Miriam,
Back around 1952,
in fact I think it was while I was recovering from detached retina
surgery, I noticed a large black car roll slowly past the house and
part at the curb in front of the neighbor's house. Two men wearing
grey overcoats and hats, slowly climbed out of the car and sauntered
down the sidewalk to our walk. They stood there for a bit of time
just looking around, then walked up to the door and rang the bell. My
eyes were bandaged, but I had a peephole
in the bandage over my right eye, giving me limited vision. One of
the men said, "We're from the FBI", and he waived something under my
nose. "Is Clyde Jarvis home?"
It was about 3:30 PM. and my sisters weren't home from school yet.
"My parents both work" I stammered.
"We'll come back another time. Just let your dad know that we were here".
Like I could forget to tell dad that piece of news.
I don't know if any neighbors were looking, but the two men took a
long time strolling back to their car and driving off.
When I told dad, he said that it was one of the FBI's ways of
intimidating people. Dad told me that for some time he had known that
our telephone was being tapped. During the viewing of the Daytime
show, House Unamerican Activities, dad's boss called him into his
office and announced that he had received a phone call, telling him
that dad had been a member of the Communist Party. Dad's boss said he
told the voice on the telephone that dad was his best worker, and he
had every intention of keeping him on the job. It had been over 7
years since my folks had been involved in any political activities.
While it's true that dad was well above average, intellectually, he
was never a leader in any movement. His work and family commitments
took most of his time and energy.
But the American Corporate Empire has the wealth and the numbers of
foot soldiers to spend time and money harassing's whomever they choose
in order to maintain control. It seems to me that the Ancient Greek's
experiment in democracy lasted around 40 years. How long would we say
the American experiment
in a Democratic Republics lasted? Frankly, in my personal opinion, it
was dead from the start.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/22/22, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl, I read an excellent book from BARD, written in 2019 about the
assassination of JFK. The information about King and RFK is very similar.
I've also been listening to Gerald Horn, who is a black, Marxist oriented
historian, talking about the assasination of King. And I read that book
about Alan Dulles and the CIA. The evidence, gathered by many historians
from many sources, is that the FBI, CIA, and the Military, all were involved
in these murders. They were getting rid of people who had enough influence
with the American public, to cause them to question the international
policies of the USA. Over the years, our government propaganda has caused
all of us to discount these theories. But the more that I learn about what
the CIA has been doing since its inception, the more it seems to me that
they have become the enforcer, both here and abroad, of American policy. And
in spite of what we have been led to believer over all of these years about
conflicts between the CIA and the FBI, I have read a good deal lately about
how they secretly conspired in many situations. I also think that as we
view our history and the current behavior of our government, it is important
to step away from seeing everything through this working class versus
ruling class orientation. Neither class is a monolithic entity. People with
power and money differ in their views and their actions. Those of us who are
not members of the wealthy elite, are divided by religious and political
beliefs, by ethnic backgrounds, and by life style. We do not all live by
the same values. Whatever the rigid adherents to Marxist theory believe
about how economic theory works, people do not function like the SWP would
like us to believe because human motivation and behavior is a lot more
complex. Yes, I do believe that US foreign and domestic policy are
motivated by the financial goals of corporations, but also, by men's need to
dominate others..
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2022 12:59 PM
To: Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Did J. Edgar Hoover Order the Assassination
of Martin Luther King Jr? - CovertAction Magazine
Thanks for the post, Miriam.
While I get suckered into speculating on such subjects as the
assassination's of specific individuals, I actually find it to be an
exercise in futility. J. Edgar Hoover was a very flawed individual,
working his way into a powerful position within a very flawed
government.
The FBI, both with and without Hoover at its helm, has been a tool of
the American Corporate Empire from its very inception.
I would rather speculate as to whom the FBI is defending. Why does a
Democratic Republic need such Enforcers as the FBI or the Secret
Service? I want to know what we, the Working Class, can do to protect
ourselves from Federal Agencies such as the FBI, from attacking
Workers who are picketing their employer, demanding a living wage? I
want to know why we can't teach our children that we live in a Land
where the Privileged Citizens have different Rights than do the vast
majority of Americans.
Why do we have two standards, those for the Privileged Rich and those
for the rest of us? Besides, if J Edgar Hoover is a murderer,
shouldn't he be dealt with the same as all other murderers? Why is it
that those people involved in social actions are beaten and killed,
while those who are heading corporations that allow Working Class
Americans to be placed in dangerous conditions, and allowed to be
killed while struggling to make a base living for their families? J.
Edgar Hoover is dead. I would have no problem with reexamining his
activities, once we have found the way to set in place a government
that treats all Americans equally.
At 86 I am not expecting to see that day.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/21/22, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Did J. Edgar Hoover Order the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr? -
CovertAction Magazine
A person holding an object
Description automatically generated with medium confidence
Left: MLK as target. [Source: biography.com] Right: J. Edgar Hoover firing
a
rifle. [Source: theguardian.com] Artwork courtesy of Steve Brown.
Powerful new evidence of a government-abetted conspiracy has prompted
King
family members to demand a reopening of the investigation into his
murder.
Everyone knows that James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King, Jr., right?
The
U.S. government says so. All the school textbooks say so. And it is
enshrined as unquestioned gospel in the pages of Wikipedia.
But the official story is full of holes. Instead, mounting evidence
suggests
that King may have been murdered as part of a conspiracy planned and/or
abetted by the FBI in coordination with local Memphis police personnel.
In
this scenario, Ray served as a patsy, like critics allege Lee Harvey
Oswald
was in the JFK assassination. The real shooter, according to these
accounts,
struck King not from the boardinghouse bathroom—allegedly from where Ray
shot him—but from bushes behind the Lorraine Motel—the King
assassination’s
version of the grassy knoll.
This article lays out that evidence—as it may soon be laid out in court
and
a congressional committee—if the King family’s demands to reopen the
murder
investigation continue to gain traction. What follows is a reconstruction
of
the events leading up to King’s murder, and the subsequent purported
attempts by local and national government officials to cover up their
involvement and pin it on a patsy named James Earl Ray.
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was struck in the
face by a bullet as he was leaning over the balcony of his room at the
Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
An hour later he was declared dead at nearby St. Joseph’s Hospital.
Associates of Martin Luther King Jr. point toward the sound where the
gunfire originated just moments after his assassination at the Lorraine
Motel on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn.
