Orders to Kill
Page 45
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 Youngblood, 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 Youngblood 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 Youngblood when the latter was with the “Air Studies Group” based at Nha Trang. He said that he had last seen Youngblood in the summer or early fall of 1967 on one of his gunrunning deliveries to New Orleans. He saw Youngblood 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 Youngblood 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 Youngblood 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 miltary issue side-arm. (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 kne
w 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 camera 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.
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 #38). 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 1980s. 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 secre
t 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