colonel Van Tassell.

***

ON THE WEEKEND of March 15 James was instructed by Raul to leave Los Angeles and drive to New Orleans where he would receive further instructions. At this time Memphis produce man Frank Liberto asked Loyd Jowers to repay a "big" favor. Jowers, who had been alerted earlier by another mutual acquaintance, was told by Liberto that the brush area behind his Jim's Grill was to be used as a sniper's lair for the assassination of Dr. King, who would at some time in the next three to four weeks be staying at the Lorraine Motel which was directly opposite the brush area. A gun would be provided.

Jowers was told that the police would not be there. A patsy was also going to be provided and Jowers would be handsomely paid. Liberto explained that the money came out of New Orleans.

Also on that March 15,J. Edgar Hoover met one-on-one with the 902nd MIG's Gardner, who was the coordinator of the military mission.

It is clear that by March 15, not only had the die been cast but various wheels had been put in motion so that the assassination would be carried out in Memphis during the course of Dr. King's visits to that city in support of the strikers.

On the next day, Saturday, March 16, the massacre of civilians began in the village of My Lai, Vietnam, and Senator Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy for the presidency on an antiwar platform. Dr. King addressed the powerful California democratic state council on that day and on the following Sunday, March 17, as ASA agents listened, he discussed on the telephone the arrangements for his travel from L.A. to Memphis, where he was scheduled to address a strikers' rally on Monday evening (March 1 at Mason Temple.)

Dr. King flew to Memphis and addressed nearly 15,000 people. 111th MIG agent Marrell McCollough was in the audience. King promised to return to lead the march which was planned for March 22. He then went to the Lorraine Motel where he met with local leaders, after which he went to the Rivermont Hotel where the four-man black detective team led by Jerry Williams provided security all night. During this stay he was electronically surveilled and the phones in his suite were tapped and monitored by ASA agents, with the assistance of Jim Smith of the MPD special services/intelligence bureau.

On March 22 the planned march to Memphis was cancelled due to a heavy snowstorm and rescheduled for March 28. Also on March 22 James arrived in New Orleans, a day late. Raul had already gone to Birmingham with instructions for James to meet him there at the Starlight Lounge, the next day. They met and at Raul's insistence set out immediately for Atlanta. In Atlanta Raul told James to stay close to the rooming house because he might be needed quickly to go on a trip to Miami. He also asked James to leave the side door open so that he (Raul) could come and go without being seen.

***

IN BIRMINGHAM, on March 22, 20th SFG second in command Major Bert E. Wride conducted a two-hour briefing on the Memphis situation and plans. At the same time, President Johnson announced that General Westmoreland had been replaced by General Creighton Abrams, as commander of the Vietnam forces.

At 7:30 a.m. on March 28 in Camp Shelby, 20th SFG Alpha 184 team captain Billy R. Eidson was given his orders on the Memphis deployment. Later that day, the rescheduled march was broken up by provocateurs and Dr. King was led to the Rivermont Hotel by an MPD motorcycle officer, even though he had reservations at the Peabody Hotel. He was given his usual suite, making it possible once again for his activities and conversations to be monitored by the waiting ASA agents. The disruption of the march placed the army on "full alert focus" in Memphis. George C. Moore of the FBI's Division Five (counterintelligence) sent a Memphis field office report to Yarborough and then late that afternoon Moore went over to Falls Church, Virginia, to meet with Gardner of the 902nd MIG.

The day after the aborted march, Dr. King tried to bring things together in a meeting with the Invaders who he tended to believe (incorrectly) were responsible for the previous day's violence. The session at the Rivermont was overheard and taped by ASA agents who cabled the transcripts to the Pentagon. They learned that King was personally determined to return to Memphis and complete his march on Friday, April 5.

That same day, March 29, Raul, whom James hadn't seen for over five days, returned and announced that the gunrunning operation was set. He said they had to leave immediately for Birmingham. Once there, he instructed James to buy a rifle at the Aeromarine Supply Store. When James came back with a .243 caliber Raul told him to arrange to exchange it for a 30.06, which James did the following day. Before departing, Raul instructed James to meet him on April 3 at the New Rebel Motel in Memphis and bring the gun with him.

***

ON MARCH 29, even as Dr. King was addressing the problem of provoked violence in Memphis, various congressmen and senators delivered scathing attacks on him. The media picked up the theme.

On that day the FBI prepared a draft article for placement through "cooperative" sources, taking Dr. King to task for leading a violent march and also for staying at white-owned hotels. It urged him to stay at the "fine Hotel Lorraine." The combination of the bureau and the press (articles appeared across the country) was formidable. Subsequently, a decision to stay at the Lorraine was made.

Around this time Jowers received a regular produce delivery from the Liberto-controlled M. E. Carter produce company which contained in the bottom of the box the sum of $100,000 in cash, which had been delivered from New Orleans. Considering Jowers's role this appears to be a lot of money and raises the possibility that Jowers may also have been disbursing funds under instructions to designated MPD and possibly other officials. During this period Jowers was visited on two occasions by Raul, who discussed details of the proposed hit with him.

On March 31, while Martin King preached at the Episcopal Cathedral in Washington, D.C., his aides Andrew Young, James Orange, and James Bevel flew to Memphis to begin preparations for the march. Their meeting that evening in the Lorraine with the Invaders was overheard by ASA agents. At some point the reservation for Dr. King's room was changed from a cloistered secure room (202) to a highly exposed one (306).

***

ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 3, Dr. King arrived in Memphis where he was met not by the usual security team of black detectives, but by a specially formed group of white detectives who had never before been used as a security detail for Dr. King. They would be removed late that afternoon and were not formed the next day. This was significant. The black detectives had been assigned to protect Dr. King on previous visits. Now, during a visit when the tension in the city and hostility toward him was at an all-time high, the special black security team was not formed.