Associates of Martin Luther King, Jr., point toward where the sound of
gunfire originated just moments after his assassination at the Lorraine
Motel on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee [Source: nbcnews.com]
King had come to Memphis as part of his poor people’s campaign to support
a
sanitation workers strike. The civil rights leader was increasingly
promoting socialist views, had become more outspoken in criticizing the
war
in Vietnam and had been running for president on an anti-war ticket with
Benjamin Spock.[1]
MLK and Rev Ralph Abernathy in Memphis, on March 28, 1968 supporting
striking Sanitation Workers
King marching with striking sanitation workers in Memphis on March 28,
1968.
[Source: ratical.org]
Item Detail - King, Spock 1968 Jugate
King-Spock buttons [Source: Anderson-auction.com]
After King had given a speech denouncing the Vietnam War at New York’s
Riverside Church one year before his assassination, U.S. Army spies
recorded
Black radical Stokely Carmichael warning him: “The man don’t care you
call
ghettos concentration camps, but when you tell him his war machine is
nothing but hired killers, you got trouble.”
Carmichael, unfortunately, was right.
Stokely Carmichael, A Philosopher Behind The Black Power Movement : Code
Switch : NPR
Carmichael and King together in a 1966 voter registration march in
Mississippi. [Source: npr.org]
Lone Assassin?
Police authorities fingered James Earl Ray—a career criminal from Alton,
Illinois, who had escaped from the Jefferson City, Missouri, penitentiary
in
April 1967—as the lone assassin.[2]
A newspaper with a person's face on it
Description automatically generated with low confidence
James Earl Ray in his mug shot. [Source: missouripentours.com]
On May 6, 1968, syndicated columnist Drew Pearson wrote that the FBI was
conducting “perhaps the most painstaking, exhaustive manhunt ever before
undertaken in the United States. Its G-men have checked every bar ever
patronized by James Earl Ray, every flop house he ever stopped at, every
cantina in Mexico, he ever visited. It has collected an amazing array of
evidence, all linking Ray with the murder.”[3]
The Columnist' Review: Master of the Merry-Go-Round - WSJ
Drew Pearson [Source: wsj.com]
Ray was supposedly motivated by race hate. He allegedly began stalking
Dr.
King on the weekend of March 17 in Los Angeles, arriving in Memphis on
April
3 with the murder weapon and booking into a seedy rooming house owned by
Bessie Brewer above Jim’s Grill right across from the Lorraine Motel.[4]
MLK Crime Scene — TPAAK
Photo of rooming house above Jim’s Grill. [Source: tpaak.com]
Just before 6:00 p.m., Ray barricaded himself in a communal bathroom from
where he pointed his rifle outside the window and shot King.
images%2Fslides%2Fmlk_08
Photo from Life magazine of the back of the rooming house from which Ray
allegedly shot King. The rooming house is on the right. [Source:
slate.com]
Afterwards in haste, Ray neglected to eject the spent cartridge. Back in
his
room, he wrapped his rifle along with an overnight bag in a bedspread and
ran outside.
Ray was then spotted by another tenant in the rooming house, Charles
Quitman
Stephens—the state’s chief prosecution witness—who said that he saw Ray
running out.
James Earl Ray's room at Bessie Smith's Boarding House across the street
from the Lorraine Motel photo - Richard photos at pbase.com
Ray’s room at Bessie Brewer’s rooming house. [Source: pbase.com]
When Ray saw a stream of police cars rushing to the scene, he panicked,
and
dropped the bedspread with the rifle in the doorway of the Canipe
Amusement
Company on South Main Street.
A person holding a baseball bat
Description automatically generated with low confidence
Bedspread with rifle dropped by Ray allegedly in panic outside the Canipe
Amusement Company. [Source: tpaak.com]
He then fled in a white Mustang, making his way first to Atlanta, where
he
ditched the car, and then to Toronto, where he hid for a month, and then
to
Portugal and England, where he was apprehended two months later by
authorities trying to board a flight to Brussels.
Stock Photo - James Earl Ray (1928-1998), future assassin of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., arrested for armed robbery and auto theft January 4
Mug shots of James Earl Ray. [Source: bbc.com]
Ray’s fingerprints had been found on the gun that allegedly killed King,
scope, binoculars, beer can, and a copy of the Memphis Commercial Appeal
dropped in the bundle.
At his trial, Ray pled guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
House Select Committee on Assassinations and 1999 Civil Trial
The 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)—which was
convened
to investigate the King and Kennedy assassinations—alleged that Ray
carried
out the killing to collect a bounty from two St. Louis racists, both dead
at
the time.
A group of people sitting in a room
Description automatically generated with low confidence
House Select Committee on Assassinations. [Source: wikiwand.com]
Martin Luther King Jr. Case Is Closed, Despite Swirl Of Conspiracy
Theories
: NPR
Ray testifying before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in
1979.
[Source: npr.org]
In 2012, G. Robert Blakey, staff director to the HSCA, said, however,
that
he had been deceived by the CIA—which had failed to inform him that a
government liaison to the HSCA, George Joannides, had a CIA background.
Blakey told the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger that “thoughtful
people
today, not just nuts, think that more people than James Earl Ray were
involved [in King’s killing].”[5]
G. Robert Blakey, former Justice Department prosecutor, was the chief
architect in 1970 of RICO. | Chief architect, Organized crime, History
G. Robert Blakey [Source: pinterest.com]
Case Not Closed
Three days after his sentencing, Ray fired his mob-connected attorney,
Percy
Foreman, and said that he was pressured into pleading guilty and had been
set up as a patsy.[7] Foreman was given 60% royalty rights on a book
about
Ray by William Bradford Huie, which would not have sold if it were about
a
non-assassin.[8]
The FBI was never able to match the bullet that killed King with the
rifle
allegedly left by Ray on the steps of the Canipe Amusement Company.
A picture containing text, sky, sign, outdoor
Description automatically generated
Remington rifle that allegedly killed King; the bullets, however, were
never
matched to the fatal one that killed King. [Source: gunsamerica.com]
Ray’s fingerprints were also never identified in the room he had rented
at
the rooming house.
A well-known crime scene investigator determined that the shot from the
rooming house bathroom could not have struck King unless Ray had hung out
the window or smashed a ten-inch-deep hole in the wall for his rifle to
fit
into—the angles were all wrong.[9]
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated from this bathroom in Bessie
Brewer's Boarding House photo - Richard photos at pbase.com
Bathroom in Bessie Brewer’s rooming house. To have killed King, Ray would
have had to hang out the window, which no one observed him doing.
