Global Research News Hour episode 215
By William Pepper and Michael WelchGlobal Research, April 07, 2018
Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/
“And who is to know how a jury ruled
Pronouncing justice long delayed
When a media establishment schooled
By their absence the truth waylaid.”
-Dr. William Pepper (quoted in The Plot to Kill King) [1]
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In
cities across the United States, Americans gathered to commemorate the
50th anniversary of the death of the iconic African American leader
whose gospel of civil rights and non-violence would come to shake a
generation, and inspire the world. [2]
A single bullet from an assassin’s rifle targeted Martin Luther King the
evening of April 4th 1968 while he stood on the third floor balcony of
the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The murder was rightly
recognized as a tragedy for the progress of civil rights and anti-racist
struggle in the United States. [3]
Other dimensions to King’s legacy, of course, involved his championing economic justice – he was weeks away from leading a Poor Peoples’ March on Washington – and his quest to reverse the tide of war, particularly the Vietnam War.
These aspects of King’s activism were effectively (and in a sense
literally) whitewashed from the history books, drowned out by the
repeated, and by today’s standards less controversial footage of his
1963 ‘I have a Dream‘ speech. [4]
That
speeches, writings, and activities over the course of the last year of
his life might have served as a motive for King’s murder barely gets
addressed half a century later. A simple lone racist gunman theory is
apparently sufficient for addressing Nina Simone’s heart-broken query: Why? (The King of Love is Dead).
But
the ghosts from that turbulent, revolutionary period in American
history, including King’s own, remain restless as long as lies and false
narratives animate the imaginings of those fighting for a more just
world today. Government, profit-making corporations and media continue
to play a role in falsifying and distorting the past for the benefit of
power.
William Pepper’s account of King’s death, as encompassed in three books, including his latest, The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.,
provides an indispensable resource for those not content with the
official story of King’s Murder. Not only does his work lay out more
than 3 decades of diligent research into the assassination, including an
under-reported wrongful death civil trial in 1999, it provides a
notable case study on how and why high-level conspiracies, involving
government entities, carry out crimes and successfully conceal them from
the public.
In
this 50th anniversary commemoration of the death of one of America’s
most inspiring crusaders for social and economic justice, the Global
Research News Hour is proud to present this exclusive feature-length
interview with Dr. William Pepper. A transcript of the entire conversation is available below.
William Francis Pepper is
a barrister in the United Kingdom and admitted to the bar in numerous
jurisdictions in the United States of America. Bill Pepper was a friend
of Martin Luther King in the last year of his life. Believing King’s
convicted killer James Earl Ray had been framed, he represented Ray in a televised mock trial in the early 90s.
In
1999 he represented the King family in a wrongful death civil trial
which found the assassination to have been the result of a conspiracy
involving “governmental agencies.” Dr. Pepper is also the author of
three books on the King assassination, including Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, and his latest from 2016, The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Pepper has also acted as counsel for Robert F Kennedy’s accused murderer Sirhan Sirhan. His website is williampepper.com
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Transcript- William Pepper Interview, March 29, 2018
Part One
Introduction
Our
guest is William Pepper. He is a barrister admitted to the bar in the
United Kingdom and in jurisdictions throughout the United States. He was
a friend of King’s in the final year of his life. He came to believe
that James Earl Ray was a fall guy in the murder of Martin King, to
cover up for the involvement of a broad conspiracy involving the Memphis
Police Department, the FBI, and the local mafia. He represented the
King family at the wrongful death civil trial and has written now three
books on the King assassination: Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, and his latest from 2016: The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
He joined us from New York City.
We asked Dr. William Pepper to give us some background on how he came to be associated with Martin King.
William Pepper: I had been a journalist in Vietnam, and when I returned, I published an article in Ramparts Magazine, called The Children of Vietnam,
that dealt with American war crimes and some of the reality of the war.
He was a subscriber to Ramparts, saw the piece, read the piece, was
very distressed by it, and asked to meet with me. So I met him and
opened up more files to him, and he was devastated by what his
government was doing. I then worked with him that last year of his life,
really, for the National Conference for New Politics. He asked me to
run that, and we were looking to have a King-Spock ticket which was
subverted at a convention on Labor Day weekend in Chicago.
Global Research: You’re talking about Dr. Benjamin Spock.
WP: Yes, it was ….Dr. Benjamin Spock. That was their projection for the ticket.
