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ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN LUTHER KING |
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Chapter 13: The HSCA Report: January 1979 BY THE END of the final set of public hearings, I felt convinced that the HSCA had already formed its conclusions and was probably well advanced in writing its final report. In fact, a first draft was finished by December 13, 1978, about two weeks after the hearings. Disinformation was produced at a high cost to the taxpayers (the total cost of the King and Kennedy investigations was $5.5 million). Clearly, the committee could have done a proper job. Counsel Blakey reported that in conducting both investigations staff completed 562 trips to 1,463 destinations -- including Mexico, Canada, Portugal, and Cuba -- during a total of 4, 758 days. Three hundred and thirty-five witnesses were heard in public or private sessions, and some 4,924 interviews were conducted. The last official act of the committee, in December 1978, was to approve its findings and recommendations. The final report was published in January 1979. It is essential to distinguish between the report itself -- which was widely disseminated, even published commercially -- and the material contained in the accompanying thirteen volumes, which had a very limited print run and distribution. One frequently finds information buried in the volumes that conflicts with conclusionsin the report itself. Among the most valuable historical information was the account of the FBI's wide-ranging legal and illegal communist infiltration investigation (COMINFIL) and counterintelligence programs and activities (COINTELPRO) conducted before and after the assassination. These were designed to tie Dr. King and the SCLC to the influence of the Communist Party and to discredit Dr. King. As early as 1957, at the time of the founding of the SCLC, FBI supervisor J. K. Kelly stated in a memo that the group was "a likely target for communist infiltration." [27] As the SCLC mounted an increasingly high-profile challenge to segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks across the South, the bureau began actively infiltrating meetings and conferences. [28] On October 23, 1962, Hoover sent a memo authorizing the Atlanta and New York field offices to conduct a general COMINFIL investigation of the SCLC. The memo also inquired about whether the SCLC had any branches in New Orleans and asked the New Orleans office to explore COMINFIL possibilities in that city. [29] As for the COINTELPRO activities specifically aimed at Dr. King which began in late October, 1962, the HSCA report noted that a 1976.1ustice Department report explicitly stated that the bureau's campaign embodied a number of felonies. The HSCA report only summarized these activities, with the full scope of the illegal activity only being revealed by the documents contained in Volume six. In December 1963, less than a month after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, bureau officials attended a Washington conference to analyze the avenues of approach aimed at "neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader." [30] The conference focused on how to "produce the best results without embarrassment to the Bureau." [31] Those present discussed the possibility of using Dr. King's housekeeper, Mrs. King, or selective plants in the SCLC. From then on, agents in the field were challenged to come up with proposals for humiliating, discrediting, or even merely inconveniencing Dr. King and the SCLC. Officials at the meeting agreed with domestic intelligence chief William C. Sullivan's suggestion that microphones be placed surreptitiously in Dr. King's hotel rooms as he traveled. These would complement the wiretaps already in place at his home and office in Atlanta. The bureau hoped to pick up information about extramarital sexual activity, which could then be used to tarnish his reputation or even blackmail him. The bureau carried out this surveillance at numerous hotels nationwide from late 1963 through the end of 1965. Documents reveal that the wiretaps on the SCLC's Atlanta offices ran from October 24, 1963, to1une 21, 1966; [32] Dr. King's home was tapped from November 8, 1963, to April 30, 1965, when he moved. [33] In 1966 FBI director Hoover, becoming fearful of a congressional inquiry into electronic surveillance, ordered this monitoring of Dr. King discontinued-but in such a way that it could be reinstalled at short notice. [34] When in 1967 the SCLC and Dr. King turned their attention to Vietnam and the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, the bureau asked Attorney General Clark to approve renewed telephone surveillance. He refused.35 I was skeptical that electronic surveillance on King ceased, but thought it unlikely that evidence of such rogue activity would ever surface. The