How the Government Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.
Posted by Kevin Barrett on
April 4, 2013 javascript:window.print()mailto:?subject=Veterans
Shot
down by the Memphis PD’s top sharpshooter – with backup by US Army snipers on a
nearby rooftop
By
Carl Gibson – Reader
Supported News
Before scoffing at this headline, you
should know that in 1999, in Memphis, Tennessee, more than three decades after
MLK’s death, a
jury found local, state, and federal government agencies guilty of
conspiring to assassinate the Nobel Peace Prize winner and civil rights leader.
The
same media you would expect to cover such a monumental decision was absent at
the trial, because those news organizations were part of that conspiracy.
William F. Pepper, who was James Earl Ray’s first attorney, called over 70
witnesses to the stand to testify on every aspect of the assassination. The
panel, which consisted of an even mix of both black and white jurors, took only
an hour of deliberation to find Loyd Jowers and other defendants guilty. If
you’re skeptical of any factual claims made here, click
here for a full transcript, broken into individual sections. Read the
testimonies yourself if you don’t want to take my word for it.
http://youtu.be/0lg1EBXYjvE
It
really isn’t that radical a thing to expect this government to kill someone who
threatened their authority and had the power to organize millions to protest
it. When MLK was killed on April 4, 1968, he was speaking to sanitation
workers in Memphis, who were organizing to fight poverty wages and ruthless
working conditions. He was an outspoken
critic of the government’s war in Vietnam, and his power to organize
threatened the moneyed corporate interests who were profiting from the war. At
the time of his death, he was gearing up for the Poor
People’s Campaign, an effort to get people to camp out on the National Mall
to demand anti-poverty legislation – essentially the first inception of the
Occupy Wall Street movement. The government perceived him as a threat, and had
him killed. James Earl Ray was the designated fall guy, and a complicit media,
taking its cues from a government in fear of MLK, helped sell the “official”
story of the assassination. Here’s how they did it.
The Setup
The
defendant in the 1999 civil trial, Loyd Jowers, had been a Memphis PD officer in
the 1940s. He owned a restaurant called Jim’s Grill, a staging ground to
orchestrate MLK’s assassination underneath the rooming house where the
corporate media alleges James Earl Ray shot Dr. King. During the trial, William
Pepper, the plaintiff’s attorney, played a tape of an incriminating 1998
conversation between Jowers, UN Ambassador Andrew Young, and Dexter King, MLK’s
son. Young testified that Jowers told them he “wanted to get right with God
before he died, wanted to confess it and be free of it.”
On the
tape, Jowers mentions that those present at the meetings included MPD officer Marrell
McCollough, Earl Clark, an MPD lieutenant and known as the department’s best
marksman, another MPD officer, and two men who were unknown to Jowers but whom
he assumed to be representatives of federal agencies. While Dr. King was in
Memphis, he was under open or eye-to-eye federal surveillance by the 111th
Military Intelligence Group based at Fort McPherson in Atlanta, Georgia.
Memphis PD intelligence officer Eli Arkin even admitted to having the group in
his own office. During his last visit to Memphis in late March of 1968, MLK was
under covert surveillance, meaning his room at the Rivermont was bugged and
wired. Even if he went out to the balcony to speak, his words were recorded via
relay. William Pepper alleges in his closing argument during King v. Jowers
that such covert surveillance was usually done by the Army Security Agency,
implying the involvement of at least two federal agencies.
Jowers
also gave an interview to Sam Donaldson on “Prime Time Live” in 1993. The
transcript of the interview was read during the trial, and it was revealed that
Jowers openly talked about being asked by produce warehouse owner Frank Liberto
to help with MLK’s murder. Liberto had mafia connections, and sent a courier
with $100,000 to Jowers, who owned a local restaurant, with instructions to
hold the money at his restaurant.