[Source:
pbase.com]
Memphis police officer Vernon Dollahite said that he arrived on Main
Street
within one minute and fifty seconds of King’s shooting and did not see a
fleeing Mustang or hear screeching tires, raising doubt that Ray could
have
gathered his stuff, dropped it in front of the Canipe Amusement Company—a
detour from his car—and gotten away to escape notice by Dollahite.[10]
Ray’s decision to drop the bedsheet supposedly resulted from his panic at
seeing a parked police car after exiting the boarding house. However, the
car would have been blocked by a hedge which was cut down the day after
King’s death.[11]
A picture containing text, building, outdoor, street
Description automatically generated
Rooming house next to Canipe Amusement Company which repaired old pinball
machines. [Source: xdell.blogspot.com]
According to Guy Canipe, the bedsheet was dropped on the steps of Canipe
Amusement Company approximately two to five minutes before King was shot.
Canipe described the person dropping the bundle as having a “chunky
build”—which did not match Ray.[12]
Ray’s old prison radio—which could be seen outside the bundle—supposedly
fell out when the bundle was tossed in the doorway; however, it was not
on
its side, visibly cracked or broken.[13]
A person standing in a doorway
Description automatically generated with low confidence
Guy Canipe being interviewed by the police moments after King’s shooting.
[Source: thewileyreport.blogspot.com]
The prosecution’s main witness, Charles Quitman Stephens, had been
arrested
155 times mostly for alcoholism and was dead drunk at the time of the
shooting, according to his wife, landlady, a homicide detective who
interviewed him (Tommy Smith) and a cab driver who picked him up.[15]
Stephens’s cab driver, James McCraw, said the hall bathroom was open and
bathroom empty as he approached and left Stephens’s room—indicating that
the
shots did not come from there.[17]
Stephens’s common-law wife, Grace Walden, also said that she heard the
shot
come from outside her window in the rooming house, which opened onto the
bushy area between the rooming house and motel.[18] The only man she saw
coming out of the rooming house was short with “salt and pepper hair,”
wearing an open army jacket and plaid sports shirt—which did not fit
Ray.[19]
Two Mustangs and Ray’s Alibi
When he was picking up Stephens, James McCraw said he noticed a delivery
van
and two white Mustangs parked within 50 yards of each other, one in front
of
Jim’s Grill, the other just south of the Canipe Amusement Company.[20]
Another witness, Charles Hurley, told Ray attorney William Pepper that,
after arriving to pick up his wife at the rooming house at 4:45 p.m., he
pulled up behind a Mustang with Arkansas plates parked in front of the
rooming house and south of the Canipe amusement store.
Ray’s Mustang had Alabama plates and was parked north of the Canipe
store.[21]
A picture containing text, car, outdoor, road
Description automatically generated
1966 Mustang that Ray was driving at the time of King’s killing. [Source:
tpaak.com]
However, his brother, John Larry Ray, said that James lied and was
waiting
in his Mustang for his handler Raoul at the time King was shot, believing
he
was to be the getaway driver for some job.
Shortly after he heard the shot that killed King, Raoul jumped into the
backseat of his vehicle and put a sheet over his head, and Ray drove off.
After a few blocks, Raoul jumped out of the car and fled and Ray drove
all
night to Atlanta.[22]
An Unlikely Assassin
Ray did not have a clear motive for killing King apart from a possible
financial one. He could never have survived on the lam after his prison
escape and in the two months after the King assassination without outside
support. Ray had received money not only for travel and lodging, but also
for fake identities, plastic surgery, and even dance and bartending
classes
and hypnosis.
A strong anti-communist who was otherwise apolitical, Ray was painted in
the
media as a racist. However, people close to him said he had had a Black
girlfriend, and that evidence was planted by police to make him appear to
be
a racist when he was not.[23]
A picture containing text, person, old, standing
Description automatically generated
Ray following his arrest. [Source: picclick.com]
Most significantly, Ray had no expertise in firearms. During a stint in
the
Army, he was trained with an M-1 and obtained only the lowest level of
ability.[24] The salesman who sold him the alleged murder weapon in
Birmingham—which he had been told to buy by the mysterious Raoul
(discussed
below)—said that Ray “did not seem to know anything at all about firearms,
I
mean nothing.”[25]
Shot from the Bushes
King’s chauffeur Solomon Jones and Southern Christian Leadership
Conference
(SCLC) attorney Chauncey Eskridge, who were both looking at King when he
died, said they saw King’s body lurch upwards when he was shot—and not
downward—indicating that the shot could not have come from the rooming
house
bathroom.
Instead, it must have come from the bushes behind Jim’s Grill and between
the rooming house and motel.
A picture containing text, outdoor
Description automatically generated
View from Lorraine Motel balcony that shows brush area from where
witnesses
claimed the shots were fired. [Source: tpaak.com]
Ray’s first lawyer, Arthur Hanes, Sr., noticed tree branches that would
have
been a formidable obstacle to shooting King from the rooming house
bathroom—though these branches were cut down the next day by police to
try
to cover this up.[26]
Several eyewitnesses reported seeing a man crouching in the bushes and
running away afterward, and a sound like a firecracker coming from the
bushes.[27]
Olivia Catling said that she saw a fireman standing near the wall below
the
bushes yelling at the police that the shot came from the clump of bushes
above the area where he was standing—but the police ignored him.[29]
Diagram, engineering drawing
Description automatically generated
[Source: muckrock.com]
A picture containing text, person, old, standing
Description automatically generated
James Orange [Source: blackthen.com]
Reverend James Orange said that he saw smoke “rise from the bushes right
by
the fire station” seconds after the shot.[30] The smoke was most likely
sonic dust rising from the bushes caused by the firing of a high-powered
rifle in the heavily vegetated area.[31]
Orange and a reporter, Kay Black, also alleged that the brush area was
cut
and cleared back the morning after the shooting, along with the
inconveniently placed tree branch that blocked a clear shot from the
rooming
house.
