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 COIN-TELPRO 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 ABC’s Prime Time Live program aired the television admissions of Loyd Jowers, they were totally ignored by CBS, NBC, and even ABC 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.
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Conclusion
AS THIS STORY COMES TO A CLOSE the next millenium 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 l
eadership 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.
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