Who Killed Martin Luther King?
by Philip Melanson
Odonian Press, 1993, paper
p5
Murder in Memphis
In March 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr.
made a decision that may have cost him his life. He and his Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) denounced the war in Vietnam
as "morally and politically unjust" and promised to
do "everything in our power" to stop it.
In King stepped up his attack. At a speech
at the Riverside church in New York City, he called the US "the
greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and compared
American practices in Vietnam to Nazi practices in WWII. He challenged
all young men eligible for the draft to declare themselves conscientious
objectors.
Before this, King had kept his civil rights
work separate from the peace movement, partly on the advice of
other black leaders who felt racial justice should be his first
goal. But he increasingly saw that "the giant triplets of
racism, materialism and militarism" couldn't be separated.
The war was siphoning off money desperately needed for the poor
and racially oppressed at home.
So King planned "civil disobedience
on a massive scale" in order "to cripple the operations
of an oppressive society." There would be sit-ins of the
unemployed at factory entrances across the country, "a hungry
people's sit-in' at the Department of Labor" and a Poor People's
March on Washington, where thousands of demonstrators of all races
would pitch their tents in the nation's capitol and stay until
they'd been heard. There were even rumors (though King denied
them) that he might run in the 1968 presidential election on an
antiwar, third-party ticket with Dr. Benjamin Spock.
King's actions brought sharp criticism
from all sides, black and white alike. Life magazine called the
Riverside speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script
for Radio Hanoi." It charged King with "introducing]
matters that have nothing to do with the legitimate battle for
equal rights here in America."
Even the more moderate National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) agreed: "To
attempt to merge the civil rights movement with the peace movement,"
they said, "will serve the cause neither of civil rights
nor of peace."
From the government there wasn't just
hostility-there was fear. King had already demonstrated the ability
to instigate massive unrest, and his rumored presidential candidacy
would appeal to those appalled by the war.
For years the FBI had wiretapped King's
home and office, intercepted phone conversations and planted paid
informants within the SCLC; now it stepped up its surveillance.
President Lyndon Johnson is said to have admitted privately, "That
goddamn nigger preacher may drive me out of the White House."
Tensions were high and King's list of
enemies was long when, the following spring, he came to Memphis
to support a strike by (mostly black) sanitation workers who were
demanding job safety, better wages and an end to racial discrimination
on the job.
The murder
King visited Memphis twice in March 1968.
On the 18th, he addressed a crowd of 17,000 supporters of the
strike. He promised then that he'd return on March 28 to lead
a citywide demonstration of sympathy for the workers.
The March 28 event erupted in violence.
As demonstrators marched through the city, rampaging black youths
broke store windows and looted. King tried to curtail the escalating
violence by requesting that the demonstration be cut short. But
by the time it was over, police had moved on the crowd, wielding
mace, nightsticks and guns. One black youth was shot and killed,
and 60 persons were injured. Nevertheless, King promised to return
on April 3 to plan another demonstration; this time, he hoped,
Memphis would see the power of his nonviolent approach.
King spent the last day of his life, April
4, 1968, closeted inside the Lorraine Motel on Mulberry Street,
in one of Memphis' seedier neighborhoods. Alter a long day conferring
with aides about the upcoming event, he was looking forward to
a prime rib and soul food dinner at Rev. Samuel B. Kyles' home
that evening.
Just before 6 pm, King and Kyles stepped
out onto the second-floor balcony overlooking the motel's courtyard.
King exchanged greetings with several persons who stood below,
waiting to join him for dinner. Kyles headed downstairs to get
his car. King stood alone on the balcony.
At 6:01 a single shot from a high-powered
rifle cracked through the evening air. The bullet tore into the
right side of King's face, sing him violently backward.
p9
It wasn't until April 19 that investigators identified fingerprints
on the gun thought to be the murder weapon. They knew then for
the first time that the man they sought was James Earl Ray not
Eric S. Gait) Even so, Ray eluded capture until June 8, when he
was caught in London trying to board a plane for Brussels.
Ray spent the next nine months preparing
to go to trial. Then, unexpectedly, on March 10, 1969, he pleaded
guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
p56
Who was involved?
When the HSCA exonerated the government
of any role in a King assassination conspiracy, their conclusion
was based on a less-than-thorough review of only two government
groups-the Memphis Police Department and the FBI. The evidence
indicates that these groups shouldn't have been dismissed so readily,
and that other government agencies may also have had a motive
to kill King.