Shortly after King arrived at the motel, checking into room 306, Psy Ops officers Reynolds and his partner Norton were met around noon (when the firemen on duty had begun their afternoon -- noon to 5 p.m. -- nap) by fire station 2 Fire Captain Carthel Weeden, who provided them with an observation post on the flat roof on the east side of the fire station, overlooking the Lorraine. Hourly surveillance reports on activities at the motel began to be transmitted to 111th MIG agents stationed in the IEOC inside the MPD's central headquarters.

Soon after the SCLC group arrived in Memphis that morning, one of their number, controller Jim Harrison, the deep cover FBI informant inside SCLC, called the Memphis SAC Robert Jensen, in order to check in and tell him that he was in town with the group in case he was needed for anything.

Also on this day, in the back of the fire station, MPD intelligence bureau officer Detective Ed Redditt and patrolman Willie Richmond surveilled all activity going on at the motel. The TACT units were pulled back on the orders of Inspector Sam Evans who controlled those units. TACT 10, which had used the Lorraine as its base, was ordered out of the immediate area of the Lorraine Motel. Its new base, beginning on April 4, was to be the fire station. This pullback constituted a further removal of a security force from the immediate area of the Lorraine.

On April 3, James, transporting the Aeromarine rifle, checked into the New Rebel Motel where he was joined by Raul late that evening. At that meeting Raul told James to meet him at Jim's Grill at 3:00 p.m. the next afternoon and wrote the address down for him. Raul left, taking the rifle with him.

Sometime around this time a rifle connected with the assassination scenario may have been stored on the premises of a Liberto business located within blocks of the Lorraine.

Martin Luther King, whose room was under constant eye-to-eye MPD and 111th MIG surveillance as well as electronic surveillance by ASA agents, went that evening (April 3) to address an overflow crowd at Mason Temple in the presence of an 111th MIG team and 111th MIG/MPD undercover agent Marrell McCollough.

At the request of the MPD, between 10 and 11 p.m. that evening the only two black firemen at fire station 2 -- Floyd Newsom and Norvell Wallace -- were ordered not to report to their regular station the next day, April 4. Their new assignments were to fire stations in distant parts of the city. It appears likely that Newsom and Wallace were removed because they were potential witnesses who could not be controlled.

***

ON APRIL 4, Captain Eidson began briefing his Alpha 184 team at 4:30 a.m. at Camp Shelby. They were shown target acquisition photos of the Lorraine Motel and their target .., Dr. King and Andrew Young, who were described as enemies of the government. Young was a target as he was viewed as potentially the most effective successor of those likely to pick up the torch. No firing was to occur until the order was given by Eidson. Each member of the team was told where to go when they arrived in Memphis. They would be met and taken to their prearranged positions.

Within thirty-five to forty minutes they were on their way. Shortly after in Memphis, Loyd Jowers got ready to open up Jim's Grill for the day and began to prepare, as usual, for the breakfast crowd. He told Bobbi Smith not to follow her usual routine of taking breakfast upstairs to recuperating rooming house tenant Grace Walden. Presumably this was because the area was to be used for some staging activity for the operation.

At 10 a.m., even as the Alpha 184 team drew nearer to Memphis, ACSI Yarborough and USAINTC commander Blakefield left the Pentagon for what was to be a nearly four-hour meeting at Bailey's Crossroads with senior CIAB officers and others. At 2:10 p.m. the meeting broke up and they returned to the Pentagon.

At the fire station Reynolds and Norton climbed back up to their surveillance perch on the roof and continued the routine established the day before, passing reports along to the MPD-based agents of the 111th MIG. The 111th MIG and ASA agents were also in place from early morning in the immediate area of the Lorraine. Also in position was the MPD surveillance team (Redditt and Richmond) in the rear of the fire station.

***

SOMETIME in late morning Jowers was visited by Raul who gave him a rifle to hold, saying he would pick it up later. Jowers dutifully put it on the shelf under his counter.

Dr. King got up late that morning. There was an SCLC executive staff meeting set for the afternoon and a court hearing on the city's application to enjoin the march was scheduled for that morning. Andy Young had been assigned the task of attending the hearing and reporting back. Sometime after he left, MPD chief MacDonald took up a position near the Butler Street entrance to the Lorraine, walkie-talkie in hand.

In Memphis, Captain Billy Eidson introduced Warren and Murphy to Lieutenant Eli Arkin of the MPD intelligence bureau. Arkin reportedly told them that their assistance was essential to save the city that Dr. King's forces were preparing to burn down. They then met up with their contact around 1:00 p.m. Warren named him and said he believed he was a CIA agent. They were taken to their perch on top of the Illinois Central Railroad building where they assumed a state of readiness. In the course of the afternoon Captain Eidson put Warren on the radio with MPD inspector Sam Evans who described the layout of the Lorraine. He also advised them that "friendlies would not be wearing ties." (The only government agent we have identified who was physically close to Dr. King at the time of the killing was Marrell McCollough who was not wearing a tie. It is also interesting to note that James was wearing a tie although Raul, reportedly, was not.)

[Inspector Evans (whose son Sam Jr. is currently an investigator for attorney general Pierotti's office) was a significant MPD senior officer and a link between the army and civilian operations. Jowers had been told by Liberto that no police would be around at the time of the killing. Evans was in charge of MPD special services including the emergency TACT units, and on April 3 he ordered the TACT units in and around the area of the Lorraine Motel to pull back. The closest unit -- TACT 10 -- moved its base from the Lorraine to the fire station, thus providing the civilian shooter with more of an opportunity to escape. Also Evans's introduction to Warren by the alpha team's CO Captain Billy Eidson, clearly placed him in the loop regarding the army operation.]

