During this time, much to Steve Tompkins’s surprise, he had received a telegram from the Special Forces soldier he had previously interviewed, who I will call Warren and 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 United States, was the last weekend in March. 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 claim that he did not know.
Based on what Tompkins had told me about Warren, I knew that he and his partner, whom I will call Murphy, had vital information. Tompkins said that though I would have the names 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, which did not apply to participants who had since died. Tompkins would give a statement, and his reports would be written and detailed.
On the morning of November 9, 1993, I met with Steve in his 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. Since he had left it on top of a letter he had written on behalf of his secretary, he was convinced that his office had been entered and the file taken. I had recently had a similar experience in Birmingham when my address/appointment book had disappeared on the one occasion I registered in my own name. It has never turned up. It was an ominous indication that a closer look was being taken at my activities.
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, people who were in strategic positions with access to information, and analyzing relevant army intelligence documents, files, and other official records that have never been made public.
In 1963, the 101st Airborne was deployed at the racial riots in Oxford, Mississippi. Major General Creighton V. Abrams, the on-scene commander, wrote a highly critical assessment of how army intelligence had performed: “We in the army should launch a major intelligence project, without delay, to identify personalities, both black and white, and develop analyses of various civil rights situations in which they become involved.” His report received serious attention from the army intelligence machine in place in 1967 and 1968.
In 1967, Military Intelligence formed part of the US Army Intelligence Command (USAINTC) at a military compound based at Fort Holabird, Maryland. By 1968 the Investigative Records Repository (IRR) was housed in a huge two-story steel room, containing more than seven million brown-jacketed dossiers on American citizens and organizations. They included files on allegedly subversive 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.
USAINTC took control of seven of the eight existing counterintelligence or US Army Military Intelligence Groups (MIGs) in the Continental United States (CONUS) and Germany. The eighth MIG—the 902nd—was under the command of the army’s assistant chief of staff of intelligence, who from December 1966 until July 1968 was Major General William P. Yarborough, the founder of the units known as the Green Berets. By 1967, the MIGs employed 798 army officers and 1,532 civilians including 67 black undercover agents. Of this total force, 1,576 were directly involved in domestic intelligence gathering, and of these “spies,” some 260 were civilians.
The MIG officers were responsible for eye-to-eye surveillance operations which included audio and visual recordings of people and events designated as targets. Dr. King was a target and throughout the last year of his life was under surveillance by one or another MIG team. Closely related to the USAINTC structure at the time was the separate intelligence office under ACSI Yarborough.
In addition to controlling the 902nd MIG, he supervised the Counterintelligence Analysis Board (CIAB). This analyzed a wide range of MIG-produced intelligence and forwarded reports directly to the ACSI. The 902nd MIG was a highly secretive organization, carrying out some of the most sensitive assignments. Warren had always refused to discuss the 902nd, saying anyone interested in the “90 Deuce” should dig a deep hole.
Intelligence gathering was also done in 1966 by the Twentieth Special Forces Group (SFG), headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, as part of the Alabama National Guard. The Twentieth SFG provided small, specialized teams for “behind the fence” covert operations, made up of reservists from Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana, which also came to provide an organizational cover for some of the most sinister and talented “retired” Special Forces operatives. The Ku Klux Klan had a special firearm and other military skills at a secret camp near Cullman, Alabama, in return for intelligence on local black leaders.
The US Strike Command (CINCSTRIKE) was the overall coordination command for responding to urban riots in 1967 and 1968. It included liaison officers from the CIS, FBI, and other non-military state and federal agencies. Its headquarters were at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. ACSI and USAINTC commanders were primary leaders in developing CINCSTRIKE strategy for mobilizing forces required for defensive action inside CONUS.
The United States Army Security Agency (ASA) carried out all “non-eye-to-eye” or electronic intelligence surveillance (ELINT), employing expert wiretappers, eavesdroppers, and safecrackers. Telephone monitoring wiretapping was used against Dr. King when he stayed at the Rivermont Hotel on March 18 and 28 and the Lorraine Motel on April 3 and 4, 1968. The Psychological Operations section (Psy Ops) was used for highly sensitive and technical photographic surveillance and reports.
The CIA, whose director at the time was Richard Helms, and the FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover, worked alongside this multifaceted army structure, which had vastly superior manpower resources, particularly black operatives that the CIA and certainly the FBI were lacking. The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) contributed the task force under the umbrella of the coordination intelligence body—the United States Intelligence Board (USIB) chaired by Richard Helms.
Warren and Murphy 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 Fifth SFG in Vietnam, and part of a Mobile Strike Force Team involved in cross-border covert operations in 1965 and 1966. They were reassigned in 1967 as reservists to the Twentieth SG/FG, with Camp Shelby, Mississippi, as their training base.
Throughout 1967 they were deployed in 902nd covert operations as members of as small specialized “Alpha team” units in a number of cities where violence was breaking out. They were issued with photographs (mug books) of black militants in each city. 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 the green and white mug books 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. The units were deployed when riots flared up in Tampa, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and on reconnaissance in Chicago.