John
McFerren owned a store in Memphis and was making a pickup at Liberto’s
warehouse at 5:15 p.m. on April 4th, roughly 45 minutes before the
assassination. McFerren testified that he overheard Liberto tell someone over
the phone, “Shoot the son of a bitch on the balcony.” Other witnesses who
testified included café owner Lavada Addison, who was friends with Liberto in
the 1970s. She recalled him confiding to her that he “had Martin Luther King
killed.” Addison’s son, Nathan Whitlock, also testified. He asked Liberto if he
killed MLK, and he responded, “I didn’t kill the nigger but I had it done.”
When Whitlock pressed him about James Earl Ray, Liberto replied, “He wasn’t
nothing but a troublemaker from Missouri. He was a front man … a setup man.”
The
back door of Loyd Jowers’ establishment led to a thick crop of bushes across
the street from the Lorraine Motel balcony where Dr. King was shot. On the
taped confession to Andrew Young and Dexter King, Jowers says after he heard
the shot, Lt. Earl Clark, who is now deceased, laid a smoking rifle at the rear
of his restaurant. Jowers then disassembled the rifle, wrapped it in a
tablecloth and prepared it for disposal.
The
corporate media says it was James Earl Ray who shot MLK, and he did it from
the 2nd floor bathroom window of the rooming house across the street from the
Lorraine Motel. The official account alleges the murder weapon was dropped in a
bundle and abandoned at Dan Canipe’s storefront just before he made his
getaway. But even those authorities and media admit that the bullet that tore
through MLK’s throat didn’t have the same metallurgical composition as the bullets
in the rifle left behind by James Earl Ray. And Judge Joe Brown, a weapons
expert called to testify by Pepper in the 1999 trial, said the rifle allegedly
used by James Earl Ray had a scope that was never sighted in, meaning that the
weapon in question would have fired far to the left and far below the target.
The
actual murder weapon was disposed of by taxi driver James McCraw, a friend of
Jowers. William Hamblin testified in King v. Jowers that McCraw told him this
story over a 15-year period whenever he got drunk. McCraw repeatedly told
Hamblin that he threw the rifle over the Memphis-Arkansas bridge, meaning that
the rifle is at the bottom of the Mississippi river to this day. And according
to Hamblin’s testimony, Canipe said he saw the bundle dropped in front of his
store before the actual shooting occurred.
The Conspiracy
To make
Dr. King vulnerable, plans had to be made to remove him from his security
detail and anyone sympathetic who could be a witness or interfere with the
killing. Two black firefighters, Floyd Newsum and Norvell Wallace, who were
working at Fire Station #2 across the street from the Lorraine Motel, were each
transferred to different fire stations. Newsum was a civil rights activist and
witnessed MLK’s last speech to the striking Memphis sanitation workers, “I Have
Seen the Mountaintop,” before getting the call about his transfer. Newsum
testified that he wasn’t needed at his new assignment, and that his transfer
meant that Fire Station #2 would be out of commission unless someone else was
sent there in his stead. Newsum talked about having to make a series of
inquiries before finally learning that his reassignment had been ordered by the
Memphis Police Department. Wallace testified that to that very day, while the
official explanation was a vague death threat, he hadn’t once received a
satisfactory answer as to why he was suddenly reassigned.
Ed
Redditt, a black MPD detective who was assigned to MLK’s security detail,
was also removed from the scene an hour before the shooting and sent home, and
the only reason given was a vague death threat. Jerry
Williams, another black MPD detective, was usually tasked with assembling a
security team of black police officers for Dr. King. But he testified that on
the night of the assassination, he wasn’t assigned to form that team.
There
was a Black Panther-inspired group called The
Invaders, who were staying at the Lorraine Motel to help MLK organize a planned
march with the striking garbage workers. The Invaders were ordered to leave the
motel after getting into an argument with members of MLK’s entourage. The
origins of the argument are unclear, though several sources affirm that The
Invaders had been infiltrated by Marrell McCollough of the MPD, who later went
on to work for the CIA. And finally, the Tact 10 police escort of several MPD
cars that accompanied Dr. King’s security detail were pulled back the day
before the shooting by Inspector Evans. With all possible obstacles out of the
way, MLK was all alone just before the assassination.