bureau also engaged in surreptitious activities and burglaries directed against Dr. King and the SCLC. The HSCA estimated that twenty such events took place between 1959 and 1964.36 These illegal operations began at least three years prior to any security file being officially opened. The bureau would maintain that Dr. King was not officially a COINTELPRO target until late 1967 or early 1968. In fact, a massive campaign was underway from 1964 with the purpose of destroying him and even, at one point, apparently trying to induce him to commit suicide. In its campaign the bureau left few areas untouched. Bureau Contacts with Political Leaders The FBI, often with direct personal contact of an agent or SAC in the relevant area, met with a number of political leaders to advise them about information it had obtained on Dr. King's allegedly indiscreet personal life and the communist influence on him. Those approached included, among others, the following:
Bureau Manipulation of the Media By late 1964 the bureau began to put out the word to newspeople that Dr. King's personal life was unsavory. A whisper campaign was aimed at the media in general, and trusted reporters were offered an opportunity to read the transcripts of the surveillance or to listen to the allegedly damaging tape recordings. The HSCA confirmed a number of approaches Hoover made to the media through Crime Records Division head Cartha DeLoach. U.S. News & World Report was one of the bureau's favorite media outlets. Like some select others, it was provided with the full text of an extraordinary three-hour meeting between Hoover and a group of women reporters, at which Hoover declared, "I consider King to be the most notorious liar in the country." A summary report of this comment also found its way to the first page of the New York Times, on November 19, 1964." [38] In November 1966 the bureau also successfully used the media to cause Dr. King to cancel a meeting with Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa. (At this time Hoffa was in the final stages of appealing his conviction and sentence on a charge of jury tampering, stemming from his earlier trial in Nashville. His appeal was finally denied in January 1967, and he entered prison on March 7.) Any alliance between Dr. King and the powerful labor leader would have greatly concerned the bureau and the federal government because Hoffa had an enormous work force and a virtually unlimited treasury. His support of King would have greatly enhanced the SCLC's effectiveness. Consequently, the Crime Records Division prepared an article for public release and also recommended that "a Bureau official be designated now to alert friendly news media of the meeting once the meeting date is learned so that arrangements can be made for appropriate press coverage of the planned meeting to expose and disrupt it." [39] Hoover's "OK" appeared below that recommendation. Upon learning of the imminent date of the meeting, the Crime Records Division notified a national columnist for the New York Daily News as well as selected news photographers and wire service reporters, to ensure maximum publicity. The Daily News broke the story, causing Dr. King to decide not to meet Hoffa. The bureau then tipped off a number of reporters that King was traveling to Washington. As he came off the plane, he was besieged by reporters asking about the proposed meeting. The Crime Records Division reported that it had been successful in thwarting the SCLC receiving any funds from the Teamsters. Hoover scribbled "Excellent" at the bottom of the memo. [40] In March 1967, Hoover approved a recommendation by the Domestic Intelligence Division to furnish "friendly" reporters with questions designed to exploit King's growing opposition to the war in Vietnam. Reporters were also furnished with off-the-record embarrassing questions they might put to Dr. King at press conferences. [41] Following the UN rally on April 15, 1967, newspapers began to speculate on the possibility of a third-party King- Spock presidential ticket. We had no doubt that this ticket would be a matter of serious concern to the sitting president, who would be concerned about the split liberal vote resulting in Nixon being elected. Such a ticket would also be a matter of concern to the FBI and the intelligence community because of the resulting debate about the war and their roles in support of it. (This was subsequently confirmed by Freedom of Information Act materials and other researchers.) [42] However, we never anticipated the degree of fear that Dr. King's activities and plans in 1967-1968 instilled in the intelligence, defense, and federal law enforcement apparatus. The bureau's concern was heightened when it learned that we had scheduled a convention in Chicago for September. Its field office recommended that flyers, leaflets, cards, and bumper stickers be used in