A close-up of a gold ring
Description automatically generated with low confidence
Badge of Memphis Police Department who were involved in the coverup of
King’s assassination. [Source: wikipedia.org]
The pre-dawn clean-up request, according to Maynard Stiles, deputy
director
of the Memphis City Public Works Department in 1968, came from the
Memphis
Police Department early on the morning of April 5.[32]
Suspicious Happenings
The night before King’s killing, the only two Black firemen in the
Memphis
Fire Department (MFD), Norvell E. Wallace and Floyd E. Newsum, were
ordered
not to report the next day to their posts at Fire Station No. 2
overlooking
the Lorraine Motel.[33]
A person wearing a mask
Description automatically generated with medium confidence
Floyd E. Newsum [Source: facebook.com]
The Memphis Police Department (MPD) failed to form the usual security
squad
of black detectives for Dr. King and withdrew other key police security
units to a position five blocks away from the Lorraine Motel on April 4—a
key factor that enabled the assassin(s) to get away.[34]
six : 01 - Martin Luther King's Last 32 Hours
Ed Redditt [Source: 601.commercialappeal.com]
Black detective Ed Redditt was removed from his surveillance post about
an
hour before King’s shooting and placed in home confinement after the FBI
had
warned MPD of an assassination attempt directed against him—by the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party—which proved to be phony and served
as
a diversion.[35]
This hoax indicated an organized plot and that Ray could not have been a
lone assassin.
The King Assassination: Was James Earl Ray A Patsy? | Ann Arbor District
Library
[Source: aadl.org]
Loyd Jowers and Jim’s Grill.
Investigator continues looking into King killing
William Pepper in his office in 2018. [Source: mankatofreepress.com]
Taxi driver James McCraw told William Pepper that, on the morning after
the
shooting, Loyd Jowers, the owner of Jim’s Grill, showed him a rifle in a
box
on a shelf under the counter, which he said he had “found out back after
the
killing.”
This account was corroborated by Betty Spates, a young Black waitress at
Jim’s Grill who implicated Jowers, her former lover, in the murder.
Loyd Jowers - Wikipedia
Loyd Jowers in 1999. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Spates said that, after hearing what sounded like a shot, she saw him run
into the kitchen from the brush carrying a rifle. His hair was in
disarray,
and the knees of his trousers were wet and muddy as though he had been
kneeling in the soggy grass or brush areas.[37]
Jowers then wrapped his rifle in a tablecloth, put it under his apron,
and
slipped into the café behind the counter where he discreetly placed the
rifle under a shelf and then asked customer Harold Parker, a taxi driver,
if
he heard anything.
The shooting had only happened one minute earlier. Subsequently, a
sheriff’s
deputy came in and ordered Jowers to lock Jim’s Grill and keep everyone
inside.
Blind Spot: The Jowers Affair — Historical Blindness
[Source: historicalblindness.com]
Jowers later admitted to Willie Akins, his right-hand man, that he was
the
figure in the bushes—though he said someone else was the shooter.[38]
Akins
said that his job was to kill this shooter who ran off to Florida before
he
could “pop him.”[39]
Jowers had been a Memphis police officer from 1946 to 1948 who went into
business running clubs and then bars and restaurants.
A person wearing a hat
Description automatically generated with low confidence
John McFerren [Source: legacy.com]
Bill Hamblin, James McCraw’s roommate, testified at the 1999 civil trial
that McCraw had told him that Jowers had not only showed him the rifle
that
killed King but told him to get rid of it. McCraw in turn said that he
drove
on to the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge and threw it off.[40]
John McFerren, a civil rights leader in 1968, told William Pepper how he
heard Frank Liberto from the back of his store before King’s death say,
“I
told you not to call me here. Shoot the son of a bitch when he comes on
the
balcony.”[41]
Liberto—a member of the Carlos Marcello crime family—told the caller he
should collect his money—$5,000 was mentioned—from Liberto’s brother in
New
Orleans.
Frank Holt, a Black produce truck unloader whom Jowers had falsely tried
to
blame at one point for the murder, heard Liberto say to one of the
“big-wheels” at the M.E. Carter Produce Company during the sanitation
strike
that “King is a trouble-maker and he should be killed. If he is killed,
then
he will cause no more trouble.”[42]
Lavada Whitlock Addison, the manager of a pizza parlor near Liberto’s
home,
said that, one day between 1976 and 1982, Liberto leaned forward and told
her, “I had Dr. Martin Luther King killed.”[43]
Frank Liberto was an alleged member of the NOLA mafia | Crime family,
Mafia, Mobster
Frank Liberto [Source: pinterest.com]
Earl Clark and Marrell McCollough
Jowers identified the assassin as Memphis Police Lieutenant Earl
Clark—who
was regarded as the best shot on the MPD and was close to Liberto.[44]
Afterwards, Clark allegedly scaled down a wall adjacent to the Lorraine
Motel before jumping into an escape vehicle.[45]
Clark was involved in planning sessions at Jim’s Grill to prepare for the
assassination with five other men, only two of whom Jowers could
identify.
One of the men, unbeknownst to Jowers, was an undercover police officer
and
agent provocateur, Marrell McCollough, who was assigned to the MPD from
the
11th Military Intelligence Group.
Born in Mississippi, McCollough had served in the military police in
Vietnam
and went on to work for the CIA in Central or South America. At the time
of
King’s slaying, McCollough was posing as a member of the Invaders, a
militant Black political group, which gave him access to King and his
circle. He was identified as the mysterious figure kneeling over Dr. King
after he was shot.[46]
A person holding a baby
Description automatically generated with medium confidence
Marrell McCollough with his daughter Leta. [Source: oprah.com]
Frank Strausser
In April 2003, Lenny Curtis, a custodian at the MPD shooting range,
identified King’s killer to William Pepper as MPD patrolman Frank
Strausser.
Curtis said that about four or five months before King’s death, he heard
Strausser—a Vietnam veteran with a reputation for beating up Black
people—say in the lounge of the rifle range that “somebody was going to
blow
[King’s] motherfucking brains out.”
Henry Loeb - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia
Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb. Loeb was a pro-segregationist whose family had
made a fortune in the dry cleaning business by exploiting Black labor.
[Source: alchetron.com]
Curtis identified Strausser as being in the gun range firing a rifle all
day
the day before and day of King’s assassination. At around 2:30 p.m.,
Memphis
Mayor Henry Loeb (D), MPD Chief Frank Holloman (discussed below) and a
number of MPD officers including Earl Clark—whom Curtis identified as the
spotter in King’s shooting—went into a meeting in a room in the rifle
range.
Strausser then left around 3:30 p.m. wearing a white shirt and pair of
sunglasses carrying the assassination rifle in a red Chevrolet
convertible.[47]
After the killing, investigators identified a size 13 shoe print in the
bush
behind the Lorraine Motel. In October 2013, Pepper interviewed Strausser
and
got him to admit that he wore a size 13 shoe.[48]
Ray’s Intelligence Background
The assassin's brother | Illinois Times
John Larry Ray [Source: illinoistimes.com]
Ray’s brother John Larry believes that his brother’s role as a patsy in
the
King killing had been planned for many years and originated with his Army
service at the end of World War II.