The Memphis Police Department
The Memphis Police Department (or MPD)
had prepared for King's visit in three ways. First, several officers
from the intelligence unit were stationed in the firehouse across
from the Lorraine Motel to spy on King. Second, a four-man security
detail was assigned to protect King. Third, tactical (TACT) units
for "emergency or riot situations" were created to control
any violence that might erupt as a result of King's presence.
The MPD made two changes in security arrangements
in the early days of April: the four-man security detail assigned
to King was withdrawn 25 hours before the assassination, and three
to four TACT units were pulled back from the Lorraine Motel the
morning of the assassination.
The first change probably wasn't conspiratorial.
King's entourage didn't want the MPD security-they perceived it
as part of the hostile white power structure and so refused to
divulge the details of King's itinerary. Inspector Donald Smith
claimed he got tired of "tagging along" without knowing
where King was headed and asked permission to withdraw the detail.
But the shift in TACT units is more disturbing.
These units, each consisting of three vehicles and twelve officers,
had been formed alter violence erupted during King's March 28
visit to Memphis. From King's arrival on April 3 to the morning
of the assassination, the units (a total of nine to twelve vehicles)
were patrolling within the five to six block area "immediately
surrounding" the Lorraine. On April 4, the units were pulled
back to five blocks away.
The MPD's explanation-that the units withdrew
because an "unidentified" member of King's entourage
"instructed" them to do so-is suspect. Unlike the security
detail, these units weren't there to protect King, but rather
to protect the city of Memphis from the violence that might accompany
King's visit.
While it's possible that King's staff
would want the TACT squads kept at a distance, it's highly improbable
that the MPD would comply. If anything, such a suggestion would
lead police to suspect King's group was up to something. If the
TACT units were in fact responding to a request that they stay
out of sight, there was no need to have moved back five blocks.
A distance of, say, two blocks would have been sufficient.
If the TACT vehicles had remained in place,
or at least closer to the Lorraine, it would have been extremely
difficult for anyone to escape the crime scene. As it was, only
one unit-TACT 10-could respond quickly to news of the shooting.
That's because it was taking a break in the firehouse near the
Lorraine at the time King was shot.
p60
More important actions were taken too late For-not at all. The
dispatcher's order to seal off the two-block area around the Lorraine
wasn't given until 6:06, three minutes after the shooting was
reported. The dispatcher never issued a "signal Y,"
a code indicating that all main exits from Memphis should be blocked.
He also never issued an APB, an all-points bulletin describing
the suspect for the neighboring states of Arkansas, Mississippi
and Alabama. As a result, Ray (and any others involved) slipped
through each law-enforcement net that ordinarily would have trapped
him.
Lt. Kallaher, the "shift commander
of communications" on April 4, tried to explain these failures
of communication as a result of the "massive confusion"
after the assassination. But this doesn't explain why the dispatcher
ordered certain procedures and not others, and the confusion wasn't
reflected in police transcripts.
The FBI
In 1968, there wasn't any good evidence
that the FBI had a motive to murder King. But subsequent revelations
made clear FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's hatred of King and the
Bureau's attempts to destroy "the Black Messiah" personally
and politically through what it called COINTELPRO ("counterintelligence
program"). Yet the HSCA's investigation of the FBI employed
logic so questionable it might have been lifted from a primer
issued by the Warren Commission. Here are some examples.
The HSCA reasoned that if the FBI had
set up the assassination, it would need to have had control over
Ray. By control, the committee seems to have meant that Ray would
be checked in at a motel near the Lorraine. Since Ray stayed at
a distant motel his first night in Memphis and didn't move to
Brewer's boarding house until the next day, the HSCA concluded
that the FBI must not have had control over Ray's movements and
thus didn't mastermind the assassination.
Evidently it never occurred to the committee
that in a well-planned assassination, the conspirators might elect
to keep their trigger man away from the target area for as long
as possible to reduce the chances that he could be identified
after the shooting. The committee never defended the logic that
a hit man must be dispatched to the crime scene as soon as he
arrives in town.
With similarly dubious reasoning, the
HSCA decided that since the FBI continued its dirty tricks against
King right up to the time of the assassination, the Bureau was
exonerated. After all, the committee deduced, it would hardly
have been necessary to continue a nationwide program of harassment
against a man soon to be killed. In a review of all COINTELPRO
files on Dr. King, the committee found substantive evidence that
the harassment program showed no signs of abatement as the fateful
day approached. In other words, the HSCA didn't consider that
the Bureau might be providing a cover for its complicity, or that
the agents who ran COINTELPRO might not be the ones who plotted
the assassination.
p65
The CIA
The HSCA's failure to investigate the
CIA' stems in part from the impression the agency sought to project-that
it had only a cursory interest in King and the SCLC, and that
this interest was largely satisfied by whatever data Hoover shared
with the agency. The CIA describes its own King file material
as routine, oriented toward matters of foreign policy and centered
on world reaction to King's death. A November 28, 1975 internal
memorandum even states, "we have no indication of any Agency
surveillance or letter intercept which involved King."
