Martin luther king

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/EG26Aa03.html

Book review
Dissecting an assassination
An Act of State. The Execution of Martin Luther King by William Pepper

Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia

"Truth crushed to earth shall rise again" - Martin Luther King

Americans celebrate Martin Luther King Day to commemorate the message of
the
greatest prophet of non-violence the world has seen since Mahatma
Gandhi.
School textbooks in the US contain chapters on the civil rights movement

spearheaded by King, and universities offer undergraduate and graduate
level
courses on his philosophy, actions and significance.

Yet the most under-researched and clouded subject is that of his
assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Neither the speechmakers on
MLK
Day, nor the Americans who are taught about the man in school and
college
know who shot King on that fateful evening and why. Like three other
contemporaries who were assassinated inexplicably in the turmoil-ridden
1960s, John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X, King's murder has
remained an unsolved mystery.

William Pepper, an American lawyer and associate of King, has been
fearlessly probing the truth for a quarter of a century, fighting
threats to
his life and other insuperable roadblocks and hurdles. This book
summarizes
his findings and finalizes the list of conspirators who wanted the
apostle
of peace out of their way.

In spring 1967, King was emerging as the focal point of a coalition of
the
growing peace and economic justice movements in the US. Against the
advice of his peers who limited themselves to civil liberties in the
domestic
arena, King catapulted to the epicenter of the anti-Vietnam war cause
due
to his formidable conscience and belief in the oneness of human
suffering in
every corner of the world. Pointing out that civil rights legislation
was
not
enough to meet the basic needs of poor Americans, King was mobilizing
half a million impoverished citizens in the Poor People's Campaign that
would culminate in a unique demonstration-cum-encampment outside the
US Congress to demand economic justice. King declared intentions
of moving into mainstream politics as a potential presidential candidate
to
highlight the anti-war and anti-poverty agenda. These bold and
captivating
planks outraged and struck fear in the hearts of wealthy and powerful
interest groups in the country. "It was for this reason alone that King
had
to be stopped." (p 6)

During a whirlwind tour to galvanize public opinion, King went to
Memphis
to participate in a sanitation worker's strike on April 3, 1968. He was
shot
dead the following day on the balcony of his hotel room. State
investigations nailed a petty criminal, James Earl Ray, for the killing
and
sentenced him to 99 years in prison without a judicial trial. It was
another
lone-assassin explanation for the removal of another progressive leader.

In 1978, following persistent rumors of a gross miscarriage of justice,
the
author interviewed Ray in jail and found that "he was set up" and was
not
even present at the crime scene when King was murdered.

Pepper began poring through the official version of events that was
published for limited circulation by the House Select Committee on
Assassinations. Some startling facts surfaced. As early as December
1963,
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials met in Washington "to
explore ways of neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader". (p 11)
Wiretaps and phone bugging of King and his entourage went on
uninterrupted
for the last five years of his life. The bureau also engaged in
surreptitious
activities and burglaries against King to soil his reputation. There
was an
attempt to assassinate King in 1965 through the collaboration of FBI and

Louisville police officers, involving a US$50,000 contract to kill.

Pepper found out that the state's chief witness, who claimed that James
Earl
Ray shot King from a bathroom window and then fled, was heavily drunk
that
evening. Other witnesses testified that the bathroom was empty at the
time
of the shooting. Members of organized crime rings in Memphis and New
Orleans
had a connection to the murder, as was admitted by Lloyd Jowers, the
owner
of the grill opposite King's hotel and a key player in the
assassination.
Jowers was approached before the assassination with $100,000 and a
weapon,
and he was present to take the gun from the actual sniper seconds after
firing at King, not from the bathroom but a bushy area adjoining his
bar.
When Pepper petitioned the attorney-general to reconsider Ray's case
based
on new evidence, he was met with stony refusals.

Undeterred, the author continued arranging meetings with witnesses that
were
never considered by the state prosecutors. Oil and media baron H L
Hunt's
aide confessed that at various meetings between his boss and FBI
director
J Edgar Hoover, King was discussed. In June 1967, Hunt told Hoover "he
could finish King by constantly attacking him on his daily radio
broadcasts,"
to which Hoover replied, "The only way to stop King would be to
completely
silence him." (p 43)

Hunt, who had top-level mafia ties, was interestingly a close friend of
then
president Lyndon Johnson and his assistant, Booth Mooney, the author of
many anti-King radio broadcast scripts. On the evening of the
assassination,
to ward off suspicions, Hoover called Hunt and advised him to cancel his

anti-
King radio programs. The same cabal of Johnson, Hunt and Hoover met the
evening before JFK's assassination in 1963 in a closeted session, at the
end
of which LBJ came out and told his wife, "After tomorrow, those goddamn
Kennedys will never embarrass me again - that's a promise." (p 127)
Corroborating the link between the JFK and King assassinations, Pepper
uncovered facts about the shadowy "Raul" who set up James Earl Ray and
also
had close ties with Jack Ruby, the killer of Kennedy's assassin, Lee
Harvey
Oswald.