After enlisting in 1946 at the age of 17, Ray served in the 7892nd
Infantry
Regiment and as a military policeman with the 382nd Military Police
Battalion in Nuremburg, Germany. Subsequently, Ray was recruited into the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). He told John Larry that, “when you join the
OSS,
it’s like joining the Mafia, you never leave.”[49]
Researcher Lyndon Barsten was told by an intelligence officer that
four-digit Army units like the 7892nd Infantry Regiment were “often used
for
cover.”[50] The unit was based in Frankfurt, Germany—the European
headquarters of the CIA, housed in the old I.G. Farben building which had
been spared during the Allied bombing. Ray was given two serial
numbers—which further indicated he was involved in something secret.[51]
According to John Larry, James was haunted by an incident when he was in
the
military police when he shot a Black soldier named Washington who was
accused of beating up Jews and raping an officer’s family member—which
was
not true. James had been given lumbar punctures (or spinal taps) by Army
doctors which can be used to administer drugs.
A picture containing outdoor, tree, city, crowd
Description automatically generated
I.G. Farben building in Frankfurt after World War II that housed CIA
headquarters. It was nicknamed “The Pentagon of Europe.” [Source:
wikipedia.org]
Gaps in Ray’s military record further lead to suspicion that he was an
unwitting victim of mind-control drug experiments carried out under the
CIA’s MK-ULTRA—which may have caused him to shoot the Black soldier.
FBI documents show that Ray saw two hypnotists in Los Angeles after his
Army
service was completed, one of whom, Xavier von Koss, had been an Army
intelligence officer and was likely brought over under Operation
Paperclip
(which brought Nazi scientists to the U.S.).[52]
Text
Description automatically generated
[Source: latimes.com]
James had told his family that the Feds were “messing with his mind,” and
his father felt that he had been drugged.[53]
Between 1949 and 1952, James served as an undercover operator for FBI
investigations into communists in Chicago, earning him the nickname “the
Mole.”[54]
When Ray was arrested after committing a robbery, an intelligence
operative
was spotted in the rooming house where he was staying. There is a
possibility that he was there because the government wanted Ray locked up
so
they could use him in a later operation—knowing he was a controllable
personality.[55]
Jeff City Escape
There is no better patsy than an escaped prisoner because he cannot go to
the police for assistance and is dependent on his contacts for survival.
On April 23, 1967, Ray escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary at
Jefferson City, where he was serving a 20-year sentence, by hiding in a
breadbox in the back of a bakery truck.
The director of the Missouri State Prison system at the time, Fred T.
Wilkinson, was a U.S. intelligence operative who handled the famous May
1960
spy exchange between U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose plane had been
shot down over the Soviet Union, and a Soviet Colonel, Rudolf Abel, who
had
been imprisoned for setting up a spy network in the U.S.[56]
The warden at Jeff City, Harold Swenson, also had an intelligence
background. His predecessor, E.V. Nash, was said to have committed
suicide—though the gun that killed him was found in a separate room in
his
house than his body.[57]
After a failed escape attempt, Ray was seen by Dr. Donald B. Peterson,
head
of psychiatry for the Army’s Far East Command during the Korean War, the
height of the brainwashing era. Peterson prescribed Ray with Librium, a
drug
listed in government documents as one used to strengthen
narco-hypnosis.[58]
Missouri State Penitentiary
Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City from which Ray escaped.
Once
deemed by Time magazine as the “bloodiest 47 acres in America,” it closed
in
2004 and is now a museum. [Source: tulsaworld.com]
Gene Barnes, a former inmate at Jeff City, signed an affidavit in the
late
1970s which said that he had been told by Warden Donald Wyrick that
Wyrick,
Wilkinson and Swenson had allowed James to escape Jeff City so that the
feds
could later use him as the fall guy in King’s assassination.[59]
Donald Wyrick [Source: wikiwand.com]
The fingerprints the prison sent out after James’s escape were not his;
they
had been switched by Wilkinson and Swenson with another man’s—meaning
that
if Ray had been captured, the police would have had to set him free.
When Wilkinson retired, the inmate who talked Ray into escaping, Ronnie
Westberg, committed “suicide” by hanging himself, though he was
discovered
with broken arms and legs, pointing to foul play.[60]
The Mystery of Raoul
After James’s escape, he came in contact with a mysterious figure named
Raoul, who provided Ray with phony documents in Montreal, Canada, after
the
two met at the Neptune Bar.
In exchange for the documents, Raoul had Ray assist him in smuggling
contraband across the border and then sent Ray to Birmingham, Alabama,
where
he purchased a 1966 white Mustang and a telescopic rifle that appears to
have served as the fake murder weapon.[61]
In Montreal, Ray was given the identity of Eric St. Vincent Galt—who
happened to be a highly placed Canadian operative of U.S. Army
intelligence.[62]
The real Eric S. Galt
The real Eric S. Galt. [Source: maryferrell.org]
Galt ran a warehouse for Union Carbide which housed a top-secret
munitions
project funded by the CIA, the U.S. Naval Surface Weapons Center, and the
Army Electronics Research and Development Command.[63]
At 3 p.m. on April 4, Ray met Raoul at Jim’s Grill where he was told to
go
to the rooming house next to the Lorraine Motel. He then waited for him
after the shooting and helped him flee from the scene, before Raoul
jumped
out of the car and abandoned him to his fate.[64]
Raoul’s real name may have been J.C. Harden, a man Ray had been in
contact
with and was believed to be an FBI snitch, or Raoul Coelho, a Portuguese
immigrant identified by Glenda Grabow, or Raoul Esquivel whose number Ray
called.
Esquivel was tracked by a Los Angeles Times reporter to a Louisiana State
police barracks in the New Orleans-Baton Rouge area, a well-known staging
ground for CIA-sponsored guerrilla operations against Fidel Castro.[65]
Jules Ricco Kimble, a convicted killer who worked for organized crime,
the
Klu Klux Klan and CIA in the French separatist struggle in Quebec, told
investigators that he flew Ray to Montreal and brought him to a CIA
identities specialist who provided Ray with his aliases.