Around this time J. D. and his partner were met by their contact officer and taken to their perch on the Tayloe Paper Company water tower.

James, having run some errands earlier that morning, made his way downtown to look for Jim's Grill where he was to meet Raul in mid afternoon. On the way, he stopped to change a slowly leaking tire, which made him late. James arrived on South Main Street and after going to the wrong bar eventually entered Jim's Grill. Not seeing Raul inside, he retrieved his car and finally parked it in front of Jim's Grill around 3:30 p.m. By that time Raul had shown up in the grill. He instructed James to rent a room in the rooming house upstairs which he did under the name of John Willard, although Raul had initially wanted James to rent the room using the Galt alias. James was dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt and tie and looked out of place. Raul was also wearing a dark suit and light shirt but was not wearing a tie.

Loyd Jowers pretty much followed his routine most of the day, except for meeting with Raul and spending time out in the back brush area behind Jim's Grill.

Raul sent James to purchase binoculars and then instructed him to bring his bag upstairs to the room. James also carried a bedspread up to the room in case he had to sleep there since he didn't want to sleep on the one provided.

By this time all of the preparations for James to be set up were completed. He had rented the room which was to be the staging area, brought some of his physical possessions into it so that they were available to be planted, and purchased a set of binoculars which could be used to support the allegation that he was surveilling the motel.

***
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN

Postby admin » Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:45 am

Part 2 of 2

AROUND 4:00 P.M. Andrew Young returned from court and joined the SCLC meeting in room 306.

Between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. MPD intelligence bureau lieutenant E. H. Arkin met with Phillip R. Manuel (former army counterintelligence officer and investigator for the U.S. Senate Committee on Permanent Investigations). Manuel had been in Memphis for a couple of days. Sometime after 4:30 p.m. Arkin appeared at fire station 2 and ordered Redditt to go with him to central police headquarters. Between 5:00 and 5:30 p.m. at a headquarters conference room filled with military brass, the Director of Police and Fire Frank Holloman ordered Redditt to go home for his own protection, indicating that there had been a threat on his life. Redditt resisted but was finally driven home by Arkin, who had already learned that the threat was bogus.

Around 4:40-4:45 p.m., a man in a dark blue windbreaker drove up South Main Street in a white Mustang with Arkansas plates and parked it just south of Canipe's in front of the billboards and just north of the parking lot driveway. He sat in the car for some time and then eventually got out and entered the rooming house, going up to room 5-B where he would join Raul. This white Mustang driver was clearly not James, who was dressed in a suit and tie on that day.

Sometime late that afternoon Raul visited Jowers again in the grill. This time he picked up the rifle he had left earlier. He carried it into the back of the grill and apparently upstairs to James's room.

Around 5:00 p.m. James Latch answered the phone in the LL& L office and handed it to Frank Liberto. An agitated Liberto yelled at the party on the other end of the phone, "I told you not to call me here, shoot the son of a bitch when he comes on the balcony." He then told the caller that he should collect his money from his (Liberto's) brother in New Orleans after he had finished the job. The sum mentioned was $5,000. It appears that Liberto was speaking to the shooter, who may have been Raul.

Meanwhile, also around 5:00 p.m. or shortly afterward, Invader Big John Smith arrived at the Lorraine Motel. Passing through the lobby on his way to a meeting room, he noticed a number of MPD officers around the motel, particularly officer Caro Harris. When he came down from the meeting about thirty minutes later (5:30-5:45 p.m.) the officers, including Harris, had all disappeared.

By this time, then, all security had been stripped away from Dr. King's immediate area. In contrast, massive surveillance units were in place. Three rooms at the Lorraine, including Dr. King's room, 306, were bugged and the telephones tapped. Eye-to-eye physical surveillance was in place from units on Butler and Huling Streets and photographic surveillance was in process from the roof of the fire station. Also still in place were the Alpha 184 sniper teams.

***

SOMETIME AROUND 5:15 P.M. Raul gave James $200 and told him to go to the movies as he wanted to meet alone with a gunrunner. Raul also told James to leave the car, as he would be using it later. Instructed to return in two to three hours, James left the rooming house around 5:20, got a quick bite to eat, and then remembered the flat spare tire. Deciding to try to have it repaired, he went looking for a gas station. He drove north on South Main for two blocks and then at Vance Avenue turned right at about 5:50-5:55 directly in front of two Jim's Grill customers (Ray Hendrix and William Reed) who were walking to their hotel -- Clarks Hotel.

Between 5:30-5:50 p.m., with James out of the way, the shooter was in the brush area with the murder weapon, where he was joined by Loyd Jowers. The two began to watch the motel, waiting for Dr. King to come outside.

Meanwhile, another person waited in room 5-B, prepared to take the bundle containing the rifle James bought and other items of his downstairs to plant them.

Also at 5:50 p.m., as J. Edgar Hoover was settling in at his favorite Washington eating and drinking place (Harvey's Restaurant), ACSI Yarborough was en route to attend a reception for the Chinese Ambassador at 3225 Woodley Road N.W.

Back in Memphis, around 5:45-5:50 p.m., Redditt's surveillance partner Richmond observed the hurried departure of the Invaders from their motel rooms 315 and 316. Some left in Charles Cabbage's car and others departed on foot.Soon after they left, Richmond observed Reverend Billy Kyles knock on the door of room 306. He saw Dr. King answer the door, speak briefly with Kyles and then go back inside, closing the door behind him. Right around then, the 111th MIG undercover agent Marrell McCollough drove into the parking lot of the Lorraine with SCLC's Jim Orange and Jim Bevel.