GR: And,
course, the assassination was taking place, took place, on april 4
1968, and this would have been right in the middle of the U.S. primary
season.
WP: Yes,
it was, it was. And, of course, we didn’t have that third party ticket
because the convention with 5,000 delegates was subverted, disrupted by
government agents who made it impossible to run this kind of ticket
because the attending black caucus, a small part, but a disruptive part,
Blackstone Rangers began to introduce anti-semitic resolutions which
drove away all of the northern liberal Jewish money, so it cut the legs
off from under that potential campaign.
GR: Interesting.
Now, when it came to the assassination, you originally accepted the
official story that James Earl Ray was the lone killer. He had been in a
rooming house across from the motel where King had been staying, or at
least he had a room checked out, and that was the official line. He pled
guilty in 1969 and was sentenced to 99 years. At what point did you
start to doubt that official take on events?
WP: Well,
I began to doubt it when I interrogated Ray for 5 hours in August of
‘78. Abernathy wanted me to do that. He and I and Jim Lawson and a
psychiatrist friend of mine attended effectively that interrogation at
the Brushy Mountain Penitentiary in August. And it raised a number of
issues and number of facts that conflicted with the official story, and
so I decided at that point to begin to look into it and see what I could
find out for myself.
And
that’s really when this 40-year investigation began, following the
interrogation of Ray. I would go to see him periodically and give
questions and ask questions and try to get more information from him,
and he kept asking me to represent him, and I refused to do so until
1988, which was 10 years after I met him, because I had to be certain
that he was… we all knew he was not the shooter. That was evident from
the interrogation that I conducted in ‘78. But what we didn’t know was
what role he might have played in terms of the assassination. It took 10
years for me to be convinced that he was an unknowing patsy.
GR: Now,
adjacent to this idea that he wasn’t the shooter, there’s that, there
the spectre that there’s a conspiracy involving a lot of different
players that had conspired to kill King and put James Earl Ray in this
patsy position. Did you come to this realization about the same time, or
was there, as you continued to interview James Earl Ray, that the
spectre of conspiracy started to come out?
WP: Well,
the more I dug into the issues in Memphis, the more I became gradually
convinced that this guy knew nothing about the plan but was really just
being set up to take the fall. That became really, clearly evident to me
as I worked in Memphis.
GR: So, tell us a little bit about the man himself. He had actually been serving a prison sentence and then escaped, correct?
WP: Yes.
GR: Okay,
so you discovered at some point that there had actually…he had some
help in escaping from the penitentiary where he had been detained,
right?
WP: Yes,
that was arranged. J Edgar Hoover sent $25,000 Into Memphis with Clyde
Tolson, his number 2. Tolson was always a intermediary…intermediary with
the Dixie Mafia people, and government and police people who were
involved in the assassination. With respect to Ray, they sent him 25,000
with Tolson. The head of the Dixie Mafia, Russell Adkins, took the
$25,000 to the prison and gave it to the warden to pay him for arranging
the escape.
James
knew nothing about it, but they had profiled him as a candidate, an
ideal patsy candidate and then they arranged for this escape and then
they kept him on a leash and knew where he was, and kept him under
control, moved him around to have him where he needed to be as a patsy. I
learned this because the 16-year-old son of the Dixie Mafia leader went
along with his father to give the money to the warden, so he was able
to confirm that.
GR: And
over that period..when he escaped that was in ‘67, less than a year
before the assassination. And what was he doing in that period between
his escape and the time when he had been given access to that room in
the rooming-house
WP: Well,
he was trying to get out of North America… He was trying very hard to
get into Africa, and so that was his goal. He started to head towards
Canada. He picked up a job, he had a job in a restaurant for a period of
time and gathered a little bit of money, then he went on to Canada. It
was in Montreal that he met Raul, who offered to help get him papers and
get him out of the country and keep him out. But he asked him to do, he
would have to do certain things for Raul before that and Raul gave him
money to buy a car and pretty much kept him on a string until they were
ready to use him.
GR: And there was a period when he was up in Canada, right?
WP: Yes, that was in Montreal, when he met Raul.
GR: Tell us a little bit about Raul. He was a mysterious figure that seems to be a very important player in this whole drama.