conjunction with the voices of a number of political columnists or reporters, to discredit the ticket. [43] The Chicago memo stressed that "this person ... [the journalist chosen] ... should be respected for his balance and fair mindedness. An article by an established conservative would not adequately serve our purposes." (We would later learn of the existence of a heavily deleted CIA memo dated October 5, 1967, which noted that the communists had been blocked in their efforts to obtain a King-Spock peace and freedom ticket. The deletions were justified on the grounds of protecting "intelligence activities, sources or methods." [44]) In October 1967, the FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division recommended that an editorial be placed in a "Negro magazine" to reveal King as "a traitor to his country and his race" and thus reduce his chances of gaining much income from a series of SCLC fund-raising shows scheduled around that time by Harry Belafonte. This recommendation was also approved by Hoover and marked "Handled 10/28/67." [45] In early March 1968 the bureau began to disseminate information to the press aimed specifically at hurting the SCLC's fund-raising for the Poor People's Campaign. One such story the bureau circulated was "that King does not need contributions from the 70,000 people he solicited. Since the churches have offered support, no more money is needed and any contributed would only be used by King for other purposes." [46] On March 28, 1968, the day the Memphis demonstration broke up in violence (which I have come to believe was caused by agents provocateur), a Domestic Intelligence Division memo detailed the outbreak of violence and had attached to it an unattributable memo that it was suggested could be made avail- able by the Crime Records Division to "cooperative media sources." It also carried Hoover's "OK" and the notation "handled on 3/28/68." This effort resulted in the widely published articles depicting Dr. King as a coward for fleeing the scene of the violence. For example, five days before King's death, the Memphis Commercial Appeal (March 30, 1968) asserted in an editorial that "Dr. King is suffering from one of those awesome credibility gaps. Furthermore, he wrecked his reputation as a leader as he took off at high speed when violence occurred." The next day (March 31) the paper stated in an article headed "Chicken a la King" that "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fled from the rioting and looting in the downtown area Thursday .... His efforts to climb aboard a meat truck were rebuffed but the motorist next in line picked him up." On March 30 and 31 the Globe-Democrat, in an editorial supplied virtually verbatim by the FBI and headed "The Real Martin Luther King" stated that "King sprinted down a side street to an awaiting automobile and sped away." Dr. King was termed a deceiver who would no longer be able to "hoodwink intelligent Americans." It labeled him "one of the most menacing men in America." On the opposite page was a cartoon caricature of Dr. King shooting a gun, with the caption, "I'm not firing it -- I'm only pulling the trigger." In fact, King was reluctant to leave the scene of the violence on March 28. He virtually had to be forced to leave. Then, as Dr. King prepared to go to Memphis for what would be his last visit, the Domestic Intelligence Division, in a memorandum issued on March 29, 1968, recommended that the following article be furnished to a "cooperative news source": Martin Luther King, during the sanitation workers' strike in Memphis, Tennessee, has urged Negroes to boycott downtown white merchants to achieve Negro demands. On 3/29/68 King led a march for the sanitation workers. Like Judas leading lambs to slaughter King led the marchers to violence, and when the violence broke out, King disappeared. The fine Hotel Lorraine in Memphis is owned and patronized exclusively by Negroes but King didn't go there for his hasty exit. Instead King decided the plush Holiday Inn Motel, white owned, operated and almost exclusively patronized, was the place to "cool it." There will be no boycott of white merchants for King, only for his followers. Thus, five days before the assassination the bureau was looking to place an internally prepared article whose message was that Dr. King should stay at a black-owned hotel instead of a white establishment. In particular, "the fine Hotel Lorraine" was singled out. In volume four of the HSCA report, [47] the committee stated that the "FBI did as a part of its propaganda campaign against Dr. King prepare a press release on March 29, taking him to task for staying at the Holiday Inn. In turn, this criticism was echoed in newspapers around the country, although the investigation was unable to determine concretely if the news stories were the direct result of the FBI release ...." In its Saturday morning (March 30) edition the Commercial Appeal made a point of stating that Dr. King was "staying in a $29 a day room at the Holiday Inn Rivermont, also known as the Rivermont Hotel." This of course was the hotel to which he was rushed and registered by the police after the march broke up. The HSCA accepted Ralph Abernathy's recollection that Dr. King's normal practice was to stay at the Lorraine, though reporter Kay Black's memory differed. The contention that Dr. King normally stayed at the Lorraine made no sense in light of the active campaign of criticism aimed at him for staying at white-owned hotels. Such criticism would have been hollow if in fact the Lorraine was his usual motel in Memphis. The committee didn't discuss or even refer to the changing of Dr. King's room at the Lorraine. *** THE HSCA REPORTED that the bureau's media efforts to discredit Dr. King even continued after he was killed. In March 1969, when it was learned that Congress was considering declaring Dr. King's birthday a national holiday, the Crime Records Division recommended briefing the members of the House Committee on Internal Security, who had the power to keep the bill from being reported out of committee. A plan was developed, but Hoover was concerned that any efforts to discredit King posthumously be handled "very cautiously." [48] Though not covered specifically by the HSCA report, one of the most blatant ways the bureau tried to tarnish Dr. King's image after his death was by spreading the story to the media that he might well have been shot on the orders of a husband of a former lover. Jack Anderson, one of the columnists who was fed the FBI information, revealed in 1975 how he had been contacted by Hoover in 1968, when he was, in his words, "on good terms with the old FBI curmodgeon [sic]": The FBI vendetta against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't end with his murder. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had tried to blacken King's name while he was alive, also tried to tarnish it after his death. Not long after King was gunned down on the balcony of his Memphis motel on April 4, 1968, Hoover sent word to me that the motive behind the murder was cuckoldry, that the assassin apparently had been hired by a jealous husband ... who had become enraged by the discovery that his wife had borne King's child. The intermediary identified the Los Angeles couple and showed me supporting data, including an FBI report describing a passionate interlude between the wife and Dr. King in a New York City hotel .... I flew to Los Angeles and did my damnedest to confirm the FBI leads .... I could find absolutely no evidence that contradicted the couple's own explanation that Dr. King was an honored friend of the family, a frequent guest in their home and nothing more. I also discovered with deepening apprehension that there were no FBI agents on this trail that was supposed to be so hot. I returned to Washington satisfied that the FBI story was erroneous and half convinced that it was a deliberate hoax. [49] In 1968 Anderson was indeed on good terms with Hoover, receiving and publishing bureau information such as that appearing in his columns on May 6, 1968 (lauding the bureau's search for Ray and pronouncing his guilt), and March 25, 1969 (denying the existence of either a conspiracy or the handler named Raul). Bureau Influence with Religious Leaders In his testimony before the HSCA in open hearing, bureau assistant director C. D. Brennan confirmed that the FBI also strove to discredit Dr. King in the eyes of prominent religious leaders. A number of confidential bureau memos substantiated this assertion. The bureau was particularly incensed over the possibility of Dr. King meeting with the Pope in late September 1964. In an effort to prevent this audience, Assistant Director john Malone provided an extensive briefing to one of the bureau's most reliable friends -- Francis Cardinal Spellman of the New York diocese. His Eminence was long known to be one of the Roman Catholic Church's most virulent anticommunists and a long-term supporter of U.S. intervention in Vietnam. He reportedly "immediately advised" the Vatican secretary of state that no audience be given to Dr. King in light of "very serious, but highly confidential information which had come to his attention but which he could not discuss in detail over the telephone." [50] For whatever reason, the effort failed, and Dr. King did meet with the Pope on September 18, 1964. The bureau had more luck in its contact with the Baptist World Alliance, which had scheduled Dr. King to speak at its congress in Miami Beach, Florida, in June 1965. After the alliance was presented with certain "facts" about Dr. King, his speech was canceled. The FBI mounted similar campaigns in late 1964 and early 1965 designed to damage Dr. King's relations with the National Council of Churches and