I wanted to learn whether Tompkins, who had spent eighteen months researching his piece, knew anything about the King killing and if so whether he could open up some doors for me. Since Dr. King had been under army surveillance I wondered if the killing had been seen and even photographed. I had earlier read about this possibility in Douglas Valentine’s book, The Phoenix Program, though at the time it appeared to be too speculative.1
Tompkins, a lanky, guardedly friendly man, had gone to work for the Tennessee Governor’s Economic Development Department. I noted that he had confirmed the presence in Memphis that day of a number of army intelligence operatives. I needed to know their roles and, if possible, who they were. He would not give me their names but he did offer an observation that surprised and chilled me. He explained that he had stumbled on certain information which he was unable to print because of the lack of corroboration. He said that he had come to believe that in addition to surveilling Dr. King on April 4, 1968, the army presence in Memphis had a more sinister mission related to the assassination.
He had come to this conclusion after a conversation with a former Special Forces soldier now living in Latin America. The nervous ex-soldier had showed up with an AK-47 rifle which he kept near at hand throughout the interview. This man was the only member of the army unit whom Tompkins had been able to interview. Another member had been shot in the back of the head in New Orleans. The ex-soldier told Tompkins that he decided to leave the country after one of the members of the unit deployed to Memphis had been killed. He said it appeared that a “cleanup” operation was underway and that he had better get out.
I was at once excited and frustrated because this important information greatly complicated the picture. It was imperative that I investigate it as far as I could. Tompkins warned me that, if publicly questioned, he would deny telling me the information. As we parted, he said he was relieved to be away from the project, stating, “These people are incredibly dangerous. They’d kill you, your mother or your kids, as soon as look at you. You have to be very careful.”
In a subsequent conversation I asked him if he would take me to his contacts or at least provide me with the names of people involved so that I might seek them out myself. I hoped he would become involved since he himself had been in naval intelligence and so had initial credibility and military access. He also understood far better than I could the mentality of that special community and how they operated. He reluctantly agreed to think about it.
TWO AND A HALF MONTHS after Garrison met with Pierotti there was no sign that the attorney general was going to act or even that he was seriously considering Garrison’s request. I had therefore begun to think about ways of applying pressure in an attempt to force his hand.
On August 16 I wrote to him, informing him that I was aware of Garrison’s petition, calling on him to grant the petition (or make a plea bargain arrangement with Jowers) and pointing out its potential impact, both in setting the record straight and in bringing about the release of a man who had been unjustly imprisoned for almost a quarter century. I also pointed out that the individuals concerned were effectively benefiting from de facto immunity.
Pierotti was on holiday at the time. He responded on September 8:
Some months ago an attorney came to my office and stated that he knew of people who had knowledge of the murder of Dr. King which had heretofore not been revealed. He asked me if I would be interested in this information, to which I replied affirmatively. He stated that he could not reveal these people’s identity unless I was in a position to seek, from the Courts or through Grand Jury proceeding, a grant of immunity from prosecution.
I told this attorney that I would not consider immunity unless I had a full and complete statement detailing their knowledge of this matter. I would further only be interested in considering immunity if the information they provided could be corroborated by independent sources and documents. I asked this attorney if he was working with you or working independently. He replied he was working independently, so we therefore must be referring to different people….
As you state in your letter, your client has been incarcerated for over twenty-four (24) years and you believe him to be innocent. However, I have not been presented with any information or documentation to support your belief. I, therefore, have no reason to consider granting anyone immunity, and I will not consider any such action unless and until I have evidence which can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.
Correspondence continued. It became clear that he had no intention of considering the request. On September 15 he even denied having anything to consider, stating that: “… I have not been presented with any document requesting formal immunity for anyone in connection with this case, nor have I been presented with a summary of the evidence which any such applicant might possess which would cause me to consider immunity should such an application be made. If and when such evidence is presented to me I will consider it carefully but at this time I have nothing to consider.”
I wrote back that, sadly, I had to conclude that he was being economical with the truth. He promptly replied that he had to hear from the federal government and that there was no use in continuing the exchange of letters until then.
I believed that Pierotti was seeking to make the federal government a scapegoat for his own inaction. In fact if immunity was granted for a state crime and a federal grant of immunity then requested in respect of other lesser federal offenses, it would be unusual for the federal government not to accede to the state’s request.
On October 4, at the request of Lewis Garrison and Ken Herman, Wayne Chastain met both men in Garrison’s office. To Chastain’s surprise, Garrison provided him with a copy of the actual request for immunity submitted to the attorney general on June 22. Despite Pierotti’s representations in his letter to me of September 15, the request was indeed a document asking for immunity and it contained a summary of the evidence on which the request was based.
It stated that Jowers (designated as Witness Green) was approached before the assassination and offered money to locate a person to assassinate Dr. King. The funds would come from another city through a local person or persons. Jowers, who had close contact with some persons in the MPD, was advised that he was in a strategic location to assist and that Dr. King would be a guest at the Lorraine Motel from a certain date. Jowers was to be provided with a weapon. Jowers located a person to do the job and funds were delivered to Jowers before the assassination in stacks of large bills. At the time of the shooting Jowers was stationed close to the assassin and once the shot was fired, the weapon was passed to Jowers who disassembled it and wrapped it in a covering. Jowers had been advised by other conspirators that there would be no reason to suspect him or any of the other participants in the actual assassination since there would be a decoy following the assassination.