WP: Well,
he was the handler for James. He was a Portuguese immigrant; I believe
he was involved with military intelligence in Africa for Portugal. He
came to the United States and had certain connections both with
organized crime and with the government, and he was involved in
activities for the government and he was a natural person they selected
to take control and handle James and make sure that he was where they
wanted him to be. So he played a significant, a very significant role,
in the assassination, yes.
GR: Now,
I understand that he ended up… among the identities that James Earl Ray
ended up adopting was one that would have given him a certain amount of
protection in the event that some, that there was some intervention by
the law enforcement that might have upset the plans to put them in that
patsy role. Could you talk about that identity that he adopted?
WP: James
was given the identity of a man who work in a weapons warehouse outside
of Toronto in Canada. The identity was Eric S. Galt. They gave him that
identity because if James was ever stopped for speeding or anything
else, any police track would show that he has special security clearance
and he would be let go very, very easily. So that’s why he was given
the Galt. There also was somewhat of a physical relationship resemblance
between Galt and James.
GR: Now, what can you tell us what James Earl Ray’s activities while he was in Memphis leading up to that fateful day April 4th?
WP: Well,
he came into town as he was instructed by Raul. He had brought a
weapon, and he had turned it over to Raul the night before on the
outskirts of Memphis. Then he came into Memphis that day, and parked the
car in front of a rooming house as he was instructed, and he went
upstairs, brought his belongings upstairs, and rented a room from Bessie
Brewer who ran the rooming house.
And
it was the room that had a window overlooking the Lorraine, but it was a
small room and he would not spend much time there because Raul would
tell him that he was really meeting with some gun sellers and he was
promising to meet with them to conduct purchases of weapons and things,
so Ray was not in the room a great deal. But the room was used, so we
learned, as a staging place for the shooting. And the shooter and his
spotter went down and met Loyd Jowers and Earl Clark in the bushes in
the back of that rooming house.
GR: Now, we know that James Earl Ray was nowhere near the crime scene when the assassination took place. What was he doing?
WP: Yeah,
that’s right. He remembered that he had a flat spare tire. And that if
Raul took the car, as he thought he was going to, and had any problems
with the flat tire, and there was a flat spare as well, he wouldn’t be
very happy. So James decided to go to a gas station some blocks away and
to have that spare tire repaired.
He
was seen heading in that direction by two men who came out of Jim’s
Grill and who saw him driving toward that gas station. That evidence was
buried deep in a file drawer and never referred to or used. When James
was up at the gas station waiting he heard a siren, sirens. They had
begun already to send the ambulance down to the area where he was to be.
So
he took off from the gas station, decided not to wait, and drove back
towards the rooming house, but as he came up to the rooming house he was
waved away by the police, and he then just decided that he should make a
break and head out of there, really go to Atlanta where he was
intending to go earlier at Raul’s suggestion. But, he left the Memphis
area and headed south to Georgia.
GR: When did you get your first real lead as to who was involved in the assassination? Your first lead?
WP: Well,
I mean, there were evolving developments. I thought Earl Clark, who was
the captain of the police department, was involved. He was a very good
shooter on the police force and very much a racist. It turned out he
wasn’t, he was only acting as a spotter for the shooter, who was another
policeman who was an excellent shot.
Bits
and pieces of information started to come from various witnesses all
along. So, it’s not easy to… so, we ran a mock trial in 1993. Our
research and investigation produced results which led us in the
direction of the army being there. And they were there with an eight-man
squad as backups, but they also had two photographers on the roof of
the fire station. So it all developed gradually. It was all put together
gradually.
GR: Where did you first start to notice the involvement of Loyd Jowers?
WP: Well,
Jowers was always in question because he owned a grill in back of where
the shot took place. He was always in the frame, but we never put him
so directly in it as when he carried the smoking rifle into the back of
the kitchen, broke it down, then took it out and put it on the shelf in
the restaurant. Jowers’ secret was kept by Betty Spates from 1968 to
1994 when I was able to break her down, and she told me the story of
Loyd and what she thought Loyd had done.
GR: Loyd
Jowers was also he was a former police officer before becoming the
proprietor of Jim’s Grill. He had made some connections with the local
Mafia, right?
WP: Yes,
he was very close to Frank Liberto, who hired him to do this job. He
owed a lot of money to Liberto. That all got forgiven, and he put
$100,000 in a unused stove, and he bought a taxi cab company after the
assassination. So, he was well in with them. His gambling was forgiven,
and he was given quite a bit of money to cooperate.
