Orders to Kill

by William F Pepper Esq

  Tampa, Florida (June 12–15, 1967—riots)

  Detroit, Michigan (July 23, 1967—riot)

  Washington, D.C. (October, 1967—riot)

  Chicago, Illinois (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. Similarly, 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 sil
ence. 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:

  A team was in Memphis.

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

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

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

  Support services were provided at the “Riversite.”

  Local intelligence was needed.

  Recon on the site was required “… prior to King, Martin L. Arrival.”

  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; SACSA was the FBI’s Special Agent in Charge of Security Affairs; NMCC referred to the National Military Command Center; SECDEF indicated 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 contact 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.