Archbishop Cody of the archdiocese of Chicago. *** Campaign to Prevent the Award of Honorary Degrees to Dr. King Every time the bureau learned that a university was planning to award Dr. King an honorary degree, it strove to dissuade senior officials from making the award. Usually these efforts failed. One notable success apparently involved Marquette University in 1964. Hoover had himself received an honorary award from Marquette in 1950 and considered the prospect of King getting the same award a personal insult. The bureau pulled out all stops, and the award was canceled. *** Attempts to Neutralize Dr. King's Leadership and Replace Him In 1964 the bureau undertook a plan to promote an alternative figure as a black leader. A moderate, acceptable replacement was to emerge after the discrediting and destruction of Dr. King was complete. A memo dated December 1, 1964, proposed that Cartha DeLoach organize a meeting of a number of the more amenable civil rights leaders. These leaders would be positively informed about the bureau's civil rights activity as well as about the negative aspects of Dr. King. In effect, the so-called potential replacements would treat King like a pariah. The "Suicide Project" One of the bureau's most venal actions against King took place in October 1964 after it was announced that he was going to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. U.S. ambassadors in London, Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen were briefed about his personal life and communist associations, in case any of them contemplated receiving him. In addition, the FBI made a tape that allegedly contained ribald remarks made by Dr. King, and sounds of people apparently engaging in sexual activity. An agent flew the tape to Tampa, Florida, and mailed it anonymously to the SCLC from that city, along with a letter threatening to expose the alleged sexual indiscretions. The letter, mailed in late November, was designed to drive King to despair: King look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a greater liability to all of us Negroes. ... You are no clergyman and you know it. I repeat you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that .... You, even at an early age have turned out to be not a leader but a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile. We will now have to depend on our older leaders like Wilkins[,] a man of character[,] and thank God we have others like him. But you are done. Your "honorary" degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce) and other awards will not save you. King, I repeat you are done .... The HSCA concluded that the final paragraph "clearly implied that suicide would be a suitable course of action for Dr. King": [51] King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is .... There is but one way out for you. You had better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation. [52] As a result of this action by the bureau, Dr. King and his colleagues became aware for the first time of the extensive surveillance of them. From then on, they had no doubt about the lengths to which Hoover would go to silence King. SCLC Infiltration Former agent Arthur Murtagh testified before the HSCA that he himself had many informants whom he used to gather information about the SCLC. They were part of the "black probe" operation. He noted that the field office's primary informant was a member of the SCLC's executive staff controlled by agent Al Sentinella, who sat directly across from him in the Atlanta field office. In addition to the monthly bureau payment, this informant further supplemented his income by embezzling organization funds. Sentinella warned him about this but took no other action. The informant informed on the SCLC and Dr. King, sometimes daily, right up to the day of the assassination. Among other information, details of Dr. King's itinerary and travel plans were provided. The official abuses, though orchestrated by Hoover, were supported and carried out by bureau and field office personnel in every section of the country. Murtagh said that in Atlanta 90 percent of their time was spent on investigating and attempting to denigrate Dr. King. This focus reflected a hatred that seemed to permeate the bureau from top to bottom. Murtagh's HSCA testimony revealed that on April 4, 1968, as he left the Atlanta field office around 6:30 p.m. with Special Agent Jim Rose, his fellow agent virtually "jumped for joy," exclaiming, "We [or "They" -- Murtagh's recollection here is hazy] finally got the son of a bitch !" (In his testimony before the HSCA, Rose couldn't recall any words that he uttered at the time. When asked whether it was possible that he made the statement alleged by Murtagh, he said, "It is possible.") [53] As horrendous as this campaign was in the HSCA's view, the committee didn't view it as indicative of the bureau 's involvement