A retired CIA agent later said that the CIA identities specialist in
Montreal was named Raoul Miora.[66]
Ewen Cameron and MK-ULTRA
While serving as Ray’s handler in Montreal, Kimble said that the two were
ordered to go to McGill University’s Memorial Institute to undergo
hypnosis.[67]
The Memorial Institute was the home of subproject 68 of the CIA’s
MK-ULTRA
brainwashing program run by Dr. Ewen Cameron—the lead CIA mind-control
expert in Canada.[68]
Winnipeg woman brainwashed in Montreal psychiatric hospital hopes new
year
brings new compensation | CBC News
Dr. Ewen Cameron, Director of the Allan Memorial Institute at McGill
University from 1950 to 1965. [Source: cbc.ca]
An Inside Job
Kimble said that the assassination was carried out by a team of covert
intelligence operatives who had an unmarked van with sophisticated
electronic radio equipment that could oversee the crime scene and monitor
and broadcast on police radio channels.
Two snipers with the team used rifles identical to Ray’s, while other
members obtained Memphis Police Department uniforms. The two snipers
concealed themselves in the bushes behind the boarding house; one was a
backup, the other shot King. The rifles were then concealed in a
prearranged
hiding place behind the boarding house where they were retrieved by other
operatives.
The two snipers afterwards jumped down onto the sidewalk from the bushes
and
mingled with the other uniformed officers who were rushing about. A
voucher
had been established for the police imposters. If anyone asked who they
were, they were told to call a certain police captain who would vouch for
the “new men on the force.”[69]
Secret Army Intelligence Team
The 902nd Military Intelligence Group under the command of Colonel John
W.
Downie—LBJ’s CIA Vietnam briefer—had been deployed to Memphis at the time
of
King’s visit with orders to shoot to kill him and aide Andrew Young
[later
mayor of Atlanta] on command.[70] King was considered “a Negro who
repeatedly preached the message of Hanoi and Peking.”
The 902nd Military Intelligence Group had been involved in gun-running
with
mobster Carlos Marcello; weapons stolen from Army bases were delivered to
Marcello and the proceeds were used to help fund black operations.[71]
According to two sources, the 902nd included “Klan guys who hated
niggers.”
A Green Beret said that nobody in it had “any hesitancy about killing the
two sacks of shit [King and Young].”[72]
Another Green Beret who participated in a clandestine training course in
riot control and surveillance identified a CIA/NSA agent whom he had
recognized from his time in Vietnam climbing down a wall behind the
Lorraine
Motel just after King was shot.[73]
A contact in the CIA had given Downie’s team a detailed area of
operations
map, pictures of cars used by the King group and Memphis police radio
frequencies. It carried camera equipment and took up positions
overlooking
the Lorraine Motel and monitored King’s telephone conversations from Room
306 and other communications. They obtained pictures that caught the
shooter
as he was lowering his rifle and Jowers running back toward the rooming
house. These were given to Colonel Downie and never revealed
publicly.[74]
The secret agent who snapped the photos said that the shooter was not
Ray.[75]
Ties to Dallas ’63?
In the days after King’s killing, FBI agent Don Wilson came across a 1966
Mustang with Alabama plates in Atlanta and opened the car door. An
envelope
and some papers fell out, which he kept hidden for the next 29 years.
One piece came from a 1963 Dallas telephone directory. The telephone
numbers
on the page included those of the family of H.L. Hunt and had the name
Raul,
the letter J, and a Dallas telephone number, which turned out to be the
number of the Vegas Club which, at the time, was run by Jack Ruby, the
killer of Lee Harvey Oswald.
H. L. Hunt | National Portrait Gallery
H.L. Hunt [Source: npg.si.edu]
The second paper was a payoff list and included Raul’s name and a date
for
payment. A third piece of paper had a telephone number and extension of
the
Atlanta FBI field office.[76]
FBI’s War Against King
YOUNG, Andrew Jackson, Jr. | US House of Representatives: History, Art &
Archives
Andrew Young [Source: history.house.gov]
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg swore in an affidavit that,
during a 1978 conversation with Brady Tyson, then an aide to UN
Ambassador
Andrew Young, Tyson said that a group of off-duty and retired FBI
officers,
including a sharpshooter, working under the personal direction of J.
Edgar
Hoover, killed King and then covered it up.[77]
Brady Tyson. Image courtesy of
Brady Tyson [Source: library.brown.edu]
According to Ron Adkins, Hoover’s right-hand man, Clyde Tolson—who
allegedly
was routinely given money by Hoover to perform criminal deeds including
local contract killings—planned King’s assassination beginning in May
1964
on a cruise to Southampton, England, with Russell Adkins, Sr., Ron’s
father
and a Memphis city engineer, Klansman, and fixer for the Dixie mafia.[78]
Clyde Tolson and J. Edgar Hoover.
Clyde Tolson, left, with J. Edgar Hoover. [Source: slate.com]
Part of the plot involved Tolson’s providing envelopes of money to be
paid
to informants and $25,000 to the warden of the Missouri state prison,
Harold
Swenson, to arrange for Ray’s escape.[79]
Hoover had considered King an enemy of the state. In December 1963, less
than a month after the assassination of President Kennedy, FBI officials
had
met in Washington to explore ways of “neutralizing King as an effective
Negro leader.”[80]
Hidden microphones were placed in Dr. King’s hotel rooms in an attempt to
pick up evidence of extramarital sexual activity, break up his marriage,
or
blackmail him.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s slaying sparked violence in Port City - News -
The
Daily News - Jacksonville, NC
Protester in Massachusetts in 1965 quoting Hoover to the effect that King
was a troublemaker and liar. [Source: jdnews.com]
The Bureau also engaged in surreptitious activities and burglaries
against
Dr. King and SCLC.[81] In a letter sent to King in 1964 calling King a
“colossal fraud,” the FBI even encouraged him to commit suicide.
<em> ‘You Are Done’: </em> The letter sent to King by the F.B.I. (One
person’s name has been obscured because The Times could not verify or
disprove the claims about her.)
Suicide letter sent to King by the FBI in 1964. [Source: nytimes.com]
FBI-MPD Links
The FBI enjoyed very close connections with the Memphis PD.
E.H. Arkin founded MPD’s intelligence unit in 1967 under the tutelage of
FBI
agent William Lawrence, who headed the FBI Memphis Field Office’s
domestic
intelligence operations which surveilled King.[82]
A person wearing glasses
Description automatically generated with medium confidence
William Lawrence [Source: 601.commercialappeal.com]
The head of the MPD at the time of King’s assassination, Frank Holloman,
was
a 25-year FBI veteran from Mississippi who was in charge of director J.