GR: So,
in terms of Loyd’s involvement in the assassination, could you comment a
little more on what you’ve been able to piece together in that critical
couple of hours during and after the assassination?
WP: It’s
sort of difficult to provide all the details. We knew that James was a
patsy. We knew that Jowers had involvement because he brought the
smoking rifle in. Earl Clark, who was out there was a spotter, went over
the wall. He was seen by a taxi driver who was killed that evening.
The
shooter was a fellow named Frank Strausser, and Jowers was reluctant to
name him, and we only got his name gradually over a period of time from
Lenny Curtis who was a janitor at the rifle range where he saw
Strausser get the special rifle and practice with it all day, before
leaving around 3 p.m. So this is what we know in terms of setting up the
shooting that was taken from the bushes in the back area of the rooming
house and Jim’s Grill.
Intermission
Part Two
GR: In
case you just joined us, we’re speaking with Dr. William Pepper. He is a
human rights lawyer most known for his defense of James Earl Ray in the
trial of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and the author of three
books, the most recent being The Plot to Kill King: the truth behind the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr.
William Pepper, I’m wondering if we could also talk about the various
ways in which the King delegation in Memphis had been somewhat set up.
The fact that, for example, he had been asked to change, or made to
change, rooms from a more secure area at the Lorraine Motel to one where
he would be exposed on the balcony. Can you maybe provide us some
insight into how and why those…because that figures into the overall
conspiracy too, right?
WP: The
Dixie Mafia Family and, in fact, the wife of the leader of that family,
received a phone call sometime shortly before 4th of April, because
King had only arrived there, and he was placed in room 202 which was a
secure room.
She
received a phone call from her son, who, along with Frank Holloman, was
running the operation, the assassination operation, and she was asked
to talk to… one of the Adkins’ employees was a black fellow called O.Z.,
and she was asked to call him, ask him to get to Jesse Jackson and ask
Jackson to go to the owner of the motel and move the room.
Her
son was there at the time that she took the call when she was making
the arrangements, and she discussed it with him. So her son was my
informant of those events. Martin was moved to room 306. It was an open
area and a clear target.
GR: Yes
WP: And
that’s really what was required. When that happened Mrs Bailey, after
the shot, Mrs. Bailey realized what she had done, she actually managed
the motel, and she said, “Oh my god what have I done.” She ran to her
room and collapsed. Had a cerebral hemorrhage and was taken to St.
Joseph’s hospital where she died about 5 days later. So the room change
was organized by the conspirators and was thus carried out.
GR: There’s
also the fact that there’s a major involvement on the part of other
figures that would have acted as backup in case this sniper in the
bushes had missed. Can you talk about how that was organized.
WP: You’re talking about the backup?
GR: Yes, the backup shooters.
WP: The
Army had a team In Memphis as a backup unit. They were instructed, they
came from Camp Shelby in Mississippi, and they were given their
instructions, and they left around 4:30 in the morning. They were shown
two photographs one of Andy Young and one of Martin King. Those were the
targets, they were told they were enemies of the state.
They
drove in and took up positions, one on the roof of the fire station and
we believe the other one on the water tower. Each with a spotter. And
they were waiting. If the shooter, the civilian shooter, did not do the
job, they were prepared to do it they were not going to let Martin King
ever get to Memphis. He was too dangerous. I mean from Memphis to
Washington. He was too dangerous and they were not going to allow that.
To allow him to bring half a million people that could turn into a
revolutionary mob.
So
they were determined to kill him, one way or another. They had the
initial plan with Strausser’s civilian – quote civilian, he was always a
police officer – shooter and the army was backing him up in case he
couldn’t get the job done.
GR: Some
other details relating to the conspiracy… the fact that the police,
that there had been some irregularities in terms of arranging for police
to not be at or near the scene in the run-up to the assassination?
WP: Let me have that question again, exactly what you want?
GR: Well,
I’m just wanting to clarify some of the details. Irregularities in
terms of police being called off their normal rounds in the lead up to
the assassination on April 4th.
WP: Well,
that day, the two black fireman at the local fire station were
replaced. They were told to go somewhere else. But the Kings’ usual
black body guard unit was kept in the police station. They were not
involved. So they were taking all the necessary precautions to make sure
that the effort would go off promptly and smoothly and without any eye
witness observations.