Not many documents are publicly available
to challenge this claim, but those that are tell a different story.
In January 1984, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
request, I obtained 134 pages of heavily-deleted CIA documents
on "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." and the "Southern
Christian Leadership Conference." These documents indicate
that the CIA not only received FBI data on King, but that in at
least two instances, it passed data to the FBI.
The documents also indicate surveillance
of King; for example, there's a July 10, 1966 dispatch containing
photocopies of several scrawled notes, apparently made by King
or members of his staff. There are also lists of phone calls placed
from his Miami hotel during a two-day period, photocopies of receipts,
a page from an appointment calendar with a message for King and
an assortment of business cards. There was no indication who collected
the data or how it was obtained.
It's likely that much more information
exists about the CIA's interest in King. In December 1990, I interviewed
an ex-CIA agent who'd been a high-ranking officer and field agent.
Unfortunately, I can't describe the agent, the entire interview
or even why he was willing to talk to me, since these facts could
reveal his identity. I also have no way to verify his allegations,
but I believe his story for two reasons: the interview was arranged
by a person trusted by both of us, and the source's bona fides
as a CIA agent have been validated by a non-agency source I trust,
by a major corporation and by a network news organization (on
a story unrelated to the King case).
This ex-agent confirmed that the CIA's
publicly released King file is deceptively brief. Although there
were very few cables in the file, he claimed that cable traffic
on King was extensive, and went back as far back as 1963. He confirmed
that in the spring of 1965, CIA agents worked directly with FBI
agents to bug King's Miami hotel room, but this information wasn't
filed with the CIA's Office of Security (which ran domestic operations).
It was filed instead with the "Western Hemisphere desk,"
which was responsible for the agency's vast anti-Castro operations,
including the Bay of Pigs invasion.
This deceptive filing assured that the
agency's politically sensitive, if not illegal, bugging of King
would never pop up in domestic-surveillance files. Instead it
would be cloaked by the top security of clandestine, anti-Castro
operations.
Why was the CIA so interested in King?
Because of its attitude toward "black power groups"
and their alleged communist connections. Jay Richard Kennedy,
a highly respected CIA source with close ties to the civil rights
movement, warned the agency about this alleged infiltration:
The Communist left is making an all out
drive to get into the Negro movement .... Communists or Negro
elements who will be directed by the Communists may be in a position
to, if not take over the Negro movement, completely disrupt it
and cause extremely critical problems for the Government of the
United States.
Kennedy believed that this wasn't simply
a domestic problem, to be handled by the FBI alone, but should
be considered an "nternational situation." So the CIA
targeted black political groups with zeal.
p77
Solving the case
In 1978, the HSCA turned its findings
over to the Justice Department and suggested further investigation.
A decade later, the Justice Department claimed that all known
leads had been checked arid that further investigation appears
to be warranted... unless new information... becomes available."
Further investigation is warranted, for
several reasons. First, the HSCA inquiry was glaringly inadequate.
It's shameful that an investigation into the death of a man as
important to this country's past and future as Martin Luther King,
Jr., a man whom we now honor with a national holiday, was conducted
so shabbily. He and his family-as well as the nation-deserve the
full truth.
Second, the case has new leads, people
and topics to be probed. If they're pursued, the question "who
killed Martin Luther King?" may now be answerable.
p79
* The National Security Agency, Defense\ Department, Air Force
and CIA should be formally queried about any information they
might have concerning Ray's aliases.
* The FBI and CIA should be required to
produce all documents concerning their attempt to influence history
or public opinion about the King case.
* The HSCA's files should be released
to the public. Despite the committee's failures, their key documents
and interviews could help to pursue the above leads. The film
JFK evoked public pressure to release the HSCA's Kennedy files,
but Congress still intends to keep its King files secret until
the year 2028.
Who should conduct the investigation?
It shouldn't be the FBI-even after two decades, the Bureau has
at least a historical conflict of interest. Nor should the Justice
Department have a primary role, due to its secrecy and inactivity
during the decade following the HSCA's investigation. And another
congressional effort would very likely become mired in the web
of politics and personalities spawned by the previous committee.
The best alternative-although not without
pitfalls-is to appoint a special prosecutor.
FBI watch
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