Edgar Hoover’s Washington office from 1952 to 1959. In the mid-1960s,
Holloman headed the FBI’s Atlanta office when it was the nerve center of
surveillance and skullduggery directed against King.[83]
Frank Holloman [Source: memphislibrary.org]
A law-and-order conservative who railed against “long-haired,
foul-smelling
hippies” and “hostile forces in Black Memphis,” Holloman promoted
aggressive
police tactics against Blacks during the sanitation workers strike whom
he
accused of adopting “guerrilla warfare” and oversaw an expansion of MPD’s
internal security division.[84] The Tri-State Defender called Holloman an
“advocator of genocide of Black people,” and included a cartoon depicting
him firing his pistol under the shelter of hooded Klansmen.[85]
Holloman said that his first priority as police chief was to ensure that
“there was always a ‘two-way street in terms of the flow of information’
between the MPD and FBI.”[86] He was the one to move the Black firemen
and
pull Black detective Ed Redditt away from protecting King—and, according
to
witnesses interviewed by William Pepper, was involved in numerous other
aspects of the planning of King’s death.[87]
FBI Gets King to Stay at the Lorraine Motel—and Switch His Room
On March 29, 1968, the FBI issued from headquarters a COINTELPRO
(Counterintelligence Program) memorandum, written by G.C. Moore, chief of
the racial intelligence section, to William C. Sullivan, Assistant
Director
in charge of the intelligence division, that was designed to influence
King
to stay at the Lorraine Motel when he returned to Memphis on April 3.
The memo recommended placement of a news item with the Bureau’s friendly
sources which would read as follows:
The fine Hotel Lorraine in Memphis is owned and patronized exclusively by
Negroes but King didn’t go there after his hasty exit [from] the
demonstration of March 28. Instead, King decided the plush Holiday Inn
Motel, white-owned, operated and almost exclusively white patronized, was
the place to “cool it.” There will be no boycott of white merchants for
King, only for his followers.[88]
National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel – US Civil Rights
Trail
The FBI made sure that King stayed at the Lorraine Motel during his visit
to
Memphis so that the assassination plot against him could be consummated.
[Source: civilrightsall.com]
A retired New York Police detective later uncovered that King was
initially
supposed to stay in a secluded room in the motel, #202, but was moved to
Room 306 with an exposed balcony after the concierge received a call
supposedly from SCLC in Atlanta asking for the change in room. According
to
William Pepper and Phillip Nelson, the caller was actually an FBI
infiltrator inside SCLC who acted under the orders of police chief
Holloman
and had been paid through an intermediary. The infiltrator or possibly
infiltrators also had the task of getting King out of his room onto the
balcony before 6 PM and making sure he was wearing a tie so he could be
identified by the assassin.[89]
Coverup
After King’s death, the FBI took charge of the investigation from the
MPD,
even though the murder was a state and not federal crime. There was an
inexplicable 30-minute delay—which enabled the killers to get away.
Obvious
leads and significant witnesses were subsequently ignored or dismissed,
and
the Bureau’s files sanitized.[90] An autopsy of King—amazingly—was never
conducted.[91]
To help convince the public of Ray’s guilt, the FBI had William Bradford
Huie—editor of The American Mercury[92] literary magazine—write a book on
Ray that depicted him as a deranged lone gunman.
http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/images/m-5454.jpg
William Bradford Huie [Source: encyclopediaofalabama.org] ]
A conservative Alabaman, Huie had known J. Edgar Hoover since the 1930s.
He
claimed that Ray was a vicious southern racist who had stalked King,
which
was untrue. Huie was given access to Ray by his first lawyer, Arthur
Hanes,
Sr.– a former FBI and CIA agent and the mayor of Birmingham when Eugene
“Bull” Connor ordered the use of police dogs and fire hoses against civil
rights protesters.[93]
https://www.bhamwiki.com/wiki/images/4/4b/Art_Hanes_1963.jpg
Arthur Hanes, Sr. [Source: bhamwiki.com]
Cartha DeLoach, the FBI agent placed in charge of the investigation, had
written a memo to J. Edgar Hoover suggesting that the FBI “quietly sponsor
a
book” that would tell the “true story of the King case” and “advise
friendly
newsmen” on a “strictly confidential basis” that Coretta Scott and Ralph
Abernathy “were deliberately trying to keep King’s assassination in the
news
by pulling the ruse of maintaining the King murder was definitely a
conspiracy and not committed by one man in order to keep the money coming
to
Ms. King.”[94]
Cartha D. 'Deke' DeLoach, top FBI deputy to Hoover and high-profile crime
fighter - The Washington Post
Cartha DeLoach [Source: washingtonpost.com]
Captain Ed Atkinson, an aide to Memphis PD chief Frank Holloman, said
that
he overheard the discussion of two FBI agents at the bathroom window at
the
rear of the rooming house after the killing in which one of the agents
said
that the tree branch would have to be cut because no one would ever
believe
that a shooter could make the shot from that point with the tree in the
way.
After undergoing hypnosis, Atkinson identified Memphis police Captain
Earl
Clark as the one who called for the cutting down of the tree branch.
Drawing King to Memphis
The sanitation workers strike in Memphis started after two Black
sanitation
workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death in the back
of
a garbage truck on February 1st after taking temporary shelter from a
hard
rain by kneeling inside the back of the truck.
According to Ron Adkins, whose father Russell ran the Memphis city
garbage
dump, Cole and Walker did not die because of an accident; “somebody
pulled
the hammer, pulled the lever on the truck and mashed them up in
there.”[95]
Sanitation workers inspect a garbage truck similar to the one in which
Cole
and Walker were killed on February 1, 1968—deaths which started the
sanitation workers strike that drew King to Memphis. Courtesy of the
Preservation and Special Collections Department, University Libraries,
University of Memphis. [Source: mlk50.com]
The motive behind the killings was to precipitate the strike that would
draw
King to Memphis—the ideal place for him to be killed. Memphis was ideal
because of the close connection between J. Edgar Hoover and Memphis
police
Chief Holloman and the hostility toward King exhibited by Memphis Mayor
Henry Loeb—a segregationist whose family had made a fortune in the
dry-cleaning business exploiting Black labor.