Widening the focus of the inquiry, the author next lands on
incontrovertible
proof of the hand of US army intelligence in the King assassination.
Army
intelligence had been desperately searching for a way to finish King,
according to several sources. A Special Forces Alpha 184 sniper team was
in
Memphis on the day of the killing. It was notorious for "behind the
fence"
covert operations and special training links with the Ku Klux Klan. A
two-man "reconnaissance unit" was sent to Memphis on April 4 with
explicit
orders to "shoot to kill 'body mass' [center, chest cavity] Dr Martin
Luther
King Jr and the Reverend Andrew Young". The team's pep talk before the
mission stressed how the targets were "enemies of the United States who
were
determined to bring down the government". (p 68)

The Alpha 184 mission was a backup plan to an officially deniable
"civilian
scenario" that involved Jowers and the mobsters. Army photographers were

perched on top of a nearby building to capture the entire killing on
camera
to suppress observations and tamper with the evidence on the crime site
immediately after the killing. Members of this sensitive mission either
died
in mysterious circumstances a few years later or escaped the country.
One of
them admitted "a clean-up process had begun within a year of the
assassination ... if he returned to the United States he would be
immediately killed". (p 73) The 1972 Ervin Committee condemned the US
military for domestic surveillance of civilian political activity in no
mean
terms, confirming that King was one of the millions of US citizens and
entities targeted for bugging and infiltration.

By a tortuous and circuitous route, Pepper got the case proving
innocence of
Ray running in a County Criminal court. Judge Brown concluded that the
rifle
produced by the state was not the murder weapon because the death slug
did
not match test-fired bullets from the same gun. Just as legal momentum
was
gaining, the government got a higher court to overturn Brown's ruling
and
removed him from the case on grounds that he had "ceased to be
impartial."

Pepper went on unveiling new parts of the conspiracy puzzle. Members of
the
Memphis Police Department (MPD) used Lloyd Jowers' grill for "planning
sessions" before the assassination. The MPD's best shooter, Earl Clark,
may
have been the actual trigger puller behind the bushes. When a former FBI

agent spotted a person in Atlanta who matched the murder suspect and
asked
for permission to apprehend him, he received strange instructions and
was
disallowed from detaining the suspect without explanation. The massive
damage limitation and cover-up operations, understandable given how far
up
the official line the conspiracy went, ensured that government
investigators
sidelined crucial facts like these.

In 1999, Pepper and the King family managed to arrange for a trial of
Lloyd
Jowers. The jury pool contained a disproportionate number of employees
of
law enforcement agencies and security firms. Aspects of the local and
wider
conspiracy came out cogently at the trial. Mafia organizations had
informed
the co-conspirators that "there would be no security, the police were
cooperating, and that a patsy (decoy) was in place". (p111) Removal of
police from the area of the crime, failures to place the usual security
unit
around King and deletion of other individuals whose presence in the area

could jeopardize the assassination - all inevitably pointed to an
orchestrated plan. An anonymous caller changed King's lodging from the
protected ground floor to an open balcony terrace room. The small police

presence at King's hotel completely disappeared within half an hour of
the
murder. A fireman yelled at the police standing at some distance that
the
shot came from a clump of bushes but was ignored. Moments after the
shooting, a figure rushed into a car and drove right past the police
barricading the street, as the MPD let him go. There never was a
house-to-house investigation after the incident despite it being a
standard
police practice.

Other exposes at the trial included an FBI agent who was in the
assassination in-group telling one witness, "the CIA ordered it done". A

journalist who knew Raul, the weapon and cash facilitator, startled the
court by informing that the accused's family was "being protected and
advised by US government agents who had visited their home on three
occasions - the government was helping them through these difficult
days".
(p125) When Ray tried a prison break in 1976, he narrowly escaped death,

not capture, by an FBI SWAT team consisting of more than 30
sharpshooters.
The implication of this astonishing operation was to prevent Ray from
spilling
any beans on the cover-up once he was out of custody.

Last but not least, the King versus Jowers trial threw light on
government
use of the media for disinformation, psychological warfare and
propaganda.
In 1967-68, there was extraordinary press and radio hostility for King's

anti-Vietnam war position. The "powerfully comprehensive control of the
media by the forces who control American public policy" enabled biased
and
unquestioning coverage of the assassination and repeated brainwashing of
the
public with the official version of events. No less a publication than
the
New York Times was implicated in furthering the official spin.

The final judgement of the case apportioned 30 percent liability to
defendant Jowers and 70 percent to "all other co-conspirators", ie
agents of
the City of Memphis, the State of Tennessee and the Government of the
United

States. Despite this overwhelming verdict and President Clinton's orders
to
conduct another official investigation into fresh allegations, the US
Attorney General dished out one more sham exonerating report in June
2000.
The Department of Justice taskforce that collected proof for this report
had
an "orientation to defend the status quo in the case at all costs".
(p226)
It selectively decided who and what to believe and protected agencies
whose
culpability was an open secret. Pepper's disappointment with this latest

charade is vivid: "Our democracy is a perpetrated illusion, a myth, even
a
disappearing fantasy when it comes up against the special interests of
wealth and power." (p261) Martin Luther King's vision of root-and-branch

transformation of society to overcome militarism, infringement of
liberties
and unresolved racism is still a valid pursuit for decent Americans. The

truth about his assassination plot is a wake-up call for them and a
shocking
rebuttal of what George W Bush loudly trumpets as "the meaning of
American
justice."

An Act of State. The Execution of Martin Luther King by William Pepper,
Verso Books, London, 2003. ISBN: 1-85984-695-5. Price: US$25, 334 pages.

-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
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