The Cover-Up
Around
7 a.m. on April 5, the morning after the shooting, MPD Inspector Sam Evans
called Public Works Administrator Maynard Stiles and told him to have a
crew destroy the crop of bushes adjacent to the rooming house above Loyd
Jowers’ restaurant. This is particularly odd coming from a policeman, since the
bushes were in a crime scene area, and crime scene areas are normally roped
off, not to be disturbed. The official narrative of a sniper in the bathroom at
the rooming house was then reinforced, since a sniper firing from an empty
clearing would be far more visible than one hidden behind a thick crop of
bushes.
Normally,
when a major political figure is murdered, all possible witnesses are
questioned and asked to make statements. But Memphis PD neglected to conduct
even a basic house-to-house investigation. Olivia Catling, a resident of nearby
Mulberry Street just a block away from the shooting, testified that she saw a
man leave an alley next to the rooming house across from the Lorraine, climb
into a Green 1965 Chevrolet, and speed away, burning rubber right in front of
several police cars without any interference. There was also no questioning of
Captain Weiden, a Memphis firefighter at the fire station closest to the
Lorraine, the same one from which Floyd Newsum had been transferred just a day
before.
Memphis
PD and the FBI also suppressed the statements of Ray Hendricks and William
Reed, who said they saw James Earl Ray’s white mustang parked in front of
Jowers’ restaurant, before seeing it again driving away as they crossed another
street. Ray’s alibi was that he had driven away from the scene to fix a tire,
and these two statements that affirmed his alibi were withheld from Ray’s guilty
plea jury.
The
jury present at Ray’s guilty plea hearing also wasn’t informed about the bullet
that killed MLK having different striations and markings than the other bullets
kept as evidence, nor that the bullet couldn’t be positively matched as coming
from the alleged murder weapon. Three days after entering the guilty plea,
James Earl Ray unsuccessfully attempted to retract it and demand a trial.
Incredibly, James Earl Ray turned down two separate bribes, one of which was
recorded by his brother Jerry Ray, where he was offered $220,000 by writer
William Bradford Huey and the guarantee of a full pardon if he would just agree
to have the story “Why I Killed Martin Luther King” written on his behalf.
The Deception
One of
the 70 witnesses that William F. Pepper called to testify in King v. Jowers was
Bill Schaap, a practicing attorney with particular experience in military law,
with bar credentials in New York, Chicago, and DC. Schaap testified at great
length about how the government, through the FBI and the CIA, puts people in
key positions on editorial boards at influential papers like the New York Times
and Washington Post. He describes that although these editorial board members
and news directors at cable news outlets may be liberal in their politics, they
always take the government’s side in national security-related stories. Before
you write that off as conspiracy theory, remember how people like Bill
Keller at the New York Times, as well as the Washington Post
editorial board, all cheerfully led
the march to war in Iraq ten years ago.
Another
King v. Jowers witness was Earl Caldwell, a New York Times reporter who was
sent to Memphis by an editor named Claude Sitton. Caldwell testified that the
orders from his editor were to “nail Dr. King.” In the publication’s effort to
sell the story of James Earl Ray as the murderer, the Times cited an
investigation into how Ray got the money for his Mustang, rifle, and the long
road trip to Tennessee from California. The Times said that according to their
own findings as well as the findings of federal agencies, Ray got the money by
robbing a bank in his hometown of Alton, Illinois. In Pepper’s closing
argument, he says that when he or Jerry Ray talked to the chief of police in
Alton, along with the bank president of the branch that was allegedly robbed,
neither said they had been approached by the New York Times, or by the FBI.
Essentially, the Times fabricated the entire story in order to sell a false
narrative that there was no government intervention and that James Earl Ray was
a lone wolf.
So for
the following 31 years after King’s death, nobody dared to question the
constant reiteration of James Earl Ray as the murderer of Martin Luther King.