They
also had two photographers put on the roof. That was a military side of
it. Two photographers put on the roof to shoot the back of the Lorraine
Motel at the time of the shooting. One was to shoot at the balcony and
the other was to shoot on the ground, and he was the one who brought his
camera around into the bushes and actually caught the shooter lowering
his rifle. The shooter he said who was not James Earl Ray
GR: There
was also the issue that on the morning of April 5th, the next day, they
sent up a crew to clear the bushes near the grill from the location
where the people locate… some witnesses had seen the shooter.
WP: Yes,
that is right. They sent a clean up crew from the public works
department to clean up the entire back area, which was filled with high
bushes and brush. They cut all that down and they cleaned it up
thoroughly so that it would never appear that a shooter could be there
without being spotted. So they took all the bushes and even one tree
limb I think was cut down. So they made it a safe haven for the shooter.
And he then, was able to escape by running back through the back of the
building along the side of it because it was a vacant lot along the
side and out onto the sidewalk.
GR: Was
there any concern, I mean the fact is, I understand it, the Memphis
Police Department had ordered, had sent out the orders to clean up that
area which was a credible a credibly accused crime scene. So that’s an
irregularity for which there’s no official explanation, if I’m not
mistaken.
WP: No,
there was no official explanation, there was no public knowledge that
it was done, and they cut in fact a large bush, an intervening bush
between the fire station and the vacant lot because if that bush had
been there, then their story of James having seen a police car and
panicked and dropping the bundle in front of a store would have held
true. Without that bush there, James could have seen the police car, but
with the bush there, even if there was a police car, there was no way
he could have seen it.
GR: Now,
going back to the assassination itself, the shot took place at 6:01, an
ambulance came and took him to St Joseph’s hospital. Now, could you
maybe comment on that choice of hospital. Why King would have been taken
there as close to another location?
WP: Well,
it was fairly close, but it wasn’t as close as a couple of other
hospital facilities. But, of course, they had to take him to St.
Joseph’s because that was, if it became necessary. that was where they
were going to make sure that he didn’t leave alive.
GR: Could
you expand on that what happened, from what you’ve been able to
determine, what happened from the time of the arrival at the hospital?
St. Joseph’s Hospital, that evening.
WP: Well,
he was moved into the emergency room, eventually not immediately, but
eventually they began to work on him, and they were trying to identify
pieces of paper that had been dropped so that they could know their way
out at the right time, but for the time being they were in the hospital.
Raul was there, as well, with with them.
It’s
important to know about Raul was that he didn’t have his passport with
him, and he was on the list of people who should leave the city as
quickly as possible. So that was the escape area that they had left,
Frank Holloman and his crowd. Now as you back out of here, you’ll tend
to see a lot of people.
GR: According to your book, there was an unusual number of military and intelligence people inside the hospital?
WP: Yes,
they got there early, and they identified everyone. They knew every
nurse and every doctor. They were very well-informed and supposedly
protective, although they weren’t being protective; they were
effectively there to facilitate whatever Dr. Breen Bland wanted to do.
He was the one who took control of the room and control of the operation
in the hospital. And he’s the Adkins’ family doctor. He had been out
with the Adkins family a couple of weeks before, and he insisted that
they have, that the group have a strong position with respect to
covering up the assassination by Strausser.
GR: So,
according to your book, Strausser, who you identified as the shooter,
actually didn’t kill King. That King appears to have, or the job is
finished you might say, inside that hospital. In his last moments alive,
who was with King?
WP: Well,
Dr. Bland that chased everyone out of the room. As they were going out,
the last one leaving was the nurse Shelby. She heard them gathering
spit up in their mouths. That caught her attention as she was at the
door going out. She then turned around and saw the three men, two in
suits and Dr. Bland she saw the three of them spit on the body. That was
when she saw Bland take a pillow and put the pillow over Dr. King’s
face and effectively suffocating him.
The
next morning when she went home at 11 o’clock, she called her family
around and said I don’t know why they had to kill him. And then she told
them the story, and it was years and years later of course, that I
deposed one of her sons, who knew the whole story from his mother, and
who, under oath and video transcription, told us exactly what had
happened to Dr. King.
He
was killed in the emergency room. He might have died anyway. He was
badly injured by the bullet, but they were not taking any chances. There
was no way they were going to let him bring the mob into Washington.
They were afraid it could turn into a revolutionary situation.
Intermission
Part Three
GR: So,
a high level conspiracy…Yet another interesting aspect to this case.