The proposal next recounted information allegedly known by Betty Spates (designated as “Witness Brown … a close acquaintance of Jowers”). She would state that she was “within a few feet of the location where the shot was fired.” Betty would also testify that she saw Witness Green with a rifle immediately after hearing the shot. She would state that she saw a large amount of money that had been delivered to Jowers. The money was in stacks of large-denomination bills. McCraw stated (he was Witness Black) that on the day after the killing Jowers showed him the gun and told him that it was the one used to assassinate Dr. King. Willie Akins (Witness White) would testify that he was asked, after the fact, by Jowers to take care of certain people “who knew too much.” He was also told by Jowers that Jowers received the gun after the killing from the actual assassin. Bobbi Smith (Witness Gray) allegedly would testify that she was aware of the large amount of money paid to Jowers just before the assassination and that she had knowledge of other details about the actual killing.
The submission ended with a formal request for immunity for all five persons.
Jowers’s story, as summed up for Chastain b
y Garrison, was that he had agreed at the request of produce-man Frank Liberto to hire a man to kill Dr. King on his last visit to Memphis. He had received $100,000 for his facilitation and he had paid a certain amount to the assassin, Frank Holt, who had worked as a loader for the M. E. Carter Company.
Jowers also contended that he tried to have Holt done away with; a task he gave to his heavy Willie Akins. Akins apparently confirmed this assignment although he said at first that he didn’t know why Jowers wanted the man killed. Akins said that before he could carry out the job the man disappeared.
Since I had no doubt that the attorney general would continue to stonewall any action based upon this evidence, I had to take steps on behalf of James. I retained Wayne Chastain as local counsel to approach the grand jury on James’s behalf. I planned to ask the grand jury to subpoena attorney Garrison, at which time, if he so chose, he could request immunity for his client(s) in exchange for their testimony. I also formally asked the governor’s counsel to ask the governor to hold off on issuing any ruling on our Motion for Exoneration since new evidence was forthcoming. I suggested that the governor could look foolish if he went ahead and ruled against us in light of information that would shortly be revealed.
BY OCTOBER 17 WAYNE CHASTAIN and I had agreed on the text of his submission to the grand jury. I would also provide Wayne with the names and addresses of the five people to be subpoenaed (which Garrison had not given to him) and a list of suggested questions. I suggested that Wayne ask the grand jury to formally request that federal immunity also be granted. In any event, once primary immunity was granted on behalf of the state, the witnesses would have no choice. Under pain of contempt they would have to tell all that they knew.
We delayed our actual submission because Wayne advised giving the attorney general every chance to act. In any event I believed that because most grand juries were closely controlled by the prosecutor it would be desirable to focus some publicity on the request in order to maximize the possibility of the members taking our submission seriously and acting independently. I therefore began to brief certain representatives of the American mass media.
By the beginning of December I was increasingly frustrated by the lack of any progress concerning the request for immunity and the unwillingness of the media to take up the issue. On Tuesday evening December 7, I gave Wayne the go-ahead for the grand jury submission. He was to deliver the request (in the form of a letter and an affidavit) to testify the next day. He rushed it in and, on his own initiative, attached the names and addresses of the people to be subpoenaed. (I would have preferred that he had provided the names while testifying, but he thought that their inclusion would increase the sense of urgency.)
Later that day Wayne urged me to allow him to go to see the attorney general. I exploded. It was beyond me how he could believe there was a scintilla of hope that the attorney general would act. I was concerned that Pierotti knew the names of the witnesses and resolved to write to him to put him on notice that any contact with these witnesses outside of the grand jury room would be closely scrutinized. I explained to Wayne that on a previous occasion when one of these witnesses had tried in her way to come forward and get the truth out in order to clear James, she was visited unofficially in her home and, the record indicates, then called in officially and interrogated. Frightened off, it took twenty years for her to begin to come around again. I obviously had to do everything possible to prevent this happening again. My client was unlikely to survive another such period of recalcitrance.
I called Andrew Billen at the London Observer, one of England’s oldest and most reputable broadsheets, to see if they would be interested. Billen had covered the trial and had a good working knowledge of the case. He was excited. So was his editor. It was clearly front-page material. Convinced that no American media entity would break the story, I gave the Observer the go-ahead.
Around this time I learned from some American contacts that Jack Saltman was talking to various media people, trying to sell the story and name the witnesses. I was also advised that Herman and Saltman had been working together for some time.
I was appalled. The privilege of confidentiality to James had been cast to the wind. Saltman had violated the rules established for the TV trial with regard to security witnesses. In confidence I had disclosed the existence of the security witnesses and the nature of their testimony. My trust was being flouted. Such a disclosure was likely to drive all of the witnesses away. In that event James would be the clear loser.
I confronted Herman. Our relationship, which had been strained since the trial, was now irreparably damaged.