in the assassination itself, but as appearing to create an atmosphere in which the assassination could take place. Summarizing the HSCA conclusions, Counsel Blakey declared that, ''as it turned out, the House Select Committee found no evidence of complicity of the CIA, FBI or any government agency in either assassination." (emphasis added.) Just as chilling as the HSCA's efforts to deflect attention from government involvement in King's death were its efforts to side-step questions about a conspiracy by putting forward a highly questionable theory of its own. The HSCA firmly rejected the FBI's conclusion that Ray was a racist and that his racism was the motive for the assassination. It would be difficult to construct a more convoluted scenario than the one the HSCA advanced: Two alleged conspirators, St. Louis racists named John Sutherland and John Kauffmann -- both dead by the time the HSCA was formed, and whose supposed involvement was raised for the first time in the final report -- were alleged to have offered a bounty on Dr. King, which Ray somehow heard about, taking it upon himself to earn it. It was acknowledged, however, that Ray had never met the two men. No explanation was provided as to why he never collected nor tried to collect his payment, nor even how he imagined he would be paid. The HSCA suggested possible ways James Earl Ray could have learned about the alleged offer. They tried, for example, to show that he could have heard about it from another prisoner or even a medical officer with whom he had had contact during his Missouri incarceration. Finally the committee admitted that its investigation failed to confirm any such connection. In fact, both the prisoner, john Paul Spica, and the doctor, Hugh Maxey, denied ever having heard of the alleged Sutherland- Kauffmann offer. The committee then attempted to establish that John Ray, at his Grapevine Tavern in St. Louis, passed information to James about the contract. Since john Ray had in late 1967 and early 1968 allegedly been a supporter of the presidential campaign of Alabama governor George Wallace and his American Independence Party, and both Sutherland and Kauffmann also supported the party, the HSCA believed there was a link. The Grapevine, according to the committee, was a source of Wallace literature. The committee also claimed that brothers John and jerry were quite active in Wallace campaign activity. John Ray denied under oath knowing either Sutherland or Kauffmann and further denied ever hearing or participating in conversations at the Grapevine about the offer. Though the committee admitted that its extensive investigation of the St. Louis conspiracy proved frustrating and that it could produce no direct evidence that Ray had ever even heard of the money offer to kill Dr. King, or even that such an offer existed, it alleged that through his participation in the Alton bank robbery Ray was physically present in the St. Louis area around July 1967. The HSCA concluded that Ray was a lone gunman, acting with full knowledge of what he was doing, probably stalking Dr. King for a period immediately preceding the assassination. Raul, as described by Ray, didn't exist, so Ray couldn't have been a fall guy manipulated by others. However, if there was a Raul he was likely either or both of Ray's brothers, with whom he had ongoing contact and assistance. The HSCA stated that strong circumstantial evidence existed about the consultative role of one of the brothers in the purchase of the weapon itself. (The only scintilla of evidence provided was Aeromarine store manager Donald Wood's comment that when he bought the rifle Ray said he was going hunting with his brother. In fact Ray has said that his cover story for the purchase was that he was going hunting with his brother-in-law.) To shore up the committee's conclusions about the involvement of the Ray brothers, Counsel Blakey continued to press for a prosecution of John Ray for perjury for denying that he participated in the Alton bank robbery. As noted earlier, the U.S. attorney general's office summarily refused, citing a lack of evidence. The HSCA then sealed, for fifty years, all the investigative files and information it elected not to publish. This included all field investigative reports, interviews, documents, and data. Counsel Blakey also invited the CIA, the FBI, and the MPD intelligence division to place their files on the case under Congressional cover so that they would be protected from any Freedom of Information Act requests. This they did. With all of its speciousness and shortcomings, the HSCA re- port raised a number of questions and identified a number of witnesses who had varying types of involvement and stories to tell. In most cases the committee prepared brief explanations and summaries to implement its door-closing objective. The committee accepted the MPD's official explanation for