Shortly afterwards the SCLC staff meeting broke up. Reverend Kyles was on the balcony some fifteen to twenty feet north of Dr. King's room. The exiting staff members left Dr. King's room quickly and headed for their rooms to freshen up in preparation for the soul food dinner planned at Reverend Kyles's home.

A minute or two before 6:00 p.m. Dr. King came out on the balcony, leaned on the railing, and began to talk to people in the group right below him in the parking lot, one of whom was Andy Young.

Betty Spates had entered the grill just before 6:00 p.m., coming across the street from the Seabrook Wallpaper Company looking for Jowers. She made her way back into the kitchen, noting that the kitchen door, which was always open or at least ajar, was closed. Jowers was nowhere to be seen.

As Dr. King stood at the railing at 6:00 p.m. he was center mass in J.D.'s sights. J. D. waited for the order to fire. At the same time Andrew Young, who was standing in the motel parking area, was also held center mass in Warren's sights.

Unknown to either army sniper, the civilian shooter was also "drawing a bead" on Dr. King from the brush area, with Loyd Jowers kneeling nearby.

At exactly 6:01 the shooter fired and his bullet struck Martin King in the side of the face. The impact rocked him back and then he fell where he had been standing.

As the impact rocked Dr. King backward and he began to fall, Reynolds snapped four or five shots catching Dr. King as he fell. Norton then swung his camera from the direction of the parking lot of the Lorraine to the left, focusing on the brush area to catch the shooter lowering his rifle and leaving the scene. After dropping the gun on the ground, the shooter scrambled through the brush and down the wall. Jumping down onto Mulberry Street he ran north to Huling and went around the front of a waiting MPD car to get into it on the passenger side. The car then drove quickly away, heading north on Mulberry Street.

Paul, the Yellow Cab driver of car number 58, who was picking up a fare at the Lorraine, saw the shooter coming over the wall and into the police car and immediately reported it to his dispatcher over his radio.

Meanwhile Loyd Jowers had picked up the murder weapon which had been left on the ground by the shooter and began to run back to the rear door of his kitchen. Inside, Betty, hearing a shot and seeing the back door open, went to it and looked out. Jowers was then about ten to fifteen feet away, coming toward her. She stepped back and he ran into the building. He was white as a ghost, out of breath, and his hair was in disarray. The knees of his trousers were muddy. In the kitchen he turned to her and said plaintively, "You wouldn't ever do anything to hurt me, would you? She replied, "You know I wouldn't Loyd." In front of her, he quickly broke down the gun into two or three pieces and covered it with a cloth. He left the kitchen, stepping quickly behind the counter under which he placed the gun on a shelf, pushing it back out of sight.

Immediately after the shot, 111th MIG agent Marrell McCollough raced up the stairs to reach the fallen Dr. King and knelt over him, apparently checking him for life signs.

Very close to the time of the shot, a person dressed in a dark suit exited James's room 5-B, went down the stairs, out of the building, and dropped the bundle in the recessed doorway of Canipe's store. He then got into the Mustang just south of Canipe's and drove away, going north on South Main Street.

***

IN THE FIVE MINUTES immediately following the shooting (TTH+6), Warren and Murphy on the Illinois Central Railroad building and J.D. and his partner on the water tower were ordered by Captain Billy Eidson to disengage and proceed to their respective preassigned egress routes. Sometime thereafter Reynolds and Norton made their descent from the roof of the fire station.

MPD officers Joe Hodges, Torrence Landers, and Carroll Dunn, having penetrated the thick brush at the rear of the rooming house, found what appeared to be a fresh set of large footprints. One was 13-1/2 inches long and the other nearly 14 inches. They were at the top of the alley which ran between the buildings and pointed in the direction of the door at the end (which led to the basement and also into the grill). No proper search was conducted of the basement of the rooming house.

Dr. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital.

James, returning to the rooming house area, saw a policeman blocking traffic on South Main Street. Constantly aware of his fugitive status, he headed south out of the area, intending to call his New Orleans contact number in order to learn what had happened. When he heard on the radio that Dr. King had been shot and that the police were looking for a white man in a white Mustang, he decided to head straight for Atlanta.

Inexplicably no all points bulletin (APB) and no signal Y (blocking exit routes from the city) were issued by the MPD. Within half an hour after the killing, a hoax CB broadcast took place depicting a car chase on an outward egress route in the northern end of the city. (Remember that the Alpha 184 recon team had on February 25 mapped egress routes in that section of the city.)

Yellow Cab driver Paul dropped his Lorraine fare off at the airport and reported what he had seen, first to another Yellow Cab driver, Louie Ward, and then to three MPD officers. He was subsequently also interviewed that evening by the police at the Yellow Cab offices on South Second Street. Paul reportedly died late on the night of April 4, either falling or being pushed out of a car on the Memphis Arkansas bridge.

On the evening of Apri14, H. L. Hunt was called by J. Edgar Hoover and advised to pull off the air all anti-King Life Line radio programs being aired in the next twenty-four hours. Hunt immediately summoned John Curington to his home and gave him the assignment of organizing a group of secretaries to make the radio station calls. Hunt began feverishly working on an anti-King book on the day after the assassination, only to abruptly abandon the project.

In the course of the rest of the evening, Dr. King was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's and his friends paid their last respects. In performing the autopsy the coroner would strangely fail to trace the path of the bullet in Dr. King's body. The death slug was removed in one piece from Dr. King's back where it came to rest just under his left shoulder blade. MPD officers, often accompanied by FBI agents, began to take statements from witnesses in the area, and the rifle, death slug, and items found in the bundle in front of Canipe's were sent off to the FBI laboratory for forensic examination.

