How the Lyndon B. Johnson Democrat Government Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.

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.

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."

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/16784-how-the-
government-killed-martin-luther-king-jr

--
Lyndon Baines Johnson 1963... "These Negroes, they're getting 
pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since 
they've got something now they never had before, the political 
pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something 
about this, we've got to give them a little something, just 
enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference... 
I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two 
hundred years".
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