Furthermore, Tennessee’s governor, Buford Ellingtone, was a close friend
of
President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Hoover ally who also wanted King dead.[96]
Ellington’s involvement in the coverup was demonstrated when he fired the
state’s commissioner of corrections, Harry S. Avery, after he had begun
to
investigate King’s death when he came across a letter to Ray typed on
McGill
University letterhead, which Avery believed might have been related to
how
Ray was able to obtain his aliases and some Canadian passports.[97]
From the author’s personal collection. Governor Buford Ellington (left)
with
his friend President Lyndon B. Johnson
Buford Ellington, left, with his friend Lyndon B. Johnson. [Source:
knoxfocus.com]
Ghouls in White Smocks
After more than four decades, Johnton Shelby came forward relaying the
story
of his mother, Lula Mae, who was a surgical aide at St. Joseph’s Hospital
that took part in Dr. King’s emergency treatment.
The morning after King’s death she had gathered her family to tell them
that, as doctors were working to save King, one of the orderlies, John
Billings, following doctors instructions, left the room to “find the men
in
charge.” When he returned with them, the doctors said there was nothing
more
they could do to save King and then instructed the rest of the staff to
leave the room and not talk about what had occurred.
St. Joseph Hospital
St. Joseph’s Hospital in Memphis where King died. [Source:
memphislibrary]
According to Lula Mae, who was the last to leave the room, King was still
alive at that time. As she made her way out of the room, the head of
surgery—Dr. Breen Bland, a pioneer in blood transfusions and polio
vaccinations—and a couple of men in suits told the doctors to “stop
working
on that nigger and let him die.”
Dr George Breen Bland Sr.
Dr. Breen Bland [Source: findagrave.com]
She also heard spitting sounds and turned around just in time to see
doctors
spitting on King and removing his ventilator tube while putting a pillow
over his face to ensure that he died.
Ron Adkins, under oath, stated that he had been with his father, and
after
he died, his older brother Russell Adkins Jr., when his father and
brother
discussed the plan with Dr. Bland and Frank Holloman regarding the need
to
take King to St. Joseph’s Hospital if he had not been killed. Ron
recalled
that Dr. Bland was prepared to give King a certain lethal injection if it
became necessary.[98]
Poor Buddy
On the night of April 4, cab driver Louis Ward went straight to the
airport
after hearing of King’s shooting and met a fellow driver he knew as
Buddy,
who said he had gone to the Lorraine Motel shortly before 6 p.m. to pick
up
a passenger with an enormous amount of luggage.[99]
As they finished loading up his taxi in the Lorraine parking lot,
Buddy—who
was in his early sixties—turned to look to the area of dense brush and
trees
opposite the motel. The passenger then punched him on the arm to distract
him and told him to look up at King on the balcony where he appeared to be
a
sitting duck for any would-be assassin.
At that precise moment, King was struck by the fatal bullet, Buddy saw a
man
[thought to be Earl Clark] come down the wall from the balcony empty
handed
and get into a black and white Memphis PD car which was stopped at the
middle of the intersection between Mulberry and Huling.
The passenger at this time became irritable, saying he had to leave
immediately because otherwise the ambulance and other cars would box them
in, and he had a plane to catch.
When Ward asked about Buddy a few days later, three or four other drivers
in
the main taxi office told him they understood he had fallen or been
pushed
from a speeding car from Route 55 on the other side of the
Memphis-Arkansas
Bridge late in the evening of April 4 and was dead.[100]
A Pile of Corpses
John Larry Ray—who spent 18 years behind bars after being framed for a
crime
he says he did not commit—wrote that “the coverup of the King
assassination
left a pile of corpses in its wake.”[101]
Three months after Jimmy Hoffa’s lawyer, Z.T. Osborn, Jr., decided to
help
James Earl Ray with his case, he abruptly committed “suicide”—which his
wife
did not believe.[102]
Z.T. Osborn, Jr. [Source: outlet.historicimages.com]
Two judges considering Ray’s request for a retrial—W. Preston Battle and
William E. Miller—died of suspicious heart attacks.[103] Just before he
died, Battle had received a request for a new trial from one of Ray’s new
attorneys, Richard J. Ryan, which was refused by Battle’s successor,
Judge
Arthur Faquin, Jr., in contradiction to existing Tennessee law.[104]
Picture of
[Source: findagrave.com]
The Church Committee hearings later revealed that the CIA had developed a
“heart attack gun” which could deliver a tiny frozen needle that, upon
entering the body, would deliver a toxin that induced a heart attack but
then became undetectable at autopsy.[105]
The CIA Heart Attack Gun. In reality, a lot more terrifying than… | by
Andrei Tapalaga ✒️ | History of Yesterday
Frank Church holding the CIA’s heart attack gun at 1975 hearings.
[Source:
historyofyesterday.com]
In 1971, Bill Sartor, a 32-year-old writer for Life and Look magazines on
the trail of the Marcello/Liberto organized crime connection to King’s
death, was murdered in Waco, Texas, the night before he was to interview
a
nightclub owner linked to Marcello. Sartor was given a lethal dose of
methaqualone—slipped into his drink.[107]
William C. Sullivan [Source: worthpoint.com]
Six years after Sartor’s death, former FBI assistant director of
intelligence William Sullivan was shot and killed by a man (Robert
Daniels)
who mistook him for a deer while deer-hunting. The killing occurred
shortly
before he was scheduled to testify before the HSCA about his former boss,
J.
Edgar Hoover’s, hatred of King.[108]
Getting Away with Murder
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination was a major negative turning
point
in American history.
It sparked riots that played into Richard Nixon’s call for law and order,
deprived the civil rights and Vietnam anti-war movements of its greatest
leader, and destroyed prospects for an inter-racial movement of the poor.
Afterwards, two U.S. Army brigades were until 1971 stationed on permanent
standby to deal with domestic unrest as part of Operation GARDEN PLOT.
A picture containing text, outdoor, person, sidewalk
Description automatically generated
Storefront signs commemorating King in Chicago in the wake of his
assassination. [Source: chicago.suntimes.com]
King had prophesied that a world starved of love—in which human caring
and
the spiritual dimension are de-emphasized—would become one of material
scarcity, massive inequality, overly stressed environmental systems, and
social disintegration.
Martin Luther King Jr., who was on a tour of the South to recruit
volunteers
for his "Poor People's Campaign", spoke to an overflow crowd at Mason
Temple
on March 18, 1968.
Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at the Mason Temple, April 3, 1968.
[Source: usatoday.com]
The men who killed King were very clearly starved of love. The evidence
indicates that they continue to enjoy impunity for their crime because
the
U.S. government will never admit that it was behind the killing of a
national treasure.