I instructed Wayne to add the names of Ken Herman and Jack Saltman to the list of those persons to be subpoenaed. The next day, Thursday, December 9th, Wayne delivered the names directly to an attendant at the entrance to the grand jury room and waited. He was not called.
On Friday, Jim Smith told me that the attorney general and his number two, Strother, were closeted together continually and the local FBI special agent in charge had also been in for meetings. Jim said they seemed to have a “bunker mentality.” I had no doubt that Wayne’s request to appear before the grand jury was a source of their anxiety. The pressure was building.
Next, I became aware of and increasingly concerned about the rogue efforts of Herman and John Billings to locate Frank Holt. We all believed that Holt was in the Orlando area. Since, for their own reasons, they were determined to find Holt, I believed it essential that I exercise control over how he was approached. I was aware of a witness who saw a black man in the room James had rented. It could have been Holt. I needed to know exactly what he was going to say. I told them that I would go to Orlando to approach and personally interview Holt if he could be found.
I also sent them formal notices asserting attorney’s privilege over everything they knew or had connected with the case.
I would bring black investigator Cliff Dates with me. If Holt could be found, Dates would approach him in as nonthreatening a manner as possible and begin to discuss his problem, which was not going to go away.
The Memphis Commercial Appeal quoted Pierotti as having denounced both Garrison and me, calling the entire story a “fraud” or “scam.”
ON THE MORNING the Observer hit the newstands, I caught the flight to Orlando. C. D. “Buck” Buchanan, the Orlando P.I. I had hired for the job, had come up with an address for Holt. Memphis investigator Cliff Dates met me in Orlando and we went to 32 North Terry, a small transient boarding house, and walked up to the porch where we found a fairly intoxicated Jimmie Lee Branner, his sister, and Theresa, a young boarder. A paper bag filled with empty beer cans lay on one side. Jimmie Lee said Holt had not been there for months. Theresa pulled us aside and told us about some “crooks” who had been looking for Holt. They said they were from the church, but they weren’t because they gave Jimmie whiskey and money and told him not to tell anyone else that they were looking for Holt.
We continued to comb the streets of the area. Later, as we drove around, we saw a grey Cadillac approaching. We both recognized Ken Herman in the back, sitting between a black man in a baseball cap and John Billings. I thought that they must have seen us. We pulled over opposite the boarding house and Cliff Dates went up to the porch to see Theresa. I remained in the car. Over my right shoulder I saw the grey Cadillac approaching up the side street just behind us. The back of my head was clearly visible. As the car reached Terry Street and turned left to go in the opposite direction, it burned rubber.
AFTER TAKING DATES to the airport so that he could catch his plane back to Memphis, I returned to the area that night and scoured the streets and checked two homeless centers in the area, with no success.
I was hindered in my search for Frank Holt by having to spend part of the next two days (December 14 and 15) negotiating with the ABC Prime Time Live producers. I had learned that Jack Saltman had sold the story and his consulting services to them. I saw the program as potentially being useful to the effort to
free James, but I was afraid that they might name the witnesses. This would likely hurt our legal efforts, since if Betty and Bobbi were named without their consent and before their statements could be heard in a courtroom, they would probably repudiate earlier statements, or not discuss the matter at all. This, of course, is exactly what had happened before. The two sisters had been scheduled to testify at the trial only to back out in fear at the last minute.
I contacted the ABC producer. Eventually he promised that only the witnesses they actually interviewed would be named. I was told that they planned to interview only Jowers and Akins. In fact senior correspondent Sam Donaldson was already interviewing Jowers and Akins, preparing to move on to Pierotti late that afternoon.
On the program, which aired nationwide on Thursday, December 16, 1993, Loyd Jowers cleared James Earl Ray, saying that he did not shoot Dr. King but that he, Jowers, had hired a shooter, after he was approached by Memphis produce man Frank Liberto and paid $100,000 to facilitate the assassination. He also said that he had been visited by a man named Raul who delivered a rifle to him and asked him to hold it until final arrangements were made.
Loyd’s cleanup man Akins confirmed he was ordered to kill the unnamed shooter but before Akins could get him in a place where he could “pop” him, the shooter disappeared, running off to Florida.
The producer’s promise was worthless. Betty had been surreptitiously filmed leaving her place of work. Though partially obscured, she was recognizable and she was named. I was apprehensive about the effect.
The next morning I asked Cliff Dates to contact Betty and gauge her reaction to the show. He reported back that she was hurt and hostile and blamed me. She didn’t realize that Herman and Saltman hadn’t worked with me for eight months. Since she wouldn’t talk to me I sent her a letter explaining the facts. From 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. that morning while doing other things I flipped back and forth from CNN to CBS to NBC and ABC. Incredible as it seemed, there was no news coverage of the previous night’s program; not even on ABC. A review of the day’s newspapers including the New York Times, U.S.A. Today, and the Washington Post showed only small mentions in the latter two, featuring Pierotti’s new willingness not to reopen the case but to investigate further. Here was a confession, on prime-time television, to one of the most heinous crimes in the history of the republic—and there was virtually no American mass media coverage. The story was buried.
Orders to Kill Page 33