the removal of Detective Redditt from his surveillance post at the fire station. Under cross-examination, however, Redditt admitted that his role was not to provide security for Dr. King, as he had previously maintained, but rather to surveil him and provide intelligence reports. The report noted that upon being removed from his post Redditt was personally brought by MPD intelligence officer Lt. E. H. Arkin to a meeting in police headquarters where he was informed by Director Holloman of a threat on his life. However, the report also revealed, without explanation, the presence at that meeting of one Phillip Manuel, an investigator for the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Arkansas senator John McClellan. Supposedly, Manuel had told Redditt's superiors about the threat on Redditt's life. The HSCA discussed the removal of the two black firemen, which early investigators had found curious, but passed it off as being motivated by the MPD's concern with the security of their surveillance posts and having nothing to do with the existence of a conspiracy. The report also dealt with rumors surrounding the removal of a personal security detail assigned to Dr. King and accepted Inspector Don Smith's explanation that since the SCLC party wasn't willing to cooperate with the detail it was disbanded late in the afternoon of April 3. As to Solomon Jones's insistence that he saw someone in the bushes right after the shooting, the HSCA concluded that it was unlikely that what Solomon saw was a person but that if it were a man it was likely to have been a quick-responding MPD policeman, already on the scene. [54] (This appears incredible considering Solomon had described the man as wearing a jacket and plaid shirt.) The HSCA further noted the MPD's failure after the shooting to issue an all points bulletin (general alert describing the suspect) as well as a "Signal Y" alert (instructing cars to block off city exit routes). Pages were devoted to discrediting Grace Walden and hence her denial that a man she saw exiting the bathroom around the time of the shooting was James Earl Ray. In so doing the committee gave credibility to Charlie Stephens's account of seeing someone running down the hallway after the shot. The committee maintained that it didn't rely on him for an identification. The HSCA attacked Wayne Chastain's report of his interview with Walden and his observations of a drunken Stephens as "improbable, if not an outright fabrication" [55] (despite including in the volumes MPD detective lieu tenant Tommy Smith's affidavit stating that Stephen was indeed drunk). The report also raised the names of three individuals with intriguing possible connections to the case. One was Herman Thompson, a former East Baton Rouge, deputy sheriff. Ray had told the committee that Thompson was the owner of the Baton Rouge telephone number given to him by Raul. (Ray had discovered this by comparing the number he had with the phone numbers in the Baton Rouge telephone directory, beginning with the last digit. Eventually he matched the number he had with that listed for a Herman Thompson.) The second individual was Randy Rosenson, whose name was on the business card Ray said he had found in the Mustang before crossing the border from Mexico into California. The third person was Raul Esquivel, the Louisiana state trooper whose Baton Rouge state police barracks had allegedly been called by Ray in December 1967 on his trip with Charlie Stein from Los Angeles to New Orleans. The HSCA reported that all three people denied knowing Ray and concluded that none of them had any connection with a conspiracy to kill Dr. King. They noted that Esquivel's work records made it impossible for him to have been Ray's Raul. The information contained in the ancillary volumes published by the HSC.A was much more valuable than the report itself. Though carefully edited, the ancillary volumes included sworn statements and documents that provided a useful place for me to start to analyze issues. For example, the HSCA staff interview of Aeromarine Supply Store manager Donald Wood on March 10, 1977, revealed Wood's account of the conversation he had with Ray when the latter requested the change of rifle. He said that he remembered the man said "that he had, and I'm pretty sure these were his exact words, he had been talking to someone and that's not the gun he wanted." Wood then recalled that the man said what he really wanted was a Remington Model 760 Gamemaster pump-action rifle. He said he had the impression that the caller was probably reading it from something, since very few people ever referred to the gun as a "Gamemaster." (This was compatible with Ray's recollection of Raul pointing out the rifle from a brochure Ray gave him). The HSCA ballistics panel reported that they test-fired the evidence rifle and examined the markings on the test-fired bullets. They