***

VERY EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, in response to a request from the MPD, Memphis Public Works deputy director Maynard Stiles assigned two supervisory workers Dutch Goodman and Willie Crawford (remember non supervisory workers were on strike) to go to the rear of the rooming house where under MPD supervision they cut the brush to the ground. The tall hedge which ran between the fire station and the parking area immediately adjoining the rooming house was also cut to the ground. A large tree branch between the bathroom window and the Lorraine may also have been cut down sometime after the killing, thus eliminating an apparent obstacle to a clear shot from the bathroom window.

The MPD investigation was aborted almost from the outset, taken over and controlled by the FBI, even though the murder was a state and not a federal crime. Though detectives conducted numerous interviews, glaringly obvious leads and significant witnesses were ignored, and the drunkenness of the state's main witness, Charlie Stephens, was concealed. The investigation files were also clearly sanitized. Where, for example, are: the interviews conducted of Yellow Cab driver Paul; the photographs of the bullet removed from Dr. King's body; the photographs of the scene of the crime as it was at the time, before the bushes at the back of the rooming house and the hedge between the parking lot and the fire station had been cut down?

Loyd Jowers opened the grill the morning after the shooting after driving Bobbi to work. On the way he told her about finding a gun out back which he said he had turned over to the police. Sometime in late morning he lifted the lid of a box and showed Yellow Cab driver James McCraw the rifle he had hidden under his counter within a minute or two immediately after the shooting. A scope was also in the box but it was not attached to the rifle. Jowers told McCraw that this was the rifle which had been used to kill Dr. King and that he had found it out back and was going to turn it over to the police. It seems that Jowers was already beginning to construct a cover story.

***

OBVIOUSLY IT IS TOO MUCH of a coincidence for the Alpha 184 army snipers and the "civilian" assassin to have been there independently taking aim at Dr. King at the same moment. The whole arrangement: the manipulation of Martin Luther King into the exposed balcony room; the stripping away of security and potential witnesses who could not be controlled; the provision of a patsy; the positioning of massive surveillance and a sniper team; the provision of local intelligence and logistical assistance; the restriction of the investigation by FBI control; the ignoring of leads and evidence begging for attention; the alteration of the scene of the crime could only have been possible with the knowledge and cooperation of the FBI, army intelligence, the ASA, the 20th SFG, elements of the ACSI's office, the CIA, the mob, and senior officers of the MPD. Further, we know from Warren's orders that the White House, the Secretary of Defense, the FBI, and officials of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others, were aware of the Memphis army deployment. The relationship between the army and the civilian assassination operations is further revealed by James's use of the alias of Eric S. Galt. Galt, holding top secret clearance, was at the time involved in another covert operation (Project MEXPO) with the same unit (the 902nd MIG) which carried out the Memphis deployment and coordinated the 111th MIG, ASA, and 20th SFG forces on- site. In fact, Gardner of the 902nd MIG himself selected the eight-man Alpha 184 sniper team.

It clearly appears that the hit was to be carried out by the civilian contract killer with the army snipers there as backup shooters if the contract shooter could not make the shot or if he failed to kill King. How two snipers shooting from different locations could take out both King and Young and still pin the shooting on James Earl Ray is difficult to reconcile until one remembers that the initial plan appeared to be to shoot at a moving target in a car. Because of the movement of the car and the fact that bullets would be deflected back and forth inside, it would be virtually impossible to determine the origin of the shots. The army snipers were surprised that their targets Dr. King and Andy Young were outside of their rooms in exposed positions just before six p.m. Not believing their luck, they quickly got them in their sights and waited for the order to fire. They were amazed when this did not come.

While particular senior level officials must have been aware of the whole picture, the lower level participants only knew what their particular roles were. Thus, the army snipers knew nothing of the local subcontract and Warren assumed when King was shot that it was one of their snipers who had fired too early. Similarly, the civilian operatives were unlikely to have known about the military presence. Even if the fiction of the lone assassin James Earl Ray could not be sustained there was at the next level, already in place, an officially deniable local contract and assassination operation ostensibly carried out exclusively by organized crime.

As to organized crime, the mob would not be involved without being paid. Though it appears that the payment was organized from official sources, unvouchered and thus untraceable funds would have been used.

In one sense the killing itself was the easy part. The difficulty in such operations is how to cover up the truth and keep it covered up so that the official involvement does not surface. In order to accomplish this, strict control must be exercised over any investigation. Such control characterized the original FBI-directed MPD investigation and the subsequent Justice Department and HSCA investigations.

It is important to realize that much of the subsequent cover-up activity took place after a number of key officials in 1967-68 had gone from the scene. Director Hoover died in 1972. Lyndon Johnson did not run for reelection and died in 1973. H. L. Hunt passed away in 1974 and by then Richard Helms, army chief of staff General Harold Johnson and ACSI General William Yarborough were long gone from the official positions they held at the time. Gardner faded away and eventually disappeared. Finally, in the years following the events of April 4, 1968, two members of the Alpha 184 team (Captain Billy Eidson and 2nd Lieutenant Robert Worley) died or were killed, leaving Warren and Murphy in no doubt that a cleanup operation was under way. They left the country. A third member -- the central communications operator -- also went into hiding in Canada, and a fourth, J. D., was also killed some years later.

The exception, however, was outside of government where Carlos Marcello, though in prison for part of the time, remained active in running his New Orleans criminal enterprise and the same Memphis Godfather continued to be his main man in Memphis. Produce man Frank C. Liberto also continued to "take care of business" in that city with the Godfather's blessing, until he died in 1978, the year he admitted his role in the killing to the Whitlocks.