The Memphis Mission
In successive sessions, Warren and Murphy set out the details they knew about the Memphis deployment. They were part of an eight-man “Operation Detachment Alpha 184 team,” a Special Forces field training team in special
ized civilian disguise. The unit consisted of the following: captain (as CO), a second lieutenant, two staff sergeants, two buck sergeants, and two corporals. I learned that the colonel in charge of the 902nd, John Downie, had previously selected a team from the roster of the Twentieth SFG, provided at the request of the ACSI’s office and sent to him on October 23, 1967.
A two-man reconnaissance unit of the Alpha 184 reconnaissance team, which included Warren, entered Memphis on February 22 through the Railway Bus Terminal, completed reconnaissance on the downtown hotel area, and mapped egress routes to the north of the city. (The “hoax” automobile chase at the time of the assassination took place in the northern section of Memphis and concentrated attention on this area of the city.)
The team leader was apparently given the final orders for the deployment at 7:30 a.m. on March 29. 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 half-hour session the team was left with 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 Reverend Andrew Young.
They were shown “target acquisition photos” of the two men and the Lorraine Motel. The team’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.” Immediately after the briefing, the team left in cars 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—James was instructed to buy a Remington 760), KA-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 working down by the river near President’s Island. The team leader arranged for Warren and Murphy to meet with a senior MPD officer who they believed was attached to the MPD’s intelligence division and who told them that their presence was essential to save the city from burning down in the riot for which Dr. King’s forces were preparing.
Warren later identified Lieutenant Eli Arkin from a photograph as being the officer they met. He was also the MPD’s chief liaison with Special Agent William Lawrence, the local FBI field officer’s intelligence specialist.
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). The contact took them to the roof of a tall building that dominated that downtown area and loomed over the map, pictures of cars used by the King group, and the “Memphis police TAC” radio frequencies. The roof was on top of the Illinois Central Railroad Building, which lay diagonally southwest of the Lorraine. They were in position by 1:00 p.m. and remained on their rooftop perch for over five hours as did (though they did not know it) the Psy Ops photographers who had been on the roof of Fire Station No. 2 photographing the activity at the Lorraine and the surrounding area. 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 coordination central radio man as well as to pick out or “spot” the target through binoculars.
During the course of that afternoon, Warren reported that he 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 Inspector 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 remainder of the afternoon, he and Murphy waited.
Finally, near what Warren termed the “TTH” (top of the hour—6:00 p.m.) King came on to the balcony, having spent nearly two hours in his brother AD’s room 201 and then returning to 306 around 5:30 p.m. Warren recognized his target, Andrew Young, putting on his coat, and took aim, holding him in his sights. Radio man Murphy waited to relay the order to fire, which they believed would take place if a sudden disturbance erupted. The order didn’t come, and as usual in such circumstances the seconds seemed like hours; 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 the team leader 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.
The team leader joined them and they quickly went some distance downstream to a prearranged point where cars were waiting. He ordered complete silence for the return trip. Only some of the team went out this way. Warren said 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.
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 the team leader on only two other occasions after April 4, and he refused to talk to him about what had happened.
As non-commissioned officers, Warren and Murphy 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 reconnaissance activity. Though their operation was a military one, so far as he knew there was some inter-service cooperation since they were coordinating with Tennessee National Guard units and “NAS”—the Millington Naval Air Station.
Warren had heard about one other time when a Twentieth 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” in his sights awaiting the order to fire, which never came because Dr. King turned sharply away at the opportune moment and was then closely surrounded on the march.
Steve Tompkins told me that there was one soldier on both the Selma Twentieth SFG team and the April 4 Alpha 184 team in Memphis. His name was John D. Hill (JD), a buck sergeant who was murdered in 1979. On October 16, 1994, I made contact with Jack Terrell, who knew JD well. He was a former covert operative connected most prominently with the Iran-Contra affair. At various times, he reported directly to the National Security Council. His testimony before the Senate hearings incriminated Oliver North, who he believed was involved in drug and money laundering operations in order to finance the illegal intelligence operations against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Jack Terrell had been used by ABC as a highly credible source. I believed he had vital information that could confirm and provide independent verification about the military presence in Memphis around the time of the sanitation workers’ strike. Terrell 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 characterize official but deniable covert operations. 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 plot to murder Dr. King and cover it up.
JD had shared with Terrell what he personally knew about the King assassination plan. When I initially raised the subject of JD’s involvement in the killing of Dr. King and asked Terrell whether JD 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 to me the familiar phrase, “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
I told him that by now I was getting the idea, but I had as a client an innocent man who 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. Consequently, I had little choice but to solve the case conclusively and free him.
Terrell then said that in the mid-1970s, JD appeared to want to shed some baggage about his past. He told Terrell 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 a Mississippi unit, the Twentieth SFG. He said that JD was a member of the Twentieth SFG which Terrell came to learn that, though officially a Special Forces reserve unit, actually was used for a wide range of plausibly deniable covert, special, or “behind-the-fence” operations inside and outside of the United States. No record would be kept of their deployment for sensitive “behind-the-line” duty and operations. Hence, when investigative journalists inquired, they would find no offense record.
The Plot to Kill King Page 20