This idea that it wasn’t just happenstance that King happened to be in
Memphis, that he was somehow drawn there, that the sanitation workers’
strike itself was bait for this trap of getting him to Memphis
specifically! Could you comment on that?
WP: Well,
the sanitation workers’ strike was the reason that he came to Memphis.
That’s true. The sanitation workers were determined to strike
independently of Dr. King. But two of their members had’ve been crushed
on a rainy day in the back of the garbage truck where they went for
shelter. They weren’t allowed to go into regular shelters that other
workers used in Memphis. And they were crushed in the back of the
garbage truck by a man who was a member of the Adkins group. That
precipitated a great deal of anger, sympathy, compassion for the
strikers and Dr. King determined that he was going to go and do the best
that he could on their behalf.
He
went to lead a march which became disrupted and aborted so he went back
to Atlanta, decided to come again and do work with one of the black
radical groups to try to make it a peaceful march, and one of that black
radical groups, the invaders, were also chosen to leave – told to leave
the hotel about 15 minutes before the assassination. They were
dangerous. They could have seen something. They also were armed. So the
plotters decided to get them out of there. And they were ordered out of
the hotel.
GR: Mm-hm.
Just in the last few years, as I understand it – this is since the
civil trial that you represented on behalf of the King Family – you came
up with this new information that pointed you in the direction of this
Frank Strausser. And this comes down to an individual whose identity you
kept secret until he died. Could you tell us more about that last
tidbit of information which really helps complete the picture?
WP: Well,
Lenny Curtis was the man’s name and he was a janitor in the rifle range
of the police department. And that’s where Strausser and Clark used to
work and hang out. He saw a special rifle come in and be given to
Strausser. And he saw Strausser on the day of the assassination
practicing all day with that rifle. And then he saw him leave around 3
o’clock. And Strausser had at various times said ‘he was going to get
his head blown off’ that type of thing. So he was suspicious of
Strausser.
He
also found that they were suspicious of him. And they kept him under
surveillance. Unmarked car outside of his house. Excuse me. He was
lighting a cigarette, going into his house one day, and he smelt gas. He
had to put the cigarette out. He saw a V-sign in a tree above – behind
his kitchen window.
And
then finally, the final straw was Strausser asked him to come with him –
ride with him downtown when he was going to pick up pay-cheques for the
men. And on the way down he didn’t go the usual route he went through a
wooded area and he showed his gun – brushing his coat back – and asked
Lenny who he thought – what he thought about the – Ray being the
murderer of Dr. King. And Lenny quickly said, ‘Yes of course he was.
Everything points to him.’ He was of course, speaking for his life.
So,
down, they went down, they came back. Um, but he had enough suspicion
of Strausser from the background information and experience, and then
the shooting and practicing of the rifle all day long. But I couldn’t
use – I deposed Lenny, put him under oath and transcribed him and
video-taped him. But we couldn’t use that. We couldn’t use that until –
until he died, because I would have had no doubt that they would have
killed him. So we kept that as a part of our gathering information, but
quietly held.
GR: So,
William Pepper, could you comment then on what makes this case so
important in terms of helping us understand the ability of ordinary
citizens to confront power in our society? What is the particular
significance of this assassination and cover-up?
WP: Well,
because of the evidence we’ve uncovered, there is no question that this
was a government operation. And it was an operation led by the FBI, by
J. Edgar Hoover, uh using his number two Tolson, and using the head of
Police and Fire in Memphis, Frank Holloman, who used to work in Hoover’s
office and who toward the end became very involved in the details of
the assassination. So it was a government operation using local Dixie
Mafia people, and a local hit man, with strong government back-up.
So
that we know. We know governments can do that, government did do that.
What average citizens can do is is really to try to pay attention to
their governments, and what they’re doing and what the officials are
doing, and be as well informed as possible about that. And also I think
probably move to change the whole culture of this country from
materialism and capitalism and militarism into something much more
humane. And that would require really extensive work on amending the
constitution of the United States. And that’s a task in my view that
must be undertaken at some point in time. But an alert citizenry is
essential for the salvation of a democracy, and unfortunately in America
we don’t have that alert citizenry yet. Hopefully, with cases like this
coming to the foreground, we will be able to have it.
GR: I
have just one last question, because I know you got to go, but there
has not been a lot of respectful media attention paid towards the case
that you’ve put forward. Could you comment on why that is so?