The point is that insofar as the government is concerned, the personalities -- heinous though many of them were -- changed, but a consistent policy of covering up the truth by the use of every possible means (including further murders) was continued. In every sense the cover-up has been institutionalized, and is not dependent upon the actions of particular individuals who were involved and determined to protect themselves.

***

JAMES EARL RAY ABANDONED the Eric S. Galt alias, and after going from Atlanta to Canada, fled to England using the name Ramon George Sneyd. Media coverage, often using FBI-planted stories, generally depicted him as a racist, violent, cold-blooded killer, who had dealt in and used drugs. This coverage would continue beyond his conviction. The public image of James was not the only one being molded by the mass media. It would also consistently record and remember Dr. King's pre-1966 Southern civil rights work, ignoring his formidable commitment to end the war and economic injustice at home. James was ultimately arrested on June 8, extradited to the United States on July 19, arriving in Memphis around 3:00 a.m. Only hours before, when tipped off about Ray's return, Memphis produce man Frank Liberto flew to Detroit. After James's capture all FBI work on the case ceased.

At no time in the pretrial period or since was the defense allowed to test the rifle or the bullets in evidence. James found himself housed in oppressive conditions, with his lawyers (first the Haneses and then Percy Foreman) being paid pursuant to a contract with an author who he gradually came to believe was providing information to the FBI. James would eventually be coerced into pleading guilty by his second lawyer, Percy Foreman. It finally emerged that at least by 1977-78, Foreman apparently knew Raul and had no doubt that his former client was innocent.

The day after the guilty plea hearing, the FBI put in motion the production of an official version of the case. The author proposed was Gerold Frank, whose book did indeed become the official version. The case was closed.

Three days after the guilty plea James petitioned the court to set aside his plea and grant him a trial. He was denied relief and has been seeking a trial ever since.

* * *

SOMETIME IN 1969 OR 1970 on separate occasions Amaro Pereira and Felix Torrino independently told Cheryl that Raul had assassinated Martin Luther King.

***

IN 1971 writer William Sartor, who had begun to focus on the involvement of Carlos Marcello and the Libertos in the assassination, died mysteriously in Waco, Texas, the night before he was to interview a significant witness. Twenty-one years later an autopsy report was finally obtained and it appeared that he had been murdered. A homicide investigation was opened.

In the early 1970s Marrell McCollough, then working for the CIA, returned to Memphis as part of a covert operation directed against certain antiwar activity in that city.

In 1974, Raul, in a rage, admitted to Cheryl in the presence of Amaro, Torrino and others that he was Dr. King's assassin, confirming what Amaro and Torrino had told her years earlier.

In 1976, in response to public outcry over the FBI's COINTELPRO excesses against Dr. King, the Justice Department began an investigation of the FBI's investigation of the assassination. In a report issued on January 11, 1977, the Justice Department found nothing wrong with the "technical competence of the investigation," and also found no new evidence which called for an investigation by state or federal authorities.

In 1977 author William Bradford Huie scheduled a small private meeting with James's lawyer Jack Kershaw. It was held in Nashville with two strangers present who may well have been federal agents. Huie asked Kershaw to take an offer to James of a sum of money, a pardon, and a new identity, if James would admit guilt. Only the federal government could arrange the deal Huie proposed. James rejected the offer out of hand, and it was later repeated by Huie in a tape-recorded and transcribed conversation with James's brother Jerry.

The HSCA investigation itself constituted the next cover-up. Early on, Richard Sprague, who had indicated his determination to acquire all relevant CIA and FBI and other intelligence files, was summarily removed. He was even escorted under armed guard from his office in the Capitol, presumably because they were afraid that he might remove sensitive documents which the committee would not want revealed. Under the new chief counsel Robert Blakey, no threat was posed to the interests of the intelligence community or the FBI. The committee undertook a tightly controlled investigation which focused on closing doors rather than following up leads, and sealing files, which incredibly included James's lawyer Art Hanes's trial file. Then, the "dirty tricks" activity of Oliver Patterson was deplorable, as was the refusal to seriously investigate and follow obvious leads pointing to the involvement of organized crime in the killing. Equally reprehensible was the HSCA's irrational adherence to the Alton bank robbery as a source of money for James when he was never a suspect and was not charged and in fact was not involved. By HSCA's King subcommittee chairman Walter Fauntroy's own admission, the HSCA knew at least about some of the 111th MIG surveillance activity and yet this significant and dramatic information was buried. The HSCA also clearly knew about the FBI's plan in 1977 to kill James when he was on escape but never mentioned it. In addition, staff investigators had admitted that they knew that Raul existed and that they knew who he was, yet in the final report they denied his existence and said that if he did exist he was one of James's brothers.

With all of this information, counsel Blakey was still prepared to unequivocally state that the HSCA had found no evidence of any involvement on the part of any agency of the U.S. government and the HSCA postulated an incredible conspiracy theory which purported to involve James with some St. Louis individuals without a shred of evidence that he had ever met with them or even knew of their existence. Conveniently the alleged conspirators were dead at the time of the investigation.

***

DURING THE TIME that the HSCA investigation was in operation, there was a series of efforts to silence James Earl Ray prior to his testifying in public in August 1978. It is important to note that there have been efforts to silence James at critical times during the history of the case. James Earl Ray was supposed to have been killed before he could be captured. One official source (Herbert) said that the reason the Galt alias and its tie to the 902nd MIG was never considered a problem, was because James was to have been killed, either in Memphis or in Africa.

There would obviously have been concern in official circles about what James might testify to at his trial. This was taken care of by the orchestration of his guilty plea.