found that the markings on most of the test fired bullets varied from one to another. They concluded that no meaningful comparison could be made between the test-fired bullets and the death slug. The FBI laboratory had conducted neutron activation analysis tests on the evidence bullets and the death slug (such tests analyze the composition of lead in a bullet). The HSCA panel stated that the bureau's April 29, 1968 report stated that the elemental composition of the bullets varied and therefore no meaningful comparison with the death slug could be made. The panel didn't conduct its own neutron activation analysis. The panel noted that somehow the rifle and the scope were misaligned, resulting in the weapon not firing straight. It also noted that the death slug was originally delivered to the FBI in one piece but was received by the panel in three fragments produced as a result (so the panel believed) of the bureau's laboratory testing procedures. The fingerprints report showed that Ray's prints were found on the following items in the discarded bundle: the rifle, the scope, the binoculars, a beer can and the Commercial Appeal newspaper. There were none of Ray's prints in the bathroom, the room he rented, nor elsewhere in the rooming house. The report also conceded that there were many unidentified fingerprints in the relevant areas of the rooming house and on Ray's Mustang. A Memphis City Engineers analysis of the bullet's trajectory couldn't conclude whether it came from the bathroom window of the rooming house or the elevated brush area behind the rooming house. This uncertainty was due not only to confusion over Dr. King's posture but also to the fact that the medical examiner, Dr. Francisco, hadn't traced the path of the bullet in Dr. King's body. When asked about this departure from normal procedure, Francisco took the curious position that he was loathe to cause further mutilation for no good reason. The HSCA discussed the possibility that the shot had been fired from the brush and also the contention that the brush had been cut down the next morning. It concluded that the bullet had been fired from the bathroom, discounting (as noted earlier) Solomon Jones's statement. Also, after supposedly reviewing the work records of the Memphis Sanitation Department and the Department of Parks it concluded that no cutting had taken place. The committee didn't interview Kay Black or James Orange. Occasionally, some testimony before the committee appeared to contradict Ray's story. For example, Estelle Peters, an employee of the Piedmont Laundry in Atlanta, contended that her records indicated that Ray left laundry with her on April 1. If this was the case, it could be alleged that Ray was in Atlanta with the alleged murder weapon at the same time as Dr. King, and could have been stalking him. Ray maintained that he had put in the laundry earlier and that he was nowhere near Atlanta on April 1, having been well along on his trip to Memphis and spending that evening at a motel in Corinth, Mississippi. Often, more questions were raised than answered. The MPD agent whom Redditt had told Mark Lane had infiltrated the Invaders was revealed to be Marrell McCollough. Under oath, McCollough admitted that he furnished regular reports on the Invaders' activity to Lieutenant Arkin, his MPD intelligence bureau control officer. One of the first people to reach Dr. King after the shooting, McCollough had been in the parking area of the Lorraine, having just dropped off SCLC staffers Orange and Bevel. He immediately raced up the stairs after the shot. During his HSCA testimony, McCollough acknowledged that he was the mysterious figure kneeling over the fallen Dr. King on the balcony, apparently checking him for life signs. He also admitted to subsequently being involved as an agent provocateur in a number of illegal activities for which various Invaders were convicted and sentenced. He explicitly denied being connected, at the time of the assassination, to any federal agency. When I tried to locate McCollough later, I learned he had disappeared from Memphis; it was rumored that he had gone to work for the CIA. The HSCA raised the issue of the withdrawal of some MPD TACT units from the area of the Lorraine. This had been confirmed in an affidavit provided to the HSCA by MPD chief William O. Crumby, who attributed the withdrawal to a request made by a person in Dr. King's group. This withdrawal contributed to the reduced police presence in the immediate area of the assassination. Several conspiracy scenarios, some implicating the Mafia, were covered and dismissed in the HSCA report. I was interested in some of the scenarios, if only for the leads provided and resolved to follow them up. *** THE HSCA's REPORT had only strengthened my growing conviction that Dr. King's murder had not been solved.
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