Even 13 years after a jury found the government complicit in a conspiracy to
murder the civil rights leader, the complicit media continues to propagate the
false narrative they sold us three decades ago and vociferously shout down any
alternative theories as to what happened as “conspiracy theory,” framing those
putting forth such theories as wackjobs undeserving of any credibility. It’s
strikingly similar to how the Washington Post defended
their warmongering in a recent editorial commenting on the invasion of
Iraq, and had one of their reporters defend
the media’s leading of the charge into Iraq.
As we
remember Dr. King and the important work he did, we should also reject the
official account of his death as loudly as the government and media shout down
anyone who tries to contradict their lies. As Edward
R. Murrow said, “Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them
and cover them up, at least a little bit.”
Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US
Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of
thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the
months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut
activists are featured in the documentary “We’re Not Broke,” which premiered at
the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You
can contact him at carl@rsnorg.org, and
follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
Reader
Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to
republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported
News.
The
Army is thinning the ranks of civilian helicopter instructors at Fort Rucker
Alabama by imposing a 250-pound weight limit.
Dr. Kevin
Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics
of the War on Terror.
Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.
Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.
Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.
Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.
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12
Responses to "How the Government Killed Martin Luther King, Jr."
- prairiedog April 7, 2013 at 9:30 am
And there are millions of Americans who think their
government wouldn’t murder 3000 of it’s citizens.
- WeroInNM April 6, 2013 at 9:58 am
My Opinion of How and Who Controls the People!
http://wethepeopleusa.ning.com/profiles/blogs/my-opinion-of-how-and-who-controls-the-people-part-1?xg_source=activity
“Food For Thought”
Semper Fi!
Jake
http://wethepeopleusa.ning.com/profiles/blogs/my-opinion-of-how-and-who-controls-the-people-part-1?xg_source=activity
“Food For Thought”
Semper Fi!
Jake
- ayelyahbenjamin April 5, 2013 at 12:45 pm
Whenever a voice rises among the masses that stirs the
hearts of men and ignites the flame of humanity that flickers within, and men
raise their eyes long enough to see the global slavery system constructed
around them by those without conscience, without soul, the true enemy of
mankind. MLK, JFK, were a danger to their ‘society’. Those who gave the order
to kill will never have what they desire the most, the adoration of the people.
- Emma Yacht April 5, 2013 at 9:34 pm
Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people, But it seems the good they die young. I just looked ’round and he’s gone.
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people, But it seems the good they die young. I just looked ’round and he’s gone.
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill, With Abraham, Martin and John.
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill, With Abraham, Martin and John.
Didn’t you love the things that they
stood for?
Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?
And we’ll be free Some day soon.
~ Dick Holler
Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?
And we’ll be free Some day soon.
~ Dick Holler
- Chandler April 4, 2013 at 11:02 am
James Earl Ray is no different than Lee Harvey Oswald.
Patsy! The Dalls Morning News each Sunday is printing articles on the history
of the assassination of JFK. Slanted stories that are fragmented incomplete
information, leaning all the articles to one assassin, one gun, three shots.
Even the curator of the 6th floor JFK museum now agrees with he one-shooter
story. Back in the 60’s our government was operating as they wished, against
who they wished without any concern for being revealed. They could do it
because they had people in the higher up offices who would and could cover everything
up. It is one reason why the Bradley Mannings, Daniel Ellsberg’s and Susan
Lindauer’s are so vitally important. The strength and courage of whistleblowers
read more ...
read more ...
- JS April 4, 2013 at 10:21 am
There is also the small matter of a piece of planted
evidence at the scene of the MLK murder. It was a dry cleaning receipt that
conveniently led straight to James Earl Ray. The receipt was for dry cleaning
of some undershorts. That strains my credibility. Here’s a guy who is
supposedly an itinerant redneck bum. In that case, wouldn’t he be using a
laundromat for his undies? What kind of person would dry clean his underwear?
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