Then, in June 1977, James escaped with others from Brushy Mountain Penitentiary and all the indications are that he was not supposed to return alive. He was no sooner over the wall (the nearest guard tower was curiously unmanned at the time ) and into the hills behind the prison when a large SWAT team (upwards of thirty FBI snipers) took up position in the area. The function of snipers is not to apprehend. It is to kill. On the day of the escape Governor Ray Blanton received a call from HSCA chairman Louis Stokes who told him that HSCA staff believed that the FBI went to the area with instructions to kill James. The governor immediately went to the prison and ordered the agents to leave. Some years later when the federal agents controlling Arthur Baldwin discussed Ray with him, Baldwin said they made it clear that on that occasion James was not meant to be brought back alive. The escape, Baldwin understood, was staged for the purpose of killing James and putting an end to the problem. James's luck held up once again. He was actually captured by a prison guard. The plan failed.

The next attempt to close the case once and for all by eliminating James arose in the autumn of 1977. The Mafia Godfather in Memphis told Art Baldwin that if he (Baldwin) could clean up the problem he would be very amply rewarded. He told him that the people in New Orleans found Ray's continued visibility worrying -- they wanted the problem to be over. The Godfather felt an obligation because the "screw up" happened in his town and area of responsibility. Baldwin approached Tim Kirk with whom he said he had worked on some other matters. They met and discussed the problem but it went no further. Some months later (in June 1978), Baldwin spoke by telephone with Kirk who by then was in the Shelby County Jail. Though Baldwin was offered $50,000 to get the job done, he told Kirk that the contract price was $5,000. Kirk became suspicious because of Baldwin's known ties to federal agents and let James's lawyers in on the plot. If Kirk knew that the Godfather had put out the contract, he never let on.

The third and final attempt, of course, involved an offer made to Baldwin by his FBI control agent some six or seven months after the Godfather's approach. It was first set out during a car journey to Nashville, and Baldwin subsequently overheard it being discussed by agents involved in the prosecution of Governor Ray Blanton. Baldwin backed off because he could not get satisfactory answers to material questions. Though promised lifelong immunity from all prosecution, Baldwin increasingly began to suspect that he, and possibly the other person who would be working with him, would not survive the operation.

***

IN 1980, Cheryl and Bob, following the advice of Houston attorney Percy Foreman (who seemed to know Raul) and in fear for their lives, left Houston and resettled in another state where Bob had family.

***

IN 1989 JAMES'S latest appeal for a trial based on a clear violation of his Sixth Amendment rights was denied by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Frustrated in the courts, the 1993 Thames/HBO teletrial provided an opportunity for at least some of James's case to be put to the public.

Even then, however, cover-up attempts continued. The rooms of the television trial jury were visited and "inspected" by "technical staff' of the FBI from Washington, during the week prior to the jury's arrival. In addition, rooms on the same floor were reserved in the name of William Sessions (then director of the FBI) for himself and four agents. Cover-up by interference with the jury or some members of it, appeared to be the order of the day in mid January 1993. This failed.

***

BETWEEN 1993 AND 1995 the most recent cover-up has been successfully orchestrated at the local level by Shelby County District Attorney General John Pierotti. The appearance of Wayne Chastain before a grand jury was blocked in contravention of the right of a citizen under Tennessee law. Then, of course, the American media would not break the story of Loyd Jowers's involvement and his application for immunity, necessitating the breaking of the story in the London Observer. Following the Observer story, when ARC's Prime Time Live program aired the television admissions of Loyd Jowers, they were totally ignored by CBS, NBC, and even ARC news itself as well as the overwhelming mass print media throughout the nation. Despite Pierotti admitting that he would be derelict in his duty if he did not investigate the new evidence, he never talked to Jowers and the public reports from his office distorted the actual statements of James McCraw and Bobbi Smith. Subsequently, the attorney general's office ignored Nathan and Lavada Whitlock's statements about the local Mafia contract and Louie Ward's attempt to tell about the man his fellow cab driver Paul saw coming down over the wall and getting into a police car right after the shooting. Finally, the attorney general's office has blocked every attempt to allow material evidence of James's innocence to be put on in court, as well as continuing to prevent the testing of the rifle (which twenty-seven years after the crime has yet to be independently tested by the defense).

Further, the federal government continued to be unhelpful. My appeal to Attorney General Janet Reno guaranteeing federal civil rights indictments if she formed a grand jury, was met with brush-offs.

So, the cover-up is alive and well in the State of Tennessee and the United States, and consequently, throughout the world. Its effectiveness continues to be a testament to the comprehensive efficiency of senior law enforcement officials and the general collaboration of the mass newspaper, magazine, and television and radio broadcast media.

***

HOWEVER, an innocent man remains in prison and the case will not go away. In the spring and summer of 1995 Raul appears to have been located. On July 5, 1995, he was served with a summons and complaint and made a co-defendant in James Earl Ray's civil action against Loyd Jowers, Raul, and others. Though James has to date been denied a trial in the criminal courts, new arguments will soon take place in Judge Brown's court and the civil action is moving forward and will shortly come to trial. The investigation also continues.

Some questions will likely always remain unanswered, but as new evidence inevitably comes to light the history of the assassination will continue to be rewritten.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN

Postby admin » Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:46 am

Chapter 32: Conclusion

AS THIS STORY COMES TO A CLOSE the next millennium is less than five years away.

Nearly forty years ago Americans and the world began an extraordinary decade. It was a time when no problem seemed insolvable, and no obstacle insurmountable. It is difficult now to recall, much less understand, those times when there was so much hope for the future and an unbridled passion for life dominated our daily lives. Masses of people, long suppressed, came out in full view. Their presence was frightening to an alliance of the corporate elite and their agents in government which long ago had come to dominate American public and private life. Legions of the poor, blacks, women, Native Americans, disaffected soldiers, students, and even prisoners represented a new, vital force which would inevitably clash head-on with the nation's leaders who, in the face of increasing economic hardship at home, were advocating a growing war effort in Vietnam.

When Martin Luther King only preached about morality and led his people, Southern blacks, down the road of realizing their basic civil rights, he could be tolerated. He was a nuisance but the cooptive power of the society could well allow for long overdue concessions to be given to blacks in order to head off any potentially serious disruptive activity. This coopting facility of the American system has, historically, been extraordinarily successful. It is the most subtle and effective apparatus of control that the world has ever seen. The system's flexibility allows for basic reforms to take place as they become necessary, with the distribution of just enough wealth to enough people so that only a troublesome but manageable minority remains to act on their discontent.

"When, however, Dr. King began to assert his moral leadership on the issues of peace and economic justice, he became intolerable. Then the massive weight of the American government came down on him. As we have seen he and his followers were subjected to harassment, infiltration, surveillance, and wiretapping. Finally he was killed -- and for what? For seeking peace and justice in his native land which had rejected one and denied the other.

The amount of money spent on the government's multiplicity of anti-King operations, not to mention the expenditure of the HSCA's and other cover-up activities, is incalculable. The average citizen would be staggered, as was I, by the number of different intelligence units and operations. Shock turns to horror when one becomes aware that the pervasive spying on Dr . King was only the tip of the iceberg and that massive surveillance operations were mounted against huge numbers of American citizens with most of the spying. done on Americans who were themselves paying for it. Thus, American taxpayers were paying for their own government to spy on themselves.

When the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights issued its 1973 report detailing the massive spying on civilians by army intelligence, the nation was shocked. The practices were soon put down to the excesses of General Yarborough, his successor General Joseph McChristian, General Blakefield, and other individuals, and were soon forgotten. The fact is that from what we now know, the report hardly scratched the surface.

It is too easy and all too prevalent to blame such past abuses and excesses on the likes of Hoover, Yarborough, or other individuals wielding power at the time. The clear, however unwelcome, indications are that the problem is a systemic one.

In 1968 the last serious effort to change American society led by Dr. King came to an end with his death. American cities burned for a while, but the Washington "invasion" fizzled out. The force that died early that evening of April 4, 1968, has never been revived.

Now it may be too late. The corporate elite, their lawyers and bankers, as well as their assets in government who have led us into the abyss may quite simply be too strong to dislodge, too powerful to unseat, at least in our lifetimes. We now appreciate as never before the power of the "establishment."

James Madison's worst fears appear to have been realized. He, the Republic's fourth President, the father of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself, warned about the very danger which has consumed our representative democracy. He noted that when any faction becomes so powerful, beyond its legitimate numerical presence, that it can dominate the branches of government and the political parties, so that dissent is suppressed, then tyranny will thrive. The system of government which results is a democracy in name only.

Under the Constitution of the United States, Madison and his founding colleagues attempted to provide for the problem by establishing a structure of government with a separation of powers, so that theoretically the executive, legislative, and judicial branches may each act as a check on the others.

What was not envisioned, however, was that an increasingly powerful corporate elite would develop which would not only formulate and act upon common policies, values, and goals, but also lend its senior representatives to government service. The power and influence of this corporate faction extends across all branches of government into virtually every agency and department. Governmental policies and activities in the service of these powerful private economic interests have, where those interests required, continually lied, and deceived the people as to the true state of events at home and abroad. Thus, the enormous power and wealth of the government has been used for purposes and ends which all too often have been directly contrary to the interests of the masses of Americans.

With all of this history laid bare and the details of the abuse of power clearly revealed, the inevitable conclusion will still be very difficult for many Americans to accept. Representative democracy, as practiced in the United States, has failed.

I believe that the revival of democracy in America can only be accomplished by the people taking actual control over their public affairs. Time and again, I have been impressed with the ability of juries comprised of ordinary people provided with a full presentation of the facts to thoughtfully administer justice. I remain confident that if provided with all of the facts the people are still democracy's best hope.

By 1995, however, a significant obstacle exists in the fact that the public information put out on sensitive issues is rarely complete, balanced, and comprehensive. It is usually skewed in order to obtain the desired public response. This must be addressed. It goes without saying that control of the major media companies by multinational conglomerates will never ensure the objectivity required to enable the citizens to make informed decisions.

This was a problem which faced Dr. King daily between 1965-68 as he argued for the commitment of the nation's wealth to the alleviation of misery at home rather than the infliction of barbarism abroad.

Dr. King is gone forever. He can never be brought back to us, however much the memory of his quest for justice lives on. James Earl Ray will remain in prison unless the outrage of ordinary people reaches such a crescendo that he is at last either given the trial denied to him for twenty-six years or, based upon all that we now know, he is offered a pardon or clemency. Until that day, justice will continue to be denied in this case.

As for the cancer afflicting the body politic and democracy in America, only the people in their millions can affect a cure. Rather than mourning the passing of liberty I hope they begin to organize its rebirth.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN

Postby admin » Fri Sep 04, 2015 2:47 am

Appendix

Image
CHART 7: USAINTC DEPLOYMENT

Image
CHART 8: U.S. ARMY INTELLIGENCE COMMAND JAN. 1967

Image
CHART 9: USAINTC FIELD ELEMENTS

Image
CHART 10: USAINTC COMMUNICATIONS
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

PreviousNext

Return